Review of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) by Foreverfinalgir — 15 Dec 2021

This film is a lot more fun than what I remembered it was. Between Crispin Glover’s dance moves, the increase in the deaths and nudity, and TWINS! Friday the 13th The Final Chapter is a fun movie and a lot better than Friday the 13th Part 3!

PLOT.

Die! Die! Die! Die!-Tommy Jarvis.

In Friday the 13th The Final Chapter, they take Jason’s body to the morgue. Jason isn’t having it and escapes and heads back to the lake, where a group of teens are renting a house to party. Next door is a mother, her daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck) and son Tommy ( Corey Feldman). In the woods is mystery man Rob (Erich Anderson) who says he’s hunting bears.

MY THOUGHTS.

Help! He’s killing me! He’s killing me!-Rob.

There’s so much to like about this movie. Let’s start with the kills. The kill count is higher with a total of 14 kills. There’s more blood and gore as well. Some favorite kills are when the hitchhiker is stabbed in the neck. The banana didn’t deserve that! LOL Samantha (Judie Aronson) gets stabbed in the boat. That one looked painful and I’m adding in the hypothermia she suffered from. Of course I have to add in Jimmy’s (Crispin Glover) death. I watched this one and remembered there was a scene in a Halloween movie with a corkscrew in it. (It was in Halloween H20). And, not necessarily favorite but more memorable, is Rob’s death. The famous cringy “Help! He’s killing me! He’s killing me!” line. It made him sound so bad. Almost forgot, but Jason’s head sliding down the machete was pretty cool. The slow sliding made it creepy.

We also got an increase in nudity with this film. There was a skinny dipping scene with several people and plenty of nudity by several people. We also get one girl who strips down to get into a boat at night. And can’t forget the shower scene where you get to see a woman’s butt against the glass. There is an old style film reel with half nude women on it. Poor Ted doesn’t get lucky with any of the girls and ends up watching a pseudo old style porn. Then gets killed for it.

During a conversation between Rob and Trish, Rob mentions that his sister Sandra was killed by Jason. Sandra was actually killed in Friday the 13th Part 2 and was played by Marta Kober. She was impaled with a spear while having sex with her boyfriend. I liked that little call back to an earlier movie in the franchise.

There was no way I wasn’t going to mention Crispin Glover’s AMAZING dance moves in this movie! It was so bad it’s good? From what I’ve read he was actually dancing to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” when they were filming it. But in post editing they put in Lion’s “Love is a Lie”. Honestly, I don’t think it makes it any better though? It was a weird dance. But I did find it endearing in his character.

Now for the negatives. For the most part, I think I don’t like how some of the actors were treated while filming this. I read that Judie Aronson got hypothermia while shooting her death scene. The director kept Judie Aronson in the water for her death scene so long, she got hypothermia. I also heard that the director was so mean or rough with Corey Feldman that when he was killing Jason, he was imagining he was actually hitting the director.

Overall a good movie and a fun watch. A definite improvement over Part 3. I’m quite surprised that I like this one so much. I know this may be hated but I may like this one better than the first one.

Chronologically, parts 2, 3, and 4 take place over the course of 5 days, from Friday the 13th to Tuesday the 17th. During that time Jason kills 34 people.

Last film in the series to pick up immediately where the previous film left off.

Distinguished film critic Roger Ebert called this film “an immoral and reprehensible piece of trash.”.

If you want to see my other Friday the 13th reviews, click here: Friday the 13th Franchise.

Let’s get into the rankings:

Kills/Blood/Gore: 4/5.

Sex/Nudity: 4/5.

Scare factor: 2/5.

Enjoyment factor: 4/5.

My Rank: 3.5/5.

IMDB: 6/10.

Rotten Tomatoes: critics: 1.9/10 audience: 5.1/10.

Letterboxd: 3.