Review of Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood (1988) by Bill M — 21 Oct 2017

This seventh Friday The 13TH is essentially Jason vs Carrie, as Jason faces off against a troubled telekinetic girl in the most supernatural tinged entry so far, and how could you not be won over by such a ridiculous concept.

This is definately the true turning point into more cartoonish outlandishness that would define the series later on, and despite it's terrible reputation and heavily compromised lack of gore, this is actually fucking great silly, cheesy fun, especially as there's an undeniably ludicrous entertainment value to seeing a hot girl chuck all sorts of shit at Jason with her mind, their last face off particularly is loads of fun.

Once again the characters and performances are hilariously awful, and there is a complete lack of invention and (despite the title) actual blood in the death scenes (the only highlight is the axe in the head of the main queen bitch of the movie, and even thats only because you fucking hate her) this film being as it was a victim of a sudden crackdown on and heavy monitoring of rampant, graphic cinematic violence in the late 80's.

The MPAA had a bit of a vendetta against the Friday movies in the 80's but here they were real fucking dicks, less surgically and more butcher shop style chopping out almost any trace of the insanely over the top and innovative deaths they shot for this movie, in fact the full versions of these incredible gore explosions now only exist in vhs form in the studio vaults and can be glimpsed in the great documentary "Crystal Lake Memories: The History Of Friday The 13TH, otherwise it's pretty certain we wont be seeing a fully uncut version of this film possibly ever, which is a tragic loss to horror cinema and serves to ultimately neuter this movie in a hugely frustrating, depriving us of the main money shot moments we crave with such films.

But like I mentioned before, the last third of the movie is totally nuts and more than makes up for the lack of actual gore, with some inventive, genuinely impressive and ambitious effects, the final battle between Tina and Jason is gloriously deranged b-movie brilliance, with the telekinetic girl throwing everything from nails to a plant pot with a severed head in (yep) at Jason.

This is often not everyone's definition of a good movie exactly, but with the right group of people and a few drinks and some junk food it might as well be Citizen Cane for how much fucking stupid fun it is.