Skip to main content

31 Days of Horror Movies: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning



Today's film is a favorite from my childhood. That's right: I watched a slasher film as a kid. Don't judge (me, or my parents). You get scared. You laugh at some parts. It was fun. And this one didn't give me a single nightmare. Let's take a look at...

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

The fifth entry in the once-popular Friday the 13th series of movies finds us at a relatively isolated home for troubled youth that is located, of course, deep in the woods. We arrive at the youth home via Tommy Jarvis, a guy with definite issues. He was in the previous Friday the 13th, portrayed that time by little Corey Feldman. Most everyone he knew was murdered by Jason Voorhees. Now, Tommy is all grown-up, played by the rather dishy John Shepherd.

I'm about to spoil the movie's big reveal for you ---  Jason Voorhees isn't the killer. True, there's a maniac running around in a hockey mask, slashing-up sex-crazed teenagers, but it isn't the notorious murderer who dominates most of the series. This time, it's a paramedic named Roy. You see, his illegitimate son was a resident at the youth home and was violently killed by one of the other residents. Now, instead of seeking justice for his son by having the actual killer put away for years, Roy decided to don a hockey mask and chop-up the other residents.

Just roll with it.

At any rate, I mentioned earlier that Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is a childhood favorite. And so it is. It stands out as being the most comical of the slasher films in this series, and features an assortment of odd and amusing characters. I taped (that's 'recorded' for those of you who were born post-1990) the movie off of HBO, and often watched it repeatedly with my friend Derrick. We would roll over laughing at some of the scenes and lines (such as "Those damn enchiladas!"), and overall had a blast.

It may seem weird to laugh at a horror movie, but keep in mind that the Friday the 13th series wasn't exactly high art, that it tried at times to be amusing, and that laughing at gross stuff is what teenage boys do. I have to say: If you're going to watch an '80s slasher flick (of which there are many), then give this one a look. It ain't pretty, but sometimes you just feel like slumming it for a bit.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing).  It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.
5 comments
Read more

She's Madonna

Today we're going to talk about something very important. We're going to talk about Madonna. "Madge," as she's affectionately known around the gay scene, has been making music for over thirty years. I grew up with her songs, many of them pop classics. In recent years, it can be arguably said that her popularity has waned a bit. During the past decade, Madonna has put out seventeen singles. Of those, three have charted in the US Top 40. Ten Failed to chart at all on the Billboard Hot 100. We now have at least one possibility offered as to why Madge's chart power is waning: Ageism. At least, that's what Diplo (just, Diplo), a producer of some of the tracks off her latest album, thinks . I know it's difficult to be objective about something you've worked on -- whether you were the producer or the artist -- but, as a listener/fan, I have to say that Madonna's most recent work has simply not been that good. Still, we'll hear what
Post a Comment
Read more