Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter Movie Review
Jason's Back, and This is the One You've Been Screaming For.
Oct 23, 2009
After Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D was a box office smash in the late summer of 1982, Paramount Pictures ordered another sequel to be put into production. Director Joseph Zito was instructed to kill off Crystal Lake murderer Jason Voorhees for good as they intended to end his reign of terror (albeit a profitable one) once and for all.
Tom Savini Returns to Crystal Lake
Makeup artist Tom Savini was approached about returning to the fold and was intrigued when he was told they were finishing the series and he could kill off Jason Voorhees, as he created Jason's makeup effects in the original Friday the 13th. (After Paramount resurrected Jason later, Savini - not surprisingly - never returned for later sequels). Zito and Savini had earlier worked together on the 1981 slasher film The Prowler, a sleeper with a cult following of it's own today.
Jason Voorhees is Alive, and a Child Shall Lead Them...
The story begins several hours after Friday the 13th Part 3, as the bodies at Higgins Haven are being removed along with the allegedly dead Jason Voorhees and taken to the Wessex County morgue. Soon after, two employees from the morgue are missing and Jason's body has "disappeared."
At their isolated cabin in Crystal Lake, Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) and her twelve-year-old brother Tommy (Corey Feldman), a horror film and makeup buff, observe six young people moving in to the cabin next door. Trish walks over and meets Paul (Alan Hayes), Samantha (Judie Aronson), Doug (Peter Barton), Sara (Barbara Howard), Ted (Lawrence Monoson), and Jimbo (Crispin Glover).
Paul and Samantha are the hot couple, quiet Doug and Sara soon enough become a couple, and obnoxious Ted and Jimbo are chomping at the bit for some female attention which arrives in the form of twins Tina and Terri (Camilla & Carey More), whom the group meets out hiking the next morning.
Mom Jarvis (Joan Freeman) seems uneasy at this onslaught of young people next door, and Trish and Tommy also befriend a road worker named Rob Dyer (E. Erich Anderson), who claims to be out hunting for bear but is actually hunting for Jason as his sister Sandra was a victim in Friday the 13th Part 2. Sitting in Rob's tent that night, Rob is able to convince Trish that Jason's body was not "stolen" from the morgue and that he is alive.
After they discover Jason has been to the house next door, and that her mother has disappeared, Trish and Rob realize with horror that Tommy is alone in their house. But as danger closes in, Jason certainly meets his match in young Tommy Jarvis.
Another Lucky Friday the 13th for Paramount Pictures
Filmed in Topanga Canyon from October 1983 to January 1984, the movie was released on Friday the 13th in April, and grossed $11,183,148 in it's opening weekend, ending with a final take of $32,980,000. Director Joseph Zito kept an open ending, despite the movie being billed as "The Final Chapter" , as he thought Paramount or someone else might want to pick up the storyline later. Very astute thinking on his part; eleven months later Paramount released Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, and save for 1987, every year up to the end of the decade would see another sequel.
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