Before I talk about FRIDAY THE 13th PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING I'll fill you in on a little back story on the series thus far. Despite how awful FRIDAY THE 13th PART 3-D was it did however make a ton of money. It was also during this time that the slasher genre was making a killing at the box office and PTA members along with bored mommies with too much time on their hands were protesting these violent and gory horror movies. So Paramount Pictures caved and decided it was time for Jason to hang up his machete for good but not without having one more romp in the woods. FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER came out in 1984 and was an excellent “swan song” for the series. What happened next was obvious, the film made a ton of money. The suits at Paramount were genius, moviegoers are obviously going to come out and see the movie where they kill Jason! And kill them they did! No way he can come back from a machete through the head and being chopped to Kibbles n' Bits! Well he did come back, sort of. FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING tries exactly that by teasing us with the idea of a “new” Jason. It fails and it fails big time.
After spending years in a mental hospital for “killing” Jason in Part IV, Tommy Jarvis is sent to a halfway house for maladjusted teens. After one teen from the house brutally kills another and is sent away, it sparks anew the gruesome killings! But is it Jason, Tommy, or could it even be somebody else? Why would it be someone else? That'd be stupid! Okay so who it turns out to be is not all that stupid but just lazy storytelling. What makes this movie one of the worst in the series is not the fact Jason isn't the one doing the killings it's the fact that all the violence is edited to pieces! It really looked like every death scene with the exception of maybe a few were edited down to nothing. This might have been a decent entry in the series if the kills were not messed with. Seriously, some death scenes were just left funny and or confusing. The best kills in the movie ended up being the ones done off camera. Whenever somebody was about to get killed I was wasn't filled with suspense but rather wondering what was going to be edited this time?
Maybe the movie didn't stand a chance with the MPAA? The rumor is that FRIDAY THE 13th Part V: A NEW BEGINNING at the time was the most brutal one yet! I'd believe it after hearing the “lost scene” involving a victim getting a machete stabbed in her you-know-what! Come on Mr. Director, That's just sick!
Another thing this installment has going against it is everything looks bright and colorful or neon. The cold bleak drabness of the previous films are gone. This was important to me because the look of the films was one of the things that made me feel uneasy watching a Friday the 13th!
But leave it to one of the worst in the series to have one of the coolest but really ridiculous things in it that I love! Toward the end of the movie a Sheriff has some newspaper clippings about the killings at Crystal Lake and about Jason himself. One of the clippings has a picture of Jason, hockey mask and all! I literally began laughing my ass off! Who the heck was brave enough to freaking get that picture! Trust me if your a fan of this particular genre then you understand why that is so funny.
In closing,the film may have worked for a non franchise slasher flick but not here. Instead of a “new beginning” it's more of a “revenge” story instead. It's not until after the “real” killer is revealed that there is any inkling of a new direction for the series. Part VI oddly doesn't follow the new direction (which is a great thing) so it became all for nothing anyway. So I think the story is weak but that's not the reason I hate this film, the reason I dismiss Part V is the editing of the gore. It's down right absurd what all they cut out of this thing! I'm no gore hound but give the fans what they want and don't make your movie look like crap!
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