Random Creepy Scene #846: Friday the 13th - Part VII: The New Blood

The Friday the 13th franchise isn't exactly renowned for its subtlety. It is a series of movies essentially repeating a very familiar pattern: teens in secluded backwoods by Crystal Lake fall victim to hulking killer Jason Voorhees. After they’ve indulged in booze, drugs and premarital sex, naturally. It’s generally held that the higher the number of the sequel, the lesser the quality of the film. This has never stopped me from enjoying each instalment though. With a nice, dry Sauvignon blanc.

In Part VII of the series, the filmmakers actually attempted to take the franchise in a slightly new direction – as well as all the usual oblivious teens wandering around in the dark woods investigating strange noises and getting murderlised by Jason, a young woman with latent telekinetic powers is also thrown into the mix. It’s essentially Jason vs. Carrie and was intended to directly compete with the successful and more overtly supernatural A Nightmare on Elm Street Series – in fact The New Blood started out as the first attempt to face Jason off against Freddy Kreuger. This fell through though.

Years after Tommy Jarvis seemingly defeated him and chained him underwater at Camp Crystal Lake, everyone’s favourite hockey-masked killer, Jason Voorhees, returns to stalk and slash teenagers when he's accidently released by a young woman with psychic powers…

The film does exhibit one moment of genuine creepiness and subtlety. After David and Robyn have sex, he ventures downstairs to get a midnight snack. As the power is out, he takes a torch. Moving through the darkened house – lit only by his torch and sporadic lightning from the storm raging outside – David enters the kitchen and fails to see the hulking brute Jason standing stock still in the corner behind him (visible in top right-hand corner of the fourth still below). Just standing there. Watching. Waiting. In the dark. We only see him briefly when lightning momentarily lights the entire room. This is one of the few instances in the series where we get a genuine hint of Jason’s sadistic and darkly calculating nature. There is something supremely creepy about him just standing there, so out of place in the cosy confines of this secluded, balloon-filled holiday cabin home… 






The creepiness ends here and the usual in-your-face and bloody, bull-in-a-china-shop carnage associated with Friday the 13th soon recommences... 



Popular posts from this blog

Otherworldly Encounters on Halloween

Image
Oíche Shamhna shona duit. To celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, my dear friend Marie – a writer and folklorist based in Missouri - has put together a podcast exploring first-hand paranormal experiences that took place on Halloween. The stories and accounts are shared from r/Paranormal , The Fairy Census , and the Dúchas Schools Collection (part of the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project).  Between the stories, one of which is read by yours truly, Marie explores some of the history and folklore surrounding the traditions of Halloween, or Samhein, as it was known in Ireland where it originates from. An important festival in the ancient Celtic calendar to mark the end of summer, Samhein (Irish for November), is the night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes thinnest, allowing souls of the deceased to pass through into our world and roam freely. The night we call Halloween in English, is Oíche Shamhna: literally Samhain (November) Eve. To listen t
Read more

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

Image
1985 Dir. Danny Steinmann Five years after his run in with hulking serial killer Jason Voorhees, the now 17 year old Tommy Jarvis remains traumatised by memories and nightmares of that fateful night. Released from an institution and sent to live in a halfway house for troubled teens undergoing rehabilitation, Tommy’s nightmare is far from over. A slew of brutal murders in the area would suggest Jason has returned from the grave – or that Tommy has descended into madness. But who’s that minor cast member over there with the wild ‘n’ crazy look in his eye? Is it someone who is pretending to be Jason to avenge the death of his son – also a resident at the halfway house? No.  Surely not. A New Beginning is often maligned by fans as it is the only film (aside from Part 1 ) not to feature Jason Voorhees as the killer. While the killer dresses as Jason and has a motive that also involves avenging the death of a family member, it isn’t the real Jason. You might be forgiven for thinki
Read more

Strip Nude For Your Killer

Image
1975 Dir. Andrea Bianchi When a fashion model dies during surgery to perform an abortion, a slew of violent murders ensue, starting with that of the doctor who tried to cover up her death. The killer’s victims are all connected to a fashion modelling agency where the dead woman worked. As the body count rises, a couple of scantily clad amateur sleuths try to discover the killer’s identity before they too are struck off. “ I feel too hot to be a corpse, baby .” To describe Strip Nude For Your Killer as trashy and exploitative would really be a fantastically obvious understatement. Hey, with a title like that, one should really know what to expect. Of course, there are those films with truly exploitative, titillating titles that can never hope to live up to the lurid promise their monikers suggest – Strip Nude is not one of those films. It does exactly what it says on the tin. The surprising thing is that the film is actually very enjoyable, in a trashy, campy, exploitative
Read more