DVD Review: Friday The 13th - The Final Chapter (Deluxe Edition)

Well, as the old saying goes, “You just can’t keep a good seemingly inhuman psychopathic murdering machine down.” And that’s the case of Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter. I remember seeing the TV spots for this one 25 years ago (I feel old for even writing that), thinking “Oh, wow! The FINAL chapter!” I knew that it was going to be big. I knew it was going to be something. I knew that it was going to be it.

Would you believe I have never trusted an advertising campaign since?

So anyway, back to Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter. Up until the point that New Line acquired the rights and the guilty pleasure known as Freddy Vs. Jason finally came to pass, The Final Chapter could very well be the last good entry in the entire Jason Voorhees/Friday The 13th franchise. Sure, The Final Chapter’s story is about as dumb and as full of holes as the previous three installments, but it’s the execution of the film (poor choice of words, I know) that sets it apart from the later chapters (which ultimately did nothing but make fun of themselves).

As he has a habit of frequently doing, Jason Voorhees (this time played by Ted White) returns to life (or was he just resting?) after receiving an axe to the head in Part 3. With a sharp pointy instrument of death in one hand and a secondary sharp pointy instrument of death in the other, Jason heads back towards the Crystal Lake area but this time gets sidetracked near the home of the Jarvis Family (Joan Freeman, Kimberly Beck, and little Corey Feldman). The house next door has just been rented by a group of dumb horny teens, and their illicit and wanton behavior screams “Hey, just kill us!” in Jasonese. Among 1984’s victims are: E. Erich Anderson, Barbara Howard, Peter Barton (the future Peter Burke), Lawrence Monoson, Clyde Hayes, Judie Aronson, twins Camilla and Carey More (who look positively stunning diving underwater nude), the underrated comic genius Bruce Mahler, Lisa Freeman, and, of course, we can’t forget about Crispin Glover. While some of these lads and lasses more or less failed to go anywhere in filmdom, Crispin Glover forever cemented himself in unforgettableness with his patented Dead Fuck Dance Moves featured in this one (must be seen to be believed).

Article Author: Luigi Bastardo

Luigi Bastardo is the disgruntled alter-ego of Adam Becvar, a thirtysomething lad from Northern California who has watched so many weird movies since the tender age of 3 that a conventional life is out of the question. …

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