Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Directed by	Joseph Zito
Produced by	Frank Mancuso Jr. Tony Bishop (co-producer)
Written by	Barney Cohen (screenplay) Bruce Hidemi Sakow (story) Victor Miller, Martin Kitrosser, Ron Kurz, Carol Watson (characters)
Starring	Corey Feldman Kimberly Beck Erich Anderson Crispin Glover
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	April 13, 1984
Running time	90 min
Language	English
Budget	$1,800,000
Preceded by	Friday the 13th Part 3
Followed by	Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
IMDb profile

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is a slasher film. It is the fourth film in the Friday the 13th film series. Though it was billed as "The Final Chapter," as of 2006 there are seven (including Freddy vs. Jason) further films in the franchise. The popularity and financial success of the film kept Paramount Pictures from retiring the franchise. Because of the finality of this film's plot and title, the next film, "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning", attempted to give the franchise a new face.

[edit] Plot summary

Police and paramedics are busy cleaning up the mess Jason Voorhees left at Higgins Haven during Friday the 13th Part 3, including the defeated hockey-masked killer himself. Once delivered to the Wessex County morgue, Jason rises again, kills an attendant and nurse, then makes his way back to Crystal Lake.

A group of friends (Paul, Samantha, Sara, Doug, Ted and Jimmy) have rented a house on Crystal Lake. On the way there, the group passes Mrs. Voorhees' gravestone and a female hitchhiker who becomes Jason's next victim. Next to the rental house is the cabin of Mrs. Jarvis, her teenaged daughter Trish, her twelve-year-old son Tommy, and their dog, Gordon. The group meet Trish, Tommy and Gordon when they arrive. The next day the group befriends twins Tina and Terri, who live in the area, and they all go skinny-dipping at Crystal Point. Trish and Tommy, driving by, stop to see who's at Crystal Point and the group invites Trish to a party that night. Trish's car breaks down a bit further along the road, and they are helped by Rob, a hiker with mysterious reasons for visiting Crystal Lake, who soon becomes good friends with Trish and Tommy, and camps out in their yard.

The group, along with Tina and Terri, are enjoying their drunken revels that night when Samantha, who's dating Paul, becomes infuriated when Paul doesn't turn down advances by Tina. Angered, Samantha leaves and goes for a midnight swim, where she falls victim to Jason. Paul has a change of heart and goes out to apologize to Samantha. Paul swims out to the raft where he can see Samantha's head, but finds her dead. Swimming back to shore, panicked, Paul is impaled by Jason on the dock. Meanwhile, Tina takes an interest in Jimmy, and Ted strikes out with Terri; Terri leaves for home and is killed along the way by Jason. Sara and Doug get cozy and decide to retire upstairs together, where Sara has sex with Doug in the shower.

Next door, Mrs. Jarvis has just returned to an empty home. As a storm rages, she looks for her family outside. Trish and Tommy return to find their mother missing, so Trish goes to Rob for help. Rob explains that he's looking to get revenge for the death of his sister, Sandra (killed by Jason in Friday the 13th Part 2).

Back at the rental house Jimmy goes downstairs to brag about his conquest to Ted. He goes to the kitchen looking for a corkscrew to open a bottle of wine; Jason stabs him the hand with the corkscrew, pinning Jimmy to the cutting board before killing him with a meat cleaver. Jason then kills Tina, and later kills Ted while he's watching a movie. Jason kills Doug in the shower; Sara tries to flee after discovering Doug's body, but is killed when Jason hurls an ax in her stomach.

Trish, Rob, and Tommy discover that Jason kills phone lines as well as he kills people, so Trish and Rob take Gordon next door to see what's going on. Tommy is left at home, and finds Rob's newspaper articles about Jason. Jason kills Rob, and Trish flees back to her home intending to warn Tommy. Tommy shaves his head and makes himself up to look like Jason, which is effective in distracting Jason long enough so that Tommy is able to attack Jason. He seemingly kills him, but when Jason begins to stir, Tommy then hacks Jason repeatedly with the machete.

At the hospital, Trish is being treated for wounds she received during the fight with Jason. It is left ambiguous as to the extent to which Tommy has been affected by the ordeal.

[edit] Cast

In alphabetical order

Jason's horribly disfigured face

• Erich Anderson .... Rob
• Judie Aronson .... Samantha
• Peter Barton .... Doug
• Kimberly Beck .... Trish
• Tom Everett .... Flashlight Man
• Corey Feldman .... Tommy
• Joan Freeman .... Mrs. Jarvis
• Lisa Freeman .... Nurse Morgan
• Thad Geer .... Running Man
• Crispin Glover .... Jimmy
• Wayne Grace .... Officer Jamison
• Alan Hayes .... Paul
• Bonnie Hellman .... Hitchhiker
• Frankie Hill .... Lainie
• Barbara Howard .... Sara
• William Irby .... Helictoper Pilot
• Paul Lukather .... Doctor
• Bruce Mahler .... Axel
• Lawrence Monoson .... Ted
• Arnie Moore .... Medic
• Camilla More .... Tina
• Carey More .... Terri
• Robert Perault .... Medic
• Antony Ponzini .... Vincent
• Gene Ross .... Cop
• Abigail Shelton .... Woman
• John Walsh .... TV Newscaster
• Ted White .... Jason Voorhees (uncredited)
• Robin Woods .... Girl In Shower

[edit] Goofs

1.In the film, we see Mrs. Voorhees's grave, and the year of her death on the tombstone was 1979. While this is often considered a "goof," it is actually accurate. Friday the 13th was filmed in 1979, and takes place in that year. "Present day" in Friday the 13th is considered 1979, when it was filmed, not 1980, when it was released.The theatrical trailer for Friday the 13th Part 2 actually says that the original was set in 1980 despite that it was filmed the previous year. This has caused some confusion among the film series' most diehard followers.

2.At the end of the third film Jason was struck with an axe on the left side of his forehead but in the movies covers and posters the strike mark on his mask was on the right side. Further more, when the mask is struck off, the strike mark is back on the left side.

3.Despite taking place immediately after the events in Friday the 13th Part 3, Jason Voorhees has a drastically different appearance. Fans of the series sometimes credit this to Jason's ability to "regenerate" damaged flesh, although this "ability" wasn't known until Jason X. The differences in his appearance are due to the makers of the films simply having different visions of what he should look like.

[edit] Notes

• The following scenes were cut from the film, most of them to avoid an X rating:
  • Nurse Morgan was originally held up and gutted, but it ended up being cut out so that it only showed her being stabbed.
  • A scene cut in which Tommy shows Rob a fake guillotine. Tommy puts a stick in the guillotine. It drops and the stick is cut in two. Then, Tommy puts a fake arm in and cuts it off. Rob thinks its real and starts screaming. When Tommy starts laughing, Rob figures out that it is a joke. Trish comes in and asks Rob if he wants to stay for dinner. He doesn't.
  • One scene in which Doug and Sarah are on the porch. They stand outside and talk about not dancing.
  • In another scene, Mrs. Jarvis goes into Trish's room and tells her to go get a car part in town. Mrs. Jarvis also announces that she is going jogging before it storms.
  • A small scene cut during the time in which the Jarvis' car breaks down. In the original version, right after Trish tells Tommy to hurry up it cuts. It did continue with Tommy running up to Trish in a scary mask, scaring Trish. Tommy declares that he made the mask the first week that he got there.
  • Sarah and Doug are together in their room (before the party starts). They talk about how nice each others legs are and how nervous they are about going to the party.
  • A scene where Tommy shows Rob a toy soldier melting under a magnifying glass.
  • A scene where Trish finds her mother drowned in a bathtub.
  • The original script had character Tommy Jarvis splitting Jason's head open with a machete at the conclusion. Tom Savini wasn't particularly enthused with this lackluster method, and after a member of his effects crew (John Vulich) toyed with a prop machete used in Dawn Of The Dead, Savini got the idea of having the machete blade plowed into Jason's head, followed by the hilt hitting the floor and the villain sliding headfirst down the blade.
  • A scene after Rob finds his shotgun broken to pieces in which he sets up a motion sensor in the woods.
  • An extra scene at the very beginning in the moving ambulance: the two paramedics converse, the female medic says "I could've had the night off" and the male responds "Well, this was an emergency, like every damn thing." We then cut to the ambulance arriving at the scene and being directed to Jason's body, which is all we see in the wide release.
• Out of all of the films in the series, this one has the most nudity
• Ted White refused to be credited for his role as Jason, saying he believed that many of the young actors were being horribly treated and often felt bad about what he had to do to them, even after production. One particular instance was when young actress Judie Aronson was out on a raft in the lake, naked and freezing to the point where she was crying. Fed up, White stepped in and demanded that she come in to warm up or he would quit, and director Joseph Zito complied. White also admits that he never saw the entertainment value in watching attractive young actors being mutilated by a deranged killer, and said he only did the film for the money. Despite his disdain for the film (though he says that it came out better than he expected), he was asked to reprise the role, but turned it down saying, "I had played Jason once and once was enough."
• Peter Barton was hesitant when it came time to do his death scene, as he was previously burned on a magnesium flare doing a stunt on a previous movie, and required multiple surgeries afterwards. Sensing Peter's hesitation, Ted White requested that a pad be placed behind Peter's head when he was slammed into the shower wall.
• The character of Rob Dier is the brother of Sandra who was killed in Friday the 13th Part 2 during the double-impalement scene. This creates a continuity problem, given that the second, third and fourth films in the series are set only days apart, and Rob has clearly spent a lot of time researching Jason (although he might have shared an interest with his sister about the whole Camp Blood legend and knew immediately that it was Jason who killed her).
• It has been said that Tom Savini only returned to contribute to the franchise to kill off Jason whom he helped create in the original Friday the 13th.
• The character of Tommy Jarvis is interpreted as a homage to Tom Savini. Aside from sharing a similar first name and an affinity for designing monster masks, both in their own right kill Jason off in the film.
• The film was released on a Friday the 13th.
• Among the many scenes cut was one in which Trish finds her mother drowned in the bathtub, which would have explained her disappearance in the film.
• During filming, actress Kimberly Beck experienced strange occurrences of a man watching her while she ran in a park, accompanied by phone calls at all hours. They oddly stopped once production of the film had stopped.
• Actor Crispin Glover, who played the role of Jimmy was asked to perform a normal dance. He improvised and that resulted in a very unusual dance resembling an epileptic fit.
• The poster artwork was used for the opening screen on Friday the 13th NES video game.

[edit] External links

• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter at the Internet Movie Database
• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter at Rotten Tomatoes
• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter at Box Office Mojo
• Film page at the Camp Crystal Lake web site