After Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the series was in an awkward place. With Jason Voorhees being killed in the finale and his evil seemingly passed onto the young Tommy Jarvis, fans wondered what direction the series would take, if any, because it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that they’d even make another one. This was a different era. But we know better than that.
With Corey Feldman unable to return, they scrapped the evil Tommy idea. Expectations truly needed to be thrown out the window for where the story would go, and I doubt many people would have had their bets on an impostor Jason. So let’s get into the MPAA cuts, a cast member named Vorhees, and a whole lot of cocaine as we find out what happened to Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning.
The Final Chapter was intended to be the death of the franchise, but after that film raked in tons of dough, Paramount was unable to let their low-budget cash cow gracefully bow out with Jason’s death. The Friday the 13th team set out to make something completely new post-Jason. They felt that the prior films had pretty much followed the same blueprint, so they were hoping to subvert that. Pretty ironic given what the film ended up becoming, but we’ll touch on that in a bit.
This entry would also see Frank Mancuso Jr. take a step back from being an on-set producer to a role less involved as an executive producer. He hated that his name was being associated with these films and wanted to move on to bigger and better things. As he worked as a middleman between the production and Paramount (I mean, his father was the head of Paramount after all) the man in the wings, Phil Scuderi, who often goes uncredited, actually helped shape Part V into what we’d know it to be.
He hired director Danny Steinmann, wanting something far from Hollywood sensibilities and a brand-new script that refused to bring back the Jason character. A ballsy decision, to say the least, given that most of Steinmann’s experience came from the world of softcore porn. After seeing his work on Savage Streets, the producers asked Steinmann to keep his schedule open because they wanted him for Part V.
It was Steinmann’s idea to focus primarily on Tommy as he hallucinates and is constantly fighting violent tendencies. Despite the use of the hockey mask and machete, Steinmann wanted the audience to question whether it was even Jason doing the killings.
But not everyone was happy with Danny’s directing style. This caused massive friction between him and Mancuso Jr., who felt that Steinmann was out of his element. The script would be worked out by Martin Kitrosser and David Cohen, with Steinmann doing massive rewrites. According to many cast members, the script was never fully finished while filming. Much of the dialogue was scrapped on the day, and they’d come up with something on the spot.
The story of Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning follows Tommy Jarvis as he heads to a house for troubled teens. He’s trying to get over the events of The Final Chapter and is overly quiet. When one of the residents is brutally murdered with an axe, a series of grisly murders start occurring at the house. Is it Tommy, or has Jason truly returned from the grave?
One thing that few people seem to bring up is that this entry also introduced a very different element to the series: we were following a male lead. In all the films before, our “final girl” was, of course, a girl fighting against all odds and vanquishing the Voorhees legacy. Yet Tommy Jarvis would take center stage here, essentially becoming our “final boy.”
Corey Feldman made Tommy Jarvis a memorable character in his appearance in The Final Chapter. This little ball of energy and special-effects masks was the perfect surrogate for so many young viewers watching. And with the end of Part IV setting up Tommy as a potential bad guy, there was a lot of intrigue.
But then stepped a filmmaker who “ruined everything”: Steven Spielberg.
See, Spielberg was producing this little film called The Goonies, which Feldman was signed on to. Because of that, he was unable to film Friday the 13th Part V, much to Feldman’s chagrin. Corey’s schedule was nearly impossible for the filmmakers to contend with, so they brought a crew to Feldman’s backyard to film a brief dream sequence that would see Jason return to kill two men before setting his sights on Jarvis. The crew was only at Feldman’s residence for a couple of hours, setting up a rain machine and getting reaction shots of the boy. The shots of Tommy walking through the woods are actually of a smaller woman.
John Shepherd was cast as the much more grown-up Tommy Jarvis, a role that would require him to be quite stoic and sweaty. He’s still making scary masks, but he doesn’t really feature many of the characteristics the character had in Part IV. The events have clearly traumatized him to no end.
Shepherd was actually disappointed when he initially found out he’d gotten the lead in a Friday the 13th film and not some movie called Repetition. He never wanted to be in a horror film, as he was deeply religious, but a friend convinced him to take the part, insisting that he represented the good in all of this evil. Shepherd claims to have played him as a Boo Radley-type.
Young Shavar Ross had been working the television circuit, appearing on Diff’rent Strokes, when he got the role of Reggie the Reckless. In order to take the part, his parents had all the curse words excised from Reggie’s dialogue.
Actress Melanie Kinnaman didn’t want to be one of those damsels in horror movies, so she did a bit of film study before getting the role of Pam, using Jamie Lee Curtis as a prototype.
The rest of the cast is filled with unknown actors from the time, though several stuck around the horror genre. And we have to mention Deborah Voorhees, who got the part due to her name and, um, assets. Her part had actually already been cast with actress Darcy DeMoss, but Steinmann was adamant that he wanted Voorhees. DeMoss was still paid for the part and would eventually appear in Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI.
One of the standout characters of the film, Demon, is played by Miguel A. Núñez Jr., who knew that he had to impress. He came up with Demon’s whole look and even wrote the song he sings: “Ooh Baby, Ooh Baby.” Much of his role is ad-libbed, with Núñez’s natural charisma beaming through.
The Final Chapter’s Ted White turned down the chance to return as Jason in Part V, so he was replaced by stuntman Tom Morga. Morga has a rather small stature and provides a very different look to the Jason character, who is typically depicted as large and lumbering. But with Roy, the eventual killer, being played by Dick Wieand and also being on the smaller side, it was a smart decision for continuity’s sake.
Part V started filming in September of 1984 in Camarillo, California, under the title Repetition. This was done so that union busters wouldn’t prey upon the production, since the films were known to break some rules. While they usually used titles from David Bowie albums, Mancuso thought Repetition would work perfectly given the plot of the series staying more or less the same from film to film, and the main criticism against them being that they’re all the same.
The production was absurdly cheap, cutting corners at every chance, whether it was makeup trailers or putting the crew up in rundown motels. There’s a funny story early in filming where Shavar Ross came to set wanting to meet Steinmann, but it was during a topless scene. They yelled at Shavar, and Danny talked to him in order to shield the actor’s view from what was actually happening on the monitors.
And there’s another element of the production that was prominent that doesn’t get brought up nearly enough: cocaine.
According to actor Bob DeSimone, the paramedic and sleazebag in the film, cocaine was prominent on the set at all times. With the many night shoots occurring, it facilitated staying up late while still being energetic, so it was a commodity on the set and on other sets at the time. Ironically, except for the scene where he snorts it in his car. Bob claims that he was the only person at the time of shooting that scene who wasn’t high.
Outside of the massive cocaine use on set, the cast and crew often divided into cliques. Taking a method approach to his role, John Shepherd found himself quite disliked by various people due to his quiet and standoffish demeanor. But Shepherd felt that the rest of the cast just wanted to party, and he was dead set on taking the role seriously. In his mind, if they didn’t put everything into it, the movie wouldn’t turn out good.
Obviously, the major sticking point for many viewers is always going to be “fake Jason.” It’s eventually revealed that EMT Roy is actually the father of the mentally impaired boy who was slain at the beginning of the film. So he sets out to avenge him… on everyone except the person who actually killed his son. Huh.
It’s one of the most baffling decisions in the series. But as much as people hated the twist, this film features one of the largest body counts in the franchise, with 19 deaths. That means the longest we have to wait is a measly seven to eight minutes for another kill, the momentum of this film being absolutely unmatched.
And despite it not really being Jason, it’s easy to forget that. For all intents and purposes, until he takes off that mask, this is Jason. Roy certainly doesn’t have the strength to come crashing through doors like the Kool-Aid Man.
Despite it being formulated from the beginning, the ending practically feels like a reshoot with how disconnected it feels from the rest of the movie. But since when has a bad ending ruined a good time?
With those 19 deaths came absurd requests from the MPAA. The Friday the 13th franchise had always been targeted by the MPAA, so this was no real surprise. Violet was originally going to be stabbed in her nether regions. Junior’s decapitated head was only allowed to bounce one time. And we were supposed to see more of the leather strap enter Eddie’s eyes.
What we lost in gore was made up for in nudity, though the Deborah Voorhees sex scene was cut from three minutes all the way down to ten seconds, so they clearly weren’t okay with all of it.
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning opened in the United States on March 22, 1985, and brought in over $8 million on its opening weekend. The film would end its run at $22 million. Considering its budget of just $2.2 million, this was still a success, but given that it was $10 million less than its predecessor, the series was trending downward.
The reaction from critics and fans was not so kind. Many felt ripped off by not having Jason actually appear in the film. “Fake J” just wasn’t going to cut it. So the studio knew they had to switch gears if they were going to make another entry, but that’s a story for another time.
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning has often been considered the black sheep of the series, a film that just doesn’t work and is desperately in need of Jason. Thankfully, it’s been re-examined as the film it truly is: a great whodunit with plenty of sex and violence to satiate horror fans.
And hell, Jason may not technically be in the film, but he still has that Jason aura. I’ll certainly take that over Corey Cunningham.
What do you think of Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning? Do you mind impostor Jason? What’s your favorite kill? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll see you in the next one. Oh yeah, and happy Friday the 13th.
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