FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD (1988)

If the takings for JASON LIVES on its release had reflected its re-energising of the franchise, maybe FRIDAY THE 13TH could have confidently progressed in a new direction. Paramount had said they would inject higher budgets and greater care into choosing their future directors. Yet the resulting box office of $19.4m made them nervous enough to revert to what they hoped was a formula that previously made more money. With this in mind, their choice of director was actually an understandable one, but PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD ironically had too much of what had gradually eroded the series before Tom Loughlin came in.

Behind the scenes, other deals were being worked on to milk the franchise cash cow. Paramount wanted to get into the lucrative TV syndication market, producing shows that would make enough episodes to sell in perpetuity to their affiliate stations always hungry for product. They selected STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES.
The latter bore no relation to the movie series except for the title, thus circumventing the need to pay creator Sean S. Cunningham and the other owners for the use of their hockey-masked killer. This was also a smart move since it prevented their films from over-exposing him on both mediums at once. The show's idea was based around an antique shop owned by two cousins who each week sold a supernatural store object that becomes the story focus. In spite of its lack of connection, the premise ran successfully for three years, produced in a very hands-on manner by the movie franchise's former overseer Frank Mancuso Jr along with his appointed British line producer Iain Paterson and even drafting in Tom McLoughlin to direct two episodes.

Meanwhile on the big screen the studio was angling to make a crossover movie pitching Jason against competitor New Line's even greater franchise monster Freddy Kreuger. They knew this would be an eagerly-awaited sure-fire hit with fans once they could secure the rights. This proved a protracted negotiation that wasn't finally resolved till 2003 so in the meantime Paramount figured, well, why not rush out another stand-alone potboiler? They decided that this time, inspired by Freddy waiting in the wings, they would try to give Jason an equally strong opponent.

Anything that could detract from the increasingly threadbare template was welcome. Although slasher movies had peaked in 1983 (when an estimated sixty percent of Hollywood projects had some tangential connection with it), slasher-style horror was still very common. Even a mainstream blockbuster like FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) was really a highly effective stalk and slash revenge drama cloaked in A-list production values.

The studio signed up director John Carl Beuchler, to pick up the baton and helm a script by Daryl Haney. Beuchler was a calculated choice as a veteran FX artist/supervisor and horror fan, formerly apprenticed to Rick Baker and Stan Winston. He already had genre form in directing TROLL (1986) and 1988's CELLAR DWELLER. Initially though Beuchler laughed off the idea of being in charge of yet another FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel as something of a joke; he wasn't sure he could get enthused about working on a franchise with the gall to display a PART VII on its poster. Nevertheless he agreed and prepared heavily enough with storyboards to allow him to be a well-liked, relaxed leader on set. From interviews with the actors he was considered an actor's director, all the more remarkable for someone steeped in the FX world.

Screenwriter Daryl Haney didn't get along so well with Beuchler. In his CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES book interview, he was partly aggrieved at not being paid his full Writer's Guild fee for the extensive work he did. Moreover, Beuchler felt that the writer's take on a heroine with psychokinetic powers cleaved too close to the 1976 shocker CARRIE. Beuchler and others worked to reshape the plot into something a little more original and with a more scientifically credible manifestation of the supernatural gift. The director described the finished plot as essentially three movies in one: being similar to FIRESTARTER for the first third, the middle section a standard slasher, then the final act as a TERMINATOR versus CARRIE face-off.

Paramount took so long on deal propositions with the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET team that 1987 was the first year since 1980 that Paramount had missed releasing a Jason movie. Consequently when the wheels turned on THE NEW BLOOD, they had to turn absurdly quickly. Buechler recalled getting the job that November and the film being released the following May, which is incredibly fast even for a micro-budget, non-studio movie. The entire process moved from pre-production through shooting, post-production and scoring in just five months.

It'd be too easy to use this haste as a stick with which to beat the film since I would argue its main flaws have little to do with that burden. The weaknesses in the final product can be blamed on other factors. The most prominent one is the glaringly disappointing central performance by Lar Park Lincoln as the spookily-talented Tina. Sadly this is the only evidence of her link to talent I can detect in the film.

To be fair to Lincoln, firstly she self-deprecatingly attributes her success back then to "a very lucky time period where the blue-eyed, blonde girl was popular on every TV series and horror film. So I worked a lot". Secondly, she undertook extensive research by meeting psychics from whom she gleaned that alleged psychokinetic people succumb to uncontrollable bursts of the activity rather than being in control. She at least plays these moments as a type of possession instead of harnessed in a hokey, smouldering villain manner. However the range is very much beyond her unconvincing emoting. The script certainly aimed to give us value for money in Tina's improbable skill-set: aside from this ability, she is also subject to prescient flashes forward showing us the deaths of others, and has the gift of focusing her power to literally raise the dead - both the father her psychic cyclone killed and even Jason!

The supporting cast are a retrograde step reminiscent of old. We are treated to a gaggle of self-involved, crass twenties twerps whose actors are simply required to pluck a single grating string of character - 'the rich bitch snob', ' the self-pitying loser'  etc. To represent the parents' generation, there is the dull twosome of Terry Kiser and Susan Blu as Tina's therapist and mother respectively. This may not be their fault as the material is soap opera lacklustre. Kiser worked extensively in TV and is best known as the pliable corpse in the WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S movies.

The best casting decision by Beuchler was to give the role of Jason to stunt co-ordinator and actor Kane Hodder in the first of his unprecedented four consecutive turns at bat (amongst other implements) that made him a favourite with fans. Though Hodder was shorter and less bulky than C.J. Graham from JASON LIVES, he was an inspired fit for Beuchler's vision; he wanted a frame with a little less mass in order to support the prosthetics he intended to have applied to Hodder. This in no way detracts from Hodder's acting -  he inhabits Jason with the shrewd physicality of a real actor, never allowed his creation to run, which always subtracted threat from previous players. There is rather the deliberate stalking pursuit that always made pre-Millenial zombies an inexorable terror. Beuchler and Hodder got to know and respect each on Renny Harlin's PRISON (1987) on which Buechler was Makeup Effects Supervisor and had subjected Hodder to live worms as an electric chair occupant. Clearly he remembered Hodder as a fearless good sport!  This is just as well - in the climax of THE NEW BLOOD Tina drops an exterior porch set on the unfazed stunt supremo that Hodder guessed weighed about seven hundred pounds. Also, he set a record in this movie for the longest continuous full body stunt burn lasting forty seconds during his final face-off with Tina.
Whilst he did what he could to generate something from the actors, Beuchler was more memorable in enhancing the physical appearance of his leading nemesis. Here there was more elaborate face and body makeup, reflective of greater visceral detail and a sum of his past series wars (a motorblade facial scar from the lake battle at the climax of JASON LIVES, for example)
Beuchler was less successful in carrying out his conception for Jason's comeuppance. The shock ending would see Tina's dad burst out of the lake to rescue her by grabbing Jason. It was novel if utterly bananas logic-wise, but what made it worse was that the planned zombie deterioration makeup on actor John Otrin was deleted from the daily schedule without warning by one of the producers, so what remains is the even more ludicrous sight of her perfectly well-preserved father popping up.

The other failing in THE NEW BLOOD is the tame unoriginality of most of the murders. This was courtesy of the franchise's constant role as the whipping boy of the MPAA - " a group of housewives in Encino" disparaged Beuchler. The movie had to be submitted nine times in total for cuts, seven of which came back bearing the dreaded 'X' rating - meaning that version wouldn't be allowed trade advertising and would be stigmatised at the same level as porn to drastic box office effect. One of the editors, Barry Zetlin, complained that the board kept shifting their goal posts by opposing to new sequences upon each submission.  The only killing that bore any hint of novelty is the bludgeoning against a tree of a victim still in her sleeping bag. This was reduced to one single swing. The MPAA was particularly sensitive to any immediate cuts from sex acts to murder - admittedly the sex/killing interface is an area that our own BBFC has always been squeamish about) - so they decreed that something must be interposed so any perceived connection isn't as blatant.

 One welcome editorial decision was the removal of Beuchler's 'extra' ending. Following the rushed close of a dreary hand-holding reassurance in the ambulance between Tina and Nick (Kevin Spirtas), we were then meant to see a lone fisherman on the lake who is attacked by a submerged Jason. Thankfully we are spared this derivative and predictable coda.

The only other element I thought benefitted the film was Fred Mollin's music. Paramount had allegedly nickel and dimed Manfredini by thinking they could cannibalise his existing music that they legally owned instead of re-employing him. They then realised they had run out of usable themes half way through, so Mollin was hired by Iain Paterson. His contribution augments the film well with distinctive instrumental pieces and a meaty, industrial hammer of a title theme. It seems Manfredini couldn't have done the film anyway as he was at work on Sean S. Cunningham's DEEP STAR SIX and did not enjoy splitting his attention across multiple projects at once.

THE NEW BLOOD generated $8.2m in its first three days from a budget of £2.8m. Going into profit in its opening weekend still kept the FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels ongoing as a low-cost, self-financing machine . Ticket sales did however drop off sharply afterwards. Paramount also noticed that New Line's NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER eclipsed it with an opening weekend of  $12.8m rising to a final tally of $49.1m, beating their series resoundingly and from a third sequel.

As we shall see, whilst Freddy's owners prevaricated, FRIDAY THE 13TH would deteriorate into increasingly silly shark-jumping over the next few years...