The Films: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

Starring: John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Melanie Kinnaman
Directed by: Danny Steinmann
Screenplay by: Martin Kitrosser, David Cohen and Danny Steinmann
Executive Producer: Frank Mancuso, Jr.
Produced by: Timothy Silver
Editor: Bruce Green
Original Music by: Harry Manfredini
Make-Up Effects by: Martin Becker, David B. Miller
Casting by: Fern Champion, Pamela Basker
Director of Photography: Stephen L. Posey
MPAA Rating: R
Theatrical Release Year: 1985
Running Time: 92 minutes
Soundtrack: Mono
Aspect Ratio 1.85:1

If Jason still haunts you...you're not alone.

THE STORY

Lightning flashes across the breadth of the graveyard, the pouring rain pounding at the ground. A newly-dug grave is momentarily illuminated, the fresh scrawl on its wooden marker revealing the name JASON VOORHEES.

There is a sense of urgency in the accelerated pace of the young boy who moves quickly through a wooded forest toward the graveyard. It is Tommy Jarvis (COREY FELDMAN), who is both excited and frightened as he reaches Jason's grave. The mood is quickly broken as two young men arrive. Neil (TODD BRYANT) and Les (CURTIS CONAWAY) both carry shovels; they are talking about digging up the grave of "the Main Man." As they two begin to dig at the grave, Tommy watches from his hiding place behind a nearby tree.

Neil and Les manage to unearth the casket, and they remove spikes from the coffin and lift off the lid. Inside, the corpse of Jason is revealed; it is infested by swarming insects. Jason's face is covered by a hockey mask, and as Neil begins to remove it, Jason's arm thrusts upward. A butcher knife rips straight through Neil's abdomen. Jason's left arm then swings upward and an ice pick pierces straight through Les' neck.

Jason's line of vision settles on the spot where Tommy has been hiding. Their eyes meet. ,Jason, wrenching the butcher knife out from Neil's stomach, advances toward Tommy as the rain reaches torrential intensity. Tommy, panic-stricken and frozen to his spot, screams hysterically as Jason swings the butcher knife at him....

This nightmare jolts the 18-year-old Tommy Jarvis (JOHN SHEPHERD) awake. He bolts upright; he is sweating profusely. He is in the back of a van from The Unger Institute of Mental Health, and the vehicle has arrived at the halfway house, little more than a weathered country farmhouse, a barn and a few sheds. Two apparent patients, a rotund boy named Joey (DOMINIC BRASCIA) and an earthy girl called Robin (JULIETTE CUMMINS) watch this new arrival as an elderly black man named George (VERNON WASHINGTON) tends to his chores.

Greeting Tommy as he steps from the van is Pam Roberts (MELANIE KINNAMAN), the assistant director of the institute. Following her through the clinic, Tommy observes two other people, Violet (TIFFANY HELM), a punk rocker with multi-colored hair, and Jake (JERRY PAVLON), who are painting a wall.

In the office of institution director Dr. Matthew Peters (RICHARD YOUNG), Tommy is told that the clinic is run on an honor system and that there are no guards, in preparation for the patients to re-enter society and start a new life. Tommy has been admitted here because of the severe trauma he experienced at the age of 12 during a brutal self-defense murder of a psychopathic killer. He has been treated ever since, and he seems well on his way to complete recovery.

Tommy, who has not said a word yet, settles into his room, bare except for a bed, a chest of drawers, a mirror and a closet. Among the belongings he unpacks is a sheathed hunting knife, which Tommy places under his mattress. In his room, Tommy is frightened by a trick played by a young black boy, Reggie (SHAVAR ROSS), brandishing a grotesque fake rubber spider. Tommy, in turn, scares the youngster by putting on one of his hand-made horror masks. Reggie is the grandson of clinic worker George.
Arriving at the institute are Sheriff Cal Tucker (MARCO ST. JOHN) and his inept deputy, Carl Dodd (RICHARD LINEBACK), who are returning two young patients found having sex on nearby Hubbard property. The two defiant teenagers are the sexually-uninhibited tease Tina (DEBBISUE VOORHEES) and Eddie (JOHN ROBERT DIXON), an excessively troublesome jock.

Soon thereafter, arriving together on a motorcycle, come Junior Hubbard (RON SLOAN), a large and dim-witted sort, and his passenger, his mother Ethel Hubbard (CAROL LACATELL). The tiny but feisty woman causes a scene yelling that the "looney bin" should be closed down.

Later, there is a tragic incident at the institute. While splitting logs, Victor (MARK VENTURINT) is annoyed by the chocolate-eating nuisance Joey, who is considered a pest by many others as well. Fed up with Joey, Victor swings an axe into Joey's body and continues hacking away.

An ambulance arrives to transport Joey's lifeless body. It is driven by Duke Johnson (CASKEY SWAIN), a gum-chewing paramedic. The assistant, Roy Burns (DICK WIEAND), a quiet and rotund man, assists in getting Joey's dead bloody corpse onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance. The police have handcuffed Victor, who sits in the squad car while the institute residents cry together.

A distance from the institute, on a deserted country road at night, Vinnie (ANTHONY BARILLE), a wiry teenager in a black leather jacket, is attempting to fix his car. Inside at the driver's wheel is Pete (COREY PARKER), also in black leather, his hair piled high in a perfectly-shaped pompadour. While Vinnie continues his efforts, Pete heads for the nearby woods to relieve himself. From nowhere, a lit flare is ignited and plunged deep into Vinnie's mouth, his flesh burning as his face contorts in pain. Pete returns to the car, unaware of Vinnie's fate. As he once again sits behind the wheel, the car starts up. Suddenly, a machete appears from behind Pete. It swiftly gauges deep into and across his neck.

The next morning, Tommy is frightened when he stares into the mirror; in reflection, Tommy sees the figure of Jason behind him, holding a butcher knife in his raised hand. But the room is empty. At breakfast, Tommy has a fight with the jock Eddie, who has scared him with the latex mask he has put on.

At Ethel Hubbard's run-down house, she is preparing stew at her enormous cast iron stove. Her son is slurping the stew out of a big pot when a powerfully-built but shabbily-dressed drifter, Raymond Cooper (SONNY SHIELDS), appears at the door asking for work. Ethel assigns him to clean out the chicken coop.

At a nearby greasy spoon, waitress Lana (REBECCA WOOD-SKARKEY) is finishing her chores while her boyfriend Billy (BOB DE SIMONE) waits outside in his car, his stereo blasting. An axe comes crashing down into his skull; his head splits open. Coming outside, Lana, too, is murdered when an axe swings down and is imbedded between her breasts. Mayor Cobb (RIC MANCINI) , livid that a psycho has once again resamed his murderous rampage, demands that Sheriff Tucker get him the killer. Tucker tells him the murderer must be Jason Voorhees, who must still be alive.

The wild Tina and Eddie are in the woods to have sex when they are spotted by the drifter Raymond, who becomes excited by the sight of the heated couple. While Raymond watches, a large hunting knife is thrust quickly and deeply into his stomach and twisted from side to side inside him. Eddie and Tina, having reached climax, relax. Eddie heads towards a stream to wash up while Tina reclines. Her rest is interrupted when a pair of hedge shears comes directly at her. Eddie returns to Tina, who is lying naked on her side, her face obscured from his view. He kisses her naked back, but when he turns her body towards him screams in horror that her facial features have been ripped out of her head, leaving exposed tissue on the surface. As he tries to escape, he knocks up against a tree, and a thick leather strap is lowered around Eddie's head, then pulled tight to strangle him.

Assistant director of the institute Pam has agreed to drive Reggie to visit his brother at a trailer park, and they have invited Tommy to join them. The brother, Demon (MIGUEL A. NUNEZ, JR.) is a black teenage punk. When they arrive, Demon and his girlfriend Anita (JERE FIELDS) are obviously high on drugs.

Tommy waits outside the van when a speedy motorcycle driven by Junior Hubbard tries to run him down. A fight ensues where Tommy pounds his fist into Junior's face, but then Tommy runs away down the road. Pam and Reggie jump into the truck in pursuit of Tommy.
The junk food Demon has been eating causes him to get sick and he rushes to the Port-o-John. Playing a joke, Anita begins to shake the outhouse, then giggles at her joke. Then all is silent. Again the entire toilet begins to shake violently. Demon cannot get out of the Port-o-John because the door is blocked by Anita's bloodied body; her neck is gashed. A long sharp tent pole juts through the enclosure, ramming straight through Demon's chest as he is impaled above the toilet.

A thunderstorm is beginning when Pam and Reggie return to Pinehurst, where the patients are distressed because people are missing. Pam sends everyone into the house, then gets back into the truck to go find Tommy.

At the Hubbard house, Junior returns, yelling and cursing like a madman, his face bloodied from the confrontation with Tommy. From behind one of the nearby trees, a butcher cleaver swings straight into Junior's head, chopping it off.

A hand holding a butcher knife comes crashing through the window by which Ethel is cooking, plunging the weapon into her skull. Her head drops into the iron pot as the stew she has been making turns blood red.

Searching for Tommy, Pam is distressed when the truck runs out of gas, forcing her to walk back to the institute on foot. Back there, Jake's head has been slashed open by a machete. Going to bed, Robin discovers the sheets are soaked with blood, and she is horrified to find Jake's mutilated face. She is dispensed when a machete is savagely thrust upwards, bursting straight out through her chest. Also in the house, doing her exercises, Violet is murdered.

Reggie, who has been sleeping downstairs, has awakened and when he checks Tommy's upstairs room, a flash of lightning illuminates the dead bodies of Jake, Robin and Violet. Racing madly down the hallway, Reggie bumps into the returning Pam, and they attempt to flee through the front door. The massive figure of Jasons Voorhees fills the door frame, towering over them. Reggie and Pam escape through the back door, and begin to race through the woods. At a clearing, they find the bloodied body of ambulance driver Duke Johnson in the paramedic's vehicle. There is also the mauled body of Matt, impaled on a tree, a large steel spike protruding from the center of the doctor's forehead.

Separated from Reggie, Pam returns to Pinehurst property and races from room to room looking for a weapon. She finds a large kitchen knife, which she quickly uses when Jason reappears, jamming the knife into his forearm. She tries to escape again, but slips in the mud outside and is grabbed by Jason.
The barn doors crash open as a tractor driven by Reggie heads straight toward Jason, stunning him. Checking the body. Reggie is grabbed by Jason, but Pam's kick into Jason's groin frees him. Pam and Reggie run toward the barn; Jason follows. A spectacular struggle ensues. Tommy, drenched from the outside rain, suddenly appears silhouetted in the barn door. Tommy stares straight into Jason's eyes, and the crazed stalker begins to take very slow, deliberate steps towards him. Tommy manages to plunge a hunting knife into Jason's groin, then joins Pam and Reggie in the hayloft. Jason begins to climb the ladder to . where they are huddled. All three muster all their strength to fight the demonic Jason, who plummets to the ground as his facemask falls away from him. The stalker's body flies through the air and lands, impaled on the steel spike teeth of a tractor harrow.

The madness is over.

The heavy rain pours down on the dead body, gradually rinsing away a thin layer of latex disguise from his face. Under the latex make-up, the face of the quiet and agreeable paramedic Roy Burns is revealed. It was Burns who had arrived at the institute with partner Duke Johnson in their ambulance to take away the corpse of inmate Joey who had died from axe wounds inflicted by Victor.

This killer thought to be the demonic Jason is not Jason at all.

At the Pinehurst Medical Center waiting room, Sheriff Tucker reveals the contents of a leather wallet found on murderer Roy Burns body. Inside is a recent photograph of murdered patient Joey. The police officer explains, "This kid Joey axed to death at the woodpile was Roy's son." Roy had become deranged when he saw his own son all hacked to pieces. As Roy Burns had closely followed the newspaper accounts describing the history and rampages of Jason Voorhees, he "used the Jason thing as his cover-up," the sheriff tells.

In his hospital room, Tommy Jarvis is once more unsettled by his horrific nightmares. He has envisioned himself being transformed into a crazed madman, wielding an axe into Pam's head.

Tommy is confused and disoriented, adrift in some shadow place between reality and illusion, when he opens his eyes in his hospital room and focuses on the full figure of Jason looking down at him. Tommy and Jason stare at each other, but the fear that once registered on Tommy's face has now been replaced by an expression that is relaxed and knowing. A hint of a smile crosses Tommy's face. And with that, Jason disappears from the room.

Pulling the intravenous tubes from his body, Tommy rises out of the bed and extracts a hockey mask from the bureau, which he slowly raises to his face. From the corridor, he hears the sound of approach- ing footsteps. Someone attempts to open the door, but Tommy slams it shut, yelling, "No! Please don't come in here."

Outside the door, Pam hears the sound of breaking glass. The door flies open. Entering Tommy's hospital room, all she sees are the dangling intravenous cords and an empty bed. Broken glass covers the floor, and the curtains are blowing through open windows.

As the door slowly swings shut behind Pam, a hidden Tommy can be glimpsed, his fiercely maniacal eyes staring out from behind a hockey mask...