Review of Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood (1988) by Ian B — 17 Feb 2009

The beginning of the end for Jason Voorhees. The New Blood marks the last somewhat enjoyable entry in the Friday the 13th franchise. After Jason Lives was able to breathe new life into the series by poking a little fun at the idiocy of it all, The New Blood makes the mistake of trying to take things all too seriously again, and it just doesn't work. Add to the mix a little ripping-off of Stephen King's Carrie, and you have one bizarre trip to Crystal Lake.

Picking up years after the events in Jason Lives (but still looking very much like the 80's), Jason is rotting at the bottom of Crystal Lake until a young girl with telekinetic powers decides to resurrect him for no apparent reason. Ok, well she thinks it's the corpse of her father whom she accidently killed as a little girl....if that makes much more sense. Story and character-wise this is definitely not one of the strongest in the series. Aside from lead Lar Park-Lincoln, everyone in the film is pure cardboard and forgettable. What this film does have to offer are some of the most creative (if censored) deaths in the series and Kane Hodder's first appearance as Jason Voorhees.

Hodder would become the only actor to play Jason on several occasions and definitely gave the character a bit more "personality" than the previous stuntmen who donned the hockey mask. Of course it helps that he's given some of the best and most detailed makeup to work with. Jason is just a rotting mess in this movie and looks amazing! With an exposed jaw, ribcage and other various bones, this is just some fantastic, grusome makeup. Hodder's Jason also performs some of the series' most brutal and bizarre kills here. From the infamous sleeping bag kill, to some head crushing, punching holes through people, along with some of the regular slicing and dicing....this is Jason at his blood best. It's just too bad we barely get to see any of it.

The New Blood is famously (or infamously) the most censored out of all the Friday the 13th films. Director John Carl Buechler likens this film to a joke with no punch-line. We're constantly given setups for great kills and then barely get to see a few frames of the actual carnage. Why the MPAA felt they had to cut all this over-the-top, cartoon-ish gore, yet still can have 100+ people violently shot-down in actions films is beyond me? Nothing they've ever done has made sense and they never give any reasons as for why they cut what they do. Understandably, I hate them and find them just as pointless and confusing as everyone else.

The New Blood doesn't really offer anything new to the series other than a great looking Jason and a main character who can actually fight back (even if she is just a Carrie wannabe). Still, the film moves along at a nice pace, Hodder's Jason is extremely menacing and brutal and the climax is one of the better in the series. Unfortunately there's all the usual predictability, stupidity and cardboard characters we have to suffer through to get to the good stuff. But if you can get into the absurdness of it all (being that this is part 7!) there's much to enjoy in The New Blood. Too bad it was all downhill from here.