Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

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

”— Tagline
***Friday the 13th: A New Beginning*** is a 1985 American slasher film (combining elements of the psychological thriller genre) and is the fifth installment in the *Friday the 13th* franchise. It is the last film to be directed by Danny Steinmann. The film stars John Shepherd as Tommy Jarvis, the heroic boy from *Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter* (1984) who killed Jason Voorhees, and a series of similar murders surrounding the halfway house he currently resides at. Shepherd replaces Corey Feldman, who played Tommy in *The Final Chapter*, although Feldman makes a cameo appearance in the film's prologue.

*A New Beginning* departs from the Camp Crystal Lake setting and Voorhees-themed mystery of the previous four installments, instead acting as a psychological horror film set at a fictional halfway house in Pennsylvania, and was going to set up a new trilogy of films with a different villain for the series. However, after *A New Beginning*'s disappointing reception from fans and steep decline in box-office receipts from *The Final Chapter*, Jason Voorhees was brought back for *Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives* and has been the main antagonist in every entry in the series since.

The frequency of graphic violence and gore is expedited in *A New Beginning*, with a then-series high body count. Aside from its gore, the film has also become known for its explicit nudity and sex scenes, as well as frequent drug use. Peter Bracke's book *Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th* details that behind the scenes, the production was plagued with hardcore drug use. Produced on a budget of $2.2 million, *A New Beginning* grossed $21.9 million at the box office in the United States, making it the second poorest performing film in the *Friday the 13th* series at the time with a steep decline from the previous two entries, both of which had made well over $34 million domestically. In addition to weak box office returns, most critics gave the film negative reviews. In later years, the film has obtained a cult following.

## Plot

A young Tommy Jarvis stumbles upon a graveyard while walking through the woods on a rainy night, where he witnesses two grave robbers digging up the corpse of Jason Voorhees. Jason rises from the grave and murders the two graverobbers before advancing towards Tommy.

Awakening from his nightmare, fifteen-year-old Tommy is delivered to Pinehurst; a halfway house in which he can hope to acclimate to a normal life. The director Pam introduces Tommy to the head doctor Matt, and up in his assigned room, he meets Reggie, a boy who is visiting his grandfather George who works in the kitchen. Other teens introduced are Robin, goth Violet, shy Jake, attitude-ridden Vic and compulsive eater Joey. The sheriff brings two more residents, nymphomaniac couple Tina and Eddie, after catching them having sex on the neighbor Ethel Hubbard's lawn. The Hubbards show up moments later and threaten to have the "loony bin" closed down. Afterward, Vic and Joey get in a minor altercation, which results in Vic slaughtering Joey with an double-bit axe and he is subsequently arrested. Attending ambulance drivers Duke and Roy Burns discover the body. Roy is devastated and angered by Duke's light attitude regarding the murder. That night, two teens, Pete and Vinnie, are stranded by the road. They are soon killed when an unseen killer shoves a road flare into Vinnie's mouth, then slashes Pete's throat with a machete. The following night, hospital orderly Billy and his girlfriend Lana are killed with an double-bit axe. Panic begins to ensue, but the mayor refuses the sheriff's claim that somehow Jason Voorhees has returned. Meanwhile, Tommy experiences hallucinations of Jason when he takes his medicine while Tina and Eddie run off to have sex.

Ethel's temporary farmhand is murdered watching the teens have sex, then Tina's eyes are gouged out by a pair of shears while Eddie is away for a moment. He returns to discover her, and is killed when his skull is crushed against a tree with a belt. At the house, George gives Reggie permission to visit his visiting brother Demon, and Matt convinces Pam to take Tommy with them. While there, Junior instigates a fight with Tommy, and he runs off when Pam tries to stop it. After Reggie and Pam leave, Demon and his girlfriend Nita are killed as well. Pam returns Reggie to the house and they say that Matt and George left to find Tina and Eddie who hadn't returned and Pam leaves to find everyone. At the Hubbard farm, Junior is decapitated riding his bike angrily in the yard while Ethel is killed with a cleaver. While watching *A Place in the Sun* on TV, Jake confesses his attraction to Robin who laughs at him and he storms off, only to be killed by a cleaver to his face. Later, Robin goes to bed and discovers Jake's body before getting stabbed from underneath the bed. The killer moves into Violet's room and stabs her while she is dancing to music. Reggie awakens and discovers their bodies in Tommy's room before running into Pam. Jason bursts into the house and chases them out into the rain, after discovering Duke's dead body they double back and Pam finds Matt, dead and nailed to a tree. She returns to the house and George, whose eyes had been gouged out, is thrown through a window at her. She rushes toward the barn, chased by Jason, but he is struck by a tractor driven by Reggie. They run into the barn and hide as Jason comes to find them. Tommy comes shortly after and believes Jason to be a hallucination until he is attacked by him. Together, they manage to get Jason into falling out of the loft window and he is killed on a harrow below. In the process, it is revealed that it was instead Roy Burns all along.

At the hospital, the sheriff tells Pam that Joey was Roy's son, and after seeing him slaughtered adopted Jason's identity to kill everyone at the house. She goes to Tommy's room who awakens and stabs her with a hidden machete before Tommy awakens to a hallucination of Jason. Facing his fears, he makes Jason's illusion disappear. He hears Pam approaching and throws his bed through the window to make it look like he's escaped. When she rushes in, he appears from behind the door, wearing Roy's hockey mask and holding a knife and as the screen goes to black.

## Cast

* Melanie Kinnaman as Pam Roberts
* John Shepherd as Tommy Jarvis
* Shavar Ross as Reggie
* Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis (age 12)
* Richard Young as Matt
* Marco St. John as Sheriff Tucker
* Juliette Cummins as Robin
* Carol Locatell as Ethel
* Vernon Washington as George
* John Robert Dixon as Eddie
* Tiffany Helm as Violet
* Jerry Pavlon as Jake
* Caskey Swaim as Duke
* Mark Venturini as Vic Faden
* Anthony Barrile as Vinniek
* Dominick Brascia as Joey
* Richard Lineback as Deputy Dodd
* Bob DeSimone as Billy
* Jere Fields as Anita
* Ric Mancini as Mayor Cobb
* Miguel A. Núñez, Jr. as Demon
* Corey Parker as Pete
* Rebecca Wood as Lana
* Ron Sloan as Junior
* Debi Sue Voorhees as Tina
* Dick Wieand as Roy Burns
* Tom Morga as Jason Voorhees
* Kimberly Beck as Trish Jarvis (*voice only*)

## Production

According to the *Friday the 13th: Return to Crystal* Lake DVD Box set, Feldman was only able to make a cameo in this film as a result of him filming *The Goonies*. Feldman filmed his *Friday the 13th Part V* cameo on a Sunday as that was his off day of shooting his other film.

## Reception

*Friday the 13th: A New Beginning* opened on March 22, 1985 on 1,759 screens. Like its predecessors, the film received mostly negative reviews, earning a "rotten" 17% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Nonetheless, the film was financially successful, debuting at number 1 on its opening weekend with a gross of $8,032,883, beating the teen sex comedy sequel *Porky's Revenge*, the critically acclaimed biopic *Mask* (starring Cher), Berry Gordy's martial-arts action musical *The Last Dragon* and the Disney dinosaur fantasy *Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend*. By the end of its run, the film would earn $21,930,418 at the domestic box office, placing it at number 41 on the list of 1985's top box office earners. The film squared off against strong genre competition throughout the first half of the year from such high-profile horror releases as *Cat's Eye* and *Lifeforce*.

## Soundtrack

On January 13, 2012, La-La Land Records released a limited edition 6-CD boxset containing Harry Manfredini's scores from the first six *Friday the 13th* films. It sold out in less than 24 hours.

**Films:** *Friday the 13th* • *Part 2* • *Part III* • *The Final Chapter* • ***A New Beginning*** • *Jason Lives* • *The New Blood* • *Jason Takes Manhattan* • *Jason Goes to Hell* • *Jason X* • *Freddy vs. Jason* • *Friday the 13th* (2009)
**Characters:** Jason Voorhees • Pamela Voorhees
**Comics:** *Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash* • *The Nightmare Warriors*
**Games and TV:** *Friday the 13th* (1985 game) • *Friday the 13th* (NES game) • *Mortal Kombat X* • *Friday the 13th: The Series*
**Related topics:** *A Nightmare on Elm Street* • *Mortal Kombat* • *Evil Dead*