Friday the 13th Pt VII: The New Blood (1988)

“There's a legend around here. A killer buried, but not dead. A curse on Crystal Lake, a death curse: Jason Voorhees' curse. They say he died as a boy, but he keeps coming back. Few have seen him and lived. Some have even tried to stop him. No one can.” – Opening Narration

Surely, by the seventh film in eight years, the Fridays would’ve lost momentum, strayed off course into repetitive boredom or just oversaturated their audience and diluted the villain, like Nightmare on Elm Street were well on their way to doing in ’88. But no. Paramount Pictures played a wiser game. As we’ve seen at the point the F13 films were becoming repetitive and reliant on a 3D gimmick, Paramount killed the Jason Voorhees character off (his killer being a child, no less) he remained dead for the following film, and was resurrected as a zombie (more or less) in a Frankenstein inspired lightning sequence in the sixth film – which was a meta, self-aware, semi comedic parody of the whole genre. Love them of hate them, credit has to be given for the ingenuity and creativity that went into keeping the Fridays fresh.

So, after all that, where could the series possibly go next?

Paramount had a few more surprises up their sleeve and a few aces yet to play.

Part VII takes the series in a new direction. We’ve established Jason as an indestructible Frankensteinian monster who’ll never be down for long. But the problem with Jason was that he was basically just a prop. He had been played by a variety of different stuntmen over the years – and they’d all done what was required. They’d hit their marks and had fulfilled the role of killer. But there was no continuity. Jason looked and moved differently in every film. There was no sense that this was the same person in, say Pt VI that we’d seen in Pt 2 (they didn’t start the Roman numerals until Pt III). This was about to change with the casting of actor/stuntman Kane Hodder in the role. Hodder would bring a nuanced performance to a part that had never had one before. Hodder had an imposing menacing physique that when in costume would make anybody turn and run in the opposite direction. He brought unique mannerisms to his performance, not only a walk that made the character seem relentless and unstoppable, but also subtle movements like the tilt of his head to the side, miming curiosity before a kill. In fact, and I don’t say this lightly, Hodder brought many of the same qualities to Jason, projecting a performance from behind the impenetrable hockey mask pretty much as Boris Karloff had as the Frankenstein monster in the thirties. You always know when it’s Karloff behind the layers of make-up no matter how many others played the role – and the same is true of Hodder as Jason.

With Jason now being this unstoppable force – he needed to have a worthy opponent, someone who’d give him a run for his money, but would appear vulnerable. How about a teenage girl? But not just ANY teenaged girl. How about one that has the same powers as Stephen King’s Carrie? A psychokinetic girl vs the cinema’s most prolific serial killer. (No, I’m keeping it to serial killer, because clearly cinema’s most prolific outright killer is Marvel’s Thanos.)

The film starts with a quick rundown, a crash course for those who’re coming late to the F13 films, and is narrated, as I’ve quoted above by Walt Gorney, who had played the part of Crazy Ralph in the first two films. This, sadly was Gorney’s final performance before he passed away. The recap takes us to the point we last saw Jason, floating underwater, chained to a rock, deep in Crystal Lake – which if you recall, was renamed Forest Green last time.

Well, it seems a few years have passed since Pt VI, and they’ve reverted back to calling the place Crystal Lake perhaps realising that Jason’s going to come back time after time no matter what they call it. As the film starts, we’re at a lakeside cabin, a young child is seeing her father abuse her mother, having apparently promised never to do it again. She runs to a jetty and rows out to the lake, while her father pleads for her to come back. In her anger, she sends a wave of psychokinetic energy in his direction that brings the whole structure down, killing him in the process.

Flash to the present day and she’s now in her teens. Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) has been undergoing therapy all these years feeling a crushing guilt for the unintended death of her father, and as part of her therapy, is returning to the cabin with her well-meaning, but ultimately annoying mother Mrs Shepard (Susan Blu). Her therapist is truly one of the most despicable characters to appear in this series. Doctor Crews (Terry Kiser) is a man headed straight for a malpractice suit, and under the guise of trying to “help” Tina is conducting a series of experiments in the form of controlling, threatening behaviour and verbal assaults, designed to agitate her into using her powers – which he wants to exploit.

Now… what’re we missing?

Oh, horny teenagers. The house next door to the cabin has a crowd of them, all piled in to celebrate the birthday in a surprise party for someone who’s yet to arrive. And sadly, he never will. Upset by Crews verbal lashing, Tina storms out to the lakeside and sends a wave of energy into the lake, which accidentally snaps the submerged Jason’s chain and frees him.

He emerges from the lake, and the first people he sees are the birthday boy and his girlfriend. Happy birthday, pal. Rest in pieces. His second encounter is with a camping couple – and not only does he pick up a handy machete, but we also get Hodder’s personal favourite of all his various “kills” where he drags a woman out of the tent, in her sleeping bag and swings it against a tree. I’ve spoken to Kane a few times over the years privately, for GoreZone Magazine and for Starburst Magazine and this is what he had to say when we spoke about the then vogue for torture films like Hostel and Saw;

“They are more f/x driven, but I don’t have a problem with them. I’ve got nothing against those types of movies or those versions of you know, horrible people. Saying it’s over the top is ridiculous. People like that really exist. There are some really horrible people out there and they do really horrible things, so it’s not over the top when things like that can actually happen. Jason is over the top, but it’s fun. In the Jason movies people are actually cheering for the killer. You know, my all-time favourite Jason “kill” is the sleeping bag scene from “Friday the 13th Pt 7” (Jason swings a girl victim in a sleeping bag against a tree, killing her instantly) and when people saw that, their reaction was they cheered, they high fived. In spirit, “Hatchet” is the same as that kill.”

The teens next door are typical of the teens that Crystal Lake attracts, and they’re brutally picked off one by one by Jason, despite Tina trying to explain that she had visions of some of the deaths happening. They dismiss her as a lunatic and go on with their party plans – as if they have absolutely no clue of the staggering number of murders that occur in this vicinity. We don’t mourn their passing, in fact Jason seems to be doing the planet a service. He starts getting more creative with his choice of weaponry though. The machete will always be the go-to, but as repugnant a character as he is, there’s no doubt that the manipulative Doctor Crews had that rotary tree trimmer to the stomach coming.

It's soon down to Tina and new boyfriend of around 24 hours, Nick (Kevin Blair) to face off against Jason’s onslaught of slaughter. The battle sees Tina use her powers to their maximum as she literally sends Jason fling through the staircase, to the cellar where she manipulates the flame from the boiler to set him on fire. Fire stunts are Kane's speciality and this particular one is spectacular, he was actually aflame for a full forty seconds, which was at the time a world record. Their battle both outside and around the house is spectacular, especially as we’ve never seen Jason either taken to his limit in this way, nor meeting his match. Tina literally brings the house down on him. Sadly, the ending seems a bit rushed, as Jason, having survived the fire attacks Tina and Nick on the jetty in a scene echoing the opening flashback with her father, Tina uses her powers and somehow summons the spirit of her dead father from the lake to drag Jason back down to the depths.

(So, to recap, young Jason jumps out of the lake in the first film, Mrs Voorhees popped up in the third – now Mr Shepard breaks the surface? Crystal Lake police seriously need to dredge the lake bed. Bodies everywhere.)

Will Jason finally rest in peace?

Don’t bet on it.