- Directed by Joseph Zito
- Written by Victor Miller, Ron Kurz, Martin Kitrosser
- Stars Erich Anderson, Judie Aronson, Peter Barton
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpWpe8REbag
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Spoiler: this wasn’t really the final chapter. The budget was bigger and the popularity was growing. This is another continuation right after the events of the first three films, and Jason does more of his thing to a number of hapless victims. There are lots of stunts and action and all-around entertainment.
Synopsis
We get a clip of the counselors in the previous film telling the story of Mrs. Vorhees, Jason, Alice, and everything else we’ve seen so far. Credits roll, this time showing us the hockey mask.
Ambulances cart away the bodies of the previous film as we start where part 3 ended. The police find Jason’s body, still in the hockey mask, and they put a sheet over his corpse. The paramedics don’t like dealing with Jason, but he’s dead, so whatever. They load him into the back of an ambulance and drive off. They hand him over to Axel the morgue attendant at the hospital. The attendant and the nurse start to get it on in the body storage room, but even dead, Jason can break that up. Axel eventually rolls Jason into the cold storage drawer.
Oh wait, surprise, Jason’s not dead! But Axel and the nurse soon are.
Tommy and his sister Trish talk about the new neighbors; six young people are moving in. We cut to a car with six 1980’s teen stereotypes. They get lost and park right in front of the grave of Pamela Voorhees. A nearby hitchhiker is murdered moments later. Samantha and Sara talk about how many boys they’ve had sex with. Tommy watches Samantha get undressed from his bedroom window.
The young people run into a set of twins, Tina, and Teri, and they’re all going to Crystal Lake for the afternoon. Sara decides to head home on her own but backs into a jump scare instead. Everyone goes skinny dipping as little Tommy arrives to see many naked butts. Trisha grabs him to go home, but their car breaks down on the road.
Rob, a hiker, comes out of the woods and helps with Trish’s car. They take him home so Tommy can show him all the Halloween masks that Tommy makes. Some of his stuff is straight out of the props department of a horror film.
Over at the party house, everyone dances. Next door, Trisha says goodbye to Rob, who is getting back on the road. Ted and Jimmy bicker about girls, and why neither of them is getting any action. One girl goes out and lays on an inflatable boat until Jason runs her through—all the way through. Her boyfriend Paul swims out to the little boat, finds the body, and then gets speared in the groin.
Rob, camping nearby, hears Paul’s screams and goes out with his machete looking for trouble. When he returns, his shotgun, map, and stuff have been vandalized.
In the house, Tina wants to leave, but Teri’s in the middle of sex with Jimmy. Tina goes out in the rain to go home. While Ted and the gang watch some ancient 8mm porn, Teri gets stabbed in the barn. Sara and Doug have an awkward I’m-a-good-girl-so-no-sex-for-you talk.
Tommy’s mom returns home, but the power is off. Trisha and Tommy come home too and find their mother is not at home. Trisha goes off looking and finds Rob’s deserted, wrecked tent. She runs into him and gets scared by his machete.
Jimmy goes downstairs for wine and finds a corkscrew—the hard way. Teri soon goes for a flying leap.
Rob tells Trisha about Jason, the killer who killed his sister in one of the previous films. He knows that Jason’s body disappeared from the morgue. That’s what he’s really here to hunt.
Ted gets knifed. Sara changes her mind about the no-sex rule and gets it on with Doug in the shower. Doug gets… a crush, but Sara gets the ax.
Rob and Trish stop by to look for her missing mother, and they just walk right in. She finds Doug’s corpse and flips out, calling for Rob, who finds Jason more quickly than he intended. As Trish runs away, she finds all the other bodies.
She runs home and tells Tommy to lock the doors and windows. Jason throws Rob’s body through the window and grabs Tommy. Trisha smacks him good with the machete, and the sister and brother run upstairs and barricade themselves into his bedroom.
Jason gets an ax and cuts his way inside. She hits him over the head with a TV, which shocks him out for a bit. They have to tiptoe past Jason to get out, and that goes about how you’d expect. The chase is back on!
Trish runs back into the murder house next door and falls out the upstairs window. Tommy reads Rob’s newspaper accounts of Jason and sees a picture of him. He goes into the bathroom and starts shaving his head….
Jason catches Trish and starts to kill her until Tommy comes downstairs and calls his name. He’s bald and looks like young Jason did, which confuses and distracts him. Trish hacks his mask off with the machete, and then Tommy runs Jason’s whole head through with the machete. Yeah, he’s not sitting up from that one! Actually, Jason does start to twitch his fingers, but Tommy finishes the job with about fifty more hacks with the machete.
In the hospital, the doctor says Tommy is going to be just fine; he’ll outgrow it all. Tommy gives us a look that says he isn’t going to be fine.
Commentary
It’s got Crispin Glover, Corey Feldman, and a host of other familiar faces from the period, so the cast is pretty good. It’s got a lot of stunts and action sets, so it’s clear they had a higher budget than before. It was still super profitable, so “The Final Chapter” may have been a poor choice for a title.
Did this group of teenagers rent this house? The furnishing look like it belongs to an old lady. The discovery of antique porn seemed to be accidental, so it’s not their house.
All these people read in the newspaper about the colossal mass murder that happened just last night, and still, they all decide to go play in the woods. Would the police not be out in full force? Rob knew that Jason had escaped from the morgue, so the police would have to be aware as well.
There are too many teenagers, most of whom are never named on-screen. Nothing new is really added to the lore here, I suspect they really did think this was going to be the end, so they simply wrapped up all the loose ends from the previous films.
It was good, but it wasn’t the end.