One Could Say Vic Was Indeed, Out Of Line: The Cocaine Frenzy Of Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning
On the front lawn of a halfway house, a vascular punk named Victor who looks like he's a fan of The Screamers viciously chops wood. A Baby Huey abomination enters the scene, face stained with chocolate, blubbering of his willingness to assist. Rick's rage boils over, and the axe that he was using cuts short the life of the cherub-faced oaf. That oaf's name is Joey, and his grieving father is about to ruin Crystal Lake's real estate values...Yet again.
With the conclusion of Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter, the forces behind the future of Jason Voorhees were in a pickle. The kid from The Goonies had buried a machete in their golden boy's irregular skull, leaving little doubt as to his fate (Barring lightning, psychic resurrection, The Necronomicon, etc- But we weren't there yet). Enter Danny Steinmann, director of porno High Rise and Linda Blair-starring exploitation classic Savage Streets. Steinmann is regarded as a pervert by actor and producer alike, and it's said he filmed copious amounts of nudity for the film that didn't make the final cut. We were truly spoiled with talent back then.
Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning feels like the Hail Mary play of a Bad News Bears-esque adult baseball team, if said team was populated by pill-popping boozers and scatter-brained nymphomaniacs. There's remarkable truth to this, as the production was replete with rampant drug use. After vanquishing Jason Voorhees via semi-competent cosplay, Tommy Jarvis has lived with half-decade of mental torment. Transferred to Pinehurst Halfway House (Probably medically unwise, given its proximity to Crystal Lake), he attempts to heal his splintered psyche. Coincidentally, a masked madman begins to perpetrate numerous elaborate murders. Has the fury of Jason Voorhees possessed Tommy's brain, or is this the work of a briefly-seen paramedic turned copycat killer? While it may seem logical that it'd be the former, it is in fact the latter.
Speeding with the confidence of a Sheriff's drunk son in a Mustang, A New Beginning is a breakneck supercut of hyper-violence. To manage the body count, fresh meat is constantly being thrown on screen: Mechanically incompetent greasers, numbskull redneck families, waitresses who flash themselves in the mirror and a guy from the "Bad" music video stricken by GI issues. On paper, these characters sound like a spec script where Jason slaughter a variety of Mad TV characters, but all of this is beautiful celluloid truth. When flesh is not being callously vivisected, bodies are gleefully jettisoning their clothing, eager for a good boink. You'd think by this go-round, everyone would know that copulation means certain death, but it turns out exhibitionism is alive and well in the infamous woods of New Jersey.
All of this slaughter culminates with the eyebrow-raising discovery that our "Jason" is in fact local paramedic Roy Burns, driven to murder madness by the death of his secret son (The aforementioned oaf). He also carried around a crystal-clear newspaper photo of Jason. Why did he do that? Who took that photo and lived to tell the tale? Then there's the dropped thread of Tommy Jarvis and the stinger that ends the film. Was Tommy meant to take on the mantle of Crystal Lake terror (Paralleling the original plan for Jamie Lloyd in the Halloween sequels), and what would that have looked like? These are questions A New Beginning has no time for. It's too busy flashing knockers and having its skull tension-crushed by a belt. Respect.
-Dr. Benny Graves
