Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood

 Just some thoughts.

Introducing Kane Hodder!

Cool guy. And strong as hell. I met him once. But that's a story for another time.

There's a little prologue giving us some backstory for our final girl. And letting us know that she's got something to even the playing field with Jason when the time comes. Also bye bet Dad. Hello nuthouse!

As Tina and her mom drive up to the house I can't help but thin Dr. Crews just oozes scuzbag. Mom, showing the good judgement that led her to marry an abusive drunk, trusts him completely. She will change her mind about that eventually, but far too late to do any good.

There's what, if this were a romcom, would be a meet cute. Where Tina gets more than a bit angry at Nick who's just trying to help her pick up the stuff that accidentally spilled out of her luggage. Yes he does end up grabbing her panties, but that wasn't his intent. I should mention she wasn't wearing the panties. If she had been then her anger would be justifiable.

We also get a brief into to Melissa, the rich cunt of the movie. 

I have to say, I really look forward to Jason kabobbing Crews when the time comes. I don't know if it's money he's after, or fame for exposing Tina's powers to the world, but he's pure scuz. 

Tina faints after trying to bring up dad, but actually bringing up Jason. Jason doesn't attack her in anyway. There's more than one way you can explain this, but in my own headcanon Jason instinctively knew she brought him up and had no intention of harming her. Circumstances changed however.

We find out that Nick and crew are going to be waiting in vain for his cousin and cousins girlfriend as they are Jason's 1st victims.

We find out nudity is back on the menu for Friday the 13th movies via a surprisingly honest gold-digger. I would say she lives to regret this, but she doesn't. Live that is. 

So of and on throughout the movie we've had the black couple having some sort of problem. This is treated as if it's going to matter. It never does. They make up in the van without ever revealing what the problem was. Fortunately Jason got rid of them fairly shortly after that.

Mom and Dr. Crews have a confrontation when she finally figures out he's a scuzbag. The only thing this accomplishes is to get Tina (who overheard his threats to commit her) to take a car and run off. She ends up running off the road after having a vision of her mom being killed by Jason. 

She's fine (physically speaking) and runs off before her Mom and Dr. Crews find the car. They try to find her, with no luck.

Dr. Crews is a scuzbag and a coward, but I have to say, his ideas make a lot more sense then Mom's. He says they should go back to the house to see if Tina went back there, or to call the cops for help if she hasn't. This makes a lot more sense then just running around the forest blind not having a clue where Tina's at. And this would be true even if Jason wasn't running around hacking people apart. Speaking of which.

Jason shows up and hacks mom apart. While Dr. Crews hold her in front of himself like a human shield. I mean, ok you're a coward. But why not just run? That would have actually made more sense. But the not so good Dr. manages to get away. Long enough to catch up to Tina so she can see her mother's blood all over him and realize that her mother's dead. She runs off and Jason catches up to Crews and kills him with some sort of powered tool. My only complaint is Crews didn't suffer enough.

Melissa tries to Make Nick jealous by going off with the worst sci-fi wannabe writer in the world. Pro-tip hon, they have to have some interest in you at all to get jealous over what you do. When this fails she settles for just giving the guy a case of blue balls, and sneaking out on him.

Tina meets up with Nick and gets him caught up with what's going on. He gets her to agree to stay there while he gets the others so they can all get out of there together. Of course he finds out the rest have already been taken care of by Jason.

And Tina shows mom's "good judgement" runs in the family by running off by herself and finding her mom's body. And Jason. She then "kills" Jason with some power lines. This doesn't stick and eventually she drops a porch roof on him and heads back to the house. 

There she meets up with Melissa and Nick. Why did Melissa even go there? Is she so desperate for Nick that she's decided to try breaking and entering? Tina explains what happened. Melissa decides they're both nuts and opens the door to leave, just in time to be offed by Jason. And now we have the final showdown. And it's a good one. I'm not gonna try to describe it, to do it justice would take a couple of pages. 

I will say this, the house explosion was a bit over the top. They had a wood burning stove to heat the house, so what caused the explosion. Maybe they had a gas stove for cooking, but that's still a pretty big explosion.

In some technical sense of the term Tina might not be a final girl since Nick survived as well, but I still think she did a pretty good job of it. At the end anyways. She makes some bad choices before that but handles the fight well.

Enough from me, here's someone else's take: 1000 MISSPENT HOURS AND COUNTING: Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood (1988) **½