Taking a leaf out the previous year's A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the Friday the 13th franchise is reinvigorated with an injection of psychic mayhem in Part VII: The New Blood.
After an atmospheric pre-credits exposition and recaps (narrated by Walt Gorney aka Crazy Ralph from the first two Friday The 13th movies) that focuses mainly on Jason Lives, we're introduced to a young Tina Shephard (Jennifer Banko) who accidentally drowns her abusive father (John Otrin) in Crystal Lake, when her nascent psychic powers run out of control.
I can't help thinking that young Tina is somehow a nod to Tia in the original Witch Mountain movies, but maybe that's just me.
Anyway, years later, an older Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) and her mother (Susan Blu), are persuaded to return to their summer home by Crystal Lake (the whole renaming exercise from Jason Lives! appears to have been abandoned), by her personal mental health physician, the rather creepy Dr Crews (Terry Kiser).
He's trying to capitalise on her psychic powers, by pushing her to the edge of her wits and convincing her that her 'prophetic visions' are just delusions.
Co-incidentally, the neighbouring house is being used by a group of horny teens (including boob-flashing scream queen Elizabeth Kaitan) to host a surprise birthday party for one of their number (the actual surprise is that he never makes it!).
Railing against Dr Crews rather "in-your-face" therapy, Tina's psycho-kinetic powers end up releasing Jason from his bondage on the lake bed, and the killer rises from the waters, complete with tattered clothes and rib cage showing.
This was horror legend Kane Hodder's first stint behind the hockey mask and he definitely brings a certain character and manner to Jason Voorhees that may have been absent in the earlier films.
It's not that previous iterations of the franchise's antagonist were lacking anything, it's just that Hodder undeniably makes this role his own.
As he starts butchering anyone he finds "on his front lawn", we may think that it fortunate for Jason that one of his first kills was using a large machete to chop wood.
But in the end the slasher doesn't use his trademark weapon that much, instead relying on the many and varied domestic and forestry implements he finds laying around.
Of perverse note, The New Blood was the first of the films where Jason bludgeoned someone to death in a sleeping bag, smashing them against a tree (a scene extrapolated on in my favourite entry in the franchise, the sci-fi Jason X).
One thing I've realised not only do most of Jason's kills lack the finesse - and dark irony - of, say, Freddy Krueger's (being mostly brute force delivered to meat sacks) they're also actually not as gruesome as I either imagined or remembered them to be.
It's all in the suggestive way they are shot, being a combination of tense build-up and then - sometimes, but not always - seeing the gruesome aftermath.
These aren't the mindless torture porn of later years' horror, but following in the footsteps of well-crafted horror like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
And a recurring trope I've slowly picked up on is that every Friday The 13th - after the first, I believe - appears to feature people being thrown through windows: either in through a ground floor one or out of a first floor (or higher) one.
If I was still studying film at university, I'm sure I could come up with some deep meaning for this imagery, but, as it stands, it's just one of those cool, repeated shots that you start to anticipate as new episodes of the franchise drop.
As with Jason Lives, The New Blood is another solid entry in the series that tries to elevate the central conceit beyond "slasher targets horny teens" by expanding its paranormal elements while still keeping the film rooted in its central mythology.
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