Friday The 13th: The Resurrection of Jason Voorhees is the seventh installment in the original Friday The 13th series, released in 1988. It is the start of the Kane Hodder era as Jason Voorhees, due to series star Thomas Trenton having retired from the role in the previous installment. Hodder, having inherited the part, repeated the role three more times until the infamous Jason X. It follows Friday the 13th: The Death of Jason Voorhees and precedes Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan.
Plot[]
Months after the events of the previous film seven-year old Tina Sheppard witnesses her father abusing her mother and runs out onto the lake in a boat. When John Sheppard tries to retrieve her, Tina's latent telekinetic powers awaken and she accidentally collapses the dock on him, causing him to drown.
Ten years later, after having been shuffled around from hospital to hospital, Tina and her mother Amanda return to Crystal Lake at the request of her doctor, Dr. Crews, in order to face her fear and trauma over the death of her father. She meets Nick, who organized a surprise birthday party for his cousin Michael and he becomes smitten with her, much to the chagrin of Melissa, a spoiled socialite who has her eye on him.
Crews tries to incite Tina to use her telekinetic powers through constant persuasion and manipulation, though under the guise of psychiatric care, he plans to exploit Tina's gifts. After a particularly disturbing confrontation with Dr. Crews that night, Tina runs out to the docks and believes she senses her father's presence in the lake. She uses her powers to resurrect him, but accidentally resurrects Jason Voorhees and frees him from his imprisonment. Tina faints at the sight of him, but her sighting is shrugged off as a delusion by Crews.
Now an undead creature, Jason first tracks down his old nemesis William Parks and quickly dispatches him. Then Jason kills birthday boy Michael's girlfriend Jane with a spike to the neck, and Michael himself by stabbing it into his back. He also kills a nearby couple camping, by punching Dan's heart out and bashing his girlfriend against a tree when she tries to hide in her sleeping bag. Nick invites Tina to meet the party guests and Amanda allows it, to allow Tina some semblance of a normal life. She meets the plucky Robyn, shy Maddy, stoner David, writer Eddie, and quarrelling lovers Ben and Kate. Tina experiences a realistic vision of Michael being killed and runs back to the house. She sees a spike in the porch, but when Dr. Crews goes out to find it they find nothing, leaving Tina to think she is losing her mind.
The next morning, everyone is disappointed that Michael doesn't show up, and Tina tells Nick about her experience with her father as well as being in mental institutions. Melissa later exploits this knowledge to make fun of Tina, who snaps Melissa's pearl necklace with her abilities. That night, two other party guests; Ivy League Russell, is killed with an axe to the face and his girlfriend Sondra is dragged under the surface of the lake and is drowned as Jason moves into the area. He then disrupts Ben and Kate's makeup sex, killing Ben by crushing his head when he ventures out of the vehicle, then shoving a party horn into Kate's eye. Maddy inadvertently ends up outside and discovers Russell's body, she runs to a nearby shed where her throat is slashed by a sickle.
Amanda discovers a video documenting Tina's powers and realizes Crews' true motives. The ensuing argument forces Tina to run away in Amanda's car. She sees a vision of Amanda being killed by Jason and crashes before running off into the woods on her own. She meets with Nick in the woods and they discover Michael's body, they go back to the house and Nick goes to find everyone else. Meanwhile, Jason cuts the power in the teens' house and kills David who comes downstairs for food. Robyn goes into Maddy's room and discovers David's severed head before she is thrown from the window and killed. Eddie is shunned by Melissa who was using him as a means to make Nick jealous and he goes downstairs, after Melissa leaves the house, Eddie is killed when Jason rams a knife into his neck. Amanda and Dr. Crews venture into the woods after finding the car, when Jason attacks them, Crews uses Amanda as a human shield and she is killed. After finding Tina returning to the woods and failing to warn her away, Dr. Crews is killed when Jason bisects him with a tree saw. Tina discovers her mother's body, then discovers Kate and Sondra's bodies before meeting Jason.
Using her powers to keep Jason and her separate, Tina tries to electrocute him, she flees into the teens' house and discovers the carnage within. She sends the porch roof down on Jason, apparently killing him. Melissa, who had come over to find Nick is disgusted by Nick and Tina's stories and tries to leave, only to get an axe slammed down into her face. Tina uses her power to send Jason violently into the stairwell, but he rebounds and knocks Nick out. Tina uses her powers to rip Jason's mask off, then hangs him, dropping him into the basement. He attacks again, and Tina projects canisters of gasoline onto him, then ignites him with the house's furnace. Nick recovers and gets Tina out, they run to the docks and the house explodes. Jason returns again and knocks Nick out. Defenseless, Tina uses her powers to resurrect her father from the lake's depths. John grabs Jason and pulls him back into the lake. Tina passes out.
The next morning in the aftermath, Tina and Nick are loaded into an ambulance. When Nick asks where Jason was, Tina simply responds "We took care of him." Meanwhile, one of the officers discover Jason's split hockey mask, but the lake itself appears calm.
Cast[]
- Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees
- Lar Park Lincoln as Tina Shepard
- Kevin Spirtas as Nick
- Bruce Greenwood as William Parks
- Susan Blu as Amanda Shepard
- Terry Kiser as Dr. Crews
- Susan Jennifer Sullivan as Melissa
- Elizabeth Kaitan as Robin
- William Butler as Michael
- Staci Greason as Jane
- Jon Renfield as David
- Jeff Bennett as Eddie
- Heidi Kozak as Sandra
- Diana Barrows as Maddy
- Larry Cox as Russell
- Craig Thomas as Ben
- Diane Almeida as Kate
- John Otrin as Mr. Shepherd
- Jennifer Banko as Young Tina
Production[]
The film was originally hoped to be Freddy vs. Jason, a clash crossover between Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. Plans fell apart when Paramount Pictures (who held the rights to the Friday the 13th series at the time) and New Line Cinema (who held the rights to the Nightmare on Elm Street films), failed to come to an agreement. That film was eventually made possible when New Line bought the rights to the Friday the 13th series, but did not see release until 2003.
With Thomas Trenton done with the series, all that was needed was his permission to allow the film to continue without him. Trenton, at first, thought it was a bad idea, but in the end felt that he owed the producers and made sure he got credit for creating the characters and a piece of the profits made. The entire production of this film was scheduled, completed, and released within six months; shooting took place from October to November 1987 in rural southern Alabama near Bay Minette.
Bruce Greenwood returned to the series for what turned out to be no more than a cameo. Despite getting third billing (after Lar Park Lincoln and Kevin Spirtas), he had only a single scene in which he was the first victim of the new Jason. Greenwood was offered double his last paycheck to perform the scene, as producers felt that a resolution was needed for the series' longtime enemies and to give the impression that the new supernatural Jason was unstoppable. Greenwood would later regret performing in the film, feeling that he allowed the producers to end the character's story on a low note, a mere victim of Jason's rampage. This film would later convince both Trenton and Greenwoood to bring back Parks to the series in Jason vs Jason X vs Jason and make him the hero.
"Resurrection" marks the first of four appearances by Kane Hodder as Jason, the only other actor to play the role more than once aside from Trenton. Hodder was ultimately chosen based on his work in the film Prison, for which Resurrection's director, Carl Buechler had worked on as the special effects makeup artist. In that movie, Hodder filmed a scene in which his character—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 Resurrection, and chose Hodder.
Hodder would go on to make cinematic history for the longest uninterrupted on-screen controlled burn in Hollywood history. For the scene in which Tina causes the 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 (as opposed to being edited in later with trick photography). Hodder was on fire for a full forty seconds, a record at the time.
Several explicit scenes of gore were cut in order to avoid an X rating, including: Maddy's death, who originally had a sickle jammed through her neck; Ben's death, which showed Jason crushing his head into a bloody pulp; Kate's death, which showed Jason ramming her in the eye with a party horn; the VHS and DVD versions only show a full view of Jason as he aims towards her face, but quickly cuts to another scene before revealing the blood and gore gushing from her eye; we see Eddie's head hit the floor; a shot of Russell's face splitting open with a large blood spurt; Dan's original death had Jason ripping out his guts; Amanda Shepard's death originally showed Jason stabbing her from behind, with the resulting blade going through her chest and subsequent blood hitting Dr. Crews; Dr. Crews's death showed Jason's tree-trimming saw violently cutting into his stomach, sending a fountain of blood and guts in the air; Melissa's original death had Jason cleaving her head in half with an axe with a close-up of her eyes still wriggling in their sockets.
The boxed set DVD release of all of the films and the single deluxe edition have all these scenes available as deleted scenes in rough workprint footage, however the deluxe edition features more additional footage than the boxed set.
The narration in the prologue of the film (spoken by Walt Gorney) is as follows:
- There's a legend 'round here. A killer buried, but not dead. A curse on Crystal Lake. A death curse. Jason Voorhees's curse. They say he died, but he keeps coming back. Few have seen him and lived. Some have even tried to stop him. No one can. People forget he's down there... waiting.
Box office and reception[]
Release[]
Friday the 13th: The Resurrection of Jason Voorhees opened on Friday, May 13, 1988 in 1,796 theaters, debuting at number 1 and earning $8.2 million its opening weekend. The film faced strong competition during its release from such high profile genre fare as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (the highest grossing horror film of 1988), The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Seventh Sign, Poltergeist III, Bad Dreams, The Blob and Phantasm II. Ultimately, the film would go on to gross a total of $19.2 million at the U.S. box office, placing it at number 53 on the list of the year's top earners.
Critical response[]
The film received negative reviews from critics. John Carl Buechler, the director, who also created the special make-up effects for the film, is credited with creating "the definitive Jason" in the audio commentary of the film from the series' DVD box set. The film is later mentioned in the novels American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It currently holds a 25% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 17 reviews.
Soundtrack[]
On September 27, 2005, BSX records released a limited edition CD of Fred Mollin's Friday the 13th Part VII and VIII scores.
References[]
2. R.I.P. Susan Jennifer Sullivan (Melissa, Friday The 13th Part 7: The New Blood) - See more at: http://www.fridaythe13thfranchise.com/2012/11/rip-susan-jennifer-sullivan-melissa.html#sthash.LTjZv0O4.dpuf This is sad news to pass along as it has been speculated about for many years now, but the good folks producing the Crystal Lake Memories documentary have confirmed Susan Jennifer Sullivan's passing. They have found the obituary for the late actress, which is posted below, and it shows that Susan was lost to the world on August 10, 2009. Susan was such a memorable part of Friday The 13th Part 7: The New Blood that fans still talk about her performance and lasting impression on the franchise almost 25 years later. This writer only wishes we could have had a chance to hear her stories about her time filming The New Blood and find out more about what she did in life after acting. - See more at: http://www.fridaythe13thfranchise.com/2012/11/rip-susan-jennifer-sullivan-melissa.html#sthash.LTjZv0O4.dpuf From The Boston Herald SULLIVAN Susan J., in Randolph, formerly of West Roxbury, August 10, 2009, age 46. Beloved wife of Ed K. Taylor. Devoted daughter of the late Charles A. (BPD) and Carol J. (Marcus) Sullivan. Loving sister of Karen L. Albergo of Randolph, John of Maynard, Stephen of Hanson and David of Taunton. Also survived by 21 nieces, nephews and 1 grandniece. - See more at: http://www.fridaythe13thfranchise.com/2012/11/rip-susan-jennifer-sullivan-melissa.html#sthash.LTjZv0O4.dpuf
External links[]
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