Friday the 13th Part V, subtitled "A New Beginning," was the 1985 entry into the franchise when the studio decided to keep it going. This one was directed (and co-written) by Danny Steinmann and starred Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Richard Young, Marco St. John, Tiffany Helm, Juliette Cummins, Carol Locatell, Vernon Washington, and Debi Sue Voorhees. Cory Feldman also makes a brief cameo appearance at the beginning of the film. Despite the fact that it came out just a year after the prior film, it is set five years after the events of the prior movie, with a now-teenaged Tommy Jarvis (played by Shepherd) who has been in and out of several psychiatric hospitals and is now being transferred to a halfway house near Crystal Lake. He begins seeing Jason, and when another resident at the halfway house is murdered by a violent resident, Jason seemingly begins killing again.
Unlike the first four films, as of this writing, this one only appears to be available on blu-ray as part of the Shout Factory's complete collection box set. Otherwise, it is only available on DVD. The blu-ray special features include three commentary tracks: one by the actresses who played the main female characters, one including the director, Shepherd, and Ross, and one by Adam Green and Joel Lynch. There are also deleted scenes, the trailer, the next installment of the Lost Tales From Camp Blood short film, the next installment of the mockumentary The Crystal Lake Masacres Revisited, a making-of featurette, and a stills gallery.
The movie itself is pretty bad. The writing was cheesy, and the actors (all unknowns aside from Ross, who had a role on the TV series Different Strokes, and Washington, who was a pretty recognizable character actor) were given little to work with. This one definitely earns its R-rating, as there is a lot of violence (and as much gore as they were allowed to show) and the most nudity of any of the films in the series up to that point. There are a couple of big plot twists at the end that you will probably either love or hate. Ultimately, while it is not a great film, one thing that can be said about the movie is that it wasn't trying to be a carbon copy of the earlier films in the series, and it is worth checking out.
