Friday the 13th | 31 Days of Horror

I was looking for a retro scare, so I turned to a franchise I loved as a teenager. I’ve also heard that a new installment is due on Friday, March 13, 2015, so I wanted to do some catch-up on the story. Seems I’m VERY behind, since there are seven more FTT’s after this 1985 film, including some crossovers with Nightmare on Elm Street…Movie Marathon time!

New Beginning catches up with Tommy Jarvis, the boy who killed Jason Vorhees, as a teenager living in a sort of half-way group house for mentally disturbed kids. One by one, the residents are brutally butchered in increasingly imaginative ways. Tommy, damaged and almost mute, sulks around a lot, while the music escalates and crazy neighbors hack at raw chicken carcasses. As the bodies pile up, Tommy befriends Reggie, a young kid whose grandfather works at the home. Together they must find the killer – could it be Jason reborn? – and try to live to see the 6th installment.

Overall, New Beginning is cheesy enough to be pretty funny, and features some terrible acting thrown in all around with no real scares. If you’re looking for a B horror movie to play a drinking game to, this just might be the one.

Top Scare: Uh, can’t think of one
Heartbeats: 1 out of 5
Gore Factor: 2 1/2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 1 out of 5
Recommended for: 15 or 16 and up

Went back to another original/classic…some call it one of the first slasher movies upon which so many of today’s movies are based. Can’t believe this is one of eight of these movies in this series; with the gore factor, I just watched the first one and that was good enough for me.

Friday the 13th is set at Camp Crystal Lake, or Camp Blood, as the locals still call it. That’s because in 1957, a young boy drowned there and in 1958, two counselors were murdered as they made out in an old barn. Since then, the camp has been closed, but Steve-o wants to change all that. He’s hired several college-age kids (including a very young Kevin Bacon) to come in to help get the camp ready for its opening just a couple of weeks away.

Annie, one of these teens, is heading to the camp to be the cook (yes, one cook for the entire camp!), but the town cuckoo named Ralph warns her, “You’ll never come back again. It’s got a death curse!” Well, he was RIGHT! Poor Annie never even makes it to the camp before she meets her demise, set to a whispery man’s voice of “Ch ch ch ch, ah ah ah ah.” Creeeeepy!

Meanwhile, back at camp, the other counselors are working and playing (mostly playing) while Steve heads into town. It begins to pour down in the dark, dark woods, so they split up (naturally!) to head to various cabins for strip Monopoly or make-out sessions. This is a teen movie after all!

One by one the counselors are picked off with axes and other various handy instruments of torture, until only one girl is left. She soon meets up with the killer, and must spend the rest of the movie trying to run, quiet her breathing so as not to be detected, discovering dead bodies and crying, and just being the ignorant horror movie girl in general. We do discover before the movie’s end who the killer really is, and the killer’s motivation – psycho killer – and even get a surprise or two thrown in for good measure.

Top Scare: Near the very end
Heartbeats: 2 out of 5
Gore Factor: 3 3/4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 3/4 out of 5
Psycho factor: 3 out of 5
Recommended for: 17 and up due to several sex scenes, gory killings and fear factor in general

Next up: The Blair Witch Project

Category Archives: Friday the 13th

31 Days of Horror: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (aka Part V) (R; 1985; 92 min)

Horror Movie: Friday the 13th (R; 1980; 95 min.)