Friday the 13th Part 4
Friday the 13th Part 4 is a fan favorite, considered a perfect slasher movie. It’s also a running joke among many critics because of the subtitle: the Final Friday. It’s not my personal favorite – which would be Part 7 – but, from a structuralist point of view, it is as close to perfection as a Friday the 13th movie could hope to be.
The movie opens, lamely enough, at the crime scene from Part 3; apparently, the Crystal Lake CSI team are either quite thorough or quite lazy. Jason is carted off to the morgue, where one of the stranger murders in the series occurs. The name of the morgue has no less than five nouns, which is as bad a case of noun plague as the plague of dead bodies heading it’s way. There’s a sleazebag coroner who tries to hook up with a nurse right there in the morgue, which has got to be a turn-on for both of them because, ahem – I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled a dead body, especially one like Jason’s that is festering with multiple stab wounds from both previous movies on top of whatever naturally repellent scent he had before – but isn’t no one fucking in a morgue who doesn’t have a kink for that shit no matter how horny they are.
The nurse, however, gets creeped out and leaves. The coroner, nonplussed, watches an none-too-subtly pornographic exercise video, steaming on prime time on cable TV. Jason sneaks up behind him and, after sawing his neck open, twists his head completely around. He won’t be watching TV while jerking off simultaneously ever again.
The rest of the movie revolves around two groups: a family in a cabin, and a group of kids renting the house next door. The family includes a mother and her daughter, and Corey Feldman. Feldman likes to make Halloween masks that are quite beyond believing anyone his age could make. The mother and the daughter have been criticized by feminist critics because they like to exercise, not for health reasons, but to become hard bodies and attract men. Ahem – well, such women exist. They don’t deserve to be represented on film? What’s wrong with wanting to be attractive, and taking effort to become so?
Whatever.
The group of kids include too many characters to go into details about without taking up an inordinate amount of time, but they are considerably more well-developed than the characters from the previous movies. Crispin Glover plays a horny goofball who, despite what I said in my other review, actually manages to get laid by default. The so-called Crispin Glover Dance, in which he puts on some metal and jerks as if he’s having a bad case of the DTs, has become something of meme on level with “Garbage Day”. His friend Teddy is sort of an asshole, but a lovable asshole. The dialogue between them is the best in the movie, or any Friday movie actually. There’s also Judie Aronson from Weird Science, who plays Samantha.
Another memorable scene occurs when Feldman observes Aronson undressing and freaks out.
While hiking though the woods, the group of kids run into a pair of twins, who join the party after skinny dipping in the lake, a sight which almost drives Feldman insane when he watched it as an adult and saw then what he could have seen at ten. There’s quite a lot of nudity in this movie, perhaps the most of any of the series, although I am not a man to sit around counting breasts to make a joke.
Later, the kids have a party. This movie is the best one, except perhaps Part 7, to watch sexual selection unfold in all its 80s stupidity. One of the boys, who is dating Aronson, flirts with one of the twins, which pisses Aronson off she goes to float naked in a boat. Her boyfriend follows her, but not soon enough to see her alive, and his harpooned in the dick when right after seeing her dead body in the raft. I suppose he got what he deserved.
This is the first movie, by the way, in which Jason starts throwing people around. He murders one of the twins off screen, and just as the “Aw!” escapes your lips, he throws her dead body up against the wall of the house in sequence with a lighting bolt. Say what you will, but Jason has a comedic sense of timing.
Glover hooks up with the other twin, who was lost in the shuffle after Aronson’s boyfriend left to make up with her. Teddy tries, and fails, then winds up watching Silent Era porn, which says a lot about the porn of that age that it could be shown unedited in an R movie in 1984 but was probably considered hot stuff back then. Glover, full of confidence, goes down to get some wine for Round Two when he’s killed, quite brutally, by Jason with a corkscrew and a butcher knife.
The rest of the kills are spectacular, except for Sara, who spends most of the movie trying to figure out if she wants to lose her virginity or not, then decides to lose it and maybe does, then gets an axe through the chest.
The climax of the movie involves another character, Rob, who is seeking out Jason for revenge for killing his sister. Jason kills him, throws someone – I forget y’all – through a window again, then attempts to kill Feldman’s sister. Feldman pulls the same trick that Gina did in Part 2, only this time he pretends to be Jason himself rather than Jason’s mother. Apparently, it is easy as shit to mess with Jason psychologically. The movie ends with Feldman, of all goddamned people, hitting Jason with a machete, which he slides down as it supports his fall. It’s a gory shot, but over-praised in my opinion. I enjoy watching Jason throw bodies through windows. I don’t know why.
Friday the 13th Part 4 stands out as balancing a lot of elements perfectly, from violent deaths to nudity to comedy to character development and backstory. I don’t think the formula can be done better without the sarcastic twists you find in House on Sorority Row or Slumber Party Massacre. While not my favorite, I admit that when judged from a professional standpoint, it is the best. It’s one of those quintessential 80s movies like the Breakfast Club that define the decade. I would say it’s better than anything the Elm Street series ever did, and – in its parts – is better than a lot of 80s comedies, thrillers, and romance. You could go worse.
You could watch Say Anything.
I give it four and half stars.
Friday the 13th Part 4 is a fan favorite, considered a perfect slasher movie. It’s also a running joke among many critics because of the subtitle: the Final Friday. It’s not my personal favorite – which would be Part 7 – but, from a structuralist point of view, it is as close to perfection as a Friday the 13th movie could hope to be.
The movie opens, lamely enough, at the crime scene from Part 3; apparently, the Crystal Lake CSI team are either quite thorough or quite lazy. Jason is carted off to the morgue, where one of the stranger murders in the series occurs. The name of the morgue has no less than five nouns, which is as bad a case of noun plague as the plague of dead bodies heading it’s way. There’s a sleazebag coroner who tries to hook up with a nurse right there in the morgue, which has got to be a turn-on for both of them because, ahem – I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled a dead body, especially one like Jason’s that is festering with multiple stab wounds from both previous movies on top of whatever naturally repellent scent he had before – but isn’t no one fucking in a morgue who doesn’t have a kink for that shit no matter how horny they are.
The nurse, however, gets creeped out and leaves. The coroner, nonplussed, watches an none-too-subtly pornographic exercise video, steaming on prime time on cable TV. Jason sneaks up behind him and, after sawing his neck open, twists his head completely around. He won’t be watching TV while jerking off simultaneously ever again.
The rest of the movie revolves around two groups: a family in a cabin, and a group of kids renting the house next door. The family includes a mother and her daughter, and Corey Feldman. Feldman likes to make Halloween masks that are quite beyond believing anyone his age could make. The mother and the daughter have been criticized by feminist critics because they like to exercise, not for health reasons, but to become hard bodies and attract men. Ahem – well, such women exist. They don’t deserve to be represented on film? What’s wrong with wanting to be attractive, and taking effort to become so?
Whatever.
The group of kids include too many characters to go into details about without taking up an inordinate amount of time, but they are considerably more well-developed than the characters from the previous movies. Crispin Glover plays a horny goofball who, despite what I said in my other review, actually manages to get laid by default. The so-called Crispin Glover Dance, in which he puts on some metal and jerks as if he’s having a bad case of the DTs, has become something of meme on level with “Garbage Day”. His friend Teddy is sort of an asshole, but a lovable asshole. The dialogue between them is the best in the movie, or any Friday movie actually. There’s also Judie Aronson from Weird Science, who plays Samantha.
Another memorable scene occurs when Feldman observes Aronson undressing and freaks out.
While hiking though the woods, the group of kids run into a pair of twins, who join the party after skinny dipping in the lake, a sight which almost drives Feldman insane when he watched it as an adult and saw then what he could have seen at ten. There’s quite a lot of nudity in this movie, perhaps the most of any of the series, although I am not a man to sit around counting breasts to make a joke.
Later, the kids have a party. This movie is the best one, except perhaps Part 7, to watch sexual selection unfold in all its 80s stupidity. One of the boys, who is dating Aronson, flirts with one of the twins, which pisses Aronson off she goes to float naked in a boat. Her boyfriend follows her, but not soon enough to see her alive, and his harpooned in the dick when right after seeing her dead body in the raft. I suppose he got what he deserved.
This is the first movie, by the way, in which Jason starts throwing people around. He murders one of the twins off screen, and just as the “Aw!” escapes your lips, he throws her dead body up against the wall of the house in sequence with a lighting bolt. Say what you will, but Jason has a comedic sense of timing.
Glover hooks up with the other twin, who was lost in the shuffle after Aronson’s boyfriend left to make up with her. Teddy tries, and fails, then winds up watching Silent Era porn, which says a lot about the porn of that age that it could be shown unedited in an R movie in 1984 but was probably considered hot stuff back then. Glover, full of confidence, goes down to get some wine for Round Two when he’s killed, quite brutally, by Jason with a corkscrew and a butcher knife.
The rest of the kills are spectacular, except for Sara, who spends most of the movie trying to figure out if she wants to lose her virginity or not, then decides to lose it and maybe does, then gets an axe through the chest.
The climax of the movie involves another character, Rob, who is seeking out Jason for revenge for killing his sister. Jason kills him, throws someone – I forget y’all – through a window again, then attempts to kill Feldman’s sister. Feldman pulls the same trick that Gina did in Part 2, only this time he pretends to be Jason himself rather than Jason’s mother. Apparently, it is easy as shit to mess with Jason psychologically. The movie ends with Feldman, of all goddamned people, hitting Jason with a machete, which he slides down as it supports his fall. It’s a gory shot, but over-praised in my opinion. I enjoy watching Jason throw bodies through windows. I don’t know why.
Friday the 13th Part 4 stands out as balancing a lot of elements perfectly, from violent deaths to nudity to comedy to character development and backstory. I don’t think the formula can be done better without the sarcastic twists you find in House on Sorority Row or Slumber Party Massacre. While not my favorite, I admit that when judged from a professional standpoint, it is the best. It’s one of those quintessential 80s movies like the Breakfast Club that define the decade. I would say it’s better than anything the Elm Street series ever did, and – in its parts – is better than a lot of 80s comedies, thrillers, and romance. You could go worse.
You could watch Say Anything.
I give it four and half stars.