Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is a 1988 American supernatural slasher film directed by John Carl Buechler and starring Lar Park Lincoln, Kevin Blair, Susan Blu, Terry Kiser, and Kane Hodder in his first appearance as Jason Voorhees, a role he would reprise in three subsequent films. It is a sequel to Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives and the seventh installment in the Friday the 13th franchise. Set seven years after the events of the previous film, the plot follows a psychokinetic teenage girl who unwittingly releases Jason from his tomb at the bottom of Crystal Lake, allowing him to go on another killing spree in the area.
The New Blood was intended to have a higher standard of quality than that of the previous installments, with high-profile directors being considered to helm the project. Paramount Pictures sought a partnership with New Line Cinema to create a crossover film between the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series which would not come to fruition until New Line bought the rights to the franchise, releasing Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. After several failed concepts, screenwriter Daryl Haney suggested an idea akin to "Jason vs. Carrie", in which Jason would battle a teenage girl with psychokinetic abilities.
The film was released on May 13, 1988, to mostly negative reviews from critics, and grossed $19.2 million at the U.S. box office on a budget of $2.8 million. It was followed by Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan one year later.
Plot
After witnessing her alcoholic father John physically abusing her mother Amanda, a young Tina Shepard attempts to escape the chaos at home and heads out onto Crystal Lake in a boat. When John follows her in an attempt to stop her, Tina's dormant telekinetic abilities emerge, and she accidentally destroys the dock John is standing on, causing him to fall into the lake and drown.Years later, a teenage Tina is still struggling with remorse surrounding John's death. Amanda takes her to the same lakeside residence as part of her treatment from her psychiatrist, Dr. Crews. He begins a series of experiments designed to agitate Tina's mental state, forcing her powers to become more pronounced. While Dr. Crews claims to be treating Tina, in reality, he is only trying to exploit her psychic powers. After a particularly upsetting session with Dr. Crews, Tina runs from the cabin and to the dock thinking about John's death. While thinking about him, she wishes he would come back. Her powers unwittingly awaken mass murderer Jason Voorhees, who had been chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake by Tommy Jarvis seven years prior, and he emerges from the water to commit another killing spree.
Next door to the Shepard residence is a group of teens who are throwing a birthday party for their friend Michael Rogers. The group includes Michael's cousin Nick, preppy Russell and his girlfriend Sandra, Ben and his girlfriend Kate, science-fiction writer Eddie, stoner David, perky Robin, shy Maddy, and snobby socialite Melissa. Nick, who has arrived just for the party, becomes attracted to Tina, much to Melissa's chagrin. Melissa attempts to break up Nick and Tina, even going as far as kissing Eddie to make Nick jealous, but her schemes are to no availother than making Eddie feel spurned thereafter. Tina tells Nick about Jason and has a vision of him murdering Michael. Meanwhile, Jason kills Michael and his girlfriend Jane McDowell, later murdering Dan Carter and Judy Williams, another couple camping in the woods, as well.
When Tina goes off with Nick to find Amanda, Jason proceeds to kill the other teens one by one. Russell and Sandra go to the lake for a swim. While Sandra goes skinny-dipping, Russell is killed with an axe to his face. Sandra discovers his body before she is pulled under the water and drowned. Maddy goes looking for David but finds Russell's body. She runs for help, but Jason attacks her in a nearby barn and kills her with a sickle. Jason then kills Ben by crushing his skull and then Kate by driving a party horn into her eye. Inside the house, Jason stabs David and slices Eddie's neck open. Upstairs, Robin finds David's severed head and is defenestrated to her death. When Jason attacks Dr. Crews, he saves himself by using Amanda as a human shield, but Jason eventually kills him with a brushcutter. Tina finds Amanda's body shortly afterward and uses her powers to electrocute Jason and crash part of the house down onto him. When Nick and Tina try to tell Melissa what happened, she thinks that they are crazy and tries to leave, but Jason kills her with an axe to the face.
Nick tries to fight off Jason, but he is quickly subdued. Tina unleashes her powers, breaking Jason's mask and exposing his disfigured and decomposed face. As the battle rages on, the Shepard lakeside cabin is destroyed by an explosive fire and the attack continues on the dock. Although Tina is unable to kill Jason, she focuses and summons the spirit of her father, who rises from the lake and drags Jason back down with him into the depths of Crystal Lake, chaining the serial killer once more.
The following morning, Tina and Nick are taken away in an ambulance. A firefighter finds Jason's broken mask in the wreckage, and the screen fades to black as Jason's whispers can be heard in the distance.
Cast
Production
Conception
After the previous installment, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, which reintroduced the Jason Voorhees character, Part VII was originally intended to be a crossover film between Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. With each Friday the 13th sequel, the box office profits were diminishing, with the films in the Nightmare on Elm Street series grossing nearly twice the amount of the Friday films. Paramount Pictures proposed the crossover idea to New Line Cinema, the rival company who held the rights to the Elm Street films, with Paramount controlling domestic distribution and New Line controlling international distribution. The idea was abandoned after the two companies failed to come to an agreement, with the concept only coming to fruition after New Line purchased the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise, releasing Freddy vs. Jason in 2003.One of the concepts for Part VII was conceived by associate producer Barbara Sachs, and was noted as being similar to the plot of Jaws, wherein a corporate land developer covers up the previous Jason Voorhees massacres in order to profitably build condos on Crystal Lake. Executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr. resisted the idea, and screenwriter Daryl Haney stated "There’s always a teenage girl who’s left to battle Jason by herself. What if the girl had telekinetic powers?" Sachs, who considered the "Jason vs. Carrie" concept to be "an interesting idea", wanted the installment to be more respectable than the previous entries in the series. Haney stated that "She wanted it to be unlike any other Friday the 13th movie. She wanted it to win an Academy Award". Several high-profile directors were considered for the job, including Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini.
Development
The film's original working title was Birthday Bash, chosen to conceal its identity as a Friday the 13th film. The entire production of this film was scheduled, completed, and released within seven months. Shooting took place from October to November 1987 in Baldwin County, Alabama, at Byrnes Lake off SR 225, and in nearby Mobile in February 1988.This film marks the first of four appearances by Kane Hodder as Jason, the only actor to ever reprise the role. Although C. J. Graham, who had portrayed Jason in Part VI, was initially considered, Hodder was ultimately chosen based on his work in the film Prison, for which The New Blood director, John Carl Buechler, had worked on as the special effects make-up artist. In that movie, Hodder filmed a scene in which his character Charlie Forsythe, a prisoner executed in the electric chair, rises from the grave; Hodder himself had suggested to Buechler that he have maggots coming out of his mouth during the scene to heighten the effect of decomposition, and went on to film the sequence with live maggots spilling out of his mouth. Buechler remembered Hodder's commitment to the part when casting The New Blood, and chose Hodder over Graham. Graham expressed disappointment, as he had hoped to reprise the role of Jason and make himself synonymous with the character, as Boris Karloff had with Frankenstein's monster, but ultimately expressed satisfaction with Hodder's portrayal and said that he bore no ill will about not being asked to return. Hodder would go on to make cinematic history for the longest uninterrupted onscreen controlled burn in Hollywood history. For the scene in which Tina Shepard causes a furnace to shoot flames at Jason, Hodder was actually set on fire by an apparatus rigged so that the ignition could be captured on film. Hodder was on fire for a full forty seconds, a record at the time.