Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

A narrator tells the legend of Jason Voorhees over clips from earlier films: a killer buried but not dead, who keeps coming back, and who is still down there at the bottom of Crystal Lake, waiting.

Years before the main story, young Tina Shepard hears her drunken father John hitting her mother Amanda. Tina runs out to the lake and takes a boat onto the water. John follows her to the dock to stop her, and her hidden telekinetic power bursts out for the first time. The dock collapses under John. He falls into the lake and drowns.

Now a teenager, Tina still blames herself. Amanda brings her back to the same lake house for treatment under psychiatrist Dr. Crews. He claims he is helping her, but he keeps pushing her with harsh verbal attacks to bring out her power, because he wants to study and exploit it. After one bad session Tina runs down to the dock and wishes her father would come back. Her power reaches into the lake and snaps the chain holding Jason, who was trapped there by Tommy Jarvis years ago. Jason rises out of the water. Crews tells Tina she imagined it.

Next door, a group of young people gather to throw a birthday party for Michael Rogers. There is Michael's cousin Nick, Russell and his girlfriend Sandra, Ben and his girlfriend Kate, the aspiring science fiction writer Eddie, the stoner David, perky Robin, shy Maddy and the snobby Melissa. Michael and his girlfriend Jane never make it. Their car stops on the way, and Jason kills them both with a metal spike. Nick takes a liking to Tina, which Melissa does not like at all. Melissa kisses Eddie to make Nick jealous, and it only leaves Eddie hurt. Tina has a vision of Michael's death and tells Nick about Jason.

Jason works through the woods and the party house. He kills Dan and Judy, a couple camping nearby, slamming Judy against a tree while she is zipped in her sleeping bag. Russell takes an axe to the face at the lake, and Sandra is pulled under the water and drowned while skinny-dipping. Maddy finds Russell's body, runs, and is killed with a sickle in a barn. Jason crushes Ben's skull and drives a party horn into Kate's eye in their van. Inside the house he stabs David and slices open Eddie's throat. Upstairs, Robin finds David's head and is thrown out a window.

Amanda learns what Crews has really been doing to her daughter. Tina overhears them arguing, learns he wants to send her back to the hospital, and drives off. Amanda and Crews go looking for her. Jason attacks them in the woods, and Crews shoves Amanda in front of him as a shield. Jason kills her, then kills Crews with a brushcutter. Tina and Nick find the files on Jason in Crews' office and learn who is hunting them.

Tina finds her mother's body and fights back. She uses her power to electrocute Jason and bring part of the house down on him. Back at the house, Melissa refuses to believe them and opens the front door to leave. Jason puts an axe into her face. Nick tries to fight and is knocked out. Tina throws everything she has at Jason. She splits his hockey mask in half, revealing his rotting face, sets him on fire with the furnace, and blows up the lake house. He keeps coming.

On the dock, out of other options, Tina calls on her father. John Shepard's body rises from the lake, wraps Jason in chains and drags him back down into Crystal Lake. Tina and Nick are loaded into an ambulance, and when Nick asks where Jason is, Tina tells him they took care of him.

Story notes

• Telekinetic teenager Tina Shepard returns to Crystal Lake with her mother and therapist.
• Her powers accidentally free Jason from the lake, leading to a confrontation between Jason and Tina.

Release & Reception

Paramount did not screen the film for critics. It opened on Friday, May 13, 1988, in 1,796 theaters and was number one with $8,245,038 for the weekend. It was the third film in the series to open on an actual Friday the 13th.

It grossed $19,170,001 domestic with 4,664,234 admissions, 53rd for 1988, and the series' ticket sales kept falling.

Reviews were poor. Rotten Tomatoes lists 33% from 27 reviews with an average of 4.6 out of 10. Its consensus says the franchise badly needs the new blood of the title. Metacritic gives it 13 out of 100 from nine critics. CinemaScore audiences gave it a B.

Gene Siskel gave it one star, pointing to the weak finale, the predictable killings and what he saw as the series' hostility toward women. Steve Davis of The Austin Chronicle wrote his whole review in verse and gave it a bomb. The Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Reporter were also negative. Amnon Kabatchnik of the Star-Gazette said it was made to appeal to viewers' baser instincts.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: IMP Awards — Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood poster archive.

Cast

Crew

Production

After Jason Lives, Paramount first wanted Part VII to be a crossover with Freddy Krueger. The Nightmare on Elm Street films were earning nearly twice what the Friday films made. Paramount pitched New Line Cinema, which owned Freddy, on a deal where Paramount would handle U.S. distribution and New Line would handle overseas. The two companies could not agree. The matchup did not happen until New Line bought the Friday rights and made Freddy vs. Jason in 2003.

Associate producer Barbara Sachs had an idea close to Jaws, with a land developer covering up Jason's past killings so he could build condos on Crystal Lake. Frank Mancuso Jr. turned it down. Screenwriter Daryl Haney then pointed out that there is always a teenage girl left alone to fight Jason, and asked what would happen if she had telekinetic powers. Sachs liked this 'Jason vs. Carrie' idea. Haney said she wanted it to be unlike any other Friday movie, even good enough to win an Academy Award. High-profile directors were considered, including Federico Fellini.

The job went to John Carl Buechler, a makeup effects artist whose company Magical Media Industries also did the film's special makeup. The working title was Birthday Bash, to hide what the movie was. Variety's production chart listed a writer named Kevin Heaney, who gets no screen credit.

Kane Hodder became the first actor to play Jason more than once. C.J. Graham from Part VI was considered. Buechler had done the makeup on Prison (1987), where Hodder played an executed prisoner who rises from the grave. Hodder suggested having live maggots spill from his mouth, then did it. Buechler remembered that. Mancuso first thought Hodder was not big enough, so Buechler shot a screen test of him in test makeup, and that won Mancuso over. Graham said he was disappointed, since he had hoped to own the role the way Boris Karloff owned Frankenstein's monster, but he liked Hodder's work and held no grudge.

The whole film was scheduled, shot and released within about seven months. Filming took place in October and November 1987 at Byrnes Lake in Baldwin County, Alabama, with more work in Mobile in February 1988. AFI cites a Variety production chart that gives January 8, 1988, in Los Angeles as the start of principal photography, and production notes describing eight weeks in Alabama, four of them at night.

The two lake houses were temporary shells built in less than a month. The party house was sold and moved after filming. The Shepard house was blown up for the finale.

Hodder set a record for the longest continuous on-screen body burn at the time. For the furnace scene he was really set on fire, with a rig that let the ignition be caught on camera instead of faked in editing. He burned for about forty seconds.

Several explicit gore shots were cut to avoid an X rating.

Filming locations

• Byrnes Lake, off State Route 225, Baldwin County, Alabama: Crystal Lake, the Shepard house, the party house and the lake scenes. Both houses were shells built for the film.
• Stockton Fire Department, 54090 State Highway 59, Stockton, Alabama: The fire truck seen after the house explosion, with its real department markings.
• Mobile, Alabama: Additional filming in February 1988
• Los Angeles, California: Listed by AFI as where principal photography began
• The principal Crystal Lake material was shot around Byrnes Lake near Stockton in Baldwin County, Alabama, with additional work in the Mobile area.

Effects and makeup

John Carl Buechler's Magical Media Industries handled the special makeup effects, with Buechler as unit line producer, John Foster as unit production manager, Cary Howe as fabrication and location supervisor, and John Criswell and Dave Kindlen on animatronics. Richard Snell made the contact lenses and Karin Hanson made the wigs.

Buechler designed Jason as a torn-up living dead ghost in a rotting body, with makeup that added bulk and showed missing chunks. The hockey masks were the smallest of the series, almost half an inch smaller than the earlier ones.

Imagine Engineering handled mechanical effects, coordinated by Lou Carlucci, with Jim Doyle leading mechanical design and Joe Lombardi as pyrotechnic consultant.

Kane Hodder's full-body burn in the furnace scene lasted about forty seconds, a record at the time.

Several of the goriest shots were cut to get an R rating.

Alligator wranglers were hired for Byrnes Lake, but the alligators stayed quiet during the fall shoot.

Both principal lake houses were lightweight shell structures erected for filming. The party house was later sold and moved, while the Shepherd house was destroyed for the finale explosion and the lake site was restored afterward.

Props and costumes

Jacqueline Johnson designed the costumes.

Jason wears a heavily torn khaki work shirt, weathered tan work pants and vintage black U.S. Army mountain boots.

Horror Costume Index counts three masks on screen, including two breakaway split masks for the finale. Propstore, which sold the screen-matched hero mask from the Mario Kirner collection, says only two masks were made. The hero mask is vacuum-formed plastic with a red forehead triangle and three brown leather straps held on with brass split pins.

This is the film where the hockey mask Jason took in Part III is finally destroyed. He gets a new one in Part VIII.

Weapons used on screen include hero and stunt machetes, a chef's knife, a brush axe, a felling axe and a saw-bladed weed trimmer.

John Carl Buechler's production reduced the hockey-mask silhouette and aggressively distressed it to expose more of Jason's prosthetic face. Three masks appear on screen, including breakaway/split versions used for the finale; the primary hero mask was vacuum-formed plastic with leather straps and screen-matched damage.

Jason's wardrobe uses a heavily weathered khaki Dickies work shirt, matching/tan work pants and vintage black U.S. military mountain/ski boots. The film's practical weapon inventory includes hero/stunt machetes, a Chicago Cutlery chef knife, brush axe, felling axe and saw-bladed weed trimmer.

Design

Production artifacts

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Harry Manfredini and Fred Mollin share the score credit. Christopher Kennedy was music supervisor.

Songs, all licensed from Duke Street Records or A&M Records of Canada: 'I'm Not Mad (Ready for the World)', 'Take the Time to Dream', 'Dream Girl', 'The Real Thing' and 'Magic (In Your Eyes)', all performed by FM and written by Cameron Hawkins, Nash the Slash and Michael Waite; 'Essence of You' by Eye Eye, written by Bill Wood and Andy Ryan; 'Heart of Ice' and 'Coming Out of Nowhere', performed by Stan Meissner and written by Fred Mollin and Meissner; 'Can't Look Back', written and performed by Stan Meissner.

September 27, 2005: BSX Records limited CD pairing Fred Mollin's scores for Parts VII and VIII.

July 2020: Waxwork Records vinyl with the complete Fred Mollin cues plus Harry Manfredini material.

October 30, 2020: La-La Land Records limited edition CD, 78:22.

• Waxwork Records complete Part VII soundtrack by Harry Manfredini and Fred Mollin, sourced from rediscovered original 1988 master tapes and issued as a double LP.

Home Media

• September 3, 2002: Paramount standard DVD with no extras.
• 2004: included in Paramount's From Crystal Lake to Manhattan DVD box set, which carried some of the deleted footage.
• September 15, 2009: Paramount Deluxe Edition DVD, with about 16 minutes of deleted scenes, far more than the 2004 box set had.
• September 13, 2013: Blu-ray in Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection from Paramount and Warner Bros.
• February 2018: Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection DVD set from Paramount, covering the first eight films.
• October 13, 2020: included in Scream Factory's Friday the 13th Collection Deluxe Edition Blu-ray box set.

• NECA Ultimate Part 7 New Blood Jason 7-inch scale action figure.
• Waxwork Records soundtrack vinyl (2020).
• La-La Land Records limited CD (2020, 78:22) and BSX Records Parts VII and VIII Fred Mollin CD (2005).

Replica props and masks

Trading cards

The catalog

• Official trailer — Paramount+

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Props

Costumes