The Best ‘Friday the 13th’ Movie Didn’t Even Have Jason as The Killer
Four decades ago this month, the greatest Friday the 13th movie of all time was released — and Jason Voorhees wasn’t the killer.
Neither was his mother, Pamela Voorhees. (I’m looking at you, fans of the original 1980 installment.)
If you’re a Friday the 13th fan and can perform process of elimination, you know by now I’m referring to the fifth installment in the venerable series, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Debuting in American theaters on March 22, 1985, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning controversially revealed at its conclusion that the slasher villain hacking his way through our likable protagonists wasn’t a Voorhees at all. The perpetrator was instead paramedic Roy Burns (Dick Wieand), who prior to being unmasked had done little onscreen besides utter a handful of words and intensely glower.
That glower, though, in retrospect foreshadowed not only his impending villainy, but also Burns’ ultimate status as the greatest of all Friday the 13th baddies. Because Burns elevates the surrounding story, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning by extension becomes the best movie in the entire series.
Also Read: If ‘Friday the 13th’ Had a Different Title, Would We Still Talk About it?
Audiences first meet Burns after he discovers the brutally mangled and dismembered body of his mentally disabled son Joey (Dominick Brascia). We don’t know yet that Joey was Roy’s son, and Roy himself had abandoned the boy. But apparently, the unexpected discovery of his savaged corpse snaps the man’s brain. The rest of the film shows Roy go on a murderous rampage against residents of the Pinehurst Halfway House, which houses other youths struggling with severe mental illness including the main survivor of the previous sequel, chief protagonist Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd).
Jarvis, unsurprisingly, struggles from severe PTSD as a result of his previous encounter with a slasher villain. Because of his lingering trauma, it makes sense that he incorrectly assumes his new stalker is the same man he escaped once before, despite having killed Jason in the last movie with his own two hands. Shepherd reportedly spent months volunteering at a state mental hospital to prepare for his role, only to be “disappointed” that the movie he thought was called Repetition was actually a Friday the 13th movie.
He shouldn’t have felt this way. Instead of mugging and hamming it up like most other actors portraying mentally ill characters—not just within the horror genre, but outside of it—Shepherd’s Jarvis is subtle, nuanced, and sad. Using exhausted and frightened eyes, a tense mouth, and an unending aura of weary self-consciousness, Shepherd excellently captures the day-to-day experience of real-life trauma victims. He doesn’t need to put on a fright wig and gnash his teeth; Shepherd plays Jarvis as a normal kid weighed down by years of trauma… which, of course, is exactly what he is.
Also Read: ‘Friday The 13th’ Actor Ari Lehman on First Jason, Acting, and Just Having a Good Time
With Shepherd’s Dark Knight as a counterpoint in benign insanity juxtaposed with Weiand’s Joker, the other patients at Pinehurst all inhabit somewhere in the mushy middle of the spectrum. Each one is given little strokes of character development that render them identifiable as various troubled teen archetypes: The insecure stutterer, the sulking goth, the violently angry tough, you get the picture.
Because this is a Friday the 13th movie, most of these characters are destined to die in a grisly, horrifying fashion. (Some characters unrelated to Pinehurst also die; Burns is nothing if not inconsistent in his choices.) The tone is full-throated exploitation, every bit as sleazy and gritty as one might hope from a 1980s slasher flick. For those with less sophisticated cinematic palates, these touches may be turn-offs. Take this slanted take from Slant Magazine.
“Agatha Christie this ain’t,” writes Jeremiah Kipp. “The tone is crude, raunchy, and leering, with kill scenes combined with more nudity than usual; we’re even invited to check out a hot chick’s body after her face has been sliced in half by garden shears. There’s also an obnoxious, though rarely dull, penchant for potty humor, such as when a guy runs to a rusty old outhouse after eating ‘those damned enchiladas’ and lands on the wrong end of a spike.”
Also Read: ‘Friday the 13th’ (2009) Outdoes the Original in Almost Every Way
Kipp’s trash is a gorehound’s treasure. For those who don’t naturally enjoy graphic scary movies, these scenes are off-putting; if you can look past the flying viscera and body fluids, however, the movie notably maintains a certain stubborn empathy for the troubled teens. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning doesn’t vilify mental illness, but rather the lack of compassion we feel for those who struggle with those conditions. Roy Burns is ultimately no different than the Pinehurst teens he targets. When he dons Jason’s mask, he is symbolically and literally demonstrating how trauma is transferred between victims, even those who may not have been involved in the original experiences.
Tragically, the man who wore the mask as Burns does not share my rosy perspective. Speaking years later, Wieand said, “It wasn’t until I saw Part V that I realized what a piece of trash it was. I mean, I knew the series’ reputation, but you’re always hoping that yours is going to come out better.” Similarly, director Danny Steinmann described the film as comparable to pornography because of its frequent nudity.
By modern standards, neither the gore nor the nudity in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is particularly bracing. Mental illness, however, is always upsetting to behold, especially when depicted with any degree of realism. Perhaps, on some level, this is why so many critics then and now are uncomfortable with a Friday the 13th movie that is frankly the best in the series.
Categorized:Editorials
