Makeup and special effects artist John Carl Buechler, after pausing to direct Troll two years prior, steps behind the camera once again to bring Jason Voorhees back to form in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. However, in order to counter the newly-minted prowess of his now supernatural killer, he gives us a “Carrie verses Jason” premise which, though trademark grandiose Hollywood, results in an average slasher outing.
Distraught at her father’s spousal abuse, 13 year-old Tina Shepard (Lar Park-Lincoln) wishes her father, John (John Otrin), dead. The young girl’s telekinetic powers, fueled by her rage, makes it so as the pier upon which he is standing collapses into Crystal Lake. Four years later, at the suggestion of a psychologist named Crews (Terry Kiser) that such will be therapeutic, Tina’s mother, Amanda (Susan Blu), brings her daughter back to the site where her father met his premature end. However, instead of resurrecting her father, Tina inadvertently brings back Jason Voorhees.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood had a lot of difficulties getting off the drawing board before getting to see a camera. The production was the first attempt at Paramount Pictures and New Line Cinema to pit Jason Voorhees against Freddy Kruger (which becomes ironic in that Paramount turned down A Nightmare on Elm Street years prior). However, when the companies could not agree upon the terms and conditions, rookie screenwriter Daryl Haney was hired to write a script. As legend has it, Haney’s agent, upon his own volition, contacted the film’s producer, Frank Mancuso, and stated his client would not complete the project lest his contract was rewritten at a higher price. Haney was subsequently replaced by an unknown ghostwriter penning under the pseudonym “Manuel Fidello,” thus we do not know who to credit for bringing the iconographic killer back to his roots.
After Danny Steinmann messed with our minds by presenting us with a faux Jason in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and Tom McLoughlin lightened the fare with his comedic Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, Buechler–using the franchise mold–opens his work with a recap of what came before as our killer, once again, follows the slasher Puritanical moral code as he dispenses sin in the form of premarital sex, drugs, and poor dispositions with death. Moreover, he fills the Friday quota of tossing a body through window before catapulting through one himself, as the now proverbial shattered door is supplemented with a stairwell. But, alas, once again we are negligent one stabbing from under the bed (thus leaving us to assume that, due to its extended absence, such is now cliché by even Jason’s standards). Interestingly, the director even posits the possibility that, once again, our murderous culprit might not be who we initially believe it to be (thereby echoing Parts 1 and 6, via character POV shots and the obfuscating effects of a mask respectively) for good Doctor Crews informs us, as his patient later admits, that Tina is suffering from guilt-ridden delusions. However, this concept is foiled midway through once Crews comes face-to-face with a corpse signed by Jason. Furthermore, our return is literal in that Crystal Lake-cum-Forest Green has its original title reinstated for what we are left to assume is the town’s attempt at capitalizing upon the locale’s notorious past.
Yet Buechle imparts many new facets into the series as he matches his now supernatural zombie (twice over given that Tina raises him from the grave a second time) with a supernatural protagonist, a paranormal. (The line of thought perhaps being that Friday the 13th’s Carrie-esque finale enthralled audiences, ergo, an entire premise containing said concept might be a viable avenue to pursue.) As such, our original rivalry between a ghost–Freddy Kruger–with Jason is metamorphosed into a battle between Stephen King/Brian de Palma’s Carrie and the eternal Mr. Voorhees. Fascinatingly, and in lieu of the saga’s almost exclusively plausible plotline being wholeheartedly tossed by the wayside in an attempt to match A Nightmare on Elm Street’s hyperactive narratives, the filmmaker admirably honors the franchise’s consistency in that justification is given for the mass murderer’s return once again. However, despite all of the bells and whistles, Buechle’s affair–epitomized by one of the more famous (and unintentionally humorous) death scenes in the Friday oeuvre: Jason not bothering to remove a victim from a sleeping bag and, instead, opting to merely beat bag-and-all against a tree–seems tired and lethargic as it steadfastly, but with little enthusiasm, goes through the motions. With Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood , it is as if our killer has a corpse quota to fill and, like a 9-to-5, drops in his timecard, does his job, and clocks out when the task is complete.
Of minor note, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood does encompass the rare instance of a character in which we sympathize. Maddy (Diana Barrows) is an homely girl who tries with all her might to reconcile her desire to be noticed by the opposite sex with her obligation toward self-respect. As such, when she finally succumbs to jealousy as another female snags yet another male prospect from under her nose, we bemoan what we know to be the inevitable. Also, Buechle’s feature marks the first occasion that Kane Hodder plays Jason as, regardless of one’s opinion of him as a person, he demands respect as he brings much spine-tingling dread to the silent role (one of the greatest challenges an actor can ever be faced with). Still, for all the film’s consistency, it falls prey, much like its predecessors, to feeling rushed as Maddy goes upstairs to put on her face and, once complete, walks down the hall, opens a door, and is met with a ground-level view; Jason, after falling into a puddle, appears bone dry a few seconds later as his injured eye shifts from right to left in much the same manner that his wardrobe inexplicably changes from the previous chapter; and, lastly, even though Robin (Elizabeth Kaitan) is tossed out of a window, we look down upon her corpse as nary a shard of glass is to be spied.
Regardless if one is relieved or reviled at John Carl Buechler’s decision to return Jason Voorhees back to form in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, the work is a solid, albeit lukewarm, slasher effort. Though offering nothing of substance anymore than it adds to the legacy of the killer, the filmmaker makes a watchable product, which is to be commended considering he obliges Friday fans while rivaling the franchise’s rising horror antagonist, Freddy Kruger. Instead of attempting to please all people at all times, or even one faction while ignoring the other, Buechler settles for merely appeasing both sides, leaving us with neither a noteworthy or condemnable Friday the 13th feature.
Conversation piece: A large percentage of the male cast was homosexual–Kevin Blair, Jeff Bennett, William Butler, and Craig Thomas–thereby prompting the production’s nickname: “Fri-gay the 13th. ” Also, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the first Friday feature not scored by Harry Manfredini.
-Egregious Gurnow
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