Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

Next up we have one of the bad installments in the franchise, “Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning,” released in 1985. This one was just aggravating. Fans like to say this is one of worst of the series, because it followed a film called “The Final Chapter,” but the reason why it’s so bad is actually more than that. All the characters are flat, boring caricatures, from Joey (Dominick Brascia), the boy that eats too much chocolate, Robin (Juliette Cummins), Violet (Tiffany Helm), Jake (Jerry Pavlon), Vic (Mark Venturini), Reggie (Shavar Ross) and Sheriff Tucker (Marco St. John).

When Jason, played by Tom Morga, shows up to kill the people with the machete, we just don’t care much. The violence is very broken, but there’s at least some nice nudity.

What would appear to be a good idea at some part, Jason doesn’t actually show up in this movie. It’s all in the mind of the character from the previous film, Tommy Jarvis, now played by John Shepherd. Tommy is dropped off at a distant, country mental hospital, which is run like a farm, with patients coming and going on their own free will. I agree with Jeffrey M. Anderson when he said, “If only someone had put some thought into who these people were.”

Corey Feldman is in here for a brief cameo, reprising the character of Tommy from the last movie.

To this day, the director, Danny Steinmann’s has never come back to direct another movie.

You should just not see this movie. If you see this and find it interesting and entertaining, then you can say that this movie actually opened up some doors for new, interesting, creative ideas that sadly never came to execution. However, it’s actually a cursed movie that I don’t think people should see, but to be honest, I think this movie is probably ok. I don’t like this nearly as much as the previous movies, but I know there are worse sequels than this.

Look out tomorrow when I talk about a film that might be somewhat better, but probably not by much, in my “Friday the 13^th-a-thon” in this year’s “Halloween Month.”