"Jesus Christmas! Holy Jesus goddamn! Holy Jesus jumping Christmas shit!"
The Friday the 13th series proved to be quite successful for Paramount during the 1980s, but they also knew when it was getting old and so in 1984 they decided to kill off the franchise, or so we thought. Calling the film The Final Chapter as opposed to Friday the 13th Part 4 was a marketing technique, make the audiences think that this is the end and more people will come to see the movie.
Again, the film has very little to do with the original film. In fact in this case the film has nothing to do with the original film, aside from Jason being in the movie. The hockey mask is back and is now a trademark of Jason’s even appearing on the theatrical poster in a puddle of blood with a knife through the eye. Tommy Jarvis (Feldman) is now the main character, a young boy who loves making scary masks. They live out in the woods somewhere, him, his sister Trish (Beck) and their mother (Freeman). A house across the way is rented out by a bunch of horny teenagers and let the killings begin! The movie begins right where the last one left off, Jason’s body is taken from the farmhouse seen in part 3 to a morgue where he quickly offs the mortician and a nurse to escape. Everything else plays out like a common Friday the 13th film until the end, when young Tommy shaves his head to make himself look like Jason then quickly takes care of Jason ending the carnage.
This is one of the more entertaining Friday films, Corey Feldman was huge at the time and really brought something to the series. Parts 4, 5 and 6 proved that a woman need not headline the film for a slasher film to become successful. Part 4 also saw the return of makeup wizard Tom Savini. In interviews he claimed he created the monster, now let him destroy him. And so they did, however not for long since the following year, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning was released. I think that calling it The Final Chapter brought in quite a bit more audience and the studio saw that as a positive.
