Wednesday, October 11, 2023

My Review of Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

 


Written by Manuel Fidello And Daryl Haney
Directed by John Carl Buechler

Nick: "Jason? Where's Jason?"
Tina (re her father): "He took care of it."

After three movies with an ever changing Tommy Jarvis, it was time for the franchise to go back to a female protagonist. One I should point seemed maybe a bit too influenced by Carrie but at least it meant that Jason would have a challenge.

Following the events of the previous movie with Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) at the bottom of Crystal Lake, we all knew that he wouldn't remain there. Very quickly into this movie a telepathic girl named Tina Shepard (Jennifer Banko) would cause the death of her abusive father by inadvertently summoning Jason from his watery resting place.

Then we cut to Tina, now played by Lar Park Lincoln who's a young woman being largely manipulated by her mother's new boyfriend, Dr Crews (Terry Wiser) who takes too much of an interest in triggering Tina to a ridiculous degree. Fortunately her mother, Amanda (Susan Blu) does wise up to Crews exploitative nature and does try to protect Tina from him.

Unfortunately for Amanda, she's also one of the many kills by Jason in this movie but on the plus side, so the horrible boyfriend and the mean spirited girl who antagonised Tina in the movie. On a plus side for Tina, she also has Nick (Kevin Blair) as a love interest and co-protagonist in the movie.

Yes, it's really up to the pair of them as Jason does his usual mass murders around Crystal Lake. I'll admit that Tina's powers are rather cool and it's interesting that for the second movie in a row Jason's just trapped underwater rather than outright killed. Tina's a fairly decent main character to follow Tommy.

- Had things been different this movie wouldve been a crossover with Freddy Krueger. We'd get that fifteen years later though.
- Tina was initially meant to recur but like other Final Girls in this franchise, this was a one time movie for her.
- This was the first time we had movies with three horror icons in the same year, albeit with mixed results.
- Chronology: Three months, then seven years from the events of the previous movie.

Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood isn't quite the disaster it's reputation led me to believe but it's a bit of a comedown after the Tommy Jarvis trilogy though. I'm being generous so let's say it's fairly middling stuff.

Rating: 6 out of 10

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