Census Bloodbath: Brou-Ha-Ha

Note: It must be recognized that Evil Laugh was directed and co-written by the late Dominick Brascia. Onscreen, he most memorably played Joey, the character whose death sent his secret father Roy on a murderous copycat killer rampage in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Brascia also appeared in Rush Week and They're Playing with Fire and directed Hard Rock Nightmare. It's difficult to get too excited about all of these Census Bloodbath connections, considering the fact that he was accused of sexually abusing Corey Haim amid a flurry of he-said-she-said comments made by him, Haim's mother, and Charlie Sheen following Haim's death, so consider the alleged bullshit acknowledged. Woof.

Year:
1986
Director:
Dominick Brascia
Cast:
Kim McKamy, Steven Baio, Myles O'Brien
Run Time:
1 hour 31 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Aspiring pediatrician Jerry (Gary Hays of Hard Rock Nightmare) invites his med school friends from the fictional Catalina Island State University (this is pretty funny, if you're from Southern California) to come fix up a closed-down foster home. The home is the site of a heinous crime some 10 years before. An employee named Martin brutally murdered the children after they falsely accused him of molesting them, and his ghost is said to still haunt the area. For his trouble, Jerry is murdered by a masked, uncontrollably laughing assailant.

Into this situation unknowingly steps a group of the horniest med students on planet Earth: Jerry's fiancée Connie (Kim McCamy of Dreamaniac, who followed her banner year of slashers by becoming a pornographic actress and body double under the name Ashlyn Gere); the annoying preppy rich couple Betty (Karyn O'Bryan) and Sammy Douglas Baxter III (Tony Griffin); the studly and cruel urologist Mark (Myles O'Brien); dropout X-Ray tech Johnny (Steven Baio, who produced and co-wrote Evil Laugh and later starred in Hard Rock Nightmare - also he's Scott Baio's brother); the ditsy and horny Tina (Jodi Gibson, who later became known as Sasha, the Hollywood Super Madam, running an escort service that at one time employed Heidi Fleiss - is there anyone in this movie whose resume isn't incredibly complicated?).

Although they are somewhat weirded out by the fact that Jerry is missing, they get to work fixing up the place and sexually manipulating one another, often at the same time. Only the Fangoria-reading horror fan Barney (Jerold Pearson of Tag: The Assassination Game) is wary of the situation, and as the laughing killer targets the students one by one, Barney grows increasingly panicked by the signs that only he seems to see.

Analysis: Evil Laugh is a weirdly perfect double feature with Dreamaniac, which is the most recent 1986 slasher we covered on Census Bloodbath. Both movies star Kim McKamy, for one thing. But both also have a sex scene involving whipped cream and feature copious male flesh, though this one is more equitable in the female nudity department and thus significantly less homoerotic, it must be said.

Being significantly less homoerotic than Dreamaniac still leaves a lot of room for fun, however. Take the friendship between Mark, Johnny, and Barney, which is the most "wouldn't it be hilarious if we kissed?" dynamic I've ever seen in a 1980s slasher movie. My favorite scene is the one where Barney pranks Mark by hiding under the bed while Mark is having sex with Tina, then pushing his hand through a hole in the mattress and stroking Mark's pert bottom. You know. Because it's really funny that Mark briefly thinks it's Tina who's caressing and squeezing those caked-up cheeks. Classic prank!

Thankfully, it is pleasant enough to spend time with these characters cleaning and fucking, because the pacing of Evil Laugh is wonky as hell and the core platter of Meat refuses to fall to the killer's blade for the better part of an hour. That said, it's nice to have a good chunk of slasher Meat in the first place, because a lot of the slashers of 1985 largely eschewed that element of the formula.

The movie does less well with other tropes, unfortunately. For instance, the killer's mask is this desperately uninteresting black and white thing that even the movie itself seems embarrassed by, because we only ever see it in like three shots total. Also, the killer's M.O. of constantly laughing isn't scary, but it also fails to tie into either the story of Martin or the eventual reveal of who the killer really is. 

[SPOILER ALERT - the killer is Sadie Burns (Susan Grant), the wife of the property's real estate agent Roger Burns (Howard Weiss), and she is at least seeded into some early scenes of the movie, but her Mrs. Voorhees moment feels especially Friday the 13th-esque because it comes out of absolutely nowhere.]

The kills themselves are often pretty bland, too. In more than half of them, the uniformly bad actors are failing to sell unconvincing gore gags. Plus, the movie resolutely refuses to have the fact that the characters are med students play into these sequences even a little bit. However, the film does perk up periodically for some standout moments.

Honestly, the thing that truly keeps the film afloat is that it does have these scattered moments of horror brilliance. It just carries on being a run-of-the-mill slasher movie for minutes upon minutes upon minutes, but then it'll have a gem of a scene like the one where Betty is tied up on the bed and gagged for a bit of S&M fun and thus Sammy is unable to heed her warning that a killer has entered the room.

Now, the thing that I haven't mentioned about this movie yet is that people will tell you is that this movie is a meta comedy precursor to 1996's Scream. It certainly has a few moments that predict, Nostradamus-like, the way that the seminal meta slasher will behave 10 years on, including a proto "this is the part where the killer comes back to life" bit from Barney. 

And it's true that there are quite a few moments where other slasher movies are referenced and a few where the tropes of horror (sex = death, mainly) are discussed, particularly by Barney. However, at least to my eyes, these moments were much more similar to the vein of humor you found in the same year's Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives than anything Kevin Williamson was up to in the Scream franchise. It was late enough into the 1980s that screenwriters were more and more tempted to put a hat on the slasher tropes they were using, without the added element of having the majority of the characters genuinely seem to be aware that they were in a horror movie.

That's about the extent of the comedy in this movie, which is otherwise a run-of-the-mill slasher. However, the presence of a strong comic thread makes certain moments play wrong, particularly the absurdly dark backstory given to the foster home. The details we learn about Martin's rampage grow more and more ludicrously shocking, in a way that never plays as humor but also never appropriately bleeds into the level of horror at which the main story is operating. It's just kind of gross and edgelordy for no reason.

All in all, while I am content with giving Evil Laugh the same score as Dreamaniac, it's one that I'm less keen to recommend. It just barely crawled its way across the threshold of being worth watching, whereas the other Kim McKamy joint of the year was a blast from start to finish.

Killer: Evil Laugher (Dominick Brascia when masked)/Sadie Burns (Susan Grant when unmasked)

Final Girl: Connie (Kim McKamy)

Best Kill: Johnny has his head shoved into a microwave, which cooks him to the point that blood explodes out of his cranium. This absolutely isn't how it would work in real life, but who cares. 

Sign of the Times: They say picture is worth a thousand words.

Scariest Moment: Chief Cash (Hal Shafer) is talking to a wannabe cop, Freddy (Johnny Venokur of Hard Rock Nightmare), who is stationed in the bushes to watch over the house. Freddy is wet behind the ears and unsure about how cop things work, so he asks why there is somebody in the backseat of Cash's car. Somebody that Cash was unaware of until that moment...

Weirdest Moment: In the closing sequence, Connnie is seen walking past a signed headshot of her late fiancé.

Champion Dialogue: “If I were a girl, I'd become a lesbian."

Body Count: 12

1. Jerry is stabbed in the back and has his heart removed.
2. Donald is drilled in the torso.
3. Chief Cash has his throat slit offscreen.
4. Freddy is stabbed in the gut.
5. Sammy is macheted in the back of the head.
6. Betty is killed offscreen.
7. Mr. Burns is stabbed in the crotch.
8. Mark is axed in the forehead.
9. Tina is strangled and has her neck snapped.
10. Johnny has his head microwaved.
11. Sadie Burns is shot, both by Connie and Barney.
12. Barney is stabbed with scissors by Connie.

TL;DR: Evil Laugh is a threadbare slasher, but it is intermittently horny enough, funny enough, and scary enough to be worth watching.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1528

Census Bloodbath: Get Your Fingers Burned

Year: 1984

Director: Howard Avedis

Cast: Sybil Danning, Eric Brown, Andrew Prine

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: They're Playing with Fire follows Diane Stevens (Sybil Danning), an English professor at Oceanview College, who seduces student Jay Richard (Eric Brown of Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy, and who was fresh off 1981's similarly themed Private Lessons) in an attempt to convince him to sneak into her mother-in-law's home, which will somehow drive her mad and thus get her declared incompetent so control of her vast estate goes to Diane's husband Michael (Andrew Prine of The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Amityville II: The Possession, and two episodes of Freddy's Nightmares). Unfortunately, somebody kills Andrew's mother and grandmother that same night, and every member of the trio suspects another of committing the crime. Meanwhile, a killer in a ski mask is continuing to lurk around the property.

Analysis: This is definitely one of those films where being straight might be a prerequisite. Sybil Danning is a beautiful woman, and while the fact that she is either changing or showering during about 95% of her dialogue is highly amusing to me, it doesn't ignite any of the more prurient interests that this film was clearly intended to provoke. Instead of Eric Brown's affable geek character allowing me to transpose myself into his situation, it really left the door open for me to examine the mystifying way the relationships in his life function. Don't get me wrong, he's a cute guy, but the fact that every blonde in the film is throwing herself at his feet (his doting ex-girlfriend Cynthia is an especially peculiar psychological study) is less a fantasy and more an erotic uncanny valley. 

However, even for the people in the audience who might be interested in studying Sybil Danning's statuesque form from as many angles as possible, there's not that much that will rev the engine beyond one allegedly steamy sex scene and a lot of vacant stripteasing while she bloviates about her schemes. This is a boring movie by any yardstick, and it gets off on being withholding. 

Take the crop of teenagers who barely make any impression on the movie, including Glenn (Dominick Brascia, a well-decorated Census Bloodbath veteran from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Rush Week, Evil Laugh, and Hard Rock Nightmare). They show up every 20 minutes or so to debate whether or not they should party or study (the character of Janice is firmly in the latter camp, considering that every line she speaks is a variation on the theme of "let's go to my place and study!"), eventually arrange themselves neatly at the place where the killings happen while the person doing said killings is present, and then... drive away chatting amongst themselves, never to be seen again.

They're Playing with Fire keeps promising a slightly more interesting movie that it doesn't deliver on, so much so that the somewhat frequent really weird moments that crop up become even more potent because they're unexpected. I'm not just talking the random suit of armor in the basement or the guy who orders his pizza with mustard and anchovies (perhaps the scariest scene in the film), but a full on stalk-'n-slash sequence where the killer is wearing a Santa outfit that is never referenced before or after that moment.

The third act killer reveal is reasonably successful at drumming up atmosphere, at the very least. While Jay and Diane are trapped in an attic filled with genuinely unsettling paintings, the killer is outside the door menacing them in a baby voice that's certainly bizarre. If every scene had the energy of the brief moments where the killer rears his head, it would be a superb weirdo slasher, but alas there are too many long dialogue sequences that tax the actors delivering them far beyond their capabilities.

Killer: Martin "Bird" Johnson (Paul Clemens)

Final Girl: Diane Stevens (Sybil Danning)

Best Kill: Having the killer shoot a grandmother in the back of the head while she's watching a televangelist program on TV is certainly a bold move.

Sign of the Times: The title theme, which sounds like somebody rooted through Tina Turner and Irene Cara's wastebaskets and synthesized a track out of the scraps.

Scariest Moment: While Jay is sneaking through a seemingly empty house, a shadow moves in an ever-so-slightly wrong way that could be his shadow but keeps nagging at you until it is revealed that he is indeed not alone.

Weirdest Moment: I mean, the scene where the killer is dressed as Santa (an outfit that is never reused) and bonks Cynthia on the head with a baseball bat just has to be it.

Champion Dialogue: "Come on in, I'm not going to rape you."

Body Count: 6

Lillian in shot in the chest and cheek.

Grandma is shot in the back of the head.

Cynthia is beaten to death with a bat.

Michael is stabbed in the gut.

George is macheted in the neck.

Bird is shot.

TL;DR: They're Playing with Fire is a boring, allegedly erotic thriller, but there is just enough off-kilter weirdness to keep it afloat.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 864

Census Flashback: Party Till You Drop

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Life of the Party, which is about Melissa McCarthy returning to college and wreaking havoc on the frat scene, this week I'll be visiting the hallowed halls of the psychosexual campus slasher Rush Week.

Year: 1988

Director: Bob Bralver

Cast: Pamela Ludwig, Dean Hamilton, Roy Thinnes

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Just when you think you've seen every college-set slasher that the subgenre has to offer, the indefatigable 80's horror morass regurgitates yet another one. 1988's Rush Week has all the hallmarks of a slasher I shouldn't care about very much. Too non-paranormal to keep up with the post-Elm Street trend that made the late 80's so weird, too generic to justify the lack of gore that resulted from the MPAA's severe crackdown on the genre after it dominated theaters for the better part of a decade. Fortunately, Rush Week actually wasn't a slog, which is oh so unusual at this point in the project. Let's dive in, right after some good, wholesome plot synopsis!

Part of a balanced breakfast.

So, it's Rush Week at Tambers College, and as is oh so likely to happen when a bunch of nubile fraternity and sorority students cavort together, a cloaked, axe-wielding murderer is cutting a trail of carnage across the proceedings. The only person who seems to notice that people are mysteriously disappearing is Toni Daniels (Pamela Ludwig), a new journalism student who has been working with the college paper. 

Even though everyone in her life suspiciously warns her away from investigating these murders, including her carefree hippie professor Cosmo Kincald (Gregg Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band. Yeah, I don't know why either), the weirdly-obsessed-with-moral-purification-and-the-sanctity-of-death Dean Grail (Roy Thinnes), and her dreamy new love interest Jeff Jacobs (Dean Hamilton), a frat president who's clearly hiding a dark secret about his past. And that's just the tip of the suspect iceberg. I won't go too far into that, but I do want to mention some slasher royalty we have among us. As Julie Ann McGuffin, the killer's first victim, we have Halloween 4's Kathleen Kinmont, and as a totally useless pervy frat guy literally credited as "Peeper" we have Friday the 13th: A New Beginning's unforgettable Dominick Brascia.

Anyway, the killer is clearly trying to wipe out the moral corruption of the Greek system, as exemplified by Jeff's fraternity's increasingly wicked prank war with a rival frat. Naturally, this is accomplished by killing the women involved with said fraternity, because it ain't a slasher movie without a healthy dose of misogyny.

And Dean Hamilton isn't objectified nearly as much as I want him to be.

I've already mentioned what I could tell before even viewing one second of Rush Week. This isn't a gooey, gory romp through the best kills the slasher has to offer. No, it's almost pathetic in how boring and rote its murder sequences are: Killer raises the axe. Girl cowers in just such a way that you think her top might slip off. Killer swings the axe. Cut to next scene. This is repeated no fewer than three times with nary a drop of blood to be found, and by the time the final two kills show up with their run-of-the-mill but at least drippy special effects, the momentum has long been lost.

Usually, gore is the only reason to watch these movies, because it's not like the filmmaking or plots tend to be anything to write home about. But Rush Week does succeed in a lot of little ways that don't quite make it great, but at least worth watching in spite of that very major drawback. For one thing, it's actually a pretty solid whodunit. The red herrings are probably a bit obvious in how hyperbolically creepy they are (and one late-in-the-game plot twist makes so little sense, it might actually count as surrealism), but focusing the plot on a plucky young reporter rather than a generic campus cop or something really does help keep you invested.

It's just plain fun to follow Toni Daniels through the various obstacles and clues she faces along the way to discovering who the killer is, and the fact that the people who are backing up her research are all women (including several sources, a biology student who can test blood, and a computer whiz) makes up for at least an ounce of how skeevy the rest of the movie tends to be. Plus, Pamela Ludwig is actually kind of good. Legitimately great even, in at least one scene. In the moment before her first kiss with Jeff, you can see her face awash in a whirl of different emotions; distrust, desire, nervousness, calculation, and eventually surrender. It's one of the only slasher romantic scenes that's actually hot, and it's all because of the microscopic, expertly handled facial cues we get to watch as she sorts out her feelings.

OK, maybe it doesn't work in a freeze frame, but she's terrific, I promise.

So we have a semi-talented lead, and she's given semi-amusing dialogue. A personal favorite of mine is "Is it alright if I call you Toni?" "You can call me anything you like." "Can I call you tomorrow?" It's not Billy Wilder, set-the-Earth-on-fire work, but it's just something a little more than you can usually expect to get from one of these films. There are people who were actually trying when they were making this movie, and that does count for a lot.

There's also no denying that the killer here is actually pretty scary. To start, his weapon is consistent from start to finish (this almost never happens), which is great because it's a massively imposing medieval axe that cuts a striking silhouette. But the costume itself is actually kind of alarming. At first all you see is a cloaked figure, getting only the barest glimpses of a face in the shadows. But the more you see of the killer, the more you realize that his face won't tell you anything, because it's a mask that's just lifelike enough to be convincing in shadow, but nevertheless completely uncanny and menacing when it's revealed. Check it:

Again, maybe screenshots don't do this movie justice. Or maybe I'm just in this project waaaaay too deep.

Well, whatever. It's an entertaining thrill ride for the most part, and I'm not gonna spit on that. There are still those little reminders that this is a crummy slasher movie, both on the filmmaking level (take the foley work, which goes completely out of control anytime it has to render footsteps - they never match the characters' walks, to the point that you think somebody might actually be following them), and the way it treats the female characters who aren't Toni.

I can have fun with gratuitous nudity as much as the next guy (a girl meditating topless in a college classroom is certainly a first), but some of the material here is just gross, especially with the character of Alma. She's literally just a prostitute who the frat hires to satisfy their pledges (a truly unusual slasher character, from the beginning), who they play their cruelest, most vicious prank on for absolutely no reason, and who does not deserve the bloody comeuppance she is handed. I'm actually glad the kills aren't prolonged, gory, or numerous, because the way they play out time and time again is by far the least appealing aspect of a movie that's actually quite charming quite a bit of the time.

Rush Week is good for what it is, even though what it is isn't a very good thing at all. But in the terms of what I've had to sit through for Census Bloodbath, it's a slam dunk. That's probably a sad thing, but I've made this bed and I've got to lie in it.

Killer: [Dean Grail (Roy Thinnes)]

Final Girl: Toni Daniels (Pamela Ludwig)

Sign of the Times: A major plot point revolves around the fact that Toni got a message on her computer, and only very few people have the technical skill to figure out how to do that.

Best Kill: Dean Grail is decapitated by axe in what is more or less the only gore moment in the movie, so it's not much of a contest.

Scariest Moment: Arnold the Creeper is pursuing Toni through the halls of the science building and immediately runs afoul of the real killer, who bursts through a doorway and murders the hell out of him.

Weirdest Moment: An accordion player prances around the preppy frat's party.

Champion Dialogue: "You can't row a boat with a limp rope."
Body Count: 5

1. Julie is axed to death.
2. Alma is axed to death.
3. Rebecca is axed to death.
4. Arnold is axed in the gut.
5. Dean Grail is decapitated with an axe.

TL;DR: Rush Week lacks the gore it needs to be an exemplary late-80's slasher, but the plot and characters are strong enough that it's nevertheless enjoyable.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1529

Census Bloodbath: This Is The Part Where The Supposedly Dead Franchise Comes Back To Life

Year: 1985

Director: Danny Steinmann

Cast: John Shepherd, Melanie Kinnaman, Shavar Ross

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The year was 1984. After increasing moral outrage and MPAA sterilization, Paramount decided that a stake was going to be put in the Friday the 13th franchise's heart with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. That promise of pulling out all the stops for the last ever Jason movie caused that little film to bring in a box office 13 times larger than its budget. Whoops.

What was a savvy studio to do, having sent one of their biggest cash cows out to pasture? Well, a mere 11 months later Friday the 13th: A New Beginning plopped into theaters, so it's easy to guess what decision they made.

This is the least permanent setpiece in all of cinema.

For the record, in a review like this, with a movie this old and of this quality, spoilers don't exist. So if you truly and deeply care about not knowing the ending of a much maligned slasher sequel, please go watch it immediately so you can come back and see how remarkably astute and sharp-witted I am in my analysis. 

Luckily for Paramount, The Final Chapter afforded them a quick and dirty entry point into a sequel: the character of Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), who went a little bonkers in the end of the last entry and got machete happy on the hockey masked serial killer that murdered his mother. Unfortunately Corey Feldman was in the middle of shooting a little-known adventure movie called The Goonies and was unavailable for most of the infinitely brief shooting schedule.

In response to this, director Danny Steinmann (of the 1980 proto-slasher The Unseen) stuck Feldman in a brief dream sequence in the film's opening, then launched the film into the future as teenage Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd, who would later become a born again Christian, denounce the franchise, and take a bit part in The Hunt for Red October) is being taken to Pinehurst, a rehabilitation center for troubled youths located in the Crystal Lake township.

A place where he can acid wash his hair in peace.

Tommy is a skittish, untalkative boy who has a tendency to Kung Fu Grip the hell out of anybody who tries to sneak up on him. In short, somebody who actually needs psychological treatment and help from a halfway home like this.

Although he clearly doesn't need a personal trainer.

The other kids, though? Aside from Vic (Mark Venturini), who has some pretty deep-set rage issues, and Joey (Dominick Brascia, who would complete a Census Bloodbath hat trick with 1984's They're Playing With Fire and 1986's Evil Laugh in which he played Evil Laugher) who has some sort of coded form of Asperger's, all the teens in the home are just as sane as any other character in the Friday the 13th franchise. Which isn't saying a lot, I suppose, because they all suffer from sex addiction, Ill-Advised 80's Hair Disorder, and Temporary Deafness when there's a killer shanking someone with a railroad spike in the next room, but there's certainly no indication that they need to be in a treatment facility like this.

But for whatever reason, this teen Meat exists and for that we gotta Meet them. There's Tina (Debisue Voorhees, also of Innocent Prey and Appointment with Fear, who was almost certainly cast for her surname, although her willingness to go topless probably helped), the resident sex fiend; Eddie (John Robert Dixon), Tina's other half and wearer of hilariously low cut shirts, one of which goes almost all the way to his belt; Jake (Jerry Pavlon), who has a stutter; Violet (Tiffany Helm), who is the movie's appointed 80's Ambassador and looks like the love child of Madonna and a keytar; and Robin (Juliette Cummins, who went on to become a veritable Scream Queen in Psycho III, Deadly Dreams, and Slumber Party Massacre II), who is a human female, an empty shell who exists only to be punctured by machete.

As if that wasn't enough to swallow, there's also Dr. Letter (Richard Young), the director of Pinehurst; Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman), the assistant director; Reggie (Shavar Ross, later a recurring actor on Diff'rent Strokes), the hilariously overwritten minority and grandson of the caretaker; and Ethel (Carol Locatell) and Junior (Ron Sloan), the hillbilly garbage mom and son that live next door and arrive every now and then to provide their own very special (read: absolutely noxious) brand of comic relief.

You can practically smell them through the screen.

So that's quite the impressive cast (in terms of size and nothing else). And we're not even through with it, although I will stop the laundry listing. You see, this is the film that began the Friday the 13th bad habit of introducing side characters that are totally unconnected to the plot so they can perform one scene and then get bumped off. It's the worst kind of body count padding, because it's hard to care about the fate of some random hick who washed up onscreen during the middle of the second act.

Because of the sheer number of these types of scenes, it's nigh on impossible for A New Beginning to maintain a cohesive plot with any means of propulsion whatsoever. But, for what it's worth (not a lot), there is in fact a story buried in here.

After the angry Vic kills the supremely annoying Joey - one could say he's the Olaf of slasher characters - with an axe while he's chopping wood (the one and only moment in a later Friday the 13th sequel to truly surprise me, so kudos), Tommy is on edge and sees visions of Jason around every corner. When people around the center end up missing or dead, Tommy wonders if the man he hacked to death with a machete so many years ago could possibly have returned to exact his revenge.

Unfortunately Tommy just isn't nearly as interesting this time around as he was in The Final Chapter and would be again in Jason Lives. This is partially due to a bland performance from Mr. Shepherd, who can't even find the joy in getting to do cool karate moves (which he promptly forgets once it comes time to battle Jason - another bad habit of the franchise is people forgetting or not utilizing learned skills when it's crunch time.) and partially due to the fact that his character just straight-up vanishes for the bulk of the third act in support of a half-assed "is Tommy the killer?" mystery plotline.

Spoiler #1: Tommy is not the killer. Spoiler #2: His maskmaking skills also have no applicable use in this film.

The time has come. Do you want to know who the killer is? DO YOU?! WHO IS WEARING JASON'S MASK?! It's Jason, right? ...right?

Naw, it's Roy.

Who? Exactly.

Go ahead and control-F to search for any mention of Roy before this paragraph. Did you find anything? That's because Roy is an inconsequential minor character. A paramedic with two brief scenes. It turns out that he's the father of Joey, the boy who was killed by Vic in the beginning, and seeing his son's dead body sent him into a rage spiral and he decided to copycat Jason Voorhees in order to exact bloody vengeance.

Oops, there goes the can of worms.

First of all, audiences hated that it wasn't Jason behind the mask. There was a general outrage the likes of which had never been seen before in the horror community. It was like if George Lucas had put Hello Kitty stickers on Darth Vader's helmet in The Empire Strikes Back. Let me be the first to say that I personally have no qualms with Jason not being the killer. He wasn't the killer in the original movie, so it's not like there's no precedent. And it's still a fun bad movie about a guy in a hockey mask killing promiscuous teens, so it doesn't really matter what the dude's name is.

What does matter, however, is narrative logic, of which this film has not one iota. There's the fact that the killer is such a random side character, only the most sharp-eyed viewers will actually be able to remember his face when it's time for the big reveal. There's the fact that his revenge motive is utter hogwash because many of his numerous victims had nothing to do with Pinehurst at all and were in fact miles away from the property when they were murdered. There's the fact that he gets so in character as Jason, he apparently remembers Tommy Jarvis' attack and responds to him like an old enemy. There's the fact that Vic, the boy who killed his son, is never even killed.

And why the Jason thing in the first place? I mean, obviously they wanted to make another Friday the 13th movie, so that's why. But seriously. The filmmakers try to get around the bait-and-switch by making the mask's markings powder blue instead of the traditional red (which can be seen in Tommy's fantasy version of Jason), but there's only so far I'm willing to follow that idea down the rabbit hole.

See for yourself - Roy Jason

"Real" Jason

I am impressed that the film managed the internal continuity to separate the fake and real Jason, especially considering this is also the movie in which Jason tightens a strap by turning it both clockwise and counter-clockwise and a dead body appears in a bed in the space of a cut. But, moving on.

I don't ask a lot from these movies in terms of realistic psychology, but is that really the best copycat motive anyone could come up with? I know you had a month, but come on! I'd rather have Tommy Jarvis be the killer. I'd rather have it be Violet, turned to violence by her sinful rock n' roll music. Heck, I'd rather have it be Pamela Anderson, tired of being viewed as a sex object and ready to embark upon a new career path.

I would watch the hell out of that movie.

So while I'm totally fine with a non-Jason killer, this movie could have used a couple hundred more rewrites before its release, and it is certainly not helped by the deficit of decent gore effects. The film was too thrown together and cheap to afford the lovely designs of a master like Tom Savini and was one of the most neutered by the MPAA in the series thus far. The final nail in the coffin is Pam, the de facto Final Girl, one of the most ineffectual female characters to ever grace the silver screen, tripping her way across the flat forest floor, and generally turning into a useless, quivering heap whenever "Jason" is around.

So without a solid killer, a memorable heroine, or great grue, A New Beginning shouldn't have a leg to stand on. However, the film is so terrible and so firmly entrenched in the 80's that it's fabulously ripe to be mocked.

Every outfit and song comes from a time where the insides of people's closets could sear a cornea if you weren't wearing the proper eyewear. One of the early false scares involves a cat falling onto somebody from the ceiling of a restaurant. 

And the acting is the worst in the series - not exactly one known for Oscar-caliber talent in the first place. Mark Venturini approaches his character with all the delicacy, grace, and misplaced venom of Chris R from The Room, one of the greaser characters is played by a timid and effete man who exudes the awkwardness of a fifth grader in a turkey costume, and Melanie Kinnaman, our very own Final Girl, overacts like the worst of the silent film actresses of yesteryear, over-extending every limb like she's about to be tied to a railroad track.

Pictured: Pam in a more low key moment.

Luckily, one of the hallmarks that keeps the slasher-exploitation genre totally engaging is present in full force - awkwardly shoved in topless scenes. One, a teen sex scene, fits in perfectly with the genre and the franchise. The one where a waitress flashes herself in the bathroom proclaiming "It's showtime"? Not so much. And the scene where a bare-breasted Robin gets in bed, carefully positioning her blanket so as to not cover her nipples? Classic. Even Pam gets in on the fun, running around in a soaking wet see-through top for a solid ten minutes toward the end. 

A New Beginning takes place in a universe where bras have never been invented, possibly having been sucked into the wormhole created when it was announced that The Final Chapter would have a sequel. It's so misguidedly sleazy that it's impossible not to laugh.

Throw in the tacked on "Tommy is the bad guy" shock ending that would immediately be forgotten and you've got yourself a prime cocktail of awful. It's no good as a sequel to the beloved Part IV and it's just plum dumb, but at least it's got a lock on being one of the best bad pictures around.

Killer: Roy (Dick Wieand) as Jason Voorhees (Tom Morga)

Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) feat. Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman)

Best Kill: Violet is killed while doing the robot in her room to this song.

Sign of the Times: Literally anything Violet ever says, wears, or does.

Scariest Moment: Corey Feldman's "scared" face in the dream sequence looks uncomfortably pleasure-filled.

Weirdest Moment: Demon and Anita flirt through the wall of an outhouse while he poops out his enchilada.

Champion Dialogue: "Crap, my ass!"

Body Count: 21; including the killer, 2 in a dream, and one person killed by somebody other than "Jason." Any way you slice it, it's the highest body count in the series so far.

1. Neil is stabbed in the gut with a machete in a dream.
2. Les gets a spike to the neck in a dream.
3. Joey is axed to death by Vic.
4. Vinnie gets a flare in the mouth.
5. Pete gets his throat slashed.
6. Billy gets axed in the head. 
7. Lana is axed in the tummy.
8. Raymond the Drifter is stabbed in the stomach.
9. Tina gets her eyes clipped with garden shears.
10. Eddie's head is crushed against a tree with a leather strap. 
11. Anita's throat is slit.
12. Demon is speared through an outhouse wall.
13. Junior is decapitated on his motorcycle.
14. Ethel is cleavered in the face and drowned in her stew.
15. Jake is cleavered in the face.
16. Robin is macheted in the chest through her bed.
17. Violet is macheted in the stomach. 
18. Duke the paramedic has his throat slit.
19. Matt gets a railroad spike through the head, pinning him to a tree.
20. George aka Gramps has his eyes gouged out.
21. Roy falls onto a bed of spikes. 

TL;DR: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is hilariously awful, no two ways about it.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 2494

Reviews In This Series
Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981)
Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D (Miner, 1982)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985)
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (McLoughlin, 1986)
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Hedden, 1989)
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993)
Jason X (Isaac, 2001)
Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003)
Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009)