Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (also known as Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning) is a 1985 American slasher film directed by Danny Steinmann and starring Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, and Shavar Ross. It is the fifth installment in the Friday the 13th film series. The film is set at a fictional halfway house, where an adult Tommy Jarvis—who killed Jason Voorhees as a child—again fears for his life when a new hockey-masked assailant begins a series of brutal murders. The film features a cameo appearance from Corey Feldman, who portrayed Tommy in the previous film.

A New Beginning features a high number of on-screen murders. Aside from its gore and violence, 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.

Shot in California in 1984 on a budget of $2.2 million, A New Beginning was released theatrically on March 22, 1985, and grossed $22 million at the U.S. box office. The film was initially going to set up a new trilogy of films with a different villain for the series but, after a disappointing reception from fans and a steep decline in box-office receipts from Part III and The Final Chapter, Jason Voorhees was brought back for the next installment Jason Lives and has been the main antagonist in the series since. In addition to weak box office returns, most critics gave the film negative reviews.

Plot
Five years after the demise of mass murderer Jason Voorhees, the youngest survivor, Tommy Jarvis, is tormented by nightmares of Jason, which leads to his internment in numerous psychiatric hospitals. He is transferred to the Pinehurst Halfway House, managed by Dr. Matt Letter and his assistant Pam Roberts. Tommy meets a circle of other teens consisting of lovers Eddie and Tina, the stutterer Jake, the Goth Violet, the serious Robin, the compulsive eater Joey, and the young Reggie, whose grandfather works as the facility's cook. The group is disliked by their neighbor Ethel Hubbard, as Eddie and Tina have made a habit of engaging in sexual intercourse on her lawn. For this reason, Matt forbids the group from venturing outside the facility's premises. Vic, another patient in the institute, is gripped by a raptus of madness caused by Joey's impertinence and brutally kills Joey. That evening, two greasers are murdered by an unseen assailant after their car breaks down, and a diner waitress and her boyfriend are killed the following night. The sheriff hypothesizes that Jason Voorhees is the perpetrator of these murders, despite the cremation of Jason's corpse years ago, while Tommy himself is rendered a suspicious party.

The next morning, Eddie and Tina disobediently go into the forest and have sex. They are spotted by Ethel's farmhand Raymond, who is killed soon after. While Eddie leaves to go wash off in the creek, Tina is murdered, and the same fate befalls Eddie. Reggie begs his grandfather for a visit to his brother Devon, who has just returned to town, and Pam offers to accompany him while bringing Tommy along. Tommy meets Ethel's son Junior and gets into a fight with him, but then runs away into the forest after realizing his actions. After Pam and Reggie leave, Devon and his girlfriend are slaughtered. Upon Pam and Reggie's return to the institute, they are warned of the disappearance of Matt and Reggie's grandfather. Pam goes to search for them, entrusting Reggie to Violet, Jake and Robin. At this time, Ethel and Junior are killed, as are Jake, Robin and Violet after Reggie falls asleep. Reggie awakens just as Pam returns, and they discover the trio's corpses in Tommy's room. The killer, who has taken on Jason's image, bursts into the house.

After a long chase in which Pam and Reggie find the corpses of Matt and Reggie's grandfather, Jason is lured into a barn where he is struck by a tractor. Tommy returns and is attacked by Jason, but he manages to defend himself and escape. Tommy manages to throw Jason from the loft window and kill him. "Jason" is revealed to be one of the paramedics (Roy Burns) who arrived at the scene of Joey's murder. The paramedic happened to be Joey's loner father and implemented a plan to impersonate Jason out of a thirst for revenge and to take advantage of the sheriff's unconscious suggestion. While recovering in the hospital, Tommy has another hallucination of Jason, but he faces his fears which makes Jason's hallucination disappear. He hears Pam approaching and smashes the window to appear as though he has escaped. When Pam rushes in, Tommy appears from behind the door wearing Roy's hockey mask and wielding a kitchen knife.

Cast
John Hock appeared as Jason Voorhees in the opening dream sequence because Morga was unavailable when the scene was shot. He also performed the stunt where Roy fell off the barn.

Production
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was cast under a fake title, Repetition, and many of the actors in the film were not aware it was a Friday the 13th installment until after they were cast in their roles. Among the unaware cast was lead actor John Shepherd, who spent several months volunteering at a state mental hospital to prepare for the role, and that he felt "really disappointed" to discover that Repetition was actually the fifth entry in the Friday the 13th series. Actor Dick Wieand stated that "It wasn't until I saw Part V that I realized what a piece of trash it was. I mean, I knew the series' reputation, but you're always hoping that yours is going to come out better", and director Danny Steinmann stated that he "shot a porno in the woods there. You wouldn't believe the nudity they cut out."

According to the DVD box set Friday the 13th: Return to Crystal Lake, Corey Feldman was only able to make a cameo appearance in the film as a result of his involvement as an actor in The Goonies, which was released the same year as A New Beginning. Feldman filmed the inserts of his cameo on a Sunday, as that was his off day of shooting his other film, and the footage was shot in the backyard of his family's home in Los Angeles with a rain machine.

The film is the only entry in the Friday the 13th film series to feature a hockey mask design with two blue triangles pointing downward, as opposed to the more common variant of three red triangles, with the lower two pointing upward.

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.

Release
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning opened on March 22, 1985, on 1,759 screens. The film debuted at number 1 on its opening weekend with a gross of $8,032,883, beating the teen sex comedy sequel Porky's Revenge, the biopic Mask, 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 theatrical run, the film would earn $22 million at the domestic box office, placing it at number 41 on the list of 1985's top box office earners. The film faced competition throughout the first half of the year against horror releases Cat's Eye and Lifeforce.

Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning holds a 16% approval rating based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 3.18/10.

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune criticized the film for a perceived lack of originality, writing: "The new film is not really new. The same killer—a guy wearing a hockey mask and wielding a machete—still haunts a bunch of youngsters, mostly the inmates of a mental hospital," and added that there "is little suspense." Variety wrote: "The fifth Friday the 13th film reiterates a chronicle of butcherings with even less variation than its predecessors." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "It's worth recognizing only as an artifact of our culture." A review in the British film journal Films and Filming was critical of its redundancy in comparison to the previous sequels, with the review noting: "The woods are really spooky...especially when there's one of those giant thunderstorms (and boy! Does that Pam look great in a wet blouse!). And wait till you see what happens when Jason traps this one poor guy in a porta-loo!"

Henry Edgar of the Daily Press wrote: "If you like the others in this series, you'll like this one. If you didn't, stay away. Jason has his own followers, and he seems willing to continue the bloodshed forever." Steve Davis of The Austin Chronicle criticized the film's redundant violence, noting that the film consisted of the "Same screaming, same endless chases, same breasts, same blood, same axe, same lack of explanation, same ending primed for another sequel. Is there a pattern emerging here? In short: same as it ever was, same as it ever was." Scott Meslow of GQ called the film "the bloodiest, most deranged" installment in the series, noting its total of 22 murder sequences. Leonard Maltin awarded the film no stars, writing: "A clever title (after... The Final Chapter) for more gore galore, as gruesome and disgusting as ever."

Writing for Slant Magazine, Jeremiah Kipp wrote: "There’s more plot than usual, involving Jason survivor Tommy Jarvis wondering if the pileup of corpses can be blamed on Jason, a copycat, or himself. But Agatha Christie this ain’t. The tone is crude, raunchy, and leering, with kill scenes combined with more nudity than usual."

Home media
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was released on LaserDisc in 1986, and on VHS in 1994 by Paramount Home Video. Paramount released it in the United States on DVD on September 25, 2001. In 2009, Paramount reissued its Friday the 13th films on DVD in "Deluxe Editions," reissuing A New Beginning on June 16, 2009. This release featured several newly-commissioned bonus materials, including an audio commentary and interviews with the cast and crew.

On September 13, 2013, Paramount and Warner Brothers co-released the Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection Blu-ray box set, featuring each of the twelve films; this marked the first Blu-ray release of A New Beginning. Paramount and Warner reissued the film as a standalone double-feature Blu-ray paired with Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives in 2014. On February 13, 2018, Paramount re-released the film in another box set titled, Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection features only the first eight films of the franchise.