Friday the 13th, Part VII - The New Blood (1988)
d. John Carl Buechler, 90 minutes

Film Plot Summary

The film's prologue opened with voice-over narration (by Walt Gorney's 'Crazy Ralph' character):

"There's a legend 'round here. A killer buried, but not dead. A curse on Crystal Lake. A death curse. Jason Voorhees' curse. They say he died as a boy, but he keeps coming back. Few have seen him and lived. Some have even tried to stop him. No one can."

During the narration, the film jumped back to a montage of various killing scenes from previous installments:

Part 2:

• the infamous double impalement
• Mark's backwards wheelchair fall down steps
• Vickie's knifing

Part VI:

• Paula's blood-splattering death in a camp cabin

Part 4:

• the attempt of young Tommy Jarvis to kill Jason, etc.

More Flashbacks to Part VI:

• lightning striking Jason Voorhees' grave and reanimating him
• an older Tommy Jarvis warning Forest Green County Sheriff Garris about the threat ("Jason's alive")
• the killings of head counselors Darren and Lizabeth
• the face-smashing of Nikki in the RV
• the dart-to-forehead murder of police officer Thornton at the dock
• Tommy's vow: "Jason belongs in hell, and I'm gonna see he gets there."
• a replay of Part 6's conclusion: Tommy luring Jason into Crystal Lake, chaining his neck in a noose to a boulder, and sending him to a watery grave at the bottom.

The narration continued: "People forget. He's down there waiting."

After the credits, the film took another flashback to the 'Crystal Lake' (Forest Green) campground, where on Friday the 13th (1989), young 7 year-old Tina Shepard (Jennifer Banko as child) listened from outside their family's cabin as her abusive alcoholic father John (John Otrin) yelled at her mother and slapped her. She ran to the dock, took a motorboat out into the lake, and screamed at her father when he came after her: "Go away! I hate you! I wish you were dead!" Suddenly, her wish was granted -- her uncontrollable, latent, anger-triggered telekinetic powers surged through the water, collapsed the dock, and accidentally drowned her father (# 1 death).

1999?

Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), as a guilt ridden teenager, awoke from her nightmarish dream of the past - it was now about 10 years later. She had been in and out of hospitals ever since 1989. Her well-meaning mother Amanda Shepard (Susan Blue) drove her to the lakeside (now re-named Crystal Lake) for therapy with her psychiatrist Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser) - whom Tina had nicknamed "Bad News" Crews. The doctor and her mother entered the lakeside cabin "where it all started," while outside Tina met one of the teens from next door:

• Nick (Kevin Blair)

(It was later revealed that the teens were there for a surprise birthday party for Michael, Nick's cousin.)

Nick helped Tina when her suitcase dumped her clothes and underwear onto the ground. She retrieved one pair of panties from him, then curtly and sarcastically thanked him: "You've been a great help. I don't know what I would have done without you."

Dr. Crews insisted on starting therapy immediately, and set up a video camera to track Tina's progress - although the shady and manipulative psychiatrist was planning to profitably exploit her talent. The doctor wanted her to focus her powers on a matchbook and make it move with her unique psychokinetic ability ("Think about it moving and make it move") - but nothing happened. Egging her on and pushing her to the edge, he knew movement would only happen when her "emotions are at their peak," and verbally accused her of holding back. Then, he emphatically assaulted her with the order: "Concentrate!" When the matchbook did move, she analyzed why - he had agitated and personally angered her: "I was thinking about you." She doubted that a study of her telekinetic powers would help her ("You're more interested in this telekinetic stuff than you are in me"). He hypothesized that her psychokinetic ability was "a projection of the suppressed guilt feelings" that she had regarding her father's death. She yelled back: "That's bulls--t!" and the matchbook spontaneously ignited.

Next door, two of the teens were "sleeping" (making-out) in the van parked outside:

• preppy Russell (Larry Cox) - the nephew of the owner of the cabin
• flirty Sandra (Heidi Kozak)

She reminded him: "Who says we're sleeping?"

That night, the tormented Tina ran to the rebuilt dock and remembered back to the painful night her father had died - she apologized to him: "I'm sorry, daddy. I'm so sorry. I wish I could bring you back." While trying to resurrect her father with intense thought, she unwittingly resurrected the dormant, zombified or undead Jason (Kane Hodder) from his watery grave at the bottom of the lake, by snapping the imprisoning chain wrapped in a noose around his neck and attached to a heavy boulder. To her shock (she fainted), he emerged in a flurry of bubbles on the surface. Some of his ribcage and skeletal frame, including his spinal cord, were visible through his rotted clothing. When she was revived, she asked: "Where is he?" She insisted the man in the lake wasn't her father -- although Dr. Crews dismissed it as only another hallucination.

Two more teens were en route to the cabin, on foot, after their car broke down about five miles away:

• birthday boy Michael (William Butler)
• girlfriend Jane (Staci Greason)

As she stood waiting for Michael to pee, Jason began his slaughter spree. He grabbed her mouth, stabbed her through the neck with a tent spike and stuck or impaled her to a tree (# 2 death) (off-screen). Michael returned and found Jane's body, and was then murdered himself - the same tent spike that had killed Jane was thrown through his back as he fled. He crawled a few feet before Jason ripped the spike up through his spinal cord (# 3 death).

Nick invited Tina next door to the party, where she met, among others:

• "resident writer" Eddie (Jeff Bennett) - an aspiring science-fiction novelist
• spoiled, stuck-up, bitchy rich kid blonde Melissa (Susan Jennifer Sullivan)
• dope-smoker David (Jon Renfield)
• unattractive, homely and self-respecting nerd Maddy (Diana Burrows)
• her sexy pothead friend Robin (Elizabeth Kaitan)
• an African-American couple: Ben (Craig Thomas) and his black girlfriend Kate (Diane Almeida)

Suddenly, Tina experienced a premonition-hallucination of Jason ("the man thing in the lake") killing Michael with a metal spike. She ran back to her cabin, where she saw a large bloody metal tent spike stuck into the back porch (later missing when everyone took a second look), and ran inside yelling: "I saw him again." Dr. Crews called what she saw a delusion - "You're creating images of your father." She cried: "What's happening to me? Help me, please."

Nearby, there were two tent campers preparing to have sex:

• Dan (Michael Schroeder)
• Judy (Debora Kessler)

They were talking about getting warm (he asserted: "Let me heat you up"), but first she insisted that he collect firewood ("We need wood"). He grabbed a machete, and with a cheesy Terminator accent, promised: "I'll be back." When he was returning with an armful of wood, Jason thrust his hand through Dan's back from behind, and then twisted and broke his neck (# 4 death). When Judy heard footsteps outside the tent, she enticely offered: "OK, you big hunk of a man, come and get me!" - naked inside her yellow sleeping bag. But then she saw the masked killer with a machete slice open the tent behind her. Her death was most memorable - she ducked down to hide in her sleeping bag, as he dragged her outside and bashed her squirming and screaming body in the bag against a tree (# 5 death).

The next morning, the partygoers were preparing breakfast in the kitchen. As they became acquainted, Tina told Nick how she blamed herself for her father's death at the lake ("I know it was my fault"). She warned him about getting to know her better, since her head was so messed up: "You don't wanna mess around with me," although she joked: "With my luck, you're probably gonna turn out to be another delusion." They tenderly kissed, as Melissa jealously spied on them.

Later, Tina was insulted by Melissa about being a crazy mental patient (in an inappropriate sight gag involving a backwards-worn jacket), and she retaliated by glaring at and breaking the strand of pearls around her neck. Dr. Crews confirmed that Tina's powers and delusions were linked: "Your psychokinesis and these delusions are all tied together." She pleaded to leave the lake cabin and go back to the hospital by the next morning, fearing what her powers might do - and then levitated a nearby TV and flung it against the wall behind Dr. Crews. Tina asked Nick about the no-show birthday boy, Michael, and what he looked like -- when he showed her a picture, she said worryingly: "I think he's dead, Nick."

The sex-crazed couple, Russell and Sandra (in a tight bra-less yellow half-top), conversed together hand-in-hand. He asked: "When did you first fall in love with me?", with her reply: "The first time I saw the enormous size of your beautiful -- wallet. This huge bulge in your pants was calling out my name. 'Sandra, Sandra, take me now'." She dared him to go skinny-dipping with her, as she stripped down naked: "You chicken!" After she dove in, she added: "You need a formal invitation? Russell, party for two. Right this way, please." When she went underwater, Russell was confronted by Jason on the shore, and received an axe to the face with one swing (# 6 death). Sandra screamed when she saw Russell's corpse, and then as she struggled and splashed to get away (seen from an underwater, Jaws-like view), Jason pulled her under by the ankle (a body double) and she was drowned (# 7 death). Afterwards, he dragged her nude body (another body double) out of the water.

Mrs. Shepard snooped through Dr. Crews' papers, while simultaneously, he was out walking in the woods and had discovered the corpse of Michael, with a bloody tent spike lying nearby - completely verifying what Tina had said in her vision. Mrs. Shepard found a tent spike in his drawer (hidden after he had removed it from the backporch doorway), and then viewed a videotape, where the antagonistic doctor narrated how he was deliberately keeping Tina's stress and emotional levels high so that he could "induce huge psychokinetic reactions." She directly accused the doctor of being self-serving and conniving:

"You never intended to help her...What have you been doing to my daughter?...You have deliberately turned my daughter into an emotional wreck....You bastard. You brought her here so you could watch her perform. How could you do this to her?"

Dr. Crews threatened to return her to the hospital and put her under intense drug therapy because of her potential danger: "I'm gonna have to commit her, even if it is against your wishes." Tina overheard part of their conversation, and drove away to escape. The car careened off the dirt road into the woods after she had another future vision - of the masked killer spearing her mother in the stomach (from behind) in the middle of the road. She ran off into the dense woods, with Dr. Crews and her mother soon after searching for her.

The killer then began to converge on the teenagers. After applying eye-lash liner and tarty makeup (and wearing white high-heeled shoes and a short skirt) ("You need a little touch-up work, my ass!" she told her mirror reflection), Maddy roamed outside and called for David. As she knelt down to look for a lost earring, the body of Russell dropped in front of her. She ran and fearfully hid in a toolshed, where Jason grabbed her from either side with both fists shoved through a wooden wall behind her, and sliced her neck with a curved scythe (# 8 death) (off-screen).

Two teen couples were having sex in bedrooms within the cabin:

• Eddie with Melissa (to make Nick jealous)
• Robin with David

Another couple was doing it in the van parked outside:

• Ben with Kate

They had to quit having intercourse when the van started shaking - they guessed it was "birthday boy" Michael who had just arrived - Ben quipped: "Happy f--kin' birthday." When Ben went outside to check, his head was squeezed between Jason's bare hands (# 9 death). As Kate leaned her head out of the van's window and called for Ben, a party horn (seen from her POV) was thrust into her eye (# 10 death).

Melissa prematurely ended the love-making with Eddie, telling him that her only wish had been to make Nick jealous, and she added: "You just don't turn me on, really." When she asked where he was going, he responded: "To take a cold shower. I got a date with a soap-on-a-rope!" Robin and David were naked together in bed, but soon to be punished for their promiscuous indiscretions. They didn't mind ("Who cares?") when Jason disconnected the power box on the outside of the cabin and darkened the house. Downstairs, David searched for food in the kitchen's refrigerator with a flashlight, where he was stabbed with a machete in the stomach, and then beheaded (# 11 death).

Meanwhile, Nick (who had located Tina in the woods) and Tina found Michael's corpse on their way home, as she confirmed to herself: "I knew it. I saw it." When Tina and Nick entered her house and went looking for her father's pistol in the desk, she also discovered the tent spike and exclaimed: "Crews knew." She also saw newspaper clippings about Crystal Lake's bloody history: "KILLER AT CRYSTAL LAKE - BODY NEVER RECOVERED." Tina realized that she had resurrected the body of Jason Voorhees rather than her father: "It was him in the lake." Her uncontrollable powers caused the room to begin shaking - and items fell off shelves and walls. She initially worried about the fate of her mother who was looking for her in the woods. Nick took the gun with him.

In the living room of the next-door house, Eddie opened up one of the gag presents to be given to Michael (a "Personal Penis Enlarger"). Jason slashed the side of Eddie's neck with a machete (# 12 death). When Robin explored in the hallway while looking for David, she found his decapitated head in another bedroom, before she was grabbed by the neck and forcefully thrown through a window (# 13 death).

While Tina remained in her cabin, Nick went to find Tina's mother Amanda, who was frantically shouting for her daughter in the woods. Dr. Crews and Amanda both ran when they saw Jason coming toward them and carrying a long-handled, bladed pruning saw as a weapon. As Dr. Crews held onto Amanda, she was the first to be killed. She was speared in the back with the saw (# 14 death) - blood splattered onto his face.

During his search, Nick entered the party cabin, and called out for everyone, but no one responded. And then he looked under a table and saw Eddie's head in a flowerpot. Terrified, he ran back to Tina's cabin next-door, but found that she had already left. However, he found a disbelieving Melissa there, and told her that both Eddie and Michael had been killed, and not to venture over to the other house.

In the woods, Tina found Dr. Crews, but he lied about her mother's location: "She's back at the house." She suspected him of foul play when she saw blood on his clothes: "What did you do?" When Tina asked: "Where's my mother?", he simply replied: "She's gone." After Tina ran off, Dr. Crews was sliced through his stomach with a spinning, circular-bladed, gasoline-powered brush saw or weed-eater (# 15 death). Soon after, Tina found her dead mother on the ground, and then discovered four bodies in rapid succession:

• Kate's corpse dangled over a tree trunk (with the party horn sticking out of her eye)
• the nude body of drowned Sandra stretched out on the ground
• Maddy's body nailed by her wrist to a tree
• Russell's axe-chopped body - hanging by a rope in front of her

Tina stood face-to-face against her zombified, decomposed nemesis - and was left no choice but to unleash her awesome telekinetic powers on him. Tree roots sprang from the ground and wrapped around Jason's legs, tripping him into a muddy puddle. Then, she directed an electrical power line into the water to electrocute him. Jason fell face-first into the mud, but then rose up unexpectedly and followed her as she ran into the party cabin. When he lept through the cabin window, she used her power to levitate and throw the sofa at him to defend herself, and then collapsed the roof of the front porch of the cabin onto him, falsely believing that she had killed him.

In her own home, after Tina told Nick that she had killed Jason ("Jason's dead") as payback for her mother Amanda's recent death, another teen met her fate. Melissa opened the front door to leave after telling the couple: "F--k you both." She found Jason standing in her path. He split open her head with a large axe (# 16 death), and then heaved her face-first into a corner of the living room. The two remaining survivors ran upstairs - where Tina decided to turn and face her opponent.

Tina fiercely concentrated as Jason approached them, and broke an overhead glass light cover into Jason's head, sending him backwards - down and into the splintering stairs. She then bloodily crushed Jason's skull by tightening his hockey-mask, until the mask split into two pieces, revealing his hideously-grotesque, decaying face underneath. She wrapped an electrical cord around his neck, lifted his choking body to the ceiling, and then dropped him through a hole in the floor into the basement. Although appearing dead, one eye popped open - the zombie couldn't be killed - and he grabbed her and took her into the cellar with him. Focusing her attention, Tina sent nails into his body and forehead, then sprayed him with gasoline from a fuel can, and directed flames to set him on fire. Jason became a human torch - and soon the entire Shepard lakeside cabin was engulfed in flames and destroyed by a tremendous explosion ("Everything's gone"). But she couldn't decisively eliminate Jason - he survived the fire and explosion, attacked her on the dock, and survived gunshots from Nick's gun.

When they both couldn't kill Jason, she resurrected her zombified father John, bringing him back to life in a surge of bubbles from the bottom of the lake. He broke through the dock, wrapped a chain around Jason's neck, and then dragged him downwards into its depths, back to his watery grave (# 17 death?) (temporary).

The next morning, fire-crews extinguished the flames. One rescue/fire worker (cameo by director John Carl Buechler) found the two halves of the hockey-mask. Tina was carried on a stretcher to an ambulance, and placed next to Nick. He asked: "Where's Jason?" and she responded: "We took care of him" (but was he ultimately destroyed?) as the vehicle drove off, and the screen faded to black.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

A very dark and straight-forward horror film, with most of the filming done at night. One of the more heavily-censored of the films in the series, with numerous cuts (mostly of the gory killings) required to obtain an R-rating.

With many indistinguishable, unmemorable and unappealing characters, some of whom had very little screen time or meaningful character development before their demise.

With a production budget of approximately $2.8 million, and box-office gross revenues of $19.1 million (domestic).

A new Jason Voorhees - Kane Hodder - starred in this sequel and in the next three films.

The film was often jokingly called "Jason vs. Carrie."

Body Count: 16 (1 committed by young Tina Shepard, 15 committed by Jason). Jason suffered a 'temporary' death.