Transcription
[Music] i have been emotionally exhausted every day of this year not only witnessing the everything of it all but writing about the everything of it all with that in mind i hope you will all forgive me because this week to purge the unbelievable heaviness from my body i deliver to you what is certain to be my least important least political and most inconsequential hot take ever friday the 13th part 5 is not that bad.
the stakes have never been lower among slasher fans and friday the 13th fans specifically part 5 a new beginning is often considered a failure. a not insubstantial amount of the disdain for this movie comes from the fact that mass murderer and hockey enthusiast jason voorhees is not the killer. jason died in part 4 the increasingly inaccurate final chapter. the killer turns out to be a paramedic named roy whose mind was warped when he saw the mangled body of his son but not so warped that he couldn't come up with the most convoluted way to try to get away with this killing spree dressing up like a serial killer who everyone knows is already dead. this is not a good plan. this is a bad plan. in the end he is pushed onto some spikes you know common yard spikes and it's like zoink scoob it was old mr wilkins this whole time.
what makes a good friday the 13th movie anyway? arguably none of them are great movies except maybe part 6 but there is a kind of low budget cheesy charm that makes the series perfect for movie night with friends. what do people want when they see a friday the 13th movie? historically fans of the series wanted to see kills. there is a lot of admittedly anecdotal evidence from people who were in the theaters in the 80s that suggest people were counting the kills and cheering for jason not his victims. this has lasted to this day with kill count videos on youtube that focus on these scenes more than any others. some of the most famous jason kills across the franchise are bending his victim's body slamming a victim against a tree the 3d eye pop and a few others.
part 5 suffers from the censorship of the time. there was a lot of pressure to make the friday the 13th movies less graphic. the director was sent notes from the mpaa about what they had to cut in order for it to make an r rating and it was a whole mess. part 5 was infamously cut to pieces and showed less blood. even the most graphic kill of the movie the decapitation on the motorcycle still had to be cut a little to make the rating. you can barely see any blood in the dream sequence introduction. the pervert gets a somehow bloodless axe to the dome. violet is killed in a way that it looks like a pillow is being stabbed. the peeping tom in the forest is unenthusiastically stabbed without any gore. even roy falling on the spikes looks a little tame in terms of kills the thing that allegedly drove fans to the theaters. there are only a handful of creative death scenes. one in which roy crushes a teenager's head by twisting a strap the wrong way and another in which demon is trapped in an outhouse and dies in his own stink. the best action in the movie is when tommy jarvis hits the death valley driver through a table.
the only thing remarkable about this film's kills is that the count is pretty high compared to previous fridays. there are 22 kills in this movie whereas part 1 only had 10 part 2 had 9 part 3 had 12 and part 4 had 14. the problem with such a high kill count is that the kills don't have much impact. there is a kill approximately every 4 minutes in the movie. it's not only overkill but since so many characters are introduced almost immediately before being killed their deaths have no resonance. thus if you're not the kind of horror fan who is only there to watch elaborate kills and instead wants some slow creeping dread you're going to come away disappointed. so it's an unsatisfying horror movie whether you're there for the gore or there for the atmosphere.
going outside the slasher fan community just as an admirer of cinema it's also a hard movie to defend because it had to be edited in a blender and much of it comes across so disjointed with scenes detached from the main thread of the plot victims invented to up the kill count to have nothing to do with anything. so why do i kinda like this movie? fighter xiii part five doesn't work that well as a movie but it works as a series of unrelated vignettes skits with goofy characters. while part 6 is best known for being a comedic meta commentary on slasher movies part 5 really starts the comedy trend in friday the 13th with the possible exception of tommy none of the characters are particularly well developed but so many characters are just incredibly silly and memorable anyway and their brief existences in the movie barely having any impact on the overall plot give their introductions and rapid conclusions this vignette feel.
example the aforementioned demon is reggie's older brother. reggie's grandfather doesn't want him hanging around demon but demon never comes across as dangerous or irresponsible. whatever it is he comes across as this bad boy with a heart of gold. he and his girlfriend anita lovingly sing to each other while he's in the outhouse and then fake jason has to come around and ruin it by killing them both. demon is referenced briefly in one scene prior but he has nothing to do with the overall plot of the movie. roy kills both demon and anita without any motivation. neither of them were related to roy's son's death in any way. they didn't even live in the halfway house where it happened. this is also true of the greasers scene. they have even less to do with the death of roy's son. they are two random 1950s enthusiasts presumably ready for a grease themed party at a 50s diner who run afoul of roy for the crime of car trouble. these scenes have so little to do with the movie and yet they kind of work as unrelated vignettes to watch independently.
watching the actor's performances fighting the 13th part 5 feels like a movie where everyone knew what kind of movie they were making and just hammed it up like the entire movie is just a bunch of people practically winking at the camera. this is not mere speculation either. interviews with the actors have revealed that a lot of the memorable funny stuff from the movie was improvised. ethel's dialogue was ad-libbed. the it's showtime random nudity and a bunch of other stuff was cooked up by the actors on the set. the actress who plays violet suggested the song from the dance. why is violet doing the robot? is that even the robot? why is she dancing like this and why is it oddly compelling?
what i'm trying to say is friday the 13th part 5 may not work as a movie but it does work as a series of scenes to watch individually on youtube. maybe this is still not a convincing argument if the absence of jason leaves too big of a void in this movie for you. i understand that some friday fans will dismiss this entry into the franchise because it doesn't have jason but that's where they're wrong. it has a fake jason a ghost jason and by the end a new jason. that's three jason's. that's two more jasons than usual. if anything there is too much jason in this movie. there that settles that.
very important video this week right? is anyone else tired? just just very tired. you.