Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Still haunted by his gruesome past, Tommy Jarvis - the boy who killed Jason Voorhees - wonders if somehow he is connected to brutal slayings occurring in and around the secluded halfway house where he now lives.

Director:

Danny Steinmann

Writers:

Martin Kitrosser (story), David Cohen (story),

Stars:

Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Melanie Kinnaman	...	Pam Roberts
John Shepherd	...	Tommy Jarvis
Shavar Ross	...	Reggie
Richard Young	...	Matthew Letter
Marco St. John	...	Sheriff Cal Tucker
Juliette Cummins	...	Robin
Carol Locatell	...	Ethel Hubbard
Vernon Washington	...	George
John Robert Dixon	...	Eddie
Jerry Pavlon	...	Jake
Caskey Swaim	...	Duke
Mark Venturini	...	Victor J. Faden
Anthony Barrile	...	Vinnie
Dominick Brascia	...	Joey
Tiffany Helm	...	Violet

Storyline

10 years after killing the goalie hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees, Tommy Jarvis has grown up in various mental hospitals unable to get over the nightmares about Jason's return. When Tommy is sent to a rural halfway house in California for mentally disturbed teenagers, a series of grisly murders begin anew as another hockey-masked killer begins killing off all people at and around the residence. Has Jason returned from the dead to re-start his killing spree? Has Tommy decided to take over the reign of Jason, or has someone else?

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Plot Keywords:

jason voorhees | murder | nightmare | clothes line | small town sheriff | 

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Taglines:

A New Beginning to the first step in terror

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 March 1985 (USA)

Also Known As:

Friday the 13th Part 5

Filming Locations:

USA

Box Office

Budget:

$2,200,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$21,300,000 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Georgetown Productions Inc., Paramount Pictures, Terror Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Technically the body count is 22, 3 from the dream sequences, 1 killed by Vic, 1 killed by Tommy & 17 killed by Roy Burns.

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Goofs

When Tommy is at Jason's grave, the stones around Jason's grave are different between the close-up and the aerial shot.

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Quotes

Vinnie: I'm telling you Pete, this is bullshit. This really sucks!
Pete: Just do it. Fix it, man. Those cunts aren't gonna wait all night.
Vinnie: [Looks under the hood] Oh fuck, this is a mess.

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Connections

Featured in Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (2009)

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Soundtracks

"His Eyes"
Written by Brian Canham (as B. Canham) and T. Lugton
Performed by Pseudo Echo

User Reviews

Demon & Dudley are the highlights

This was not supposed to be a great movie, and the ending was pretty bad. However, one of the great virtues of low budget movies is that sometimes they find some really funny or unique actors that perform very memorably in their one major role. The mother and son hillbilly couple come to mind. Most of the cast in this movie was pretty entertaining. Now, twenty years later it is interesting to see that most of them never really continued their acting careers.

The main exception in this movie is Miguel Nunez, who has had a very successful career. Here he was trying to look like Michael Jackson in his brief appearance. He was much better in his Tour of Duty TV series. I enjoyed the beginning of this film. The idea of a Foster Home for troubled kids seemed like a fresh twist. Another plus is that most of the characters are not obnoxious. In most of the Slasher movies, the victims are usually so annoying that watching them get slashed is almost fun. In this movie, it was kind of sad to see some of the nice kids get killed off.

The main problems that keep this movie from being a great horror film is that John Sheppard plays the lead character of Tommy Jarvis, and that Jason is not all there. Sheppard is probably the worst actor in this film. He seems to have trouble emoting, speaking, or doing anything in a natural way. The Director seems to have noticed that Sheppard was not cutting the mustard, since most of the last half of the movie concentrates on Reggie (Dudley on Different Strokes) who has a lot more personality and charisma. The other letdown is the bogus surprise ending. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it is dumb and it makes no sense at all. The guy who killed the fat kid went to prison (and safety), and the innocent Foster Kids got killed. The fat kid never knew his father, but the father always knew where his orphan son was? I wonder what the creative team was smoking when they came up with that idea.