Jason Voorhees escapes from a morgue and is on his way back to Camp Crystal Lake. A long the way he sets his eyes on the Jarvis family.
Blaine: Slasher films were really becoming popular in the ‘80s, but there was one film that had shown that the slasher genre had gone too far. It was “Silent Night Deadly Night”, a movie taking place during the Holiday season about a nut job going around killing people dressed as Santa Claus. Kids would see advertisements for that film on newspapers and posters outside the theater and that really concerned their parents. Parents would protest demanding that the film be pulled from theaters in order to protect their children from getting the wrong idea. “Silent Night Deadly Night” was pulled from a lot of theaters and studios felt embarrassed. Because of that Paramount Pictures had decided to kill off Jason and not to make any more “Friday the 13th” movies. A script was developed and titled “Friday the 13th The Final Chapter”. Paramount Pictures had hired Joseph Zito to direct “The Final Chapter” because they were really impressed with the slasher film he made called “The Prowler”. The idea for “The Final Chapter” was to resurrect Jason one last time and then have him killed for good. Joseph Zito wanted the beginning of “The Final Chapter” to pick up after the events of “Friday the 13th Part III”. It shows a lot of the dead bodies of the victims Jason had killed being carried into ambulances including Jason’s. Then he is brought to a morgue, but he is not dead for good.
Joseph Zito wanted a professional stuntman to play Jason in “The Final Chapter” and he had Ted White in mind. Ted had turned down the project at first, but then he gave it some thought and decided to do it. Ted had rented “Friday the 13th” Part II & III in order to get to know the character, Jason, more. Ted wanted to do something different with his take on Jason. For one he didn’t want to walk slowly, he wanted to go at a faster pace. And because this was the last “Friday the 13th” movie he thought that fans wouldn’t care.
Tom Savini, the makeup artist behind the death sequences, didn’t return for the second and third movie after the first, but because the franchise had become so popular he decided to return after being asked by Joseph if he would do the makeup effects for the death sequences in “The Final Chapter”. Another reason why Tom said yes was because he liked the idea of killing off Jason and if anyone was going to be in charge of finding a way to kill Jason it might as well be one of his creators. The design of grown up Jason was based off of Tom’s original design in the first movie when Jason was a kid. Tom had nothing to do with Jason’s new look, but he thought that the people who designed it did a terrific job.
In “The Final Chapter” they had Jason not only fight another female who is the final girl, but her younger brother, Tommy Jarvis, as well. Tommy Jarvis was played by Corey Feldman. Corey went in to audition believing he was auditioning for a “Halloween” movie at first, but the casting director informed him that it was “Friday the 13th”. What Fern Champion, the casting director, liked about Corey was that he was so alive and friendly. She thought he would be perfect for Tommy. Problem was Joseph thought he was too small and felt it would be hard to believe that a kid his size would be able to pick up a machete and whack Jason several times. Corey asked for a machete so he could show Joseph and Fern that he was right for the job. Tommy’s older sister, Trish, is one of the two people in Tommy’s life who is supposed to look after and raise him next to their mother. The parents are divorced and Mrs. Jarvis and her kids live in a house out in the woods. Actress Kimberly Beck wanted to connect to Trish by looking after Corey as if he was her own blood. Both Trish and Tommy are outsiders. Trish thinks of family first and doesn’t party like the other kids her age. Tommy likes to make scary masks and props, but when this group of teenagers crash at the house across from his he wishes he could do the things they are doing, but he can’t because he is too young. Things were like that for Corey in real life while they were shooting “The Final Chapter”. He wanted to hang out with the older kids. Everyone on set loved Corey except for Ted White and the reason why was because Ted didn’t know how to handle kids.
Tom Savini had made a lot of great death sequences for “The Final Chapter”. Tom knew that fans would want to see new stuff out of the deaths caused by Jason. There was a lot of talk of how to kill these people in this movie. One of my favorite death sequences in “The Final Chapter” is towards the beginning of the film when Jason slits a doctor's throat at the morgue and then twists the neck. The young actors who played the murdered victims at the house next door would ask Tom Savini how they were going to die. One of the death scenes in “The Final Chapter” was of Judie Aronson getting stabbed through the chest while she is lying down naked on a tube. There was a hole in the tube for Judie to go through only to the chest up while the rest of her stayed underwater. Judie would lie her arms and head down on the tube while this fake body would be attached to her. It was difficult for Judie to shoot that scene because the weather was 22 degrees and the water was very cold. As the hours went by Judie was loosing all the heat in her body and was freezing to death. She couldn’t do anymore takes and had asked Joseph Zito if she could get out, but he said no because they weren’t finished yet. Ted White was getting concerned for Judie after noticing she was being tortured by the cold. Ted informed Joseph that they had to get Judie out of the water. Joseph would tell Ted to do his job of being Jason and let him direct. Ted got pissed at Joseph because of that. Ted then told Joseph to let Judie out of the water or he would walk and so they let her out. Judie warmed up pretty good in her trailer thanks to the heaters, but she got hypothermia after spending hours in cold water and was sick for several days while they were shooting.
“Final Chapter” never showed Mrs. Jarvis’ death, but still you know she is dead because her last scene shows her coming home and then she hears a noise. It’s night and it’s raining and she goes out to see if anyone is out there. She isn’t seen for the rest of the movie after that. There have been a few deaths in the “Friday the 13th” movies that have never shown the victim being murdered. The first “Friday the 13th” showed one of the victims seeing someone mysterious in one of the cabins and so he goes in to see who it is and later on he is found dead with his throat slit. There was a scene that they had shot, but never put into “The Final Chapter” and it was supposed to be the final scene that would make the audience jump out of their seats. It’s an alternate ending that shows Trish Jarvis noticing water dripping down from the upstairs. She goes up there and finds her mother dead in the bathtub. Then Jason shows up unmasked and kills Trish, but it’s a nightmare. Trish wakes up in the hospital after that. That was an intense scene for Kimberly Beck to shoot and she can’t understand why they left that out of the movie.
One of the actors who plays a murdered victim achieved a career in acting after “Friday the 13th The Final Chapter” and it was Crispin Glover (Back to the Future). Crispin’s character goes looking for a corkscrew, Jason shows up out of the dark, slams the corkscrew on to Crispin's hand and his hand is nailed to the table. Then Jason puts a butcher knife through Crispin’s face. It was a fake knife and they cut pieces of it off to match the shape Crispin’s face so that way it would look like that butcher knife was going through his head.
Towards the end of the movie, Jason throws the body of his last victim through the Jarvis’ window, then grabs Tommy and tries to take him. Corey was very terrified shooting that scene and he said it was the most terrifying thing that he has ever shot. Everyone would ask Corey if he was alright after doing that scene and he shouted “No!” Joseph Zito had thought about Jason going after Trish like a cat chases a mouse. Trish has Jason go after her on purpose as a distraction so that Tommy can escape and run into the woods, but he doesn’t do that. The reason why Tommy doesn’t run is because he comes up with a plan to defeat Jason. He shaves his head and puts a little bit of makeup on his face to look like Jason. He uses it as a distraction for Jason so that Trish can attack him from behind. When Corey Feldman was told that Tommy was going to make himself look like Jason he asked how that would work. Tom Savini would put a bald cap over Corey’s hair so that way he wouldn’t have to shave his head. Tom Savini had a lot of ideas of how to kill Jason, but Joseph had decided that it would just be a simple kill. Trish would knock Jason’s hockey mask off and then Tommy would take one hard swing at Jason’s head using a machete. Tommy sees some movement in Jason’s hand and just uses the machete on him repeatedly.
“Friday the 13th The Final Chapter” was released on April 1984 and it was another “Friday the 13th” that critics didn’t like which was predictable for the people who made the movie sense critics didn’t like the first three. It did come to mind that the ending would open new doors for “Friday the 13th” like Tommy becoming the new Jason. At the end it shows Tommy giving this strange and creepy look on his face. Killing Jason might have messed with his mind a bit. Paramount Pictures then had second thoughts about making “The Final Chapter” the last “Friday the 13th”.
My rating on “Friday the 13th” is four and a half out of five stars.
