Here's a little addendum to my October Horror Movie Challenge posts; this month I'm trying a little something coined #NewWatchNovember, trying to make all movies, TV etc. I see new to me. Not going to make it formal or anything, it's purely for fun, and it's helping me be more decisive about what things from the unwatched Blu Ray pile I do next. Part of this is taking care of a few leftover things from the October Challenge Pile, both clearing out the spreadsheet (yes, I have spreadsheets to organise my movie viewings) and making space on the DVD rack. Well during this sorting out, I realised that I had on the spreadsheet something that's been on there for ages which I still hadn't seen; Friday the 13th Part V. The only reason I actually have a copy of it is that it's on the same Blu Ray disc as Part VI Jason Lives, easily my favourite of the entire run, but I've never even bothered to watch V normally, because of its terrible reputation. When something is considered "the worst one" in a series like Friday the 13th, which isn't exactly a critical darling at the best of times, you know that's something pretty bad. So given it was the date itself yesterday, I decided to have a mini-challenge; see if I could get a bunch more donations on the Fundraiser on the promise that I spend that evening (on a Friday the 13th that had started out very, very, very well) slogging through this. Well, the people spoke with their wallets, so let's dig into the Friday that even a lot of die hard Jason fans have turned their backs upon. Spoilers ahoy...
I guess before I dig into the film itself, a quick look at my relationship with the franchise, and where this film sits within its history (just to keep myself from having to write about the damn thing for as long as I can). I have a bit of fondness for parts of this series, whilst acknowledging that it's pure junk food horror. Of course junk food can vary; for me the top tier one of the bunch, the proper Wimpy Grill, is Part VI for many reasons, such as an Alice Cooper tie in song, and having a more fun "monster on the loose" feel. The next rung down, the Five Guys, goes to the original despite its flaws, mostly for Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees; really a shame her son has overshadowed her for so long. Taking up a joint spot for the 20 Piece McNugget Share Box (heh, "share"!) would be Part 2, for having a very interesting different take on Jason and one of the best final girls in the franchise (Amy Steel needs to be recognised as a true horror star!), Part VII for a ridiculous but fun climax and one of the best Jasons, and Part 4 The Final Chapter, for great direction, Tom Savini's effects, and Crispin Glover's smooth moves. That one brings us nicely to where Part V sits in the franchise; see, Paramount really did intend IV to be a grand finale to the franchise, complete with a pretty definitive ending where Jason is hacked to pieces by Tommy Jarvis (played in that one by a pre-Goonies Corey Feldman). And that really was going to be it... except for one thing; the box office. It made an absolute killing, so not only did it not stop the series, but the gap between Final Chapter and A New Beginning was only just over 11 months, the shortest interval between sequels in the entire franchise!
As you can imagine, with that quick a turnabout, this is a bit slapdash and thrown together to say the least. How to get around the whole "our killer is dead" thing? Well I'm going to come out and say it, apart from some dreams and hallucinations from the grown up Tommy (now played by John Shepard), Jason does not show up at all, it's actually a paramedic who goes all kill crazy because his son gets killed in a pretty random incident at the start of the film, and decides to dress up as Jason to do it because... to frame someone who's dead... yeah, this really makes no sense. Look, I do complain with the first film that it's a cheat to have a big mystery of who the killer is, only to have her turn up seemingly out of nowhere, but that's a structural problem with the storytelling, this really makes no damn sense. You know what's really dumb about this? I just thought of an easy way to fix it; have Roy the killer kidnap or hide Tommy somewhere early on, have his plan be directly blame Tommy by making it look like he snapped due to Jason induced trauma. There, see, makes more sense immediately, just came up with that off the top of my head. There were three people on this screenplay, and none of them thought of that.
Speaking of, let's talk about the production. Now the shoot was apparently... not without friction from a lot of sources. A lot of fingers were being pointed in different directions about who did what, but personally I'm willing to lay a lot of blame to how this ended up at the feet of the director Danny Steinmann. He tries to shift things to the studio (which I think is fair to a point, given how rushed pre-production had to have been) and to star John Shepherd. However, Shepherd was apparently not happy because he was effectively tricked into being in this film, not knowing it was going to be a Friday the 13th movie until he got on set, he thought he was going to be in a serious drama about the consequences of trauma. That sort of subterfuge is not going to endear you towards the project you've been forced to work on, so I don't blame him for that. Against Steinmann, a lot the cast tell the story that he was abusive and off his tits on coke most of the time. Dick Wieand, who played our fake Jason Roy, goes so far as to say he "shot a goddamn porno out there", and given Steinmann's history with adult entertainment, his previous works, and the amount of nudity in the finished product, I can believe all of this. Final proof that he's to blame? Only one of the Friday the 13th directors who never made another movie since. Everyone else did do various subsequent project, for Steinmann, this was a brick wall.
I don't think the movie world will miss his great, "what could have been" contributions though; I don't think any Friday movie called for the cinematography or for Harry Manfredini's music to do as much heavy lifting as they do here. Outside an OK opening dream sequence, apart from a hilariously awful looking prop grave, the direction is pretty crap. One of the stories is that the cinematographer had to step in to direct some stuff when Steinmann was high as a kite; given the actual camerawork is the only thing that doesn't look cheap in this, I can buy that. Scenes often go on for too long, they don't bother setting up any geography for the locations (a whole barn is introduced ten minutes before the end), there's very poor set up to the death scenes that don't build any real tension or suspense at all, and it's remarkable that a film with this much blood and nudity can feel this boring. Even the Final Girl sequence is really poor, partially because our final girl Pam is a complete non-entity compared to the previous films' heroines, but also because Roy in Jason get-up is just not threatening seeming at all. I'm not sure if it's purely down to the way he's shot, but he rarely seems like a threat, and that's not helped by some actually quite good nightmare visions of the real Jason seeming far more intimidating. This film manages to make a heroine going on the attack against the killer with a chainsaw boring... again, not helped by the fact that Part 2 did that way better.
As for the writing, good grief! I know we don't exactly go into these things for an elaborate narrative, but this one doesn't even pretend to have a coherent story. It really is just bumbling around, setting up stuff for death scenes (not very well). I mentioned before that our killer Roy was motivated by the death of his son at the halfway house it's set at; well, he racks up a total bodycount of about 17 people, and 9 of them, more than half, had nothing to do with it at all! The others were in the area when it happened, and that was kind of it; the guy who actually did it gets taken away by the cops, and is still alive by the end. There's a whole other slasher movies' worth of characters who are bought in just to be murdered on screen, and yea gods these are the most annoying, downright unpleasant characters in any slasher movie I've seen. I know that's a cliche, but there's really only one truly nice, competent character in the bunch, and he's killed off screen having done nothing to anyone. The rest... I have never wanted anyone to die as much as the "comic relief" hillbillies Edna and Junior, yet when it happened, I felt nothing. The whole film has this extra skeevy, nasty taste to a lot of it, even down to some of the death scenes, like the guy getting his head slowly crushed with a belt around a tree. BTW, this was pretty heavily cut by the MPAA before release, and somehow just cutting away from some of these make it feel worse, like even more skuzzy things were just out of sight.
I could go on and on about a lot of things from this movie, like the Sheriff who suspects Jason despite him being dead, and no-one having seen a guy with a hockey mask, or the early victims who are inexplicably dressed as 1950s greasers, or the fact that not just the killer, but also the corpses seem to be able to off-screen teleport like mad. But I think one thing I can honestly say can sum up this one... I never thought I'd say this, but I think I had a better, more rewarding time watching Cannibal Holocaust. At least in that one there was more effective filmmaking, some competent moments, and indications that someone behind the camera had a brain in their head. This was a boring, ugly, pointless slog. After this one, Paramount made a major gear change in the franchise again; with Nightmare on Elm Street hitting big, they decided to go a more supernatural route, and just bought back zombie Jason. As an effect, a lot of this film is overwritten and forgotten by what came next... especially the scene where they mention that Jason got cremated, and an ending implying Tommy Jarvis went over to the dark side. That decision worked out well for them over the years, leaving this thing; not a new beginning, just a false start, sandwiched between two of the best films in the series. Mind, I'd be lying if I said it had no impact whatsoever; have a look at this music video, about how one of the death scenes affected a young horror fan. I should note that though it's a really close adaptation of the scene from the film, it somehow manages to be far more effective and better made; that's the magic of good direction.
Well, that puts this extra bonus round of the October Challenge to bed, please consider throwing a couple of pennies into the pot if you haven't already. In the next few days I plan to do a proper round up of the challenge, election anxiety followed by election bliss delayed that. Also, probably early December, I'm going to tackle that Underworld set since the donations hit the target. Finally, since there's a Friday the 13th in August next year, I'm thinking of, as a warm-up for the challenge, doing the donation thing again for the only one of the Friday the 13th movies I have yet to see, one that I know does divide the series' fanbase quite a bit...
Oh, just one more thing! Have a look at this video by Jason Arnopp, whose works I've talked about before, discussing the time he wrote a Friday the 13th novel. Hmm, maybe I will risk those eBay prices...
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