Friday the 13th Part VII
Jason himself is rather a mystery. How did he get so ungodly deformed? Ugly is one thing, but Jason goes beyond troglodyte territory and appears full blown teratoid. Did his mother take an ill-advised sight-seeing tour of Chernobyl? Incest might be a likely culprit, but as we've seen from Deliverance, it can take you only so far (i.e. badass banjo skills and a predilection for sodomy). Jason's mother must have been pretty loose around Area 51. He's not so bad off as a kid, what little we see of him, but oddly his deformation continues to evolve throughout the series, almost as if he's DECOMPOSING whilst retaining his super-human strength and stamina.
Part 7 opens with a touching story of a telepathic/kinetic girl who accidentally drowns her father in Crystal Lake, in a temper-tantrum that indicates why the discipline aspect of having a telekinetic problem child would require some finesse. Spankings were undoubtedly out of the question, so it's a no-brainier that she's wound up spoiled. Can you imagine taking this girl to Toys-R-Us and denying her a Rainbow Brite doll? My only question here is, this girl is like 8 or 9 when all this is going on. How has she managed to remain safe at Crystal Lake all through 6 entire movies where everyone dies but one lucky female? Perhaps she has cyclical outbursts resulting in explosions and hellfire, and Jason just wasn't motivated enough to deal with that.
The movie cuts to 1988 and now she's all grown up, slumming in a deep pout that she wasn't cast for the main role in Carrie. Her mother grows a Mullet Royale in Magneto-inspired telepathic self-defense and tries to console her by taking her back to Crystal Lake to see a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist, by the way, totally uses his telepathic powers to mentally undress her every second he can get. His nefarious behavior all through the movie suggests that he's not a big fan of the psychiatric standards and practices, and has probably had some seedy relations with other clients. But he's intimidated by telekinesis and Mama's Big Mullet to confine himself here to a fantasy life.
The two get in a spat, and she accidentally wakes Jason up and lets him out of his watery grave in a botched attempt to resurrect her father. Jason immediately gets back in his modus inoperandi and heads off in the woods away from civilization, because he apparently has a Hatfield/McCoy longstanding grudge against some creature people we never see.
Jason proceeds to slay two campers on the verge of making love. I love it whenever a soon-to-be victim hears Jason coming, mistakes him for her boyfriend, and uses the worst clichéd come-hither line only to embarrass herself when Jason barges in. The women of the Friday series always date guys prone to pulling the I'm-going-to-stop-mid-coitus-and-try-to-scare-you pranks now a plot device in most horror films. Jason seems to make enthusiastically grand entrances when this happens, as if he temporarily forgets he's malformed and the girl actually wants him. Only to become incensed when they scream at the sight of him, because the undead apparition in a gas-station attendant uniform wearing a hockey mask hasn't quite made the villain-to-sex symbol transition a la Edward Cullen. These girls always die more gruesomely than the rest, because Jason has had his heart broken before and won't stand for being teased.The next scene is two characters of whom the movie slaps you quite unrelentingly with back stories, because we need to get acquainted with them pretty fast before they die in the next 10 minutes. The girlfriend lets it slip that they're on their way to a surprise party- keep that in mind- after the car breaks down. The boyfriend has to pee, so he takes an elaborate hike into the woods because he's afraid his girlfriend might actually see his penis and have lowered expectations for some surprises of his own. The girl, duh, gets pinned to a tree with a knife Jason happened to find, you know, because with Crystal Lake's history it's quite reasonable to leave deadly weapons lying around. The boyfriend returns just in time to see his girlfriend dead right before Jason pulls the knife out with a smirk hidden by his hockey mask. “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” The boyfriend is dispatched in a synoptic fashion.
Now we see the people throwing the party, the writer's view of stereotypical 80s teens. You know, the Unrepentant Slut who will survive till the very end while Jason explores his sexuality and decides there is a female mongoloid out there just for him, somewhere, that will understand his baggage, and he doesn't need campy sluts to loose his virginity. The Alpha Male who actually yearns for true romance but can't overcome his social awkwardness and land the lady until Jason breaks the ice by killing off all his competition. There's even a science fiction writer nerd with the hots for every female in range.
Jason always seems to find himself on the set of a Soap Opera he transforms with his maniacal presence into a Lifetime wet dream of male oppression. In Jason Takes Manhattan in particular, Jason creeps around like a gossip queen taking notes on all the subtle dynamics of who's-sleeping-with-whom, and seems to kill accordingly. “Oh, think you're going to get the girl of your dreams? Fat chance.”In this light, Jason is less a serial killer and more like a pesky nun showcasing with his machete why premarital sex always ends in death by undead fiend.
Jason makes quick work of most of the campers before the telepathic girl catches on and tries to convince the Alpha to do-.... something. In one of her many freak-out scenes she runs through the woods and comes across a body as it falls from a tree right when she walks under it. What? Did Jason rig that just so the body would fall right then? Where did he learn these Mark Trail skills? After she recognizes the body and screams, we see Jason pop his head out from behind a tree and once again wonder what kind of expression he has on his face.“Do you like it? I set this up just for you. I've been teleporting to this exact spot behind the tree periodically, waiting for you to find it. What's the chances of a guy like me and a girl like you...”
So she predictably runs and Jason's in hot speed walk pursuit. He's like O.J. Simpson disinterestedly chasing down his hypothetical alibi. Hmm, since Jason never runs it would seem the safest place to be in any Friday movie is directly in front of him, walking backwards just to keep an eye on his whereabouts. He gets most of his victims by surprise, so as long as you know where he is and he can't catch you, you could wait him out until some other poor soul comes around and runs away.
Near the end the girl remembers she's telepathic and has had enough of Jason's shit. Her powers are almost not enough for Jason's Rasputin stubbornness. She sets him on fire, then drops him through the stairs, then strangles him with an electrical cord, then drops him through the floor, then EXPLODES the cabin with Jason in it, until finally reanimating her dead father who pulls Jason down underwater. How his reanimated corpse was remarkably preserved in water over several years and is powerful enough to hold Jason down until he passes out- which is apparently the key to defeating him, so just stock up on chloroform when you visit Crystal Lake- well, I don't have the slightest idea.
The continuity of the Friday series leaves open many questions the film never answers. For instance, given that every couple of years or so there happens to be a grotesque mass murder at this one camp and the police KNOW WHO'S COMMITING THE MURDERS, something's not quite right. The Crystal Lake Police must be the most lazy cops imaginable, who take grisly wholesale slaughters of teenagers with an indifferent shrug. Every ending scene in this series- well, the ones where Jason isn't in SPACE- showcases the clean-up procedure, and the police/paramedics-who-are-no-longer-necessary seem to be grudgingly lachrymose about bodies hanging from trees and heads in flowerpots and accept them without psychological trauma. The official Crystal Lake Police stance on Jason seems to be Supernatural Juggernaut We Can't Stop So Fuck It. Perhaps they just realized early on that they're in a film series that could go on indefinitely and their roles have been reduced from heroes who could stop him to janitors barely even meriting a few lines.
The girl and the Alpha survive, showing that the writer is optimistic about relationships between jocks with criminal histories and telekinetic girls with psychotic daddy issues. The Alpha never once pines over the loss of any of his friends, and the girl seems equally unperturbed by the death of her mother, whose mullet was no match for Jason's hedge trimmer. However this relationship might go- south and sour is my prognosis- you can bet they wait until marriage to have sex.
Part 7 opens with a touching story of a telepathic/kinetic girl who accidentally drowns her father in Crystal Lake, in a temper-tantrum that indicates why the discipline aspect of having a telekinetic problem child would require some finesse. Spankings were undoubtedly out of the question, so it's a no-brainier that she's wound up spoiled. Can you imagine taking this girl to Toys-R-Us and denying her a Rainbow Brite doll? My only question here is, this girl is like 8 or 9 when all this is going on. How has she managed to remain safe at Crystal Lake all through 6 entire movies where everyone dies but one lucky female? Perhaps she has cyclical outbursts resulting in explosions and hellfire, and Jason just wasn't motivated enough to deal with that.
The movie cuts to 1988 and now she's all grown up, slumming in a deep pout that she wasn't cast for the main role in Carrie. Her mother grows a Mullet Royale in Magneto-inspired telepathic self-defense and tries to console her by taking her back to Crystal Lake to see a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist, by the way, totally uses his telepathic powers to mentally undress her every second he can get. His nefarious behavior all through the movie suggests that he's not a big fan of the psychiatric standards and practices, and has probably had some seedy relations with other clients. But he's intimidated by telekinesis and Mama's Big Mullet to confine himself here to a fantasy life.
The two get in a spat, and she accidentally wakes Jason up and lets him out of his watery grave in a botched attempt to resurrect her father. Jason immediately gets back in his modus inoperandi and heads off in the woods away from civilization, because he apparently has a Hatfield/McCoy longstanding grudge against some creature people we never see.
Jason proceeds to slay two campers on the verge of making love. I love it whenever a soon-to-be victim hears Jason coming, mistakes him for her boyfriend, and uses the worst clichéd come-hither line only to embarrass herself when Jason barges in. The women of the Friday series always date guys prone to pulling the I'm-going-to-stop-mid-coitus-and-try-to-scare-you pranks now a plot device in most horror films. Jason seems to make enthusiastically grand entrances when this happens, as if he temporarily forgets he's malformed and the girl actually wants him. Only to become incensed when they scream at the sight of him, because the undead apparition in a gas-station attendant uniform wearing a hockey mask hasn't quite made the villain-to-sex symbol transition a la Edward Cullen. These girls always die more gruesomely than the rest, because Jason has had his heart broken before and won't stand for being teased.The next scene is two characters of whom the movie slaps you quite unrelentingly with back stories, because we need to get acquainted with them pretty fast before they die in the next 10 minutes. The girlfriend lets it slip that they're on their way to a surprise party- keep that in mind- after the car breaks down. The boyfriend has to pee, so he takes an elaborate hike into the woods because he's afraid his girlfriend might actually see his penis and have lowered expectations for some surprises of his own. The girl, duh, gets pinned to a tree with a knife Jason happened to find, you know, because with Crystal Lake's history it's quite reasonable to leave deadly weapons lying around. The boyfriend returns just in time to see his girlfriend dead right before Jason pulls the knife out with a smirk hidden by his hockey mask. “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” The boyfriend is dispatched in a synoptic fashion.
Now we see the people throwing the party, the writer's view of stereotypical 80s teens. You know, the Unrepentant Slut who will survive till the very end while Jason explores his sexuality and decides there is a female mongoloid out there just for him, somewhere, that will understand his baggage, and he doesn't need campy sluts to loose his virginity. The Alpha Male who actually yearns for true romance but can't overcome his social awkwardness and land the lady until Jason breaks the ice by killing off all his competition. There's even a science fiction writer nerd with the hots for every female in range.
Jason always seems to find himself on the set of a Soap Opera he transforms with his maniacal presence into a Lifetime wet dream of male oppression. In Jason Takes Manhattan in particular, Jason creeps around like a gossip queen taking notes on all the subtle dynamics of who's-sleeping-with-whom, and seems to kill accordingly. “Oh, think you're going to get the girl of your dreams? Fat chance.”In this light, Jason is less a serial killer and more like a pesky nun showcasing with his machete why premarital sex always ends in death by undead fiend.
Jason makes quick work of most of the campers before the telepathic girl catches on and tries to convince the Alpha to do-.... something. In one of her many freak-out scenes she runs through the woods and comes across a body as it falls from a tree right when she walks under it. What? Did Jason rig that just so the body would fall right then? Where did he learn these Mark Trail skills? After she recognizes the body and screams, we see Jason pop his head out from behind a tree and once again wonder what kind of expression he has on his face.“Do you like it? I set this up just for you. I've been teleporting to this exact spot behind the tree periodically, waiting for you to find it. What's the chances of a guy like me and a girl like you...”
So she predictably runs and Jason's in hot speed walk pursuit. He's like O.J. Simpson disinterestedly chasing down his hypothetical alibi. Hmm, since Jason never runs it would seem the safest place to be in any Friday movie is directly in front of him, walking backwards just to keep an eye on his whereabouts. He gets most of his victims by surprise, so as long as you know where he is and he can't catch you, you could wait him out until some other poor soul comes around and runs away.
Near the end the girl remembers she's telepathic and has had enough of Jason's shit. Her powers are almost not enough for Jason's Rasputin stubbornness. She sets him on fire, then drops him through the stairs, then strangles him with an electrical cord, then drops him through the floor, then EXPLODES the cabin with Jason in it, until finally reanimating her dead father who pulls Jason down underwater. How his reanimated corpse was remarkably preserved in water over several years and is powerful enough to hold Jason down until he passes out- which is apparently the key to defeating him, so just stock up on chloroform when you visit Crystal Lake- well, I don't have the slightest idea.
The continuity of the Friday series leaves open many questions the film never answers. For instance, given that every couple of years or so there happens to be a grotesque mass murder at this one camp and the police KNOW WHO'S COMMITING THE MURDERS, something's not quite right. The Crystal Lake Police must be the most lazy cops imaginable, who take grisly wholesale slaughters of teenagers with an indifferent shrug. Every ending scene in this series- well, the ones where Jason isn't in SPACE- showcases the clean-up procedure, and the police/paramedics-who-are-no-longer-necessary seem to be grudgingly lachrymose about bodies hanging from trees and heads in flowerpots and accept them without psychological trauma. The official Crystal Lake Police stance on Jason seems to be Supernatural Juggernaut We Can't Stop So Fuck It. Perhaps they just realized early on that they're in a film series that could go on indefinitely and their roles have been reduced from heroes who could stop him to janitors barely even meriting a few lines.
The girl and the Alpha survive, showing that the writer is optimistic about relationships between jocks with criminal histories and telekinetic girls with psychotic daddy issues. The Alpha never once pines over the loss of any of his friends, and the girl seems equally unperturbed by the death of her mother, whose mullet was no match for Jason's hedge trimmer. However this relationship might go- south and sour is my prognosis- you can bet they wait until marriage to have sex.