a.k.a. "Sunday the 15th"
a.k.a. "HA HA HA HA HA! The "Final" Chapter!
Directed By: Joseph Zito
After the utter disappointment that was watching Part 3 again, I went into this viewing hoping against hope that this, one of my favorites of the series, would still hold up. Right off the bat, I find that I still like the opening theme, and Axel the sleazy coroner. His (mostly) failed seduction of nurse Robbie (named after Robbie Morgan) is great, especially his reaction after the supposedly-dead Jason's hand drops the moment he's about to get some. Sure, some of Robbie's lines aren't as clever as Zito thinks they are, but Axel is pure gold.
There's still continuity problems, the most obvious being people still being allowed to camp along Crystal Lake (seriously, how big is that lake?), and Jason's constantly-changing appearance. Later on there's the character of Rob, who appears to have been hunting Jason for years, despite the fact that his sister (Sandra from Part 2) has only been missing for two days.
This one actually has some semblance of "star power", with the presence of Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover, Peter Barton (who had just starred in a short-lived TV series and was getting a minor push in the teeny bopper mags), and Lawrence Monoson, who had starred in The Last American Virgin.
The relationships between the characters may not always be realistic, but there's chemistry in the cast and the characters themselves all have a personality or are memorable for something, especially for being stock slasher movie victims.
Although it seems goofy played out, I understand Zito's psychology of wanting the audience to be collectively bringing Jason back to life. The problem is, he doesn't stay "dead" long enough for that to really come into play. There's also the totally 80's idea that "computers can do anything the script requires" (which, as Transcendence has shown, has not gone away completely) with the Jim-Ted "dead fuck" stuff, but the interaction between Monoson & Glover makes that stuff not as bad as it could be, and Monoson does a good job of making the Ted character not nearly as annoying as he might have been. This movie has not one, but two "pure" girls, including one of my personal favorites, Barbara Howard, who is sadly dispatched as soon as she is about to lose that purity. I'm sure that there has been more than one film studies paper written about that.
There are still a lot more things here that I like than in the previous installments. Feldman as Tom Savini immediately marching Rob up to his room to show off his mask is such a kid thing to do, and Erich Anderson plays the awkwardness of the moment wonderfully. Right after that, is... THE DANCE!
60% of the time, it works every time.
The "story" in so much as there is one, is of course pure Friday formula, and in fact the weakest part of the film, IMO, is Jason himself, and how he's used. Every sequences he appears in, someone dies. There's no setup (or foreplay, as it were), it's simply, find, kill, repeat until the final sequence. At least some of the kills here are memorable, like poor Paul getting speared RIGHT IN THE NUTS, Doug's face getting caved in, "Where the hell is the corkscrew?!" and Rob's horrible realization of what's happening as his death takes a little longer than usual (which leads right into his yelling "HE'S KILLING ME!" which I can understand some people finding ridiculous, but knowing that Zito based that idea on a real-life murder makes that scene really creepy and sad to me). The kills being like that is intentional, however, as they wanted to give the prolonged, gory death of Jason the best chance of getting past the MPAA with minimal amount of cuts by not throwing a ton of blood on screen beforehand.
The traditional "body discovery" scene that almost always kicks off the final stretch makes even less sense than usual here, but at least Kimberly Beck's freak out sells the moment well enough. I think Beck does pretty well during the whole last run (although it's weird that neither her nor Tommy seem to wonder what happened to Mom), and having two older sisters myself, I can easily place myself in Corey Feldman's shoes.
*** Does what passes for a story make a lick of sense? Not in the slightest, but the characters in this one are at least worth spending 90 minutes with, and the end, with Tommy killing Jason, is really spectacular. That makes it better than the first three, and much to my relief, I still like this one.
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