The Silliest Friday The 13th Movie Kept The Series From Taking The Wrong Path

As its title suggests, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was intended to signal a rebirth for what would become the 1980s’ most prolific horror franchise. Instead, thanks to a combination of gratuitous exploitation, disgruntled actors, and some groan-worthy identity theft, the fifth entry nearly killed it.

Having started out shooting hardcore porn before making the rape-revenge thriller Savage Streets and the gleefully perverted slasher The Unseen, director Danny Steinmann was always going to take the series into bloodier and seedier territory. He lived up to his reputation, racking up a record-breaking kill count of 22 while also reaching new highs (or, arguably, lows) in scatological humor and naked flesh.

In a sign of the times, practically every female character is reduced to horny teenage boy fodder. Even final girl Pam (Melanie Kinnaman) is forced to flee the killer’s last attack in a T-shirt that conveniently becomes increasingly see-through; the writers of Carmen Electra’s opening Scary Movie scene were surely taking note. Remarkably, Steinmann believed the finished version was too tame, arguing that enough nudity had been cut to make another skin flick.

As for the copious amounts of blood and gore, the film continually introduces new faces – a couple of greasers in a brokedown car, a diner waitress, a voyeuristic farmhand – only to have them savagely murdered moments later. Characterization and character names are clearly unnecessary impediments to the pure sex and violence of Steinmann’s proudly deviant world.

Little wonder, therefore, that its leading man was so disheartened on learning the film he’d spent months researching for wasn’t a gritty psychological thriller, but the sequel to a film Roger Ebert had labeled “an immoral and reprehensible piece of trash." A method actor so committed to his craft he makes Jeremy Strong appear indifferent, John Shepherd had volunteered in a state mental hospital to fully embody troubled hero Tommy. Sadly, in another sign he wasn’t always the most ethical filmmaker, Steinmann had deceived him, and most of his castmates, into thinking they’d signed up for an entirely different movie named Repetition.

The Tommy in question was the adult version of the teen who’d appeared to thwart Jason Voorhees’ killing spree in 1984’s misleadingly named The Final Chapter (first inhabitant Corey Feldman used a break in filming The Goonies to briefly reprise the role in the opening dream sequence). Set several years after the traumatic events that had confined him to a life in psychiatric care, A New Beginning gives the new Tommy little screentime, too. In fact, he practically goes missing for a good hour before dispatching Jason for a second time (or so he thinks).

With the original Jason now hacked to death, the franchise had to find a way to keep his legend going without resorting to a zombie state or any other ridiculous form of supernatural revival (it later ignored such qualms). And what better way than a copycat killer, a development signposted by the fact his hockey mask was adorned with two downward-pointing blue triangles rather than the familiar three upward-pointing red?

Oddly, the film’s first victim – compulsive chocolate bar eater Joey (Dominick Brascia) – doesn't meet his maker at the hands of this new Jason. Instead, he falls to a disturbed fellow patient at the Pinehurst Halfway House who, for some unfathomable reason, has been trusted with an axe. From then on, though, it’s the Voorhees wannabe who subjects the motley crew to a reign of terror in a variety of wickedly inventive ways.

Say what you like about Steinmann’s approach, but he sure knows how to execute an imaginative kill. Randy couple Tina (Debisue Voorhees, proving the power of nominative determinism) and Eddie (John Robert Dixon) succumb to the sex is death trope, with the former speared through the eyes with a pair of garden shears and the latter suffering a fractured skull via a tree-wrapped leather belt. Other unorthodox methods include choking by road flare, and, in the case of its big baddie, impaling on a tractor harrow.

The film isn’t without a sense of humor, either, whether intentional or not. It’s unlikely audiences were expected to take poor Demon’s (Miguel A. Nunez Jr.) rather undignified death too seriously – knifed through an outhouse after a portion of diarrhea-causing enchiladas – or the schmaltzy serenading that occurs prior. See also Violet’s (Tiffany Helm) embarrassing new wave dancing shortly before getting her stomach slit. And stew-obsessed redneck mom Ethel (Carol Locatell) gets several laughs with the blatant disdain she shows for her son, her yells of “shut the f*** up” echoing what we’re all thinking.

Unfortunately, A New Beginning squanders all hints of goodwill with the baffling reveal that mild-mannered paramedic Roy (Dick Wiewand, who’s also since disowned the movie) is responsible for all the Jason cosplay. Apparently so distraught at discovering his secret son Joey brutally axed, he went on a vengeful rampage, slaughtering a whole bunch of innocent kids without rhyme or reason.

Roy was supposed to kickstart a new wave of Jason impersonators who would take the franchise up to at least chapter seven (hence the final shot of a seemingly possessed Tommy). However, the underwhelming fan response and disappointing box office ($21.9m compared to its predecessor’s $32.9m) soon ended the idea, and the real deal was resurrected for 1986’s aptly-titled Jason Lives and beyond. A New Beginning isn’t the worst Friday the 13th (that would be 1993’s incoherent The Final Friday), but it’s undoubtedly the entry that makes you feel most in need of a shower.