Another two years had elapsed in between Friday the 13th movies. Fans were getting impatient, and Fangoria magazine was getting smart-assed. Make-up effects artiste (and now director) John Carl Buechler finally delivered Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood on a calender Friday the 13th, this one in May 1988. And the result was smashing. The setting was once again Crystal Lake. The immediate housing was vacation homes about to be invaded by partying teens. The backstory was, as usual, vague as hell, with a passing mention of Jason Voorhees, the drowned boy. And the connection with the predecessing film? Part VI's conclusion is bridged here by the acknowledgment that Jason is dead and under the lake. Now that a guilt-ridden teen named Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln) is on hand to undergo a bit of assessment under her self-serving case-worker, Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser), the stage is set for Tina's telekinesis to do a bit of unintended reanimation upon the slumbering Voorhees kid. And the proceedings are on. Now that we can safely disregard any hopes of returning the series to its roots, namely the mythology of a mother's love for her drowned son--with some supernatural implications, Part VII truly shines on its own. It's something of a "Beauty and the Beast" tale, a final showdown between unwilling heroine and unstoppable villain. A grand finale ensues, incidentally. One item of interest: Harry Manfredini was busy on another project and didn't score this one. So one Fred Mollin, who was scoring the (unrelated story-wise) "Friday the 13th" television series, was called in to score the first and last reels of The New Blood. The in-betweens used canned Manfredini music, though by this time there was so much existing music that motifs were difficult to establish. Nonetheless, after the all-new scores for the previous two films, it is something of a treat to hear old cues from, say, Part II employed here. Did I mention that a Friday the 13th, Part VIII came out the following year? Well, by now you know the drill. Principle Credits: Starring: Lar Park Lincoln, Susan Blu, Terry Kiser, Kevin Blair, Kane Hodder, William Butler, Heidi Kozak, Larry Cox, Staci Greason, Jeff Bennett, Jon Renfield, Susan Jennifer Sullivan, Elizabeth Kaitan, John Otrin and Diana Barrows. Directed by John Carl Buechler Produced by Iain Patterson << Back