Years have passed since Jason Voorhees was finally killed by young Tommy Jarvis (as seen in the ending of "Friday the 13th The Final Chapter"), but the young man was severely traumatized by the experience. Now a grown-up young man that looks like a cross between Jeff Fahey and Val Kilmer, Timmy’s been treated at the Pinehurst Youth Development Center for his recurring visions of Jason coming back to life and stalking him. He even has dreams in which he, as a young boy (AKA Corey Feldman in a brief cameo), witnesses Jason killing wannabe gravediggers. But then the killings begin again for real, and Tommy’s twisted and fragile psyche goes into meltdown. By the end of the movie he’s been pushed over the edge, and decides that the only way to make the Jason curse go away is to don the killer’s hockey mask and become him... but I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, no matter how you slice and dice the salami it will always be a salami. And a "Friday the 13th" movie in which Jason isn’t even in the got damn picture cannot truly be a "Friday the 13th" movie. Dig? DIG? Good, neither do I (what?).

Frank Mancuso, Jr. produced "Friday the 13th" films from "Part 2" ‘till this one; his departure from the series after "Part V" gave free reign to freelance producers/directors/writers to take the series into the realm of science fiction, low-brow comedy and just plain awfulness. So, viewed as a desperate attempt by one of its few original producers to keep the teenage-hacking routine from getting stale while cashing on Jason’s image without actually using him (read that two more times if you didn’t get it the first time), "Part V" is not that bad a premise. It’s a major step down from the awesome atmosphere and sadistic cruelty of "The Final Chapter," but that’s the jam into which the producers wrote themselves by killing Jason for real. Traumatizing the Tommy Jarvis character for the sole purpose of exploiting his mental state for future "Friday the 13th" installments would have truly been the ‘new beginning’ the title of the movie hints at. Instead the new team of writers tries to squeeze a preposterous ‘whodunit’ element into the formula which only confuses and irritates. Has Jason come back to life? Is Tommy going through a Sybil face of split-personality psychosis? Is someone else impersonating Jason to avenge a personal wrong? Could it all be happening in Tommy’s head and not for real?

"Part V" could almost be considered a weird tongue-in-cheek attempt at being coy. You know, knowing (and knowing that the audience also knows) how lame an excuse the premise of the movie is. It even creates a new nightmare sequence to open the movie instead of rehashing tons of old footage, ala "Part 3." If it weren’t for its incessantly bad timing and awkward pace, "Part V" might have gotten away with some lore for having the largest amount of casualties of any "Friday the 13th" movie. Instead it’s the point in the series at which everyone involved (including the audience) knew that there was nothing even remotely good or fresh about the formula. A few of the camera angles show signs of creativity, like when Ethel Hubbard gets cleaved in a first-person view while squeezing a tomato. But director Danny Steinmann eventually settles for a standard-issued horror visual style (a fake scare here, a peek through the bushes there, etc.) that’s boring and predictable, not to mention totally at odds with the overbearing and loud histrionics of Harry Manfredini’s musical score.

Steinmann also doesn’t seem to know the basics of how to keep an audience guessing who the killer is; he tips his hand early on with a couple of shots that make it clear to anyone with an ounce of intelligence (which probably excludes most "Friday the 13th" fans anyway, but whatever!) who the real killer is. This renders the scenes in which Tommy Jarvis struggles with his delusions that Jason is chasing him pointless, thus reducing the amount of anything interesting to look at or be entertained with in-between killings. The acting, as always, stinks to high heavens across the board and reaches a new low when hillbilly neighbor Ethel Hubbard (played by Carol Locatell) and her Randy Quaid-lookalike son; these two are on the run with the grocery couple at the beginning of "Part 3" as the most disgusting characters to ever appear in the series. Melanie Kinnaman isn’t as bland a leading woman as "Part 3’s" Dana Kimmell and the original movie’s Adrianne King, but she’s no Amy Steel and can barely follow on the footsteps of "The Final Chapter’s" Kimberly Beck.

The addition of a young black sidekick in the form of smooth-talking Reggie (Shavar Ross) doesn’t add anything to the lackluster personalities of the good guys. It’s sad when the most memorable character in "Part V" are the annoying Dominick Brascia’s Joey (whose death at the hands of a poe’d mental patient kick-start the whole thing), Dick Weands’ Roy Burns (who lets his body, arms and hands do the acting) and the cheekbone muscles of John Shepherd when he gesticulates wildly as Tommy. Corey Feldman’s cameo is also good, especially because it’s so short and inconsequential :-P. There’s no one to like and plenty of losers to dislike and cheer for when they get their due dismemberment/stabbing/death. And there’s not even a central villain worth rooting for, so who the hell cares? This movie is so bad it makes even Freddy Krueger hold his nose using his clawed hand to withhold the stench of its rotten existence. And we have three more "Friday the 13th movies to get through, my goodness!

BODY COUNT: 21 (14 men & seven women, four of them off-camera; three of these deaths took place in dream sequences, but we’re also including Pam because we assume that Tommy did kill her after the camera zoomed all the way into his mask at the end). MOST GRUESOME DEATH: two for the price of one. A very naked girl (see pictures on the right) gets her eyes severed by some garden clippers. Then, when the boyfriend sees her, the shock sends him to a tree against which ‘Jason’ uses a belt to squeeze the poor bastard’s head ‘till it implodes.

1/2