Friday the 13th Part VII is the first entry in the series I remember seeing. It was the night it premiered on HBO and at that point in my life (I was probably 12 or 13), I had seen only a handful of horror movies. No surprise the nudity was the key element that stood out to me at the time. I re-visited it about seven years ago and thought it was terrible; of course at that time, I did not realize that the Friday the 13th movies are best appreciated as a collective experience. In a way, they all kind of build off each other. After seeing Part 6, my hopes for Part 7 were pretty low, as I feel that Part 6 threw out everything that made the series unique in the first place. It basically turned Jason into a parody of himself. My sour feelings grew a little more positive as the picture opened. The music, which was much too playful in Part 6 was now back to its appropriately sinister sound. And the director, John Carl Buechler, made sure to let us know that this was his film before the pre-credit sequence began (a nice nod to Steve Miner and Part 2). The opening for Part 7 is a hoot. The classic series montage is back, but this time it includes a voice over by a guy who sounds like Danny Trejo and uses lines you'd expect to hear in a trailer! Example: "Some have tried to stop him...no one can!" It's pretty silly stuff, and yet it works because Buechler is paying tribute to the series and having a blast in the process.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is a very strange movie, meaning it fits right in with the best of the series. If it ultimately has a plot that is needless and kind of gets in the way, it also has enough worthy stuff to make that a minor complaint. The key character is Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), a teenage girl who fits the mold of the heroines in the series, but is given a twist: she has telekinetic and psychic powers. She stumbles upon her gift (or curse) as a child when her anger towards an abuse father leads to his death in Crystal Lake. Years later, Tina is taken back in hopes that her doctor, named Crews (Terry Kiser from Weekend at Bernie's!), can get to the root of her psychological issues. Just in that little description you can see that this is too much story for a Friday the 13th movie. It is needless, but the movie does a few fascinating things with it.
The scenes with Dr. Crews are the worst. He's that classic asshole who constantly accuses Tina of being out of control, more or less says she's crazy, and says she's delusional. There's no question we want to see him die from the first moment he's on screen. However, since this is a Friday the 13th movie, there are many others that will have to go first. Jason is of course still at the bottom of lake where Tommy Jarvis left him at the end of Part 6. In an attempt to resurrect her father, Tina brings Jason back instead, and he's still all zombie and no patience. Thankfully, his reasoning skills have been thrown away and been replaced with an unstoppable and unrelenting desire to destroy. Jason comes out of the water with the attitude of someone who did not want to be awakened. He's tired of killing, dammit, but these foolish people just will not leave him alone. It's no surprise that Buechler comes from a make-up effects background, since the Jason in this entry is the most menacing looking one yet.
The kills are up to the caliber of the earlier chapters in the series. Like in The Final Chapter, Jason is so pissed to have been awakened he's going to do his duty to the absolute extreme. What's different this time is that his purpose for living has turned into a monotonous routine. The movie has a lot of fun playing with that idea from the first kill, especially when we notice that Jason can no longer run. Realizing that himself, he tends to sneak up behind people so they won't run away and if they do, he throws a weapon to stop them or, in one priceless moment, knocks a victim down just so he can kill them with his weapon. The idea seems to be if you have the weapon, you darn well better use it. There are a wide variety of weapons in the movie, most of them of the piercing nature. Buechler takes the idea that the machete is Jason's tool of sexual aggression and pushes it through the wall. At one point, he shows up with a long rod with a curved blade on the end and later, he somehow finds a weed whacker with a spinning blade! He uses the latter to kill Dr. Crews, and even though we don't see where he sticks it, it is apparent that it's below the chest, resulting in one of the most literal rapes Jason has committed thus far. I say rape not just because of the weapon used, but also because Jason makes sure Dr. Crews knows what's happening to him.
Sex is crucial in Part 7, as is masculinity and penis size. The first sign of sexual anxiety is brought up in an early scene with Tina and Dr. Crews. The doctor puts a book of matches on the table and asks Tina to move it with her mind. It's not working so he gets aggressive with her, so much so that it not only moves but also ignites. The interesting thing about the way it's shot is that the flame appears almost directly in front of Tina's crotch, and the scene immediately cuts to two other teenagers having sex. This puts Tina's sexual suppression front and center, mainly focusing on the fact that her telekinesis has prevented her from finding someone interested in being intimate with her. I like the way Buechler further capitalizes on Jason being drawn to people having sex. We see a couple getting it on, with the next shot containing Jason walking up to the house they're in. There's a scene like the one in Part 4 where a girl dies while skinny dipping. In that movie, Jason stabs her from underneath a raft while this time, he pulls her under water. The context here seems to be that he is taking away her sexuality. In other words, he putting her "fire" out.
The running theme involving the penis is that it's all about who has the biggest one. Early in the movie, a character goes to chop wood with a machete. It may not be as effective as say, an axe, but it has a longer blade. Later, when the power goes out, a guy grabs two flashlights and gives the girl the weaker of the two (she even looks at it with a sense of doubt). Another guy is looking at his friend's birthday presents and sees that he has received a personal penis enlarger. What's makes this more than a throwaway gag is that we don't know who gave it to him and we don't know whether or not it was meant as a joke. All of it plays like an attempt to show how lame it is when men try to prove or confirm their manhood. Look no further than a moment where a guy tells his sex partner that he is going to get them some food because he is the "hunter/gatherer."
The teenagers in Part 7 are probably the dorkiest bunch yet. They've got ultra cheesy '80s haircuts, dress in ugly clothes, and act like rejects from a John Hughes movie. They are also the most disrespectful kids the series has seen. Even though they are borrowing the house of one of the kid's uncle's, they have no problem eating his food, smoking pot, and making an ungodly mess. If the boys are concerned with penis size, the girls are competitive. Tina and a spoiled rich girl both like the kind hearted stud, while two nerds, one of them lacking in confidence, both like the pothead. Of course, the nice guy leans more towards Tina while the pathetic girl, complete with big glasses, loses out because she doesn't want to get high. In hopes she can drive his affection away from her friend, the girl ditches her extra set of eyes and dolls herself up with a new hairdo, a dress, and lots of makeup. This acts as an automatic red flag that she will be killed. Jason is punishing her for pretending to be something she's not (the guy never even gets to see her all dressed up). The scene where she is pursued by Jason is really well staged, and probably has the most tension filled moments in the picture.
The performances in the movie are, for the most part, atrocious. Like I've said before, good acting is not a necessity in the Friday the 13th movies, but these people have no idea what they're doing. Lar Park Lincoln, who supposedly auditioned four times(!) before she got the part, is over dramatic to an almost irritating degree and Susan Blu, who plays her mother, is even worse. The fact the latter has spent most of her career doing voice work for animated shows is not surprising. If anyone is worth mentioning, it's Kane Hodder, who plays Jason. He is apparently the fan favourite and it's easy to see why. Even though his face is kept hidden and he never speaks, Hodder is able to convey just how boring Jason's purpose is. Look at the way he plays the famous scene where he kills the girl in the sleeping bag. Not wanting to do the same old thing, he drags her out of a tent as she thrashes in the bag and swings her against a tree. It comes across as if he hates the fact she's there and he has to kill her.
As in Part 6, there are a handful of scenes featuring Jason simply wandering around. In the last movie, it felt like an attempt to show him reclaiming the forest as his home. Here, it feels like an act of boredom. Being alive is a burden, so when there are no people to kill, walking around is the best activity life has to offer. I've noticed in two or three of the movies (this one included) that Jason likes to cut the power in his victims' house, and I always wondered how he would have any concept of what he was doing. But upon deeper examination, it makes perfect sense. By "killing" the power, he's giving the victims a bit of foreshadowing as to what is about to happen to them. It's a way of letting them know there is no escape.
Friday the 13th Part VII is probably the best technically made entry in the series. The slick production bothered me with Part 6, but this time it isn't as flashy. Buechler has enough understanding of what components belong in a Friday the 13th movie, and with that being the case, the fact it's well made comes as an afterthought. He does a nice job paying homage to the earlier chapters. I already mentioned displaying his name before the credits and the girl skinny dipping; in addition, he duplicates the cat false alarm scare from Part 2 and the girl being thrown out the window from Part 4 (which actually plays a little better here). Also, his use of humor fits in as it should. There are some big laughs in the movie, many of them involving Jason's confusion as to what is happening around him. Being that he is a zombie, nothing should make any sense to him anymore. There's a beautifully timed moment during the climactic showdown between Tina and Jason where she uses her telekinesis to throw a potted plant at Jason that has a severed head propped in it. What makes it is so funny is not only Hodder's body language when it hits him, but also the sight of the head tumbling out.
The showdown makes very little sense. Tina has obviously figured out Jason cannot be killed (she tries to electrocute him, which of course doesn't work since that's how he was resurrected in Part 6), but nevertheless, she continues to throw simple objects at him. I mean really, what good is it going to do to throw a fucking sofa at Jason Voorhees? Anyways, as silly as the climax is, it can easily be forgiven when compared to the ending. The movie has two credited writers, and what they've come up with is the stuff of bad fiction. And I must say I was bit disappointed there are no shots of Jason after he meets his (supposed) demise. Even though it doesn't seem like anyone knew how to wrap the movie up, Friday the 13th Part VII is one of the most entertaining chapters in the series. More than anything, it took me back to the rush I got watching two through five and easily makes up for Part 6. Now let's hold our breath to see if we can stay sane through Jason Takes Manhattan.
Thank you for visiting Hell and Beyond!
Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment