After the success of “Friday the 13th: Part 3,” series creator Sean S. Cunningham returned to direct the fourth installment in the “Friday the 13th” franchise, titled “Friday the 13: The Final Chapter.”
The film’s cast has some pretty big names such as Crispin Glover (known for playing George McFly in “Back to the Future”) as Jimmy Mortimer and Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis. The film also stars Kimberly Beck as Trish Jarvis, Tommy’s big sister, and this film’s final girl.
“Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” is probably the best installment of the first four “Friday” films.
The film spends quite a bit of time with the teenage campers who are usually just bland side characters that serve as nothing more than immoral punching bags for Jason, or more accurately quality chopping boards.
I think one of the reasons the film is as good as it is, is due to the more gruesome kills. I’m not sure how much detail I’m allowed to share about them on a school website, but one of the least gory kills includes a girl getting thrown out a window onto a car causing the car windows to explode.
Jason also plays arts and crafts with the dead bodies such as nailing Glover to a door frame and hanging the shower guy’s body on a door. How cute.
The final act of this film is great with Tommy shaving his head to look like a young Jason, which distracts Jason long enough for Trish to take a swing at Jason knocking off his hockey mask revealing what is some of the best makeup effects for Jason’s face in the whole franchise, done by makeup artist Tom Savini.
Jason drops his machete and then Tommy picks it up and slashes through half of Jason’s head, but after Tommy sees Jason start to move again he picks up the weapon again and starts beating Jason with the machete screaming “Die! Die!”
The end of the film seems to suggest that Tommy has the evil now, but as the films went on Jarvis turned out not to be evil, just really messed up.
While “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” was not the final chapter, it is still one of the best films in the franchise, even surpassing the original. (Fun fact this film is one of two Friday films to have the word “final” in the title and not be the final Friday movie, with the other being “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday,” which was followed by “Jason X” and “Freddy Vs. Jason.”
