Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Summary

Every week I will be reviewing a film from the Friday the 13th Collection: Deluxe Edition box set released by Shout! Factory until the entire box set has been covered. Stay tuned!

Editorial Note: there are some necessary spoilers for the previous film and a couple minor spoilers of the film so that the plot can be discussed.

“Hey, Ted, where the hell is the corkscrew?”

In 1984, Joseph Zito took over the directing duties for the fourth film in the Friday the 13th series. With the title of The Final Chapter, this film was planned to be the finale of the series. With a higher budget than prior entries, and a well conceived script by Barney Cohen, this film is considered by many to be the best film in the series. I need to finish watching the series before I can completely commit myself, but out of the first four films this is certainly my favorite. It takes all of the most successful elements of the prior three films and makes them meld together into something better. More than the prior films, The Final Chapter ratchets up the suspense and makes Jason a truly formidable villain. The stuntman Ted White made Jason more aggressive, faster, stronger, and just plain tougher to kill. The film also benefits from far better realized character development than the prior films. I sat down the other night to watch the film with my wife Stephanie (who has made me incredibly happy by watching all of these with me without complaint.)

The film starts off with an amazing “greatest hits” montage that cherrypicks some of the best kills and sequences and pieces together the storyline from the first three films. The film then picks up the day after the massacre at Higdin’s Haven. Ambulances arrive to cart the dead off to the morgue. This includes the body of the hockey mask clad murderer Jason Voorhees. Jason’s body is taken to the morgue where a mortician and his nurse are distracted by the mortician’s sexual advances. Jason rises from his prior state and murders them both. Near Camp Crystal Lake, the Jarvis family have moved into a two story wood paneled home. Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman) cares for her teenage daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck) and her artistic twelve year old son Tommy (Corey Feldman.) Tommy is fascinated by masks and monster makeup effects, creating many masks himself. The family has a dog named Gordon. Next door to their family’s house, a group of teenagers arrive to party and have some fun. Shy Jimmy Mortimer (Crispin Glover) is forced to deal with the immature and overbearing Ted (Lawrence Monoson) who repeatedly alludes to how Jimmy lost his shot with Becky by simply being bad in bed. Along with them is Paul (Alan Hayes) and his girlfriend Samantha (Judie Aronson,) and Doug (Peter Barton) who is dating virgin Sara (Barbara Howard.) While driving to the house the group passes by a tombstone for Mrs. Voorhees and a hitchhiker. The hitchhiker is killed by Jason, and the group has no idea of the danger that Jason poses to them. The group of teens meet their next door neighbors and some pleasantries are exchanged. The next day, while walking towards the lake the group of teens encounters identical twin sisters Tina (Camilla Moore) and Teri Moore (Carey Moore.) They invite them to go skinny dipping. Trish and Tommy stumble upon the skinny dipping kids. They invite Trish to party with them that night, and she shields Tommy’s eyes and starts making their way back to the station wagon. On their way back to the house, Trish and Tommy’s car breaks down. They encounter a man with camping gear named Rob Dier (E. Erich Anderson) who helps him with the car troubles. They drive Rob back to their house where he meets their mom and Tommy shows off his masks. Rob asks Trish some questions about the kids staying next door and then sets up camp in the woods nearby. He has his own reasons for wanting to stay nearby. That night the teenagers begin to party and become romantically entwined while Jason begins to zero in on them and killing them one by one. Tommy’s family is in mortal danger as well.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is a very well made slasher film. With the prior films, Friday the 13th had become an institution. Joseph Zito and screenwriter Barney Cohen made a film that paid homage to the formulas of the prior films – teenage sex, an unstoppable killer in the shadows, a final survivor – but the script also made the characters feel more realistic and less stereotypical. By giving the characters personalities that felt more lived in, the audience had more reason to want to warn them of the impending danger. The film made Jason stronger, faster, more brutal, and absolutely unrelenting. The film has more jump scares than all of the prior films combined and the final thirty minutes of the film are effectively suspenseful. Jason is absolutely ruthless in this film and seemingly omnipresent. He can bust through windows and doors with ease and can kill seemingly anyone at any time. The film in some ways feels more nihilistic than the prior films because the violence for the latter half of the film never lets up, but that only makes the film feel more intense. It is worth noting the suspense the film creates by putting a child in harm’s way. Nobody wants to see a twelve year old hurt, so the film has extra dimension that plays upon the audience. The film is helped along by special effects from the legendary Tom Savini. Savini had lent himself to the very first picture and signed on to The Final Chapter with the hope of working on a true finale for his monster. His effects work on the film is brutally effective.

The film is helped by some enjoyable performances. In my opinion, Crispin Glover stands out in the movie with his portrayal of the shy and self doubting Jimmy. This character is a perfect example of a character that the audience should root for because his doubts about himself seem all too real. Kimberly Beck is a strong female lead for the film and nails her scenes in the latter half of the film that call for extreme physicality on her part. Corey Feldman was a reliably good child actor and he fits the role of Tommy well. Lawrence Monoson plays the obnoxious Ted so well that you will be rooting for Jason to come kill him as soon as possible. The two twin sisters Carey and Camilla Moore gave many teenage boys at sleepovers a lot to dream about that night. Judie Aronson, E. Erich Anderson, Barbara Howard, Joan Freeman, and Clyde Hayes round out the cast well. The other big star of the film is stuntman Ted White who turned Jason into an absolute unstoppable force. His contribution to the character can not be overstated.

Overall – this is certainly the best of the first four Friday the 13th films. It has likable characters, inventive deaths, a suspenseful finale, and some great casting. The increased budget gave the film better production values than the prior films, and the script provides a great scenario for the ensuing mayhem. I  highly recommend checking this entry in the series out to see what these films feel like when at their absolute best.

Video

Shout! Factory presents Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter with arguably the best looking new transfer in their deluxe box set using an MPEG-4 AVC codec in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 from a brand new 4K scan of the original elements. The film benefits from a budget four times the original film’s cost (for a total budget just north of two million dollars) and the results are unsurprisingly better in the realm of cinematography. The prior film had used 3D technology effectively, but the 2D version was left feeling pretty murky. With this film, Joseph Zito enlisted capable cinematographer Joao Fernandes. The lighting and camera setups for this film are more vivid than in prior films, including an excellent crane shot that starts the film off. The transfer provided by Shout! Factory features excellent fine detail, and unobtrusive grain that lends to a great filmic look. For my money, this is about as good as one can hope for out of this series. A fantastic job from Shout!

Audio

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter features a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround track alongside a DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono track that is new to this release. In this case, I believe the only option for your listening pleasure is the surround track. To my ears it seemed like the hiss reduction employed on the new lossless mono track led to some unfortunate audio drop-ins and outs. Luckily, the surround track does not have any of these issues, so it is really a nonissue to me. I have noted the score to reflect the mono track’s issues, but the surround track sounds great. Harry Manfredini returns again as composer and his score fits the film perfectly, including the more frequent jump scares present in the film.

Supplements:

(These are just the supplements included on the disc for the third film. This does not include the supplements on the bonus discs.)

• Audio Commentary: Director Joseph Zito, Screenwriter Barney Cohen, and Editor Joel Goodman.
• Audio Commentary: Fans/Filmmakers Adam Green and Joe Lynch.
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood—Part 4
• Slashed Scenes: over fifteen minutes of alternate takes and additional frames from the numerous death sequences with a good amount of Tom Savini’s behind the scenes malice explained in the Joseph Zito commentary.
• Jason’s Unlucky Day: 25 Years After Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter – the director and some of the key cast and crew (including Tom Savini) recall working on the film.
• The Lost Ending -in this extra, a dream sequence that was cut from the film is shown.
• The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited, Part I
• Jimmy’s Dead Dance Moves
• Theatrical Trailer
• TV Spot
• Radio Spots
• Movie Stills Gallery
• Posters and Lobby Cards Gallery 
• Fangoria Articles: Accessible only via PC Blu-ray drive.

Overall Scores:

Video – 5/5

Audio – 4/5

Supplements – 3.5/5

Overall – 5/5

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is in my opinion the very best entry out of the first four films in the series. It takes everything that worked in the prior films and builds upon those elements with solid casting, a well thought out scenario, and much better character development. This film was meant to be the finale for the series when it was made, and I think it would have been a great ending for the series. Tom Savini’s effects add a lot to the film with some truly impressive death sequences. The new Shout! Factory Blu-ray features the best looking video transfer out of the first four films. The new mono track sounded a little bit unbalanced to my ears, but the surround track is capable. This film and release within Shout! Factory’s deluxe box set earns my highest recommendation for fans of the series.