What the HELL happened to Friday the 13th part 7 The New Blood

What the Hell Happened to Friday the 13th

Jason Vorhees has gone through the ringer. The poor boy drowned and his mother went on a killing spree, only to not have died and survived in a cabin buried in the woods living with his mother who still while he was alive went on a vengeance fueled killing spree. To being killed off, impersonated by a coroner when his chocolate loving son was axed by a rage fueled man with an axe. To returning thanks to the power of lightning up his ass, and continued walking the world until he transformed into the grotesque zombie Kane Hodder.

He hasn’t had it easy. But believe it or not his franchise had something a good deal of these films lacked, or handled poorly. Continuity.

Rather famously with these films, and its worthy of praising them. Each film began with a ‘Previously on Battle Star Jason’ flashback. Catching us up on where we will be with the next group of meat sacks stepping into Jasons woods. Each film held the last one accountable. Hell the second one began with Jason killing our lone survivor from the first film. It was a nice beginning and the boy took a long ass walk with a bag on his head to do that for his mother. I mean really think about it, in part two he wears a potato sack on his head. Either no one cared to ask the man in overalls and a red flannel why he was wearing a sack with one eye hole on his head, or his trip to the city was WHY he wore the sack. Maybe he realized all the screams on the bus and shouts of dear god what is that thing, were just people showering body negativity on him, he grew self conscious and started covering up. Society can be far crueler then a man with a machete. Or corkscrew.

Or birthday whistle

Or tree branch cutter.

Anyway.

These films began with a good continuity between them, we even had a mid series arch that really would have setup for, what the series now famously became a joke for. A real and true final Friday. This was the Tommy Jarvis trilogy. A unique character setup in part 4 played by Corey Feldman.

Part 4 is a great stand out in the series for its deaths, characters, and tits. My dear god they had some great. Amazing breast in that movie. Still not the best in the series though, that goes to part 5. As the kids today say, if you know, you know.

Cory was meant to come back and reprise his role as Tommy, but he unfortunately ran off to do a film called the Goonies. For some reason.

So he only appeared, though funnily enough, in a dream sequence not saying a single word, just muttering sounds and shaking his head. Much as Corey does today! But for far, far different. Darker reasons

Though part 5 is regarded as the weaker of the Friday films. It’s honestly an interestingly handled sequel. To deal with the lack of Corey, they time jumped the character. Having him spending time in a mental hospital and dealing with visions of Jason Most fans didn’t care for 5 because of its ending twist. Implying that Tommy    who survived two encounters now with Jason, was going to be the new killer as we saw him dawning the mask and looking poised to kill fellow survivor and nut job caretaker. Thankfully the creative minds decided not to follow through with that, and instead do the now rare thing of listening to the fans, giving them what they want. Jason. They had enough of the fake Jason bullshit, they wanted his corpse desecrated and re-animated like Weekend at Berny’s. God that’d look amazing.

Part 6 comes along with a new Tommy Jarvis, and they not only beautifully wrapped up his saga with Jason. But they gave a good end to the franchise. Jason in his iconic look and now monster form, received an iconic death. Throat cut my a boat motor chained and drowned at the bottom of Crystal Lake. On my desk I have a little water filled glass container with a Jason chained to a rock and gravel around him. Tommy got his happy ending. Jason was left to rot, and things were on a good high note. Then the fire nation attacked.

Which is where we begin. See lengthy intro before getting into the film. I haven’t lost it folks!

Friday the 13th The New Blood

This film was the sad victim in the late 80’s to what I’ve talked about previously. There was a dark time in horror, the late 80’s into the early 90’s. Where horror films were not only heavily cut. But watered down and put into conversion camps. That’s not even a joke. A good deal of horror films and their sequels were put on trial by the MPAA while being pushed even further and far more heavily by Satanic Panic, Religious groups and conservative organizations. Everyone can now see these films and wonder what the fuck happened? Why is this so boring the others were good. Genuinely a good deal of these films put people to sleep. They became highly forgettable and absolute distorted messes. Because, in part. The weaponization of the MPAA. Which can almost assuredly be pointed at films like Silent Night, Deadly Night which REALLY got religious conservatives panties crammed up their asses. I mean to be fair they did kill a nun, and there is a lot of fun in that film. But at the time this was just too much. A step too far. So when the studio and bodies of Hollywood bowed before the almighty MPAA, heavily influenced by religious conservatives. We got horror films without the horror.

Death scenes were cut down IMMENSELY. No gore, no guts. Less  nudity and cussing. The MPAA was overreacting, over reaching and they did more grotesque acts to films than Jason, Freddy and the Sawyer family with Leatherface ever could. All because of push back for allowing a film like Silent Night Deadly Night to be released in cinema. With their pitchforks, torches and bibles raised these groups cut the balls off a lot of horror and what was intended for this film. However they were only a part of the problem. Not the problem wholly. Though I do absolutely hold them accountable.

Studios want their films to make money, to do that you need asses in the seats of theaters. With home video distribution you had the opportunity of making money two fold. Theatrical release and home video release. However you need MPAA ratings for theatrical releases. PG and PG13 will secure you that. R rated will limit it to the 18 and above, so fewer screens, but you still make money. But if you get the X rating, or NC-17. No theater is going to show that. Your money drops dramatically and you have to fall back on what you make back with home video. Which at the time was not incredibly lucrative as it was still a pricey investment for people and rental was far more common than owning. So studios had to bow to the demands of the MPAA.

However studios also play a large part in a films potential success and failure, such as the case with this film.

If you dig into the history of A New Blood you’ll funnily enough discover what potentially could have been. Given what we got later down the road. Originally they planned on Part 7 being Freddy VS Jason.

Yeah. That one was on the books for a long. Long time. Both Freddy and Jason were at their height of pop culture popularity and people wanted this showdown. It very nearly happened too. I can’t even imagine what that would have looked like, Not just being in the worst part of the 80’s as we transitioned into the 90’s fashion. But also with the MPAA and killing of horror. It would either have been the worst thing to happen, or it might have turned a hell of a profit. But New Line unlike myself pulled out at the last minute. It was not meant to be, so the studio quickly got to writing a new script. About a girl with telekinetic abilities. This was pitched by the studio as Jason vs Carrie.

Even that is a film I would be mildly curious to see.

Because this film was shit. It was not entertaining and fans greatly hated this, despite the effects work on making Kane Hodder look less like the monster he is. The films characters are annoying and hateful. The story is half assed and rushed, you can tell it was pushed out as a last minute thing given how much Paramount was putting behind their FvJ film. Which goes to show just how close to reality this thing was going to be. There is a beginning trend with this film that later became a harsh lesson to other horror franchises and that was the dreaded, lets not be silly about this, lets be serious. Was Jason ever funny to begin with? Actually yeah. By the time we got around to part 3 the films began poking at themselves and their characters. People were playing characters, there was silliness and even a meta tone in part 6. The kids whom are in danger of having their heads crushed in and seeing the camp counselors spit roasted over a fire pit were joking about surviving like they were Satler and Waldorf roasting the dead horny teens and cops. It was pretty fun honestly. But a little too on the nose. But before that we had fun characters and things to laugh at. Unless you genuinely take seriously the performative dancing of Crispin Glover in all his glory. The Hitchhiker dying squeezing a banana. People in a van eating all their pot thinking the cops will pull them over. Horror needs comedic beats. A little levity goes a long way and in the case of Freddy his dark humor made him fun to watch. Jason had kills that even HE had to question and it made you laugh. This film did not. You had character actors chewing the scenes like someone deep fried cardboard and dipped it in BBQ sauce. You had an unbelievable plot with a manic mother, a purely not hiding it ever doctor who maybe was or wasn’t trying to fuck the mom? And the worst twenty something group of shitheads and bitches. You setup characters you want to see die and look forward to their deaths. But when everyone is just so generically forgettable and bland you don’t even care when it happens. Like giving a birthday hand job. You just go through the motions and get it over with. No one is enjoying it at this point in the relationship and your just happy your hand isn’t the one getting tired.

So the plot , because it needs to be spoken aloud to believed. Tina had a tantrum at her parents cabin on the lake of crystal lake, she got mad because her parents fighting, and. Takes off in a paddle boat to the lake. Which honestly is more like a pond. It’s really small. Like fill it with a hose small. So her dad comes out apologizing, trying to calm her. But she’s seen Cathy’s Curse and gives her dad the stink eye. Which shake rattles and rolls the dock, sending her dad to his doom. How that happened? Don’t know. We’ll assume the weight of the lumber from the roof of the dock caved in his skull and he died. Fast forward and she is being cared for by Dr Evil and is taken out of the asylum to the cabin she killed daddy in. Her mother comes along for no real reason past raising that awkward Question we will get too shortly. Dr Evil believes bringing her to the site of her trauma will help her face her fears, her problems and potentially cure her. Of whatever the fuck it is that has her in the asylum. Is she crazy? Don’t know. Did she kill people with her powers? Just her dad. Why was she put in a hospital for 10 plus years? Just go with it. The mother loves her crazy daddy killing daughter and goes along with the doctor as a chaperone of sorts for her. Which is even weirder given this will, and does create issues during her daughters ‘therapy’. But we also learn. Shockingly, that the doctor is really bringing Tina the psyker out to this site, to trigger her and get her to demonstrate her powers. Which again is confusing to the story because it raises the question. Did Tina tell her mother she thought of crushing the dock and it happened, so lets lock my daughter up in an asylum? Did she think she blamed herself for his ‘accidental death from a dock shaking and destroying itself suddenly’? Or is the mom just along for the ride because we need a parental figure so we have more than just teens to kill. Which is something else to get into too. But first the doctor and the mom. The vibes between these two reads confusingly. Either Dr. Evil is trying to fuck the mom as a means to getting access to the daughter and the cabin for his studies. Or the mom is misreading his heavy breathing interest in her daughters abilities as this man might be open to clearing the cobwebs from my chimney. In reality she has no purpose. But the signals these two cross are just weird. If you told me the doctor was her step dad I could more easily believe it over the lunacy of a doctor telling a widowed mother, the best way to cure your daughter is by dragging her out to the lake that stimmed her trauma, where she killed your husband. Trust me bro it’ll work out and I’m not filming this for the lulz.

The doctor is more of an antagonist in this film than Jason is. He sets up fake evidence of Jason sightings to set off Tina hoping she’ll go full Carrie and burn the house down(which happened on set) or blow something up(which also happened on set). When confronted by this with the mom, he goes full corporate villain mode and is angry she will fuck up  all of his hard work, in setting her daughter up for a Carrie like murder spree of menstrual rage.

Meanwhile we have the not teens who are camping next door for a surprise birthday party. I say not teens because. Get ready for this. Yes twenty somethings play teenagers in movies and television shows. Once you have accepted that truth into your hearts. Make room for Jesus because that’s the next reason. As we discussed, with the war on sex and violence in films. This too meant we could not follow the recipe of success in past Friday films. We could not, and would not label these people as 18-19 year olds. Because we cannot have the impressionable youth who see these films, being told its cool to get high and have sex, and watch bloody murder on the screen. So this group was labeled as college aged. Not entirely addressed but it is heavily. Very heavily implied so we know for a fact, these are responsible adults making decisions you are meant to be able to make for yourself at the college age, and therefor not impressionable youths. This was a direct coping mechanism by the studio to make happy the inquisitors of the MPAA.  And their religious affiliates.

So this group of not teens rent a cabin for a party time gathering, right beside the rented therapy cabin of Carrie the white, Dr evil, and mother Wannacock. Of course we need to resurrect Jason. So how do we do so? Given this is meant to be the lake that is Crystal lake where Tommy Jarvis sank Jason to his doom? In the best way humanly possible. Tina decides she is so super sorry for killing her dad, that the best thing she, as an adult not-teen person can do. Is to resurrect her dad.

Let that sink in.

Better yet, lets give this idea a little head room to breathe. Like a fart it sounds fun at first, until you realize it came from the ass beside you after having had Safeway Chinese food followed by a shot of Ozempic with a side of heavy fiber. Sure the fart sounds fun at first. But its about to get a whole lot worse. At its core. The idea of someone trying to use an ability. A magical macguffin. To bring back a loved one from the dead, has been the premise of many a horror story and comic book from tv shows, novellas to The Vault of Horror. You bring back the person and they’re a rotting evil twisted version of the person. It never goes well.

But Tina says fuck that because she’s special, she loved her dad so of course, naturally he’d come back as if nothing ever happened. Of course Tina did not account for the fact that other people died in this lake. Like Jason for example. So she brings him back to life instead of her dad. Or was Jason her dad? It could happen. He could’ve been stumbling around with his dick out, slashed off someone’s head fell over and landed dick first into her mother. We just don’t know. But we do and that sadly wasn’t the case. Again though this could be an interesting story device. But here its wasted. It’s a cheap trick to bring Jason back and just like that with a little rubble bubble, Jason is back, killing ensues and we all regret what we decided to watch. Tina spends the movie mostly being antagonized, flirted with, and losing her shit. Much like Carrie White. Just without the emotional catch and good characters. Instead she stares off like she’s judging you and little things happen. She can lift pearls. She can move pencils. But she also can toss tv’s when she wants, or bring down a dock.

The film leads us ultimately to both a showdown and her pairing up with a not boyfriend. This was another trend in horror with having a couple coming together though more often than not he’d die. But this was a different Friday film. So we will imply they are a couple as they liked each other, and they are good Christians in college, which means they are responsible enough to make wise decisions. Like anal before marriage. You can fight me on that but it does mean they’d marry ‘clean’. But I digress.

The funniest thing in this movie we get, is the ending. Holy Jesus on a cross was this ending a choice. Jason spends the film regretting his decisions and wondering why and what god brought him back just to torture him. Every time he encounters Tina it goes from him killing people near her, to Tina staring, and him getting beaten, electrocuted and hung. At one point his mask rips in half in another funny they actually filmed that way. Seriously his mask splits in half and hangs mid air around his head like it was Tony Stark popping out of his helmet. But the real fun comes in the films final battle. Which isn’t a battle. Tina uses her focused power and now that the dead body count in the lake is down to just one, decided now is a good time to resurrect her father. But not?

Her dad, burst out of the water. Looking as healthy as the day he fell in, with a spot or two of dirt on his face. He grabs Jason and drags him down to his watery grave. Film ends, lets begin to hate ourselves. Because this movie hated itself, and that is not me being mad at this either. Oh no. The films producer on the film despised horror, especially one Barbara Sachs. She was very vocal in her hate for horror, and this film. She would fight the director on set, she wanted constant rewrites including, and this is a bit insane. But including changing the script so Jason wasn’t involved at all. Jason would’ve been an eco-terrorist. This is real, it actually was discussed. Both the writer and director said she told them she wanted this change to the film. Because she felt this was all below her. Horror was low brow bottom feeder dredge and she did not want to be apart of this. The studio appointed her and much like any group where they force an inquisitor into your midst to maintain new order. She was there to do just that.

This producer above others did her very best to dismantle the film. Bringing us to what went wrong on this film.

The reach of religious watchdogs and the MPAA cannot be overstated. It was bizarre just how far these people would go. One of my biggest loves in horror has always been the film scores. Jasons iconic theme, Jaws theme, The music of the first two Hellraiser films is majestic. Friday the 13th part 6 was as I recall, the first horror film to have a song made for it and used in the film. Alice Cooper wrote “Man Behind the Mask” and it was a big hit. I love the song still to this day. Well with horror being the villain. They removed the sex, the gore, most the drugs, and of course. The rock and roll. Yes. The music was killed across many horror films. This films soundtrack is more like a screaming child hitting a plastic hammer on a synth machine versus a soundtrack. It has no beat, no rhythm, no weight or emotion behind it. It’s just there, as noise. Music has a deep hold on film, without John Williams score, Star Wars would have lacked a lot of its heart and emotional connection. Music draws scenes together and brings you in. This brings you to sleep, not peacefully. Out of boredom.

These groups worked together to kill Jason in a way no final girl ever could. And they managed rather well. But they also had help.

See there was a Jason film in there. Somewhere. They filmed extended kill scenes. Gore hound deaths, nudity, there was even better zombie Jason makeup and more so then that? They made a water zombie costume for her dad. Yeah. He actually was going to be as monstrous as Jason. Which again would make sense!

But a few things happened. Part of it was the producer. She hated maskless Jason and wanted as little of it as possible. So that monster was barely seen, which is sad because it did look interesting. The dad zombie also was tossed out because it was too much and she wanted him to look like and read as the father. Otherwise who knows, it could’ve been another random body at the bottom of the lake. As for the gore and seeing the actual deaths? What scenes that weren’t cut out, unfortunately were lost to the flames. Not burned at the stake. But actual fires. There was an accident on set where explosives went off inside the main house, destroying equipment, sets and recorded film. Another fire took out a lot of cut film including deaths. So it actually is a lost forever thing. Whatever this film could have, and would have been? Was and remains lost forever.

Watching the death scenes in this film is a sad joke. You were allowed to show the ‘thrust’ of the death, but not the dying. You could show the body go limp and lifeless, but no bleeding out, no lingering gore. When your movies main draw is tits, blood and guts, and Jason dying. And you cut back on all of this, even Jason dying and degrading it to him being pulled under water. I mean…you get what you wanted. Which was a hot mess of a film. With music that just makes you regret it even more. It was an actual step back in film. Hellraiser for example. Famously that film got ran through the MPAA and Clive had to fight a lot of battles, but one of the most well told ones was the sex scene with Frank and Julia. They were told to recut it several times. Because more than two thrust made it pornographic. This was a thing actually said. Even South park The Movie had the same. They were told they could only have Saddam wave a dildo at Satan on screen as long as there was no rim on the cockhead. It’s insane. But these people were given power by the people, on whether your film makes money in theaters or doesn’t. And with the music. Christopher Youngs score in Hellraiser is again, majestic. Originally Clive wanted a music group he loved to score the film, and they had begun doing so. Music in horror back then was still a thing people were trying to figure out, because believe it or not up until things like HALLOWEEN came out and Carpenter did the music? They still had old time  music from black and white horror as the standard. It was horrific. But Christopher convinced Clive to let him use classical music he’d compose for the film and..it made the film more brilliant. Using composers on these films added something iconic. Freddy’s Theme, Jason’s theme. All of it. But we couldn’t have that now. It all got stripped away.

Unfortunately for all of us. This was only the beginning of the end. How much worse could a franchise get after having its balls cut off and one of the worst Jason deaths in the series?

Jason takes Manhattan says hold my beer.