Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Hor-RIFF-ic Productions)

Film Year:  1984
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Joeseph Zito
Starring:  Corey Feldman's bad haircut, a dancing Crispin Glover

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Friday the 13th is about as unkillable as it's hockey-masked antagonist.  The series tried to give the world a grand finale not once but TWICE and neither of them stuck.  At least in the case of Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday it took nine full years for them to bring back the Jason character, but with Friday the 13th:  The Final Chapter they pretty much just lied to their audience and brought a sequel out the following year.

But supposedly this was to be the final film with Jason, who was becoming something of a horror superstar.  It feels strange to me that they felt the need to give him a major sendoff after only two movies of him being the primary killer (and only one with his famous hockey mask, which I guess gained instant notoriety), but I wasn't yet born when these first four Fridays were released (I popped out of the womb later in 1984) so I probably don't have a context for how popular Jason was.  It was around Jason Takes Manhattan that I started becoming familiar with the ideas and tropes of the character (I wasn't yet allowed to watch the movies), and by then Jason was definitely a legend.

Friday the 13th:  The Final Chapter is another film that supposedly doesn't take place on a Friday the 13th.  It starts on the night after the previous film which was already the day after Part 2, which would mean it starts on Sunday the 15th, and continues into the next day which means technically this is Monday the 16th.  In yet another spot around Crystal Lake a group of teenagers rent out a house to screw around in.  However Jason escapes the morgue and hitchhikes back home to kill them all once again.

Friday fans consider this one of the best of its series.  I'm not too inclined to disagree.  It's one of the more slickly made Friday movies and it keeps the hollow fun vibe the previous film offered.  It's inane as hell though, even by Friday the 13th standards.  It introduces a character related to a victim from Part 2, who is apparently out for revenge and has been studying Jason for years...despite his relative having been killed three days prior.  Pre-Stand By Me Corey Feldman has a big climactic scene with Jason in the finale, and his plan to bring the masked killer down rivals the sweater girl from Part 2 for dumbest plan I've ever seen in a horror movie.

But it's bubblegum entertainment.  Don't think too hard about it, just chew it.  Look at the pretty girls take their tops off, watch gore effects by Tom Savini, see silent film porn, and take in that weird dance that pre-Back to the Future Crispin Glover is doing for some reason.  In all these aspects Friday the 13th:  The Final Chapter delivers more than most Friday the 13th films.

The Riff

There's something that can be said for the persistence of Hor-RIFF-ic Productions, as they continue to chug along on these Friday films.  I'd love for all of them to be riffed, so they have my full support in doing so.  Unfortunately starting off in this one it feels like they're phoning it in.  For the first few sequences this riff doesn't have a lot of laughs, and Gary, Erin, and Satan sound like they're bored.  With a film series that thrives on giving the audience more of the same, I can't really blame them.

"She died as she lived:  For no apparent reason at all."

Once we meet the main cast of horny teenagers the humor pace picks up.  They're a colorful batch of sluts and boytoys this time around, and our riffers seem to get more material out of their silly partying ways.  The steady incline peaks and levels out at about the hour mark, making the riff leave a better impression when it ends than when it started.

"Did Jason just kill someone with a jump cut?"

All of this in consideration I'd say this one is better than Part 2, but on the whole the funny quota just isn't reached for me to consider it a must see.  The people at Hor-RIFF-ic have proved that Friday the 13th can give them exactly what they need to thrive, but I hope the next time around they fine tune and polish the riff script up a bit.

Average