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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984):
Well, we’ve reached the end of our discussions as we get into “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter”, right? Certainly not. This instalment must have been good to spawn more sequels, so lets find Jason again and figure out what made people beg for more.
The night after the events at Higgins Haven, Jason Voorhees’s body is found and delivered to the morgue. After reviving from his wounds and escaping from the cold storage, Jason kills coroner Axel with a hacksaw, and then stabs nurse Robbie Morgan with a scalpel. The next day, a group of teenagers drive to Crystal Lake for the weekend. The group consists of Paul, his girlfriend Sam, Sarah, her boyfriend Doug, socially awkward Jimmy, and jokester Ted. On the way, the group comes across Pamela Voorhees’s tombstone and a female hitchhiker, who is soon killed by Jason.
The teens arrive and meet neighbors Trish Jarvis, her twelve-year-old brother Tommy, their mother, and the family dog Gordon. While going for a walk the next day, the teens meet twin sisters Tina and Terri, and go skinny dipping with them. Trish and Tommy happen upon the scene, and Trish is invited to a party to take place that night. Afterwards, when their car breaks down, Trish and Tommy meet a young man named Rob. They take him to their house, where Tommy shows Rob several monster masks he made himself before Rob leaves to go camping.
Later that night, as the teens begin the party, Sam goes out to the lake where she is impaled from under a raft. When Paul goes out to be with her, he is harpooned in the groin. Terri tries to leave the party early and has a spear rammed in her back. Jimmy intends to celebrate his sexual conquest with a bottle of wine but Jason slams the corkscrew on his hand and hacks him in the face with a meat cleaver. Tina looks out a window upstairs and is grabbed and thrown out the window to her death, crashing on the car. While a stoned Ted watches vintage stag films with a film projector, he gets too close to the projector screen and is stabbed in the head by Jason, who plunges a kitchen knife though the screen from the other side. After Doug and Sara finish making love in the shower, Jason attacks Doug, crushing his head against the shower tile. He then kills Sara by driving an double-bit axe through the front door when she tries to escape.
Trish and Tommy return from town and discover the power outage. While looking for their mother, who had been killed by Jason earlier without her knowledge, Trish comes across Rob’s campsite and learns that he is actually the older brother of Sandra. Rob further explains to her that Jason is still alive and he came to Crystal Lake to get revenge for Sandra’s murder. Worried for Tommy’s safety, they return to the house and discover the teens’ bodies. Rob is soon caught and killed by Jason in the basement as Trish runs home. She and Tommy barricade the house, but Jason breaks in and chases them into Tommy’s room. Trish lures Jason out of the house and escapes, then returns home and is devastated to learn that Tommy is still there. She senses Jason behind her and tries to fight him off with a machete but is overpowered. Tommy, having disguised himself to look like Jason as a child, distracts him long enough for Trish to hit him with the machete, but she merely whacks off his mask. As Trish stands horrified at Jason’s deformed face, Tommy takes the machete and slams it in the side of the killer’s skull and he collapses to the floor, splitting his head upon impact. When Tommy notices that Jason’s fingers are moving, he continues to hack at his body screaming, “Die! Die!”
At the hospital, Trish is visited by Tommy. He rushes in, embraces her, and gives a disturbed look while staring ahead.
Summary:
It’s still a shame that the franchise hasn’t been able to keep it’s “last girl” across the films, but this one takes a hugely interesting turn by making Jason’s true foil a young boy. Corey Feldman is a cool if not unlikely survivor and we really enjoyed the ancillary teen victims more than usual (and it’s not just because of Crispin Glover, don’t forget Kevin Bacon was in part 1). Furthermore, they try to connect the dots a little bit and get quite creative with the kills. A reasonable recommend.
We really thank the fan sites out there for everything they do. They really help us with our research! Check out the Friday the 13th Wiki which have pieced together the timeline and the Horror Wiki for the list of kills! Fun for everyone!
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