Kids just aren’t as scared of summer camp as they used to be. Maybe it’s because they aren’t even going away to summer camp unless forced to by the state.
Still, the nostalgia of summer camp is enough to help us begin our Summer Camp Slasher Series, a tribute to horror movies featuring campers, camp counselors, and the maniacs who murder them.
We continue this summer horror series with Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood.
Movie: Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood (1988)
Plot: A troubled girl with telekinesis returns to her family’s home at Crystal Lake, where she had unwittingly caused the death of her father. While wishing dear old Dad back, her powers unwittingly release someone else from the lake, who goes back to his old, teen-slaughtering ways.
Killer: Jason Voorhees, again and again. Jason seems to be the only human whose body actually grows in size while rotting at the bottom of a lake. This may be due to Kane Hodder being a bit larger than C.J. Graham.
Critique: I know, I know, Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood is a bad horror movie. It is at the bottom of the Friday the 13th franchise. Not as hilarious as Jason takes Manhattan, but a little better than Jason X and the reboot. In other words, the top of the crap pile.
And I don’t care. I enjoy watching this movie. It’s just fun. Jason breaks out the entire tool shed and then some to give us some pretty original kills. Smashing people in sleeping bags into tree trunks. Punching through a man’s back to then reach up and break his neck, just to make sure. Party horns through the eye (which totally should have created enough pressure to make the horn let out a honk, but whatever.) A blonde Jean Grey throws the telekinetic gauntlet down on Jason, because it seems like only the supernatural or a nuke can take the big man down.
And there’s that ridiculous scene of redemption where Tina’s dead father busts out of the lake to take care of Jason. It’s as close to a tear-jerking scene as the Friday the 13th series has ever come.
Scene of Awesomeness: Tina uses here telekinetic powers to hit Jason in the head with a potted plant… with Eddie’s head in the pot. Or was it David’s? It doesn’t matter. I crack up every time I see it, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it!
Scene of Ridiculousness: Pretty much the entire time Tina is fighting Jason. Jason just seems so exasperated, sighing as he is hit in the head with lamps and plants, electrocuted, stuck full of nails, and blown up. There’s also Tina’s father seemingly rising from the lake to drag Jason back in, looking like he never died 10 or so years ago. As if they wouldn’t have found his body when he died so close to the shore.
Body Count: 16 (1 flashback along with an extended series recap with some of the all-time greats)
1 drunken drowning
1 tent spike into the neck
1 tent spike into the back
1 fist through the back, with a neck snap for good measure (Awesomely Overkill Award)
1 sleeping bag slam (Awesomely Overkill Award runner-up)
1 machete to the face
1 unknown underwater death
1 sickle to the stomach
1 head crush
1 party horn through the eye
1 butcher knife to the stomach
1 machete to the neck
1 toss through a 2nd floor window
1 branch trimmer through the back
1 gas-powered weed saw to the stomach
1 axe to the forehead
2 pairs of breasts.
Actors/Actresses of Note: Terry Kiser, best known for being Bernie Lomax, both alive and dead, in the Weekend at Bernie’s film series, plays the manipulative Dr. Crews. There’s also Kane Hodder, who began his horror reign as Jason Voorhees.
Quote: “I’m going back to bed. You wanna come? “- Melissa
Grade: B-