A lot can happen in two years. Witness the demise of the polarized 3-D process, which had served such mainstream hits as Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D and, of course, Friday the 13th, Part III only a year or two earlier. The gimmick was effective enough for those and other titles, but apparently, advances in cinematics had already started to discredit the polarized process, so it died a quiet death. Thankfully, one of the franchises it had serviced did not. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter opened on 13 April 1984, which was a Friday. A 1983 installment hadn't happened, and fans had been clamoring for a resolution to the storyline. They got it that day. And despite the "final chapter" promise in the title, the fans also got a lead on a potential resurrection of the franchise via the new character Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), a 12-year-old boy with an affinity for special effects, masks, make-up and video games. To bring the reader up to speed, The Final Chapter opens with a cop helicopter hovering over Higgins Haven, the setting of Part III. Kudos to director Joseph Zito for having enough sense to film the sequence at the Valuzet Movie Ranch in Saugas, CA, where the previous installment was filmed. The scene offers one of the few genuine attempts at inter-installment continuity you'll ever encounter in this series. The body of Jason Voorhees (now played by Ted White, who refused screen credit) is spirited away by hospital personnel. Unfortunately for them, the fiend is merely unconscious and not dead, and when Jason revives in the morgue and kills the immediate attendants, he's back on his way to Crystal Lake. The Jarvis family have a house on Crystal Lake....God knows exactly how large this lake or its community spans, but I don't. But Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman) and her daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck, instantly recognizable as the film's heroine) seem to have a happy relationship with younger brother Tommy, despite the recent divorce from one Mr. Jarvis. Next door to the Jarvis homestead is a summer home which has just been rented out to--who else?--a group of teenagers who want to party. And guess who else is onhand to dole out his own brand of festivities? Although this fourth installment fails in the area of establishing a mythology about Jason or the Voorhees family, not to mention its utter lack of regard for Mrs. Voorhees appearance in the lake in Part III, it succeeds in just about all other areas. The suspense is tight, and Zito works in enough red herring scenes to offset the actual murder sequences. Tom Savini reached his pinnacle with murder pieces here; later, he moved on to monster effects and creature development, but his work here represents the highlight of his splatter make-up expertise. And Harry Manfredini's score is always there. The opening and final reels of Part IV are new music; the in-betweens are recycles of previous Friday the 13th cues. This is also good, because it allows certain cues to become motifs. Mr. Manfredini knew what he was doing each time he scored a Friday the 13th movie, and his contributions have been invaluable. The greatest mistake the makers made here was entitling this movie The Final Chapter. That might have been the intention in late 1983 when it was filmed, but the massive box office response it received months later alerted them to the allure of more box-office lucre. So how do you effectively follow up a final chapter? Simple: You include the main heading title, add "Part Five" to the pie, then subtitle it A New Beginning. It worked in 1985. Principle Credits: Starring Kimberly Beck, Corey Feldman, E. Erich Anderson, Joan Freeman, Peter Barton, Barbara Howard, Alan Hayes, Judie Aronson, Crispin Glover, Larry Monoson, Camilla and Carey More, Bruce Mahler, Lisa Freeman and Bonnie Helman. Directed by Joseph Zito Produced by Frank Mancuso, Jr. Screenplay by Barney Cohen Story by Bruce Hidemi Sakow Music by Harry Manfredini Special Make-up Effects by Tom Savini << Back