Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by John Carl Buechler
• Written by Manuel Fidello and Daryl Haney
• Starring
  • Lar Park-Lincoln
  • Kevin Spirtas
  • Susan Blu
  • Terry Kiser
• Produced by Iain Paterson
• Executive produced by Frank Mancuso, Jr.

I suppose it’s an indicator of how far my standards are falling, but I had fun watching this one.

See, the Friday the 13th series has always been goofy. The first installment was just another of the subgrade slasher films that clogged the early ’80s, and after that the franchise inexplicably developed around Jason (rather than his mother — oops, I hope I didn’t ruin anything for you). They all told the story of a group of horny teens getting mowed down by the masked killer, and they all told it poorly; a collection of hand-held camera shots that were meant to incite suspense, and gory deaths by Savini or an imitator that were really the only signs of creativity on the part of anyone in the production.

Then, somewhere in the middle of the series (I mark Part 6 as the turning point), the producers had a moment of insight. Perhaps the reins had been taken over by youngsters who had seen the first few movies as paying customers. Whatever the reason, there seems to have been a sudden realization: “Hey, these movies are goofy!” And from that point on, they became selfconsciously so. Jason was no longer presented simply as a Halloween-style boogeyman; rather, he became a human video game, chopping down human bit parts between each “plot” scene. Suddenly, the films became fun.

Anyway. This installment opens with a montage and a voiceover (for anyone who’d never actually heard of the series before); we get to see several of Jason’s earlier killings, his resurrection in Part 6, and his fate at the end of that movie, chained to a boulder at the bottom of Crystal Lake (oops, hope I didn’t ruin anything for you).

We then cut to a young girl, Tina, on the shore of the lake some years later. Upset at her father for beating her mother, she gets in a rowboat and pushes away from shore. When dad comes out to plead for her to come back, she screams, “I wish you were dead!” Unfortunately, this little girl just happens to be psychokinetic; the dock starts shaking as if it were mounted on hydraulics (which it kinda was), and Dad falls in the lake.

Fast-forward — what, about a decade? Anyway, Tina is now a young, nubile, and very mixed up woman, and she’s going back to the lakehouse with her mom and her shrink, Dr. Krews (the ubiquitous Terry Kiser) to confront the demons of her past and her guilt over her father’s death. However, Dr. Krews’ motivations aren’t really so pure; recognizing her PK abilities, he’s been inciting them of videotape to make himself famous.

Now it just so happens that the old house is isolated on the edge of the lake — right beside another cabin full of college-age kids come to celebrate a birthday. In other words, it’s House O’Fodder. Since we’re planning such a high body count, we go beyond the standard four or five stereotypes used in these movies; we have a full ten stereotypes. There’s obviously Hero Boy, who befriends Tina and actually believes her when the truth comes out; the Rich Bitch, who’s inexplicable cruelty can only serve to engender distrust between the classes (she also lasts for most of the movie, just so we’ll really be rooting for Jason when she finally gets it); and then, with less importance, we have the Wallflower, the Stoner and the Pothead Girl, the Sci-Fi Geek, the Yuppie and his Yuppie Slut, and the Black Boy and Black Girl (apparently ethnicity is all the distinguishing characteristic they need). And to add to the body count, we also have the birthday boy and his girlfriend, who never make it to the party; and a couple of random campers thrown in.

See, Dr. Krews’ “therapy” upsets Tina worse, and she finally runs away from him out to the peer. She concentrates on the lake, half-believing she can raise her father; but it isn’t her father she reanimates. It’s Jason, still chained to the rock, much the worse for wear. (His ribcage and backbone are showing through, some teeth are exposed along the jawline, and his fingers are meaty but skeletal — not too bad).

Let the slaughter begin.

As you would expect (yet for no logical reason) Jason starts on the campers and such who are away from the lake (the sign says “5 Miles”), using tent pegs to dispatch them until he picks up a handy machete (a camper was chopping wood with a machete? what is this, Bolivia?). All of the deaths are couched in the standard simplistic morality of this and other slasher flicks: Everyone who has sex… or tries to have sex… or thinks about having sex, dies.

I should point out that Jason seems to have TARDIS-like qualities. He can kill someone in the house, then find someone who’s lost in the woods and can’t find the house, then kills another person in the house. I should also point out that he eventually gets bored of his machete and apparently raids the toolshed; he attacks some fodder in the woods with a long pruning hook — and then, in the next set of attacks, still in the woods, he employes a gas-powersed tree trimmer with a circular blade. I’m still trying to figure out if he went all the way back to the toolshed and then back out into the woods, or if he has the coolest Swiss Army knife in the world.

Also of note: aficionados know to look for at least one Spring-Loaded Cat scene — you know, where a cat leaps from a closet, releasing everyone’s tension, and then the real killer shows up. Not only is there a Spring-Loaded Cat scene here, but it’s arbitrary nature is highlighted. Not only have we seen no cats before this moment of the movie, but the Pothead Girl who discovers it makes a special note of saying that she hasn’t seen it in the house before. Hey, I told you it was goofy.

I think this installment also holds the honor (to date) of Most Methods Attempted to Off Jason. In the last fifteen minutes Tina and Hero Boy electrocute him, throw furniture at him, drop a roof on him, drop him through a staircase, try to crush his skull with his own mask straps, strangle him, drop him through the floor, shoot nails into his head, cover him in gasoline and set him alight, explode a house around him, and finally empty the requisite six shots into him. I’d be lying if I said he looked no worse for wear after that, but still…

As I said at the beginning, this is a goofy movie. If you check your brain at the door (which you probably did before renting it in the first place), you’ll probably enjoy it far more than it deserves.

A Notable Quotable:

“Rejection. Okay. Fine. I can take it. I’ve been rejected by some of the finest science fiction magazines in the continental United States!”

- Eddie, the sci-fi geek

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 15
• breasts: 4
• explosions: 2
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 2 (well, sorta — there are random lightning bolts throughout the night of the climax)
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Craig Thomas (”Ben” — I think he was the black kid) was a Klingon crewman in Star Trek: The Motion Picture