Rube’s Review: Friday the 13th Part 5 – A New Beginning (1985)

Disclaimer: It is well known that Part 5 has to be the worst in the Friday the 13th series… yes, worst than Part 8. Trust me when I say that the Rube did try his best with this review, but you can only polish a turd so much. Enjoy!

This one starts off with little Tommy Jarvis (yep, Corey Feldman is back!) stumbling in the rain to find Jason’s grave. Not far behind are two yokels that can’t wait to dig in and take a look at everyone’s masked man. Not knowing what to do, Tommy hides in a nearby bush while the two start digging. As they hit pay-dirt and gawk over the worm-infested corpse, one hillbilly gets stabbed in the stomach while the other gets a makeshift tracheotomy by the the former dead man. It’s not long before Jason sees Tommy hiding in the bushes and goes after him, but just when Jason raises his hand to take a vengeful machete blow Tommy wakes up as an adult in the back of a squad car. Fade to the opening credits…

What, no 5-10 minutes of moneysaving flashbacks, unneeded storytelling, or dead scenes with cheap scares? Oh man, this might be the Rubes favorite one yet! Ok, so the red-tinted F13 titles show up, turns white, and a hockey mask explodes onto the screen with the words A NEW BEGINNING. Wait, what? A New Beginning? I thought the last one was the Final Chapter… there goes the pain in my head again, guess I better get my yelling pillow out just in case.

Cut back to Tommy (who’s now in a van?) being transported to Pinehurst Youth Development Center, a halfway house for troubled teens, and is met by Dr. Matt Letter and his assistant, Pam Roberts. They hope with a treatment of fresh air (and pills) that they can get Tommy stable enough to be released into everyday society without having a post-traumatic “episode” (aka going BATSHIT BONKERS). It sounds like a good plan, but let’s hope to God that it doesn’t work or we’re going to have one boring movie.

Anyways, as Tommy unpacks his clothes and hides a knife, (goodbye boring!) Reggie (the cook’s grandson) pranks him with a giant rubber spider. In turn Tommy spooks him back with one of his old masks and they have a bonding moment before rushing out to the sound of sirens as a police car pulls up with two teens arrested for public boner’n… it’s time to meet this cast of stereotypes! We have a hillbilly mom and son team, Ethel and Junior, then there’s Tina and Eddie (the sexoholics), Violet (punk girl), plain Robin, and shy Jake. There’s also the slow-minded, candy-munching Joey… oh yeah, and axe happy Vic (we’ll get to them in a sec).

Back at the halfway house, Violet and Robin hang laundry when Fat Joey comes to help out. First, he fucks up by getting chocolate on the sheets and then annoys Vic while he violently chops firewood. Vic tells him to get lost and Joey offers him a candy peace offering. Vic decides to instead cut the chocolate bar in half before doing the same to Joey’s spine… and that’s the last time we see the two. Meanwhile, greasers Vinnie and Pete have problems of their own, including a lit road flare in the throat and a machete to the neck.

Next day at the halfway house, Tommy has another Jason-related panic attack while he watches the bone’r kids sneak out into the woods where Tina and her Double D’s are left alone for some more “scientific shots” of the female anatomy. While returning from the dirtiest pond in the area, Eddie finds his fuck buddy stabbed in the eyes with gardening sheers. Horrified, Eddie backs up into a tree and then gets blindfolded with leather strap. You see a pair of hands tighten the strap until you hear a final crushing sound as Eddie’s skull cracks in two.

Yet again back at the halfway house, Pam, Tommy, and Reggie head to the nearby trailer park to meet up with Reggie’s punk rock brother, Demon, and his girlfriend, Anita. Junior bumps into Tommy who goes all Karate Kid on Junior and before he has time to “sweep the leg,” Pam breaks it up and Tommy flees. While the others head back to the house to look for Tommy, Demon comes down with a explosive case of enchilada diarrhea and runs to the nearby outhouse.

Anita scares Demon by banging on the outhouse and the two start to serenade through the wall of the aluminum shitbox… ah, true romance! Anita’s voice stops and the shack rumbling continues. Demon quickly wipes and right when he’s about to break the door down to choke a bitch, he sees Anita bleeding out. Demon traps himself in the shitter, dodging multiple spear attacks before meeting his demise with a blow through the abdomen.

Pan and Reggie arrive back at the halfway house of scared teens. Back at Redneck Ranch, Junior is screaming his head off while doing dirtbike donuts around the house. Ma Ethel tells him to come in, shut the fuck up, and eat some stew, but Junior continues to take one more lap around which ends in his demise at the end of a meat cleaver (decapitation). As she continues to trash talk her son, Ma Ethel also meets her demise with a face full of cleaver.

Back at the house, the kids are picked off one by one. Jake gets a cleaver in the face, Robin gets a machete though her bunkbed and Violet also meets a machete death while doing some weird Goth version of the robot in her bedroom. Sleepy Reggie wakes up to stumble into a Grande Gallery along with Pam, both of whom lose her shit. While they make a run for it and we FINALLY see Jason bust through the door! Now on foot outside in the rain, Pam and Reggie take off to the highway.

They find an ambulance and then *POOF!* Jason the track star appears in front of them! So instead for driving off, the duo run and get separated in the woods. Pam finds Doc’s body railroad spiked to a tree and runs back to the house, but Reggie is nowhere to be found. Before long Jason has her in machete wacking distance, but then Reggie comes busting out of a nearby barn with a bulldozer and hits him so hard that Jason goes flying.

They (stupidly) inspect the lifeless body and before you scream out “BITCH DON’T GO OVER THERE,” Jason grabs onto Reggie’s leg. Pam and Reggie escape to the barn and Jason takes chase. There’s some rumbling around the supply closet and Pam emerges welding a chainsaw, beginning a Mortal Kombat round with the masked madman. Sadly, after delivering one minuscule blow, Pam’s weapon runs out of gas.

As Pam and Reggie hide in the hayloft, Tommy enters the barn to finally confront his demon. While standing still in fright, trying to realize if it’s just a hallucination, Tommy take a machete blow to the chest. Jason goes in for the kill, but Tommy pulls out his knife and stabs him left of his ding-ding. Tommy then climbs up a ladder to the other survivors with Jason in hot pursuit. A few tussles later and Jason falls to his death, landing on some sort of sharp spiky farm equipment(?). Suddenly, Jason’s mask pops off and we see… a random guy wearing another mask? WTF?!

Yep, turns out that the masked killer was in fact Roy Burns… WHO THE HELL IS ROY BURNS? Well, he was one of the paramedics (way back in the beginning) that also happens to be Fat Joey’s dad. When Roy found his son all hacked up (courtesy of Vic) he used the old Jason story to go all bonkers on all of the halfway house kids.

Anyways, they all live happily ever after… until Tommy snaps and kills Pam! Oh wait, that was just a bad dream. Then, in a hospital, Tommy once again hallucinates that he sees Jason, gets out of his hospital bed, finds Jason’s hockey mask and a kitchen knife (FROM WHERE?!) and kills Pam off screen. And that’s the end of that crapfest! Luckily (?) Paramount wasn’t about to give up on this killer cash cow and set their sights on the next installment of this series…

SLASHER SCOREBOARD

FAMOUS FACES:
Demon is played by Mark Venturini, who later starred as Suicide in Return of the Living Dead. Shavar Ross (Eddie) moved onto the popular 90’s TV sitcom, Family Matters. Eddie’s grandfather is played by Vernon Washington which has the memorable role as Otis from The Last Star Fighter.

LESSONS LEARNED:
Maybe not a good idea to let a high strung troubled teen with a history of mental illness chop wood with an axe.
Halfway houses for troubled teens don’t allow bras.
Mixing takeout food will lead you on the road to intestinal discomfort.
Always tune up your car or truck before taking a long trip out to the country.
Maybe rural New Jersey should outlaw Machetes.

MEMORABLE SCENES:
Nude “Double D” sunbathing.
Goth Pop ‘N Lock Robot Dance.

MEMORABLE LINES:
“Would you shut… THE FUCK… up!”
“You big dildo! Eat your fuck’n slop!”
“Looks like we have a maniac on the loose huh sheriff?”
“And our forecast is sunny in the valleys and snow flurries up your nose.”
“Freak’n A, where did ya get that?” (as Eddie introduces himself to his brother’s main squeeze)

FUN FACTS:
Originally this total failure was going to be Corey Feldman’s big break, but since he was working on The Goonies (good move Corey!), they rewrote the movie for an older Tommy.

For the opening dream sequence, it has been rumored that it was shot on Corey’s day off in his own backyard… maybe that would explain the shitty looking Little Rascals tombstone.

BODY COUNT:
20… 22 if you include the first two redneck dream kills.