Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984) ***
Once upon a time, I called Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the most schizophrenic movie ever made and what I mean by this bit of hyperbole is that The Final Chapter largely alternates being a rather brutal, occasionally mean-spirited horror movie sequel and a jovial teenage sex comedy especially made explicit in casting Lawrence The Last American Virgin Monoson in one of the key supporting roles.

The Final Chapter has some of the best and also some of the worst moments in the entire 12-movie Friday series, easily the best cast and most likable characters from (almost) top to bottom, Tom Savini’s return as makeup artist, Harry Manfredini’s first-rate musical score, Ted White’s brutal conviction selling his kill scenes as Jason Voorhees, and it’s arguably the quintessential Friday the 13th movie.

Let’s hit a couple of the high points first.

The Final Chapter introduces us to Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), a 12-year-old boy with a hyperactive imagination and penchant for monster make-up and masks not unlike Savini; Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck), Tommy’s older sister and our Final Girl; Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman), Tommy’s and Trish’s single mother; Gordon the Family Dog, the golden retriever whose fate remains uncertain. Anyway, this family dynamic is something fresh and new for the Friday series.

Crispin Glover, one of the great movie eccentrics, makes his mark on The Final Chapter and his Jimmy becomes one of the most unforgettable horny (dead) teenagers in a series that served them up by the hundreds as fodder for the slaughter. Jimmy and his buddy Ted (Monoson) especially feel like refugees from a teenage sex comedy, like they continued playing their characters from My Tutor (Glover) and The Last American Virgin (Monoson). Jimmy’s dance and exit line in this movie have become the stuff of slasher movie legend.

Feldman and Glover provide us two of the most likable characters in any of the dozen Friday movies, something that’s ironic given the fact The New Beginning (which arrived in theaters around 11 months after The Final Chapter) has almost no likable characters among the largest cast of corpses in series history. Never mind that Tommy did not exactly pan out in The New Beginning and Jason Lives like the endings of The Final Chapter and The New Beginning seemed to promise.

I almost forgot Rob (E. Erich Anderson), the older brother of a character killed by potato sack Jason in Part 2. Rob seeks revenge against Jason and fortunately he meets Trish and Tommy first, though ultimately it does not matter because Rob represents one of the great missed opportunities. Here’s a character who could have served as a basis for an entire movie and The Final Chapter makes him completely underwhelming. His death scene, designed to be poignant, instead becomes laughable (‘He’s killing me. He’s killing me’) and it wishes it could be as enjoyably bad as the bookseller’s death in Dario Argento’s Inferno. You might recall that the creepy old book retailer’s done in by rats and a homicidal Central Park hot dog vendor.

Now, we’ve moved on to the more negative.

Our first two new corpses in The Final Chapter represent one of my least favorite scenarios that’s commonly found in Friday movies. We spend several minutes, it feels even longer, much much much longer, with super horny morgue attendant Axel (Bruce Mahler) and super uninterested Nurse Morgan (Lisa Freeman) before they are massacred by Jason. Maybe it’s only a few minutes, but I never want to watch their scenes ever again to find out. I’ll use their introduction as my cue to go make some scrumptious butter popcorn.

Like the beginning of Part III and the obligatory murder of the lakefront store owners, these are minutes of my life that could have been attended to better things, even during a Friday movie.

The Final Chapter loves breaking glass and characters falling through windows.

The Final Chapter gets straight at the heart of the ambivalent relationship between parent company Paramount Pictures and the Friday movies.

One immediately gets the feeling that Paramount wanted The Final Chapter, you know, to be the end of Jason once and forever because the studio hotshots were ashamed to be associated with such a disreputable and sleazy franchise, but, alas, at the same time, The Final Chapter leaves the door open for more sequels with one of the series’ trademark endings. Paramount walked through that very door — actually, more like sprinted — when The Final Chapter returned a hefty profit.

The Final Chapter finished in the top 25 box office for 1984 and put together a $11.1M opening during the weekend of April 13.

Friday, April 13, 1984. The Challenger returned to Earth from their 11th space shuttle mission. India beat Pakistan by 54 runs to win the first Asia Cricket Cup in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Paramount released A New Beginning on March 22, 1985, and 1983 and 1987 are the only years of the ’80s without a Friday the 13th movie. Do 1983 and 1987 belong to another decade?

I more or less grew up with the Friday movies, so I might be more forgiving of them for all their numerous faults than people who grew up in different times.

Then again, I might not be, because I only consider Jason Lives (the best made and the only entry that deserves a place near second- or third-tier classic horror movies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), Part III (the most suspenseful and the one where Jason acquires his legendary hockey mask), and The Final Chapter even worth recommending. Most of the rest of them have their isolated moments, all of them are excuses for reels of sex and violence and vulgarity, and the movies definitely created their own distinctive space in the cinematic marketplace.

How did the world end up with 12 Friday the 13th movies and legendary status for both the series overall and serial killer Jason Voorhees specifically, when similar movies like My Bloody Valentine, The Burning, Happy Birthday to Me, and Madman failed to produce one sequel among them. Granted, the original Friday finished 15th in the 1980 American box office sweepstakes and the first three sequels also proved to be solid hits among strong competition, while The Burning grossed $700 thousand, Madman $1.3M, My Bloody Valentine $5.7M, and Happy Birthday to Me $10.6M.

Money obviously talked for Jason.

The Prowler (1981)

THE PROWLER (1981) *
Describe The Prowler in one word.

Excess.

Yes, indeed, director Joseph Zito goes for an excess of false alarms and jump scares. It seems like there’s a scene like that every couple minutes. I mean, for crying out loud, somebody (usually her policeman significant other) sneaks up on our main female protagonist alone at least five times. Keep in mind The Prowler (hopefully not confused with the 1951 Joseph Losey thriller) earned Zito the opportunity to direct Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Tom Savini’s gore effects ran into considerably less interference than earlier 1981 slasher films My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th Part 2, both released in the immediate aftermath of John Lennon’s murder and the subsequent MPAA tougher stance against graphic violence. Savini’s effects are quite frankly almost too good for their own good, as the blood gushes like a geyser at regular intervals. I found them a little much, just as I did in Maniac, and I usually love Savini’s work, especially Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.

In addition to all the false alarms and jump scares, The Prowler relies too much on cat-and-mouse or a ‘contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes.’ The main female protagonist and her dashing cop significant other recall Nancy Drew and one of the Hardy Boys. At one point late in the picture, she even attempts the old hiding underneath the bed with a deranged, psychopathic killer nearby trick.

The Prowler begins with a 1945 newsreel and a ‘Dear John’ letter, before getting down to brass tacks with a double homicide in the distant past that will trigger a present-day murder spree. After the success of Halloween, this flashback style of storytelling to start the whole shebang in style became the vogue for slasher films. Let’s see, Friday the 13th, Prom Night, Terror Train, and The Burning all started up this way and Happy Birthday to Me and My Bloody Valentine were both not too far behind with tours of the past. The plots of The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine have striking parallels, especially the overall look of the killer.

The Prowler conceals the identity of the killer until nearly the end of the movie and that’s probably best … but, who are we kidding, since I found some or even most of the Prowler’s behavior laughable even before the unveiling that calls into question every murder in the past hour. Fortunately, though, we have only a brief unmasking and then our heroine unceremoniously shotgun blasts the Prowler’s head to smithereens. We are spared any big speech or further character motivation and the frenzied scenery chewing of, let’s say, Betsy Palmer late in Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, we are not spared yet another jump scare in the film’s last scene, as if Zito received a bonus for overloading the picture with jump scares. Jump scares are cheap, though, and eventually some audience members turn against any picture that abuses jump scares, false alarms, cat-and-mouse, flashbacks, and dream sequences or whatever combination of them.

Casting Farley Granger as Sheriff George Fraser proved to be a strike against The Prowler, because I flashed back on two of the greatest thrillers ever made, Rope and Strangers on a Train, directed by none other than the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. All the marvels of modern cinematic technology like nudity, gore, and profanity galore cannot make up for the difference between Zito and Hitchcock or the difference between a hack and a master.

The Burning (1981)

THE BURNING (1981) Two stars
The late, great director Howard Hawks (1896-1977) once said that a good movie is “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

No way that Hawks could have possibly had a movie like THE BURNING in mind, since he died a few years before the release of the 1981 slasher and even before the boom of that genre. John Carpenter paid Hawks tribute in HALLOWEEN with characters watching THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD on TV.

THE BURNING does have three great scenes but also several bad ones.

Let’s get the three great scenes out of the way first.

There’s an effective jump scare in an early hospital scene, before the opening credits. It makes up for a couple clunker false alarms later on in the picture.

Several early period slasher films include a scene where one character would regale both the rest of the characters and the audience with an origin story of the killer. THE BURNING, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, and MADMAN all have a similar campfire story. These scenes are fun, because most of us can remember at least once being enthralled and freaked out by somebody’s ghastly yarn around the fire. Cropsy is based on a real-life New York urban legend, the Cropsey Maniac, a genuine campfire tale which obviously had a major impact on the creative forces, including Bob and Harvey Weinstein and Brad Grey (later three of the most powerful men in Hollywood), behind THE BURNING.

The “infamous raft massacre” scene, when Cropsy takes out five teenagers with his garden shears. This is the pièce de résistance of THE BURNING and the one scene when the film deserves its reappraised “classic” status. Splatter effect maestro Tom Savini earned his paycheck for this sequence alone and it can stand side-by-side with his best work.

In some quarters, THE BURNING has been called one of the best slasher films and a classic that flew under the radar.

Truth be told, I’ve always been underwhelmed and sometimes even disgusted by it, except for the three great scenes. I first watched it on late night Cinemax in the early 2000s and a few years later, I taped it off IFC.

The three great scenes probably make up less than 10 percent of the running time. Some of the camp scenes also work on a basic level.

Most often, though, THE BURNING alternates a jeering, leering tone with moments of brutal violence, a juxtaposition that makes for strange bedfellows.

We especially find that leering tone in the nude scenes of Carrick Glenn and Carolyn Houlihan. Houlihan, who won Miss Ohio in 1979, reportedly felt very uncomfortable with her nude scene and it only gets much worse for her Karen character as she receives first a temper tantrum from her would-be boyfriend after she changes her mind about sex and then Cropsy’s garden shears as she looks for her clothes scattered in the woods. Houlihan only appeared in two features, her second and final role “Bathing suit model” in A LITTLE SEX.

Ned Eisenberg and Larry Joshua play jerks in Eddy and Glazer, respectively. Joshua makes undoubtedly one of the oldest summer campers in screen history, as he turned 29 years old three months before the May 1981 release of the film. We just have absolutely no idea what Glenn’s Sally even sees in the first place in a creep like Glazer. Eddy, he’s not quite as bad as Glazer, but his scene with Karen leaves us liking the guy appreciably less.

Guess it goes to show what kind of movie we’re dealing with when Brian Matthews’ Todd and Brian Backer’s Alfred (possible nod to Hitchcock) take on Cropsy at the end. We find out Todd was one of the campers who participated in the fiery prank on Cropsy that horribly backfired during the prologue and we first see Alfred peeping on Sally in the shower. Alfred does grow on us, especially as he becomes friends with four of his fellow male campers.

Cropsy’s first murder, naturally of a prostitute, represents one of the worst aspects of the slasher film: a self-contained murder sequence that wastes precious time (sometimes minutes on end) and contributes nothing of virtue to the film.

THE BURNING holds interest today predominantly as a time capsule film.

It was part of a wave of low-budget horror films that attempted to cash in on the runaway success of HALLOWEEN. There proved to be a glut of these films in 1981.

Several famous performers and behind-the-scenes figures got their start with THE BURNING. Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander (with a head of hair), and Fisher Stevens made their screen debuts. THE BURNING marked one of the first productions of Miramax, known for their film production and distribution; Miramax (named after the Weinsteins’ parents Miriam and Max) started in 1979 in Buffalo, New York, close to where they filmed THE BURNING.

Maybe that leering, jeering tone should come of no surprise considering Harvey Weinstein’s role in THE BURNING as writer and producer.

Former production assistant Paula Wachowiak recounted her worst experience on THE BURNING with the Buffalo News in October 2017. She went to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel room, because she needed him to sign checks, and he greeted her at the door wearing nothing but a towel, which he naturally dropped when she entered his room. He wanted a massage. Wachiowiak spurned him. The Buffalo News article features the headline, “’You disgust me’: Buffalo woman tells of 1980 encounter with Weinstein.”

Friday the 13th (1980)

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) One-and-a-half stars

Of all the horror movies over the decades that have been labelled “classic,” FRIDAY THE 13TH is the one arguably least deserving of that label.

Plain and simple, it’s a bad movie. One-dimensional characters, corny dialogue that even makes references to much much much better movies like CASABLANCA, filler scenes, and perhaps the least convincing mass murderer in screen history are some of its crimes against cinema.

Harry Manfredini’s musical score derived from PSYCHO and JAWS and Tom Savini’s make-up and special effects are both very good, and their work earns the film one half-star each.

I can only see FRIDAY THE 13TH being considered a classic if you count all the sequels and imitations.

My personal favorite FRIDAY THE 13TH movies are PART III, THE FINAL CHAPTER (perhaps the most schizophrenic movie ever made, a cross between leering teenage sex comedy and brutal violence), and JASON LIVES. They succeed more at having a sense of humor and a sense of fun than all the other installments. The rest of the movies all have their isolated moments.

If you have seen the sequels before the original, you might be shocked by the film that started it all. It is very sluggish, at times, and there’s no hockey-masked homicidal maniac in the middle of the mayhem.

Sean Cunningham (director) and Victor Miller (screenwriter) made FRIDAY THE 13TH to cash in on HALLOWEEN, which earned $60-70 million on a $300,000 budget. When there’s an unexpected runaway success like that, naturally the clones and variations start appearing in droves and they did after HALLOWEEN for at least five years.

Cunningham and Miller worked together previously on a family film called MANNY’S ORPHANS, released nearly two months before HALLOWEEN. Cunningham began with adult movies THE ART OF MARRIAGE and TOGETHER, produced Wes Craven’s THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and directed a sexploitation comedy named CASE OF THE FULL MOON MURDERS before consecutive family pictures in 1978.

In other words, he saw FRIDAY THE 13TH as the way to make inroads in the brutal movie business. Honestly, who could blame Cunningham, especially as many others had a similar brainstorm.

Cunningham, of course, lacked the finesse and skill of HALLOWEEN director-writer-composer John Carpenter. FRIDAY THE 13TH does benefit, however, from its own low budget production — $550,000 — so it is effective in fits and starts despite itself. It is far more of an exploitation film than HALLOWEEN, and proved nearly as profitable. We saw FRIDAY THE 13TH movies in every year of the 1980s except for 1983 and 1987.

What FRIDAY THE 13TH did was establish a campground setting, add more corpses, er, characters, and amplify the gore, elements that quickly became the norm for an onslaught of “dead teenager” movies. Like virtually every horror movie since CARRIE (1976), it also has one final jump scare. The sequels — namely PART 2, THE FINAL CHAPTER, and THE NEW BEGINNING — upped the nudity and sex quotient. (FRIDAY THE 13TH fans should check out Mario Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD, a 1971 film that undoubtedly influenced the first two FRIDAY THE 13TH installments. If you’ve not seen the Bava film before, you might be surprised. It’s also much better than any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies.)

The original FRIDAY THE 13TH exists in that post-HALLOWEEN storytelling mode, where there’s a prologue detailing terrible events that happened in the past and will dovetail with the events of the present. Just about every horror film made after HALLOWEEN includes a bloody, sordid back story.

In FRIDAY THE 13TH, we head back in time to Friday, June 13, 1958, Camp Crystal Lake, when camp counselors Barry and Claudette sneak inside a storage cabin for a little lovin’ and they are murdered. We come to find out that one year before, a 11-year-old boy named Jason Voorhies apparently drowned in Camp Crystal Lake, due to negligent camp counselors.

You could build a nifty little collection of these back story / terrible event in the past scenes.

Let’s see, HALLOWEEN began on Halloween 1963 with 6-year-old Michael Myers killing his older sister Judith.

In PROM NIGHT, it’s 1974 when 11-year-olds Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick cause the accidental death of 10-year old Robin.

In TERROR TRAIN, a sexual initiation prank at a college fraternity’s New Year’s Eve party leads a young man named Kenny to become traumatized and committed to a psychiatric hospital.

In THE BURNING, it’s a fiery prank on a cruel, alcoholic summer camp caretaker named Cropsy that leads to five years in the hospital before his release and revenge.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE waits a bit to spring its 20 years ago flashback story on us.

Anyway, you get the point.

Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) decides that he will reopen a renovated Camp Crystal Lake. That’s his big mistake, one that results in eight deaths — seven of them Christy and his staff — on Friday, June 13, 1979.

Final Girl Adrienne King does have a great scream and some of the same wholesome All-American appeal as Jamie Lee Curtis. We also find out that she’s very talented at making coffee. Alice Hardy is virtually the only likable character among the lot, although we’re aghast that she ever had a love affair with the creepy Steve Christy. Girl, what were you thinking? There goes the whole idea of the Final Girl being a virgin.

As far as the boys go, Kevin Bacon later became a big star but he’s not around long in FRIDAY THE 13TH. Harry Crosby, son of the legendary actor and singer Bing (1903-77), attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and earned his MBA from the Fordham Graduate School of Business Administration before becoming a successful investment banker. Anyway, he’s killed in FRIDAY THE 13TH.

That all leads us to Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, played by Betsy Palmer (1926-2015), who we find out committed all the murders in a final act reveal. This middle-aged, albeit crazy, middle-aged lady, who at first seems like a kindly middle-aged lady, created all that mayhem. Early in this review, I called Mrs. Voorhees “perhaps the least convincing mass murderer in screen history” and I stand behind that claim. I just don’t believe that she could have accomplished such murderous feats, especially as she begins her attack on Alice by slapping her silly. Palmer brings on the camp — as in campy — during her screen time.

Film critic Gene Siskel (1946-99) hated FRIDAY THE 13TH so much that he first gave away the movie’s reveal and Palmer’s fate and then he provided the addresses for the chairman of the board of Gulf & Western Industries (who owned Paramount back then) and Palmer. Siskel rated FRIDAY THE 13TH “no stars.”

Palmer herself thought very little initially of the film and took on the assignment so she could buy a Volkswagen Scirocco. She called the script “a piece of shit” and she thought no one would go see FRIDAY THE 13TH.

In her later years, Palmer embraced the film and the role.

Nowadays, the next FRIDAY THE 13TH might be a documentary on the legal copyright battle between Miller and Cunningham.

As of Oct. 19, 2019, 655 folks have signed the change.org petition “Victor Miller & Sean Cunningham, End The Lawsuit and Work Together To Let Jason Live Again.”

The petition reads, “We, the fans of Friday the 13th ask both Victor Miller, Sean Cunningham along with Horror Inc to end the lawsuit and find resolution over the copyright claim by working together.

“Allowing the battle to take place in court helps no one, especially not the fans of the series. Relying on a courts decision will take years with neither side truly profiting within that time frame. Even after the courts decision one side will likely appeal the case and that will lead to even more years of not profiting on the franchise.

“By coming to a mutual agreement you both compromise and get something you want. You find common ground and you can work together to profit both sides. You’d also be supporting the fans that have supported you and the franchise for so many years. We want to continue to watch the franchise grow under your direction. Please support us as we have supported you. Thank you.”