Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

I’ve gotten behind on the Friday the 13ths, and I wanted to be finished before next Friday the 13th (obviously). So we move on to the fourth installment, entitled Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which as the title indicates was the last in the series. Ha ha! There are actually seven more to go, counting Freddie vs. Jason (and I do). At the end of the previous movie, Jason was dead, so this starts with his body being taken to the local morgue, where he gets better, kills a couple of people, and hoofs it back home, although his injuries in the previous installment have caused him to revert to 2-D. Meanwhile, a group of young people, one of whom is played in an early appearance by Crispin Glover, has booked a house for a party. Once again, I hope they got a deal on that, all things considered. The house next door is occupied by Mrs. Jarvis, and her kids Trish and Tommy (Corey Feldman, in his child actor days).

The kids are happy to see the party-goers move in, Trish to have someone her age to talk to, and Tommy because he gets to spy on one of the girls getting undressed. (Tommy celebrates this by jumping and slamming his body into the mattress, which is one of the oddest and most painful-seeming masturbation techniques in history) Soon things are proceeding in a familiar fashion, the girls responding to the nearby lake by getting naked and swimming, Jason by indiscriminate killing.

The increasing body count takes its toll, and we are quickly down to just Trish and Tommy. Jason is getting ready to deal with Trish when Tommy shaves his head, except for some long tufts, and confronts him. Jason can handle being shot, stabbed, electrocuted and drowned, but the sight of a poorly shorn Corey Feldman stops him dead in his tracks, as it would anybody. Trish and Tommy use the surprise to get the drop on Jason, and Tommy beats him to death maniacally. And he’ll stay dead an extra long time, but more on that in the next installment.

Incidentally, when the movie was first released, no one believed it would be the last one, and the common consensus was Tommy would be so broken by the ordeal, he would become the new killer. That didn’t happen, and Corey Feldman didn’t end up taking the place of Kane Hodder down the road.