Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1983)

“The man responsible for the murders in Wessex County this past week is at this moment in the Wessex County Medical Center morgue.” – Officer Jamison

For an area that’s supposed to be relatively remote and secluded, Crystal Lake sure is a busy place, with incredibly negligent police. As I pointed out before, Friday the 13th pt 2 takes place actually on a Friday the 13th as far as I’m aware – and it all happens in one day and night. The corpses are carried out the next morning as the cast of pt 3 arrive in Higgins Haven just down the road. (The cop cars pass the cast arriving in their van). So that happens on Saturday the 14th, and again, the events of that movie occur on one day and night. Part 4 begins with the clean-up crew dealing with the carnage at Higgins Haven (no survivors that we can see, and none mentioned) and the cast of this one arrives the following day at a place, presumably on the same lake. So, they arrive on Sunday the 15th, and this is when the film takes place.

There is remarkably no police or media presence when you consider that around 14 murders have taken place in the past 48 hours, despite the fact that Jason’s body is wheeled off to the local morgue. Not that he stays there for long, he spontaneously wakes up and kills the coroner with a surgical saw to the throat before tracking down seemingly the only nurse in the hospital and killing her too. Then, as ever, he makes his way back to Crystal Lake to continue his weekend massacre.

Fortunately, a bunch of horny teens (who apparently don’t watch the news) have rented a house on the lake, right next to the Jarvis family. The Jarvises consist of a recently separated mother (Joan Freeman), teenaged daughter Trish (Kimberley Beck) and precocious pre-teen brat Tommy (Corey Feldman).

It takes no time at all for the horny teens to go skinny dipping in the lake, having met the twin teens, Tina and Terri (Carey and Camilla More) who immediately agree to get naked with these total strangers and go swimming. (Which is exactly what you do in an area where nekkid teens are an endangered species. I swear these people WANT to become murder victims.) Trish and Tommy arrive at the same lake with their dog Gordon, but quickly leave when they see the flashy bits jiggling around, despite being invited to join them. (Honestly, who the hell invites a ten- or eleven-year-old boy to go swimming naked???) But despite this – Trish accepts an invitation to go to their party that evening (rolls eyes).

But as they leave, Trish’s car breaks down – and a total stranger named Rob (Erich Anderson) who is apparently hunting bears (???? Seriously, dude???) comes to their assistance. So, of course out of courtesy, Trish takes this knife wielding stranger with a dodgy backstory to their house where Tommy takes him to his bedroom to see the collection of masks he has. Apparently, the brat is a budding make-up and effects genius.

Jason is soon in the area, having stopped only to murder an innocent hitcher sat at the side of the road, eating a banana. Soon, it’s night and we’re off and running as Jason has his third busy evening in a row. One girl is killed on an inflatable boat on the lake, waiting for her useless boyfriend to arrive and join her. Or join with her, if you get my drift. Next up is the useless boyfriend himself. Let’s see… one twin is killed leaving the house in the middle of the storm which has just arrived – three storms in three days, wow. One awkward teen played by Crispin Glover gets a corkscrew through the hand and a meat cleaver to the face, the twin he’d just nailed is thrown out of an upstairs window, there are stabbings, a good chest axing through a door, head crushing during a post sex shower. Even poor old Mrs Jarvis meets a bad end, though offscreen so we don’t exactly know how she dies.

Strangely enough, in a plot twist that nobody saw coming (??) Rob isn’t quite what he seems. Trish finds his tent, and sees his arsenal of weaponry along with clippings about the Crystal Lake killer. It turns out that Rob is there to avenge the killing of his sister Sandra. That’s reasonable, I guess. Until you realise that Sandra was killed in pt 2, which according to the established movie timeline was the day before yesterday, and yesterday, Jason himself – the Crystal Lake killer – was reported dead. And it’s not until earlier today that it’s been reported that the Crystal Lake killer’s body has gone missing.

Rob should probably have minded his own business because he doesn’t survive nosing around the Jarvis cellar. This leaves only Trish and Tommy, and the film takes an unexpected swerve. As Jason closes in on Trish, Tommy uses his skills and the clipping of Rob’s to recreate a makeshift young Jason “look” for himself to distract the killer and save his sister. The kid then buries a machete in Jason’s skull.

As he and his sister hug (not once mentioning “where’s mom?”) Tommy sees Jason’s fingers twitch and launches into a frenzied attack, hacking away screaming “die, die, die”. BUT – Trish didn’t see the fingers twitch, indicating Jason was still alive – evidently, she thinks her brother has snapped and totally lost it.

In hospital, their injuries are tended and there’s still no mention of poor old Mrs Jarvis, and as brother and sister hug, the camera freezes on a disturbing look on Tommy’s face.

And that’s is. No members of the Voorhees family popping up, no dream sequences, and Jason is actually dead. This was intended to really be the final chapter, as Paramount had decided to shut the series down. And if that was going to be the case, then the series went out on a high. It was indeed the end of this particular stage of the franchise.

For all its absurdities, this fourth entry is a lot of fun and for all my sarcasm, this is one I’m really fond of.

So, as I mentioned, Jason was really dead. Whether he’d stay dead would be another matter.