In this new regular series of reviews, I’ll be watching films that are hated by many. Do these films deserve their bad reputation or do they deserve reappraisal?

First up is Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. Beware- there are spoilers ahead. I remember hearing about the film being in development when it was announced in the mid-80s. ‘But there can’t be a new Friday the 13th film’, I thought at the time. ‘The last film was called The Final Chapter!’, I thought naively. With Part IV of the franchise bringing in serious dollars at the box office, it was only good business sense on the part of Paramount Pictures to continue the pay dirt even though Mr. Voorhees had seemingly been snuffed out once and for all at the conclusion of the fourth film. At the time I imagined how the studio would get around this unfortunate obstacle- Part V would be like a TV movie with the relatives of past victims of Jason and his mother getting together and forming a therapy-like ‘healing circle’ and reminiscing about their lost loved ones with clips galore from the previous films.

When I finally got to see the film on video after it had been heavily censored (thanks again, BBFC), my opinion was the same as many other fans of the franchise. ‘It wasn’t Jason!!!’ I thought as the ending of the film played before my eyes. I also thought that I had gone to all of the trouble of stealing the small promotional standee for the film from my local video shop. All of that effort for a film that was a turkey!

Years later I would go to a Friday the 13th Marathon at a Central London cinema in which they showed the first 8 films back-to-back. ‘If I get tired I can always get some rest during Part V’, I thought. And that’s what happened.

But then a funny thing happened. The bits of Part V that I remembered from this screening weren’t as bad as I had remembered. And there was a snippet of information that I had gleaned from social media that made me consider the film in a new light. There had been a screening of the film at the New Beverley Cinema in LA and a certain Mr Quentin Tarantino had attended it. When asked by a fan why he was there, QT said that Part V was his favourite film from the whole franchise and started extolling its many virtues. If Tarantino likes the film then it definitely deserves a rewatch.

The publicity material for the film raises the question as to whether the character (Tommy Jarvis) who defeated Jason at the end of the previous film had actually become him by continuing his killing spree. Had the trauma of killing Jason awakened Tommy’s murderous impulses? It’s an interesting idea and certain posters and stills for the film suggest that this might be the case. One still has Tommy holding the mask as if becoming Jason was his destiny all along!

In fact, the iconography of the mask and how iconic it is for both Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th as a horror franchise is interestingly used by the film. There are three different masks at play within this film and it’s publicity material. Firstly, the flashbacks Tommy experiences involve the hockey mask as we know and love it- with red markings. However, the killer in Part 5 wears a mask with blue markings showing that he is NOT Jason (this mask also features in the film’s opening credits). Some of the publicity material show a generic all-white mask which seems to represent a kind of blank slate. Is this Jason, Tommy as Jason or someone completely different? And so for the first time since the original film we have the concept of a whodunnit re-entering the franchise.

The film starts with a dream sequence of Tommy’s and features Corey Feldman once more as Jarvis (Fun fact- Feldman was actually filming The Goonies and so couldn’t be more involved with Part V. This sequence was filmed on his day off and in his back garden!) Tommy is seen going to the grave of Voorhees but hides behind some bushes when he hears two frat boy types approaching who come to exhume the killer’s body. What they don’t expect though is that Jason comes back to life when the lid of his coffin is raised and kills them both with his trusty machete (of course he would be buried with it!) When Voorhees approaches Jarvis and raises his machete to kill him, Jarvis wakes up from his nightmare. It’s a few years on and he is now a young adult (and played by John Shepherd). He is being taken to Pinehurst Halfway House, a facility to try and help him acclimatise to normal life after being a resident of so many psychiatric hospitals since the events of Part IV. Here we meet the majority of the film’s characters.

Whilst most of these characters will be bumped off in the tradition of the franchise, the murders are both interesting and visceral. We get a flare being thrust into a character’s mouth which is strangely aesthetically pleasing, a leather belt being twisted around the eyes of a character whilst it’s also wrapped around a tree and a speciality of the series- another murder on the crapper. Part 5 would prove to be somewhat neutered by the MPAA but even with these cuts the kills are still brilliantly staged and the kill count appears to be much higher than previous entries. There also appears to be more nudity.

But Part V feels different. One of the most radical ways in which it feels new is that there are *shock horror* FOUR characters who are African American. Yes, there have been BAME characters in the franchise before (Part 3D boosted the gang members of Ali and Fox) but they were restricted to only a few scenes and dispatched pretty quickly. Yes, three of the characters of colour in Part V end up dead by the end of the film’s runtime, but Reggie The Reckless lasts the distance and even helps to defeat the film’s killer along with Pam Roberts (I love the fact that a counsellor and therapist is one of the characters who defeat the psycho and even wields a chainsaw at one point) and Tommy himself. In fact, this is new in itself- rather than a Final Girl, three protagonists defeat the killer. The accepted slasher movie formula was being subverted by Part V. The fact that it was being done by possibly the genre’s biggest franchise was one hell of a risk.

Another change is the inclusion of a character who is so recognisably part of a youth subculture. By the time Part V was being made, MTV had brought many different pop stars with their different styles and looks into the living rooms of many Americans. Some of these pop stars had such iconic styles that they spawned whole movements and armies of devotees. Hence, we get the Goth character of Violent, a kind of cross between Siouxsie Sioux and a proto-Courtney Love. I love that there’s a female character who isn’t some big-breasted bimbo but instead looks grumpy all the time, wears thick black eye makeup and tells people to ‘Piss off!’

Another element of Part 5 that is different from the previous franchise entries is the musical score. Whilst still by Harry Manfredini, his iconic score that proliferated the previous films is gone with the new score still offering the occasional reference to it by the studio effects used (the delay effect) and by the occasional echo pertaining to the past.

We also have more overt attempts at humour within the franchise. The bumbling sheriff in the first film was genuinely funny but, alas, the hillbilly characters of Ethel and her son Junior are neither entertaining nor humorous. In fact, when they were eventually dispatched I actually cheered.

Another character who irritated me to no end was Joey. Thankfully the audience is put out of its misery when another patient with severe anger management issues, Vic, uses an axe to off him. Not the best idea of the facility to give such an angry character a lethal weapon but I wasn’t complaining. And by the sounds of it, most of the film’s audience wasn’t complaining either.

But the biggest bone of contention for the fans of the franchise was the fact that the killer was eventually exposed as Roy, Joey’s father who ran out on him when he was a youngster. Really, you can see why he walked out on him though. It would appear that the Friday 13th fans wanted Jason and not some character who was just some pale imitation. Whilst Part V took $21.9m at the box office against a budget of $2.2m, takings were severely down when compared to the rest of the previous entries of the franchise. The previous film had taken $33m as fans couldn’t wait to see Jason get his comeuppance with the effects being handled by none other than Tom Savini.

Verdict- So, is Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning really that bad? No. It’s just different from the previous films but with enough innovative kills, suspense and nods to the formula of the previous movies that can still hold the attention of the average horror fan. I have a soft spot for the horror franchise entries that feel like anomalies- A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddie’s Revenge, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. These films were brave enough to divert from their franchise’s trajectories whilst potentially alienating the fans of the franchise. They took risks. They may not be what fans wanted but they’re still interesting. The fans’ response to Friday the 13th Part V felt like the fanboy’s response to Halloween 3- they were angry that the villain synonymous with that series of films wasn’t doing the killing. Whilst A New Beginning isn’t in the same league as Halloween 3, it still deserves respect. If you blot out the irritating characters, it’s still a fun film.

Another reason to love Part V- Siskel and Ebert hated it. Enjoy.