Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

One of the better chapters of the iconic slasher series is also one of its horniest installments, even though the filmmakers decided to build this film around a family rather than just a bunch of randy teenagers. The third Friday the 13th, Part III in 3D, was meant to be the final entry in a series that rip-off master Sean S. Cunningham started as a way to capitalize on the slasher movie trend that was codified with John Carpenter's mega-hit Halloween in 1978. By 1984, the slasher genre was waning a bit in popularity. It had been mercilessly attacked by parent groups, social commentators, and critics like Siskel and Ebert (who were both fans of Halloween but hated pretty much every slasher film that came in its wake). Producer Frank Mancuso Jr., the son of the former Paramount Pictures president, had overseen Part II and Part III of the Friday the 13th series and was growing tired of his association with a genre all his peers looked down on. Still, Paramount wanted another Friday picture because Part III was so successful. Slashers were always relatively surefire box office because they were so cheap to produce and had a built-in audience, but Part III had grossed $33M on just a $2M budget!

Bruce Hidemi Sakow, a struggling screenwriter who was constantly pitching projects in the early '80s, was brought in for a meeting on the next Friday movie. According to him (and I got this straight from the horse's mouth when I did a film with Bruce years later), he thought the idea of a Part IV to any movie series was crazy. He told Mancuso the only way to give this blatant cash-grab credibility and provide it with a hook that might feel special was to make it "The Final Chapter," ensuring viewers that this series wouldn't just go on and on. His logic was that if people thought there would be an endless supply of these movies, they wouldn't feel the need to go see the latest one. (What must he be thinking forty years later in today's endless franchise reboot culture?) Sakow's idea appealed to Mancuso, and Paramount gave the go-ahead for a final chapter, knowing full well that if the movie made a lot of money, they'd just keep making these regardless of what this one was titled. Bruce wrote a screenplay, but little of his draft was used apart from the title.

Mancuso very much wanted Joseph Zito, producer and director of the 1981 slasher The Prowler, to make the film. Zito was not a screenwriter but took the offer to write and direct and hired his friend Barney Cohen to write the script, though there was a lot of Writer's Guild debate around who was ultimately responsible for the final script. Phil Scuderi, to whom the documentary Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th is dedicated, apparently was responsible for many ideas in the script, though if he did any actual writing is not known—I love how much debate there is about writing credits for films that are essentially carbon copies of other films, but this movie deviates from the formula in a couple of significant ways.

The "story" picks up right where Part III left off (though don't worry, you won't be lost if you haven't seen Part III). The police clean up the grounds around Crystal Lake, and Jason Voorhees' body, believed to be dead, is taken to the morgue. But Jason spontaneously revives himself and escapes from the hospital, turning his vengeful attention to the Jarvis family who live on Crystal Lake. Of course, a group of horny, fun-loving teens has rented the house next door to the single mom, teenage daughter, and twelve-year-old boy. Of the many notable things this picture has going for, make-up effects artist extraordinaire Tom Savini, who had worked on the first installment, returned to the series because he was excited by the idea of killing off the iconic Jason he helped create. Another plus is the presence of the always-enjoyable Crispin Glover in a lead role. Glover does some great dancing and plays an insecure teen well. As the kid, thirteen-year-old future star Corey Feldman gives a memorable performance as a character who would continue on when this series-that-wouldn't-die was inevitably resurrected the following year with Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning.