Despite loving the series no mater what,
Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) for me is one of the lesser sequels in Jason's saga. I seem to go back to the
First 4 Films quite a bit, as well as
Part 6, which was a wonderful and very memorable Cinema going experience for me. Once
The New Blood rolls around, I do get a bit bored. Maybe the idea of the Movie is best, with Jason finally meeting a foe who has equal footing with supernatural powers. Unfortunately that character, Tina Shepherd --who is clearly filling in for Carrie White-- is written and played rather mopey by Lar Park Lincoln.
Perhaps giving Tina a recurring mental breakdown on top of her telekinesis gets in the way of having any fun with her central character. What is up with the Final Girls in this series constantly at odds with their memories, anyway?
Part 3 and
Jason Takes Manhattan also go this route. Kind of bizarre.
Part VII is also notorious for being the most shredded of all the sequels in relation to the gore. Director John Carl Buechler, a well known figure in the special makeup effects world, layered it on thick and gooey, and the MPAA gutted the Movie of most of it's impact. Jason has his moments, but now they are fairly muted.
Now, when I go back to
Friday 7, two things in particular have me howling with joy. There's the bitchy character Melissa (Susan Jennifer Sullivan), who seems hell bent on giving Tina a hard time (as well as having the hots for Nick (Kevin Spirtas --then Kevin Blair). Melissa wants Nick, but Nick only has eyes for sour-faced Tina. What's a bitch to do? Melissa does it all. She plays with her pearls, she spies, she leads on nerdy mulleted guys and then rejects them at the worst possible time. Melissa is a hoot to watch, and she's one of the more memorable bitchy characters in Slasher Films.
Among other things, I also love a bad big hairdo, and Tina's mom Amanda (Susan Blu) sure has a doozy of a one! Sometimes when she enters the frame, the Movie stops cold, and I totally forget there's a masked madman running around as her hair seems to be occupying any assemblage of real horror. Bad Mom hair is no match for a machete. This is just a fact. Thankfully, no animals or small children were hurt during the making of
Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood, but they sure did make a dent in a case of Aqua Net!
Looking Melissa up, it's sad to report that I found out actress Susan Jennifer Sullivan passed away in 2009, at the far too young of age 46. However, Susan will live on with her portrayal of a character we love to hate. Or just love.
Props to Jeffery over a jdbrecords for inspiring me to write about this.
