You’ll have to excuse me, but screening this flick for review marks the first time in my life that I have ever viewed this wonderful movie. And it is wonderful. It’s incredibly terrible as a horror movie, but viewed as a comedy, this thing is pure gold. There are so many WTF moments and quotable dialogue that why this particular entry in the “Friday the 13th” series hasn’t become a cult favorite is beyond me. Perhaps the best thing about it is that it’s almost a horror spoof long before that sort of thing was cool to do (save for “Student Bodies,” a definite cult favorite from the ‘80s).
The plot this time out really doesn’t matter much. Tommy Jarvis, who survived the menace of Jason Voorhees in “Part Four,” has since grown up, turned into a bit of a nutjob, and now finds himself as the newest member of a sort of halfway house for disturbed teens. But Tommy looks like the only one who’s disturbed. The other kids are either running around having sex on other peoples’ property, being zoned out to bad pop rock, or just simply breathing. Eventually, Jason Voorhees rears his ugly head once more and a whole bunch of groovy murders begins anew. Or is it Jason? Does it even matter?
The range of characters in this movie is simply stunning. Amongst the crew are a stereotypical redneck mother and son (Ethel, the mom, apparently makes the greatest stew ever), a couple of teenage greasers for absolutely no discernable reason whatsoever, a Madonna wannabe, one of those goofballs that likes to wear shirts that he’s cut the sleeves off of, the token fat kid, and most of all, Shavar Ross who played Dudley on “Diff’rent Strokes.” Dudley gets a lot of airtime in this movie. But when Corey Feldman only appears for the first five minutes, who else was going to be the star power? Certainly not John Shepherd. The guy plays an adult Tommy as if he had never been in front of a camera before. Every time someone yells “Tommy!” at him, see if you can contain the urge to yell back “Can you hear me?” It happens a lot here, I promise.
Amongst the other great things this flick packs include a middle-aged dude who manages to seduce a bimbo of a waitress at a local diner, then proceeds to snort some fine China White off a mirror while waiting for her, a scene between Dudley’s older brother and his girlfriend singing a touching duet of “Hey baby/ooh baby” as he takes a crap in an outhouse after the two of them share a doobie (in front of Dudley no less), and the Madonna wannabe doing some absolutely hilarious pop and lock dance moves. Yes, this movie has it all. Oh yeah, there’s plenty of naked booby shots as well.
There’s absolutely no way this movie could have ever been taken seriously, but it’s almost a great time capsule of everything that was so amusingly bad about the ‘80s. So if you haven’t seen this one like I hadn’t, do check it out. You won’t be disappointed if you watch it as pure comic genius. I’m sure there are plenty of purists out there who have watched this entire series and undoubtedly consider this entry absolutely heinous, but I have a feeling this will be getting a lot of viewings on my system.
4 / 5 Stars
Starring: Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Corey Feldman
Director: Danny Steinmann
Reviewed by Jason Thompson
Deluxe Edition DVD Review:
Not that it really needs any, but this movie comes with a director and cast and crew commentary, a few featurettes such as “Lost Tales from Camp Blood: Part 5,” and a making-of short. Surprisingly, there’s no gag reel, but one can almost consider the entire movie to be nothing but one huge gag reel. Jason Voorhees never had it so good before or since.
