Fridaythe13thPart7

Friday the 13th part 7 (1988)

The movie starts off with a recap of the events of the previous couple films, which gives them the chance to pad the film with clips from the previous entries. This sets up the fact that Jason is still chained on the bottom of Crystal Lake, where Tommy Jarvis left him in part 6. Then the movie shifts gears and introduces the character of Tina, who first appears as a young girl. The setup is that Tina has psychic powers, which we see when she accidentally kills her father. Years later her therapist takes her back to the scene of the accident where her father died, which happens to be their house on Crystal Lake! In a fit of anger her powers bring Jason back from the dead and he soon starts to off the locals, which includes a group of kids that are having a party in the house right next to Tina’s.

This is one of those movies in the Friday the 13th franchise that really suffers from the MPAA hacking the hell out of it (pun intended). The story is interesting with the Tina character being telekinetic. Though I will admit I think that using her to bring back Jason is pretty silly and dumb. Still way better than the evil worm Jason, so I’ll give it that. But other than that plot point I do dig the rest of the story. You have the stereotypical group of kids getting picked off one at a time when they are doing naughty stuff like premarital sex and drugs. While not original, this is the formula that we fans of slasher movies have all come to love and enjoy. In addition to the characters that we expect to see I also got a kick out of the Dr. Crews character played by Terry Kiser. His performance as the manipulative and cowardly doctor out to use Tina’s condition for his own research is a blast to watch. But then again I’m a big fan of Weekend at Bernie’s so take that with a grain of salt. I also wanted to talk about Kane Hodder, who has his first outing here as Jason. He really is my favorite Jason and I love how he moves as the character. Without delivering a line he really does bring a presence and personality to the character that just wasn’t there before.

The kills in Friday the 13th part 7 could have been so much more. According to the director, John Carl Buechler, they really cut the hell out of the special effects to get an R rating. It really does show. While there are a couple of cool kills like the hand thru the chest and the infamous sleeping bag kill the rest of the movie really does feel “gimped”. The camera is constantly cutting away from the kills after they take the time to set up each gag. It gets rather annoying after a while. While on the topic of annoying I also was bugged by how intrusive the music in the movie is. It just seems really loud and instead of helping to set the tone and mood it gets in the way.

While far from being a great entry into the franchise I still think that this movie could have been pretty solid. That is before the MPAA got their hands on it. Still it is worth checking out, if for nothing else than to see Hodder’s stalking his first set of victims as Jason.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer