For all the self-perpetuation in the Friday the 13th saga, it was only by Part Four that producer Frank Mancuso, Sr., decided to call it quits. Call it caving in to moral pressures – the censorial guardians couldn’t abide that Paramount was profligating the highest-profile slasher franchise – call it an admission that the artistic well had run dry some two and a half movies ago. Don’t call it a financial decision; the things made cash flow like blood. No matter, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter emerged to fulfill its titular promise in 1984, signaling its decisiveness by dropping numbers from the title altogether. And then they made a Part Five under a year later, but that’s not our concern.
By Friday the 13th Part III, these movies were nothing more than delivery systems for murder, couched in poorly-told stories. The Final Chapter does it one further by not even telling a story! Indeed, so committed is The Final Chapter to the slasher’s identity as pure exploitation, it’s as close to a grindhouse movie as a studio would release (excepting, well, Grindhouse). This is pure sex and violence, where it matters, with both of those characteristics at an all-time high – let us accept that the edit-happy MPAA was surprisingly lenient on The Final Chapter’s ultra-violence, in the promise there’d be no more of these rotten things. Ha, the joke’s on them!
Though The Final Chapter’s makers were just as dedicated to the myopic quest of finality. To that end, makeup extraordinaire Tom Savini returns to the franchise he’d left after the first Friday, anxious to kill off the Jason Voorhees character he’d himself inadvertently created. So on top of the body count being totally nutbars (and a wholly satisfying thirteen, if we ignore Jason himself), the violence is good too – in that distinct notion of “good” which focuses upon the pure aesthetics of splatter.
Director Joseph Zito has a similar claim to ickiness, with the earlier grotesque slasher The Prowler. Of course, all this is in the wake of Zito’s reimagining as the helmer of Chuck Norris insanities like Missing in Action and Invasion U.S.A. Hail Zito! So the man knows his way around exploitation. Fulfilling the sexual angle Savini has no part in, Zito not only populates his picture with the greatest mass of naked tit actresses (acting quality not even considered), he hedges his bets with archaic stag reels. Yeah, there’s legitimate pornography footage in here, never mind it hails from the 1920s or thereabouts.
Of course, a movie cannot wholly be made of tits and guts – the two great tastes that go great together. Story must intrude! With The Final Chapter’s utter disregard in this matter, the result is pretty dire, not in the brain-rapingly incompetent sense of Part III, but just desultory. For one thing, the cause of Jason’s running about hacking and slashing…just because! The Final Chapter picks up right on the tail end of III, some point during that same shared 1985 weekend as Part 2 – though a tombstone now retcons the year into 1984, by suggesting Part One was in 1979 and – moving on! Jason (anonymous stuntman Ted White) has just gotten an axe clean in the head, which’d kill just about any dude – though movies like this have deniability unless you’ve got one of the guaranteed EMT signs of death, such as decapitation or complete de-bloodification. So stash Jason right there in the hospital morgue, he will rise again, by no greater causal force than a sequel’s existence itself. Yeah, Jason’s loose by fiat, and they never dwell upon this fact.
Oh, and then Jason murders Bruce Mahler, completely making up for his Police Academy character Fackler! (Less awesomely, he makes a nurse die.)
With that, Jason beelines it right back for the familiar forest, screw a location switch, under the certainty he’ll find and kill a good dozen other people. These psycho-killer instincts do not disappoint. Verily, following some swallow-like homing sense even they do not understand, a standard pack of six sex-crazed teenagers is headed for the same place. And trust me, not a single one of them will survive beyond tomorrow.
Now, with years of series practice, one would imagine they’d have more basic character types beyond the Prankster Jerk and the Horny Couple. They do not. These are the only characteristics in the meat menu. As in Part One, the joker is named Ted – Lawrence Monoson, a self-satisfied Joisey type I’ve never once encountered in real life. Thankfully, in a fairly large cast, Ted gets lost in the shuffle.
The rest of the victims are all variations on the Horny Couple…Given The Final Chapter’s drive to cram sex into all its non-violent orifices, this is unsurprising.
Firstly, there’s the Horny Couple Classic: Samantha (Judie Aronson, of Weird Science) and Paul (Alan Hayes, of…Neon Maniacs?!). Samantha epitomizes all the world’s sluts, which makes her one of the more personable humans in any Friday the 13th. Ignoring Paul’s hat, he has no definition, a fact which extends to most of the male cast – as they’re just around to bump the lasses up to “Couple” status, and die. This they do.
Parallel is the Horny Couple in Training: Sara (Barbara Howard, now a psychotherapist for unrelated reasons) and Doug (Peter Barton, like most series vets, limited to soap operas since). Sara starts off the movie naïve, a virgin – excepting a lack of gumption, she has the earmarks of a Final Girl. But under Samantha’s tutelage, Sara’s well on her way to sluttishness, and The Final Chapter makes that one of its driving arcs. Doug doesn’t even have a hat.
One Half of a Horny Couple, Seeking a Partner: Jimmy (Crispin Glover with all his nascent insanity present). Jimmy, with his Flock of Seagulls haircut, is perhaps the only interesting male character – let’s go ahead and credit Glover with that accomplishment. And as a horny man without an opposite, well…
With six guaranteed fatalities, it’s a struggle to squeeze in more (necessary, too). Keeping with the coupling theme, let’s try for twins – a simple way to get maximum death for minimal effort. Also, someone (either one, it doesn’t matter) for Jimmy to get together with, and fulfill his Horny Couple-hood just prior to, yes, his death.
Meet Tina and Terri (another repeated name, a mere four entries in) – Camilla and Carey More. They, like the various other teens, have headed out to what is verifiably Crystal Lake, despite its California milieu, all for reasons unknown. Together as a single murderable mass now, the bunch has rented a house in the woods, dead (heh!) certain a weekend of generic debauchery is well worth the risk of a be-Jasoning. I mean, okay, fine, he’s assumed dead now, but it’s merely one day later. CGI renderings have better self-preservation than this!
Now, I’ve been discussing no one but narrative write-offs. In the lovable slasher genre, survival is a rare commodity. For as much as the to-be-murdereds commit “sins” in their boozing, smoking, sexing, dancing, one must earn survival, not merely receive it.
If anyone in The Final Chapter is due to live, it’s someone in the Jarvis family. Yup, right next door to the rental property is the Jarvis household, way deep in the woods. This is a bizarre setup indeed, and stranger still that apparently Mama Jarvis (Joan Freeman) has lived there peacefully for lo the past three murder sprees and change. Not only that, she jogs around Crystal Lake daily. How Part 2’s Jeff and Sandra disturbed Jason’s hermitude prior to Mama, I cannot say. And for this foolishness, Mama does not survive – nor does she get an on screen death, or even a corpse discovery. She just vanishes, aided by a Henry Manfredini musical sting.
Her children, however, just may earn the right to make it to end credits. Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) is a generic enough Final Girl, and not worth greater consideration.
Then there’s Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman, who sees III’s screenwriters Meatballs Part II, and raises them Meatballs 4). Tommy is a preteen (and pre¬Goonies), and thus a very unusual voyeur when the rest of the cast cannot contain their sexuality. And at that age, he automatically warrants survival, for it is a rare horror movie that willingly offs a child. And for all of Tommy’s Feldmanian baggage, he is decidedly not the standard mush-mouthed, precocious kid. He’s sort of a Mr. Fixit, and an amateur makeup artist (Tommy = Tom = Savini). Come the climax, he’s show greater depths as well.
There’s also the family golden retriever, Gordon the Wonder Dog. He must’ve smoked some righteous grass at some point, because not even the hound lives.
Cutting to the chase, Tommy and Trish alone survive. The Final Chapter, which eschews the cheese factor of Part III, is watchable in its pre-murder section only if you don’t know that, somehow. Thus you might think Mama has a chance too, if a Friday movie is concerned with preserving the sanctity of family – hah! (Nah, her death is the movie’s way to parallel Tommy with Jason, a notion they frankly were right to consider, but don’t handle with the fullest grace.) One could also mistake Sara as a Final Girl, until she bares all and fornicates and we’re all the wiser.
Oh, and there’s also Rob Dyer (Erich Anderson)! Despite my silence about this new guy, he too has a chance to live. For one thing, he’s as close as we’ve gotten to a hero, out for revenge after his sister Sandra became one half of a corpse-kebab in Part 2. He doesn’t survive – in fact, he’s #13 – but Rob is at least a fount of Jason-based exposition. This is needed because somehow neither Trish nor Tommy knows anything about the dread retarded psychopath. Even though Crystal Lake is within walking distance. Hmm…
Generally, the character stuff in The Final Chapter is most tedious. Then we get to the latter half. Murder makes everything better. Most of Jason’s many, many kills aren’t overly imaginative, but rather highly flashy variations on old classics. He even runs through another iteration of the classic Friday “sharp thing comes up from underneath you” kill. Crispin Glover in particular gets a spectacular exit, in answer of the question “Where’s the goddamn corkscrew?”
Appreciating the makeup art is pretty much the sole means to enjoy The Final Chapter (apart from the nakedness). As horror, the killing sequence is too riddled with coincidences. Not a single person hears any violence transpire – not the death screams in the next room over, nor the defenestrations, nor the impalings, nor any of that. Sometimes, they can’t hear this over a silent movie!
Adding to that, Jason’s off-screen teleportation skill (unremarked upon thus far) grows by leaps and bounds. Let’s see…First Jason’s in the kitchen – to kill a person. Then, under a minute later, he’s on the second storey façade – to kill a person. Then instinctually over to the backyard next door – to you know. Really, he can be anywhere. Even behind you right now!
In one remarkable moment, Rob heads into a basement. Meanwhile, Jason kills someone upstairs – point in fact, it’s the dog. (Boo!) And with Trish guarding the only door to the basement, Jason then appears in the basement, and gives Rod the old Night of the Living Dead reference kill. I’m not really sure how Jason managed that one, and I doubt Zito knows either.
“He’s killing me! He’s killing me! He’s killing me!” Rob shrieks. It’s one of the movie’s cleverer lines of dialogue.
Generally, The Final Chapter is simply an unusually extreme slice-and-dice. That is, until it needs to satisfy the “Final” in the subtitle. Trish’s expected little cat and mouse chase with Jason (and Jason does run in his spry youth) is more tense than it ought to be, owing to her devotion to protecting sweet, innocent Tommy. Trish races about, committing countless more defenestrations (I wager the busted windows rival the dead bodies, numerically and in personality), hoping to give Tommy the time to escape. Instead, it gives Tommy the time to kill Jason.
Finding Rob’s newspaper clippings on Jason (an impressive collection, considering the timeframe), Tommy decides to “pull a Ginny.” So shaving his head in a way we’re assured only a budding makeup enthusiast can, Tommy fashions himself into the spitting image of Baby Jason, Child Lake-Zombie. Looking this way, he frazzles what little neurons exist within Jason’s skull-shaped noggin – Does Jason think he sees himself, or is he just confused as to why a child would do such an illogical thing? Either way, it gives Tommy the time he needs to take Jason’s machete and – Oh, you think I’m gonna spoil Tom Savini’s best moment? The one which unquestionably, irreversibly kills Jason deader than dead? I’m not!
“Die! Die! Die!” Tommy shrieks. More dialogue from a golden-tongued goddess.
The epilogue is even mostly intent upon maintaining this impression of finality. A standard shock capper was shot – the usual lame dream sequence involving a water scare and Jason’s resurrection – but Zito nixed it for sending the wrong message. The man has standards. Instead, the lone sequel seed sown lies not with Jason, but with Tommy. His evil glare suggests a potential psychopath here in Corey Feldman – er, Tommy Jarvis.
And so it would have ended, and not a moment too soon. With Friday the 13th e’er the arbitrator of the slasher genre, its departure makes sense. For 1984 was the year of Peak Slasher, the genre a bit shagged and fagged, oh my brothers. Not a single slasher maker was interested in expanding the form, or playing with it. Thus it would’ve gone the way of the peplum, and many other one-time fads…were it not for one movie. A Nightmare on Elm Street. That movie rewrote the subgenre’s rules, in ways that’d eventually infect future Fridays. But its most immediate effect was Mancuso’s swift reneging on the “Finality” of The Final Chapter. Sequel ho!
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Friday the 13th (1980)
• No. 2 Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
• No. 3 Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
• No. 5 Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
• No. 6 Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
• No. 7 Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
• No. 8 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
• No. 9 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
• No. 10 Jason X (2002)
• No. 11 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 12 Friday the 13th (2009)
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