Friday the 13th, Part V - A New Beginning (1985)
d. Danny Steinmann, 92 minutes

Film Plot Summary

[Dream] The film began with a dream prologue set in a graveyard on a rainy night. 12 year-old Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman in a brief cameo role) witnessed two inquisitive redneck grave-robbers:

• Neil (Todd Bryant)
• Wes (Curtis Conaway)

The duo were digging and opening up the coffin of Jason Voorhees ("Got to look at the main man"). When they pried open the cover of the casket and looked upon the corpse, they saw that the infamous killer was buried wearing his hockey-mask (although swarming with worms), and he had his machete in his hand.

Inexplicably, they caused the corpse to revive. Jason killed both of them - he stabbed Neil in the stomach with the machete (# 1 death), and thrust an icepick into Wes' throat (# 2 death). The killer rose and stood up, spied Tommy (who was paralyzed in fear), and approached. As Jason was about to strike with his machete, a much-older Tommy (John Shepherd) awoke from the nightmare -- in the back seat of a van.

Several Years Later

The story then fast-forwarded - teenaged Tommy was being driven from the Unger Institute of Mental Health to a halfway house for mentally-disturbed youth. The attendant [later identified as Billy] in the front seat of the van leafed through a girlie magazine.

After the credits, the van arrived at the rural Pinehurst Youth Development Center (composed of a farmhouse, barn, and sheds with farm animals), where Tommy was introduced to the center's Assistant Director Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman). Remaining mute and mostly unresponsive, Tommy was also introduced to Dr. Matthew Letter (Richard Young) and told about Pinehurst. Unlike the state institution, it was without guards, and "basically, you're your own boss" - due to its honor system. It was a place for maladjusted and troubled kids to prepare to re-enter into society and "start a new life." (From the previous film), Tommy had suffered "severe trauma at age 12," recovering from "brutal self-defense murder of a psychopathic killer." The emotionally-wounded Tommy had already been treated with numerous therapies and drugs.

In his upstairs room at the facility, Tommy looked at a picture of his family members:

• his deceased mother Mrs. Jarvis, who had been murdered in the previous film
• his sister Trish (presumably dead?), although she was the sole-surviving Last Girl in the previous film

He hid his large jack-knife under his bed mattress. He met black Reggie "The Reckless" (Shavar Ross), the grandson of Pinehurst's cook George (Vernon Washington) - who scared him with a rubber spider dangling on a string. He responded by donning one of his own hand-made, latex alien monster masks - his continuing fetish.

Shortly after Jarvis' arrival, local Sheriff Cal Tucker (Marco St. John) drove into the facility, notifying Matt that they had found two of the youth patients [Eddie and Tina] trespassing at the nearby Hubbard place again, "screwin' their heads off," although the owner Ethel didn't see them. To the contrary, an enraged hillbilly Ethel (Carol Locatell) arrived on the back of her mentally-deficient son Junior's (Ron Sloan) motorcycle and confronted the Sheriff: "I want this looney bin closed down." She complained how the kids at Pinehurst didn't respect property, how the two "perverts" had been on her land - and she shouted the accusation: "they're all crazy!" She directly threatened the kids: "You mark my words. The next little bastard comes near my farm, I'm gonna blow your f--kin' brains out."

Some of the other patients were introduced:

• obnoxious, pushy, sloppy and obese chocolate bar-eating orphan Joey Burns (Dominick Brascia)
• headphone-wearing, goth-dressed, rebellious punk-rocker Violet (Tiffany Helm)
• Violet's quiet red-headed friend Robin (Juliette Cummins)
• strongly buffed, angry, short-haired axe-chopping Vic (Mark Venturini)

Joey frustrated Violet and Robin by touching their clean laundry with his pudgy chocolate-covered fingers. He then moved onto Vic who didn't want to be bothered ("Leave me alone!"). Joey persisted and offered Vic a chocolate bar - exasperated, he declined it by smashing it with his axe, to which Joey delivered an insult ("I think you're really out of line"). After he was pestered and annoyed to death, Vic turned and brutally attacked Joey with the axe and killed him (# 3 death), in plain sight of Tommy and the two girls.

The Sheriff and paramedics were called back to Pinehurst ("the nuthouse") to arrest psychopathic patient Vic. During the visit, one of the paramedics, Roy Burns (Dick Wieand), was visibly upset by the bloody and maimed remains of the victim lying in hacked-up pieces on the ground. Roy's fellow paramedic joked: "Bunch of pussies. Come on, Roy. Get your hands dirty."

Later that night, the vehicle of two teenaged, foul-mouthed greasers, Pete (Corey Parker) and Vinnie (Anthony Barrile), had stalled or broken down by the side of the road. When Pete went to "take a crap," an unknown assailant shoved a red-hot, lit road-flare into Vinnie's mouth (# 4 death). When Pete returned ("Either you got the car started or you're a dead man"), a hand from the back seat of the car grabbed his forehead as his throat was slashed with a machete (# 5 death).

The next morning, Tommy was still suffering from sweat-inducing voices and memories of his final encounter (with his sister Trish) against Jason Voorhees. He also experienced hallucinations of the axe-wielding killer in his room and on the grounds. At breakfast, more of the quirky patients were introduced:

• stuttering Jake Patterson (Jerry Pavlon)
• hunk Eddie (John Robert Dixon)
• Eddie's busty girlfriend Tina (Debi Sue Voorhees - NO relation to Jason)

Violet was berated for setting too many places, already forgetful about the two missing residents. With pent-up anger, Tommy fought against Eddie for taking one of his masks.

At Ethel's farm, the crazy woman decapitated a plucked chicken with a meat cleaver, and fed beef stew to her ignorant, backwoods son Junior ("Eat your f--kin' slop! Ain't I make the best god-damned stew in the whole wide world?"). A homeless, unemployed drifter named Raymond (Sonny Shields) appeared at their front door asking to "earn a meal," where Ethel confronted him with a shotgun, crassly: "Holy s--t! Who the f--k are you and what the f--k do you want?" She proposed cleaning the s--t out of the chicken coop in exchange for a meal.

Police officers and paramedics were again called to the crime scene where the two greasers had been killed. This time, paramedic Roy seemed more accustomed to the dead bodies. One of the deputies told the Sheriff: "Looks like we got us a maniac on the loose."

That night, outside a local diner/restaurant, Billy (Bob DeSimone), a worker at the Unger Institute of Mental Health, pulled up to pick up his long-haired, blonde waitress girlfriend Lana (Rebecca Wood) where she was finishing work. In the restroom, she unzipped the front of her waitress outfit in front of the mirror, revealed both breasts, and shouted out: "It's showtime!" [With homage to Joe Gideon in All That Jazz (1979).] (She then told herself: "Girl, you are so hot!") As he waited in his car, Billy prepared cocaine to snort:

"That's it. That's the whole f--kin' thing right there. There it is. You just stay right there, doll. That's just what the doctor ordered. Nothin' like a little preventive medicine. And, the forecast is: cloudy in the mountains, sunny in the valleys, and snow flurries up your nose!"

As he called out of his car door for her to hurry up, Billy was murdered with an axe swung into the top of his head (# 6 death). When Lana ran out to the empty car and noticed Billy was missing, she reached over for some cocaine. She sighted the feet of the axe-murderer and his weapon dripping blood onto the pavement. As she lept from the passenger side door, the same axe bludgeoned her in the torso (# 7 death).

Sheriff Tucker suspected that the psychopath responsible for the rash of murders was Jason Voorhees. He believed that the violent murders signaled the return of the cursed hockey-masked killer Jason, although Mayor Cobb (Ric Mancini) of the small town didn't believe him: "Jason Voorhees is dead. His body was cremated. He's nothing but a handful of ash." The mayor threatened: "Your ass is on the line here, Tucker. Are you getting that? You give me a god-damn live suspect."

Studly Eddie and horny Tina raced off into the woods to make love - after a memorable exchange of dialogue:

Eddie: "You loved it. You want more?"
Tina: "Eddie, we can't. Matt will kill us."
Eddie: "F--k him!"
Tina: "F--k you."
Eddie: "Exactly. F--k me. Come on."

After placing a blanket on the ground, they smoked a joint, and then undressed, as they were spied upon from nearby bushes by drifter Raymond. Suddenly, the voyeuristic Peeping Tom was stabbed in the stomach with a hunting knife (# 8 death), as Tina moaned ecstatically in the background. When the lovers were finished having sex and Eddie went to "wash up," Tina urged him to "hurry back." As she laid back naked on the blanket, providing an unobstructed view of her full breasts as she looked up at the trees, she screamed as long-handled, opened hedge shears were thrust into her face and then closed shut - mutilating her eyes (# 9 death) (off-screen). When Eddie returned and found her lying on her side, he turned her over and was horrified by the sight. As he backed up to a tree, his own head was crushed against the trunk with a tightened leather strap (# 10 death) bound across his eyes.

That night, Pam drove Reggie in a pickup to see his brother Demon (Miguel A. Nunez, Jr.), with Tommy along for the ride. Apparently, Demon lived in a van (parked in a trailer park) with a drugged-out girlfriend named Anita (Jere Fields) - both looked like Michael Jackson-Janet Jackson wannabes. While Tommy was standing under the buzzing Trailer Park neon sign, Junior drove up on his motorcycle, startled him, and asked: "Are you dumb or something?" When Junior assailed Tommy and called him "a crazy from the looney bin," and threatened to chop him up ("My mama's gonna chop you up into itty-bitty pieces, my friend") - and then threw a wayward punch, Tommy ducked and fought back, using some of his fast kung-fu kicks, punches and moves to subdue Junior.

Tommy ran off when Pam saw him fighting and didn't understand what had started it. Shortly after Reggie was driven by Pam back to Pinehurst, two more murders were committed:

• Anita's throat was deeply slashed (# 11 death) (off-screen) after she teased Demon from outside an outhouse ("You'll feel a lot better after you s--t...You better watch out for the snakes that's gonna crawl up that crapper and bite your ass")
• diarrhea-suffering Demon (from eating too many enchiladas) was speared through the chest (from behind) with a long metal spike or crow-bar poked through the tin siding of the outdoor "shitbox" (# 12 death)

Pam returned to Pinehurst, where she learned that Matt had gone searching for Eddie and Tina. She was determined to go look for all the missing people, but first sent Reggie to bed. (On her drive back, Pam's pickup truck stalled, forcing her to walk back to Pinehurst.)

With a bloodied face, Junior rode home on his motorcycle to Ethel, crying: "He hurt me, Ma! Will you murder them? Chop 'em and kill 'em?", as he recklessly rode in circles around his dirt yard and onto his front porch. His head was decapitated from his body with a meat cleaver held out into his path (# 13 death). Hearing someone, Ethel joked: "Knew you couldn't pass up on my stew." A fist holding the bloody meat cleaver broke through the window in front of her (seen from her POV), and sliced into her head - as a death reflex, she squeezed a tomato in her fist, and collapsed face-first ("plop") into her pot of stew slop (# 14 death).

At Pinehurst, Jake and Robin were watching a movie on television, A Place in the Sun (1954). [It was the scene in which poor-boy Montgomery Clift was rowing out onto a lake, contemplating the murder of his pregnant girlfriend Shelley Winters.] Hesitatingly and nervously, just at the tensest moment in the film, Jake told Robin that he liked her, after their eight months together, and implied that he wanted sex with her: "I-I-I want to be with you...I-I-I wanna make love with you," but she was uninterested. She only smiled and insensitively laughed at him. Jake then recanted his desires and headed upstairs crying, where he was murdered when an upraised meat cleaver was brought down on him (# 15 death) (off-screen).

After the movie ended [in the conclusion of the film, Clift's rich second girlfriend Elizabeth Taylor visited him in jail for the final time, before his scheduled execution for the death of his poorer girlfriend], Robin also went upstairs, and stood topless before the bathroom mirror in her bikini panties, where she blamed herself for hurting Jake's feelings: "Jake, I'm sorry. You know, sometimes Robin, you are just so stupid." She climbed into her top bunk, where she turned and saw Jake's bloody corpse and face next to her in bed. A right hand grabbed her neck and held her down as she was stabbed with a machete held by someone's left hand from underneath her mattress (# 16 death). In her room nearby where she was listening to loud music on earphones while dancing like a 'goth-robot', Madonna-look-alike Violet was grabbed with a bare fist in the neck, choked as she was lifted up, and then stabbed with a machete in the stomach (# 17 death).

Thunder woke Reggie, who was sleeping on the couch in the living room. In Tommy's darkened room, he saw the three bloodied, murdered bodies of Jake, Robin, and Violet revealed in bright flashes of lightning. Pam had just returned to the house and found the terrified Reggie and the stack of bodies. They fled down the stairs, as a hockey-masked killer (was it the ghost of Jason Voorhees?) burst through a doorway, standing above them with a bloody machete. They were closely pursued as they ran out into the rainy night - Pam's drenched white shirt without a bra revealed her breasts. They came across the body of ambulance driver Duke (Caskey Swaim) already dead in his vehicle (# 18 death) (off-screen). As the two then ran through the woods back to Pinehurst, Pam came across the corpse of Matt whose forehead was nailed to a tree with a railroad tie/spike (# 19 death) (off-screen). When she was back in the main house, the body of George with his eyes gouged out was hurled through the window (# 20 death) (off-screen). As she fled and crawled in the mud to get away, the 'Jason Voorhees' killer raised the machete above her, ready to strike, when Reggie suddenly burst through the barn door, driving a tractor loader with a scoop in front and blinding headlights, and knocked him down - but the maniacal murderer wasn't killed.

Reggie and Pam ran to the barn, where she attacked the killer with a chainsaw and sliced his left arm, but then her weapon-tool conked out. Fortunately, Tommy walked in, but stood almost hypnotized as he saw 'Jason' in front of him, and experienced flashbacks of their last encounter. After being slashed across the chest with the machete, Tommy came to his senses and fought back against the demonic assailant, stabbing 'Jason' in the leg with his jack-knife. He then climbed a ladder to the upper level hayloft of the barn where the other two survivors were hiding - and then passed out. 'Jason' was knocked out of the upper barn window, but held on to the floor, crawled back up, and attempted to pull Reggie and Pam with him. Tommy woke up, cut off 'Jason's' forearm with the machete - and propelled him a second time out of the barn opening onto a bed of iron-spiked farm equipment (a tractor harrow) below, where his body was impaled (# 21 death). The hockey-mask was dislodged from his face and the rain washed away his 'Jason' makeup, revealing that he was not 'Jason,' but ambulance paramedic Roy Burns the film's major plot twist.

In the hallway of a hospital as Reggie and Pam recovered from their traumatic evening, Sheriff Tucker divulged the meaning behind disgruntled Roy's revenge as a copycat killer. He had been seeking retribution for the death of his patient son Joey and had used the persona of 'Jason' as a cover-up:

"The kid who was axed to death at the woodpile was Roy's son. God only knows why Roy kept it hidden all these years, but he did. Roy was a real loner. Never talked much, not even to the other paramedics."

Feeling guilty for abandoning his infant son, Roy sought vengeance on those who had tormented Joey - and many others. When he arrived on the traumatic scene and saw his son "all hacked to pieces," he went insanely crazy: "I guess he used the Jason thing to cover up with."

[Dream] A few moments later, as Pam visited Tommy in his hospital room, he suddenly attacked her with a machete - he viciously stabbed her in the stomach (# 22 death) and then laughed hysterically. But then he woke and sat up, realizing that the previous attack was only an hallucinatory dream/nightmare.

However, he was increasingly suffering from hallucinations of the hockey-masked killer and was becoming more deranged from the accumulation of horrific incidents he had experienced. He appeared to incorporate Jason's crazed mind-frame into his own. He removed a hockey-mask from his bedside dresser drawer where his belongings were kept, and stared at it. When he heard footsteps approaching (Pam was coming for a visit), he crashed the window.

Pam found his room empty and the smashed window, exclaiming: "Oh my God!" - believing that he had run away. However, as the door closed behind her, Tommy was revealed, wearing the hockey mask - and this time, preparing to attack her with his upraised machete. (Was he the next Jason?) The film ended with a zoom to his eyeball under the mask, and a fade to black before the credits.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

With a production budget of approximately $2.2 million, and box-office gross revenues of $21.9 million (domestic).

With the tagline: "If Jason still haunts you, you're not alone...".

The slasher film was distinguished by its 'who-dun-it' premise and major plot twist.

There were a record number of killings of peripheral characters in this film - almost two dozen (until the 9th and 10th films when the numbers soared further), and more female nudity than any other film up to this point. The film required numerous cuts to avoid an X-rating.

In this film, Jason didn't actually appear - except as part of the prologue's nightmare or as Tommy's haunting hallucination.

This fifth film was universally criticized as one of the worst of the series, with bland and stereotypical characterizations.

Body Count: 22 (2 committed by Jason in young Tommy's nightmare in the film's opening, 1 committed by psychopathic patient Vic when he killed Joey, 17 committed by 'Jason' copy-cat - paramedic Roy Burns, and 2 committed by older Tommy Jarvis - the killing of Roy Burns and Tommy's hallucinatory murder of Pam in the conclusion).