Friday the 13th part 5 “A New Beginning”
The fifth entry of the Friday
the 13th franchise takes place in a parallel dimension where everyone
is an extreme caricature of themselves, the bullies are exceptionally nasty and
on the verge of murderous rampages, the sluts are nymphomaniacs, there is no
grey area in their personality, and they totally commit to one ridiculous aspect
of their persona and ramp it up to level 1000, which makes for some memorable
performances and one-liners. Some know
it all movie dorks might argue that it ruins the suspense when comedy and
horror aren’t mixed properly;
that it ruins the whole horror movie batter and the proverbial terror cake won’t rise. They might
also argue that this entry (SPOILER) suffers from a lack of a “real”
Jason. Fortunately for us the director,
Danny Steinmann, had his own coke fueled vision for Friday the 13th
part 5, one where suspense and comedy stood comfortably hand in hand, singing
in peace and harmony, and Roy was just as scary as Jason….
Friday the 13th part
5 starts off with the clean cut murder of a socially inept slob who loves
chocolate bars. Poor Joey never saw it
coming, and really didn’t
deserve an ax in the back for his trouble; he really deserves to be avenged. Roy takes a good run at it, slaying sleazy
orderlies and beatniks in the dead of the night. The movie sets itself up initially as a
murder mystery, but it’s
fairly obvious old Roy is doing the killing, with his tip of the hat “you talking to me sheriff” lines. He patterns
his outfit and killings after Jason, leading the police to believe the infamous
Camp Crystal Lake murderer is back in action, but they will have to wait for
the sequel because Roy has this shit on lock down.
Tommy Jarvis is back as a
shell shocked nut job that sees Jason around every corner and jumps in terror
at rubber spiders on strings. Reggie the
Reckless is a token black kid who talks jive and has a brother named “Demon”
who dies on the shitter. Damn enchiladas. I think eating enchiladas should be a required
pairing for this movie. Eat your damn
slop!
It’s really not apparent why Roy choses some victims over
others. The one guy that he really
needed to strike down in revenge, aka the guy that hacked up his own son in a
rage at Pinehurst, is safely behind bars.
If anything it seems like Roy just loses it after seeing Joey in bloody
chunks and goes after everyone in a homicidal rage, like a mad dog. He seems rather chipper and up beat later for a
guy who has completely lost his mind and is going on killing sprees every night.
In the end it’s Tommy Jarvis that finally loses it, donning the famous
hockey mask (albeit with blue chevrons) and running wild into the night, a plot
thread that was dropped right away as Jason is resurrected in the next
installment, where any attempt at suspense is completely abandoned for a full
on comedy. The New Beginning has its
pitfalls, but it also has a series of unique kills and had the balls to buck
the formula, and try to revert Friday the 13th back to its murder
mystery giallo basics. Roy will also have
a special place in my heart, the goof.
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