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FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING (1985)
New included in the Shout! Factory’s FRIDAY THE 13TH Collection Deluxe Edition Box Set found here – https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/friday-the-13th-collection-deluxe-edition?product_id=7444
Directed & written by Danny Steinmann.
Written by Martin Kitrosser, David Cohen.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/e_q7Pz2HNJc
Hey! I told everyone that the last FRIDAY THE 13TH was the last one. It said “FINAL CHAPTER” right there in the title. What are you tryin’ to make me out to be, a big fat-pantsed liar-face? Well, looks like Jason’s back again in…what are you calling it this time? A NEW BEGINNING? Yeah, Jason’s back…sort of.
In no way will FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING ever be mistaken as the best film in the FRIDAY THE 13th franchise. But through the years, the film itself has come to mean numerous things to me. As a child growing up loving the F13 series and watching a new F13 film being released every year, the film was a refreshing testament that Jason would never die, even after his so-called FINAL CHAPTER. As a pre-teen, I appreciated A NEW BEGINNING for its gratuitous nudity, which I will get to in a minute, but still needs to be mentioned when talking about this film. And as an adult who loves the genre but is able to recognize its faults, I find it somewhat of a turning point for this film series.
At the end of PART 4, we were led to believe that Jason Voorhees was dead and buried. As Tommy Jarvis thwacked him in the head with a machete and he slid down the length of it upon falling to the floor, it seemed that Jason had heard his last “Kill Kill Kill Ma Ma Ma!” But box office numbers proved to be more powerful than any massive head wound, and less than a year later, a new FRIDAY THE 13TH film—this one redundantly titled A NEW BEGINNING—was churned out. Director Danny Steinmann was set to direct the sequel to LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, but when that production went belly-up, he was shuffled over to Crystal Lake. With the way FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING ended up, it appears a rape/revenge saga may have been a better fit for him. Steinmann’s takes and retakes for the nude scenes in this film are much talked about in CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES, the book documenting the making of the F13 series, and one that leaves a kind of bad taste in my mouth rewatching the film.
Still, as a teenage boy, I remember drooling like a dog at the amount of nudity in this film (which consists of only three scenes, but these scenes are about as gratuitous as one can get in terms of maximum boobage). One of my most vivid recollections about F13 PART 5 was seeing it in the theater sitting next to my mom (I was 12 in 1985 and unable to see the film without her being there). When the scrumptous Deborah Sue Voorhees removes her top and reveals her…ahem…large assets, I clearly remember an older teen a few rows back exclaiming “Oh my god!” at the glorious sight. It’s one of those mixed emotional moments that littered my youth, where the budding man in me wanted to laugh and maybe ogle a bit, but the embarrassed kid in me sitting next to my mom wanted to shrink into my seat and completely disappear.
Nude scenes aside, F13 PART 5 should be commended for continuing the story of Camp Crystal Lake and its most infamous resident practically right where the last one left off. Opening with what turns out to be a dream sequence, Corey Feldman returns briefly as Tommy Jarvis, spying on a pair of grave robbers digging up Jason Voorhees’ grave only to find him alive and stabbing in his coffin. As the dark eyes of the hokey mask focus on Tommy in the pouring rain and advances, a much older Tommy (played woodenly by John Shepherd) awakens in a car on his way to a mental facility. We learn Tommy has been shuffled around from one mental facility to another in the ten years since the night he took on Jason, but the ghost of that night and the killer himself seems to be appearing in the periphery, haunting his waking hours as well as his dreams. The mental facility provides quite a lot of fodder for a killer if this were a proper FRIDAY THE 13TH film, but Jason’s dead, right? This becomes fuzzy when the bodies start piling up, and while all fingers point to Tommy as the killer, the sheer randomness of the kills and the distance between them might say otherwise. And the bodies do pile high, as Steinmann revealed that part of the deal he had with the studios was that a kill had to happen every 8 minutes in this film.
A few things are worth mentioning here. Corey Feldman was apparently set to star in PART 5, but he decided to pass in favor of a little film called GOONIES from some obscure director that has since faded into obscurity. Instead and Feldman’s role was lessened to a cameo. His scene in the film is fun, but it still makes me wonder how cool it would have been had Feldman reprised the role and this film were made with a younger, pre-teen cast. But this would have taken out the chances for the all-important (to Steinmann and my teen loins) nudity. Still, the appearance of DIFF’RENT STROKES’ Dudley (Shavar Ross) and his weird importance to this storyline may be attributed to the fact that a kid was written into the script thinking it might have been Feldman in the script somewhere and a rewrite kept the kid role in there. Ross is present all through the climax of this film, but oddly disappears after the showdown in the barn.
The cast is pretty broad, covering age ranges, races, and classes. This Jason has no compunction to killing everyone and anyone. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the victims, though they do have a tertiary affiliation to the group home Tommy is staying in. Despite the large cast, Steinmann seems to be able to bring out some characteristics of the kids that make them memorable. Some of Tommy’s fellow wards of the state are simply categorized by their symptomology. Others are simply there for boob time. But unlike latter installments, each of the kids felt unique and decently developed. Standouts include the fun subplot of Jake (Jerry Pavlon) awkwardly hitting on Robin (Juliette Cummins), the gross backwoods trashiness of Ethel (Carol Locatell) and Junior (Ron Sloan), goth queen Violet (Tiffany Helm) and her awesome dance moves, Demon (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) and his irritable enchilada-laden bowels, and of course, the bouncy-goodness of Deborah Sue Vorhees.
While the personalities were on point, the killings for the most part were uneventful and unspectacular. The MPAA was starting to come down on the series, so there wasn’t a ton of blood. Kills were quick and cut away from. Some even occurred off screen. The main problem was that there were so many kills that the shock lessened the more they occurred. Less is definitely more in this case and there’s no use in piling the bodies high if there is no rhyme or reason to the killings and less personality to the people dying. For the most part, stabbings seem to be the soup of the day this Friday the 13th. There are a few standouts. The aside from scenes like a road flare to the mouth and a belt wrapped around someone’s head and tightened, and maybe that hatchet to the head scene, most of the killings happen simply to up the body count with little other purpose. Still, standout kills like Vi’s breakdance leading up to her death and the aforementioned Deborah Sue Vorhees’ bouncy death scene make some of them worth watching.
Steinmann attempts to take the series back to its roots and hype up the mystery element of the series that was missing since part two. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to reveal that the killer is not Jason, but anyone with three brain cells can put together who the culprit is with his obvious dialog and pretentious staring at the camera every time he’s in frame. Still, I think the attempt to make the identity of the killer more mysterious was a good idea that simply had a poor execution.
I find it interesting that the seeds of one of the most annoying aspects of a later F13 film (JASON GOES TO HELL) were planted in F13 PART 5—this being the fact that Crystal Lake’s Death Curse is more of an infection rather than one singular killer. The fact that numerous people are perceived as possessed by the soul of the killer are hinted at numerous times in this film with two different people. Tommy himself fights urges to kill, and while there is a hokey motive motivating the real killer in PART 5, it could be argued that Jason was haunting the killer from beyond the grave. Yes, it’s a leap, but given the possession/body swapping that goes on in JASON GOES TO HELL, it’s interesting to see that there was evidence supporting this five films before it.
All of the franchises have their missteps. TEXAS CHAINSAW has THE NEXT GENERATION. HALLOWEEN has SEASON OF THE WITCH. There comes a time in every franchise when the studios see that the same old same old was starting to lose its luster and new elements are injected in order to revitalize the franchise. But changing FRIDAY THE 13TH back into a whodunit, even though it is the type of film that began the franchise in the original, was a mistake. Without Jason, there is no FRIDAY THE 13Th, and studios quickly brought him back zombified and stronger than ever in PART 6.
Tom Morga goes uncredited as Jason in PART 5. While he isn’t the best Jason, I think he does a decent, albeit stiff job of playing the killer. He really doesn’t get much screentime until the climax as the film returns to the trend shown in earlier installments where we only see the killer from the waist down. This is a technique of showing the kills that tied the series to its giallo roots and one that is dropped in the next installment and rarely returned to. Again, seeing only the killer’s shoes and hands brandishing a weapon is more suspenseful than a full shot of Jason any old day, but later installments seem to think otherwise. Morga does a decent job during the final battle, giving a very physical performance reminiscent of Steve Dash and Ted White before him.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING ended up being a prime example of why folks turn up their nose at this franchise. It’s filled with senseless kills, gratuitous nudity, and a threadbare plot serving only to up the bodycount. While the first four tied together somewhat not only in timelines, but also in theme and tone, A NEW BEGINNING boiled the films down to basics and instead of exploring themes of innocence lost, mother/son relationships, authority challenged, and disregarded youth, it was death and sex and more death and big, big boobs. While I don’t hate the film, it annoys me that this is the one that seems to give those who dislike the series ammunition against the series as a whole. Repeated viewings have made me soften up about PART 5. I like what it attempted to do, but there seemed to be a very mean and somewhat raunchy underlying tone that felt off, even for a series about a campground serial killer.
Extras for F13 PART 5 include a commentary track by Steinmann and some of the cast, as well as a behind the scenes interview short featuring Corey Feldman talking about his brief cameo and what he would love to do if he ever returned to the franchise as Tommy Jarvis. There’s also another episode from the TALES FROM CAMP BLOOD series that makes the actual films seem downright dense in terms of character and story, and Part II of THE CRYSTAL LAKE MASSACRE–a faux tabloid news show tying the story of Part 4 and Part 5 together that was actually pretty fun, as well as a making of feature talking with key cast members including talking with both men behind the masks in this episode (Dick Wieand, who played Roy, Tom Morga, who was the stuntman who played Jason), director Steinmann, and composer Harry Manfredini. Fun supplemental stuff, but nothing utterly jaw-dropping is revealed in any of it—still a must for any self-respecting F13 fan.
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