Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	88:24
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Danny Steinmann
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Melanie Kinnaman John Shepherd Shavar Ross
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Harry Manfredini

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Slovenian French German Swedish Danish Norwegian Finnish Dutch Bulgarian Icelandic Portuguese Hebrew Greek Croatian Arabic Turkish Polish Italian Spanish Romanian Czech Hungarian	Smoking	Yes, not necessarily tobacco
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, mildly
		Action In or After Credits	No

    A warning first: Friday The 13th reviews, by nature, tend to contain tidbits of information about the plot of the "current" episode as well as previous ones. This is unavoidable partly because it is necessary to give readers a better idea of which sequel they are reading about, but also because there is precious little plot in each episode to begin with.

    Friday The 13th: A New Beginning, or Part Fifty-Five as some would call it, was the sequel that really should never have been made, considering that the last instalment was called The Final Chapter. However, box office returns were still strong, and the home video market was just getting into full swing, so the makers had to chime in with a new rehash sequel. Armchair critics, however, are more divided about this episode in the series than any other, partly because there is no actual Jason to be found in this instalment. Instead, the makers tried to bring the series back to the whodunnit style of the original Friday The 13th, a move that has drawn whines of "there's no Jason in it" from people who obviously haven't seen the first film, ever since.

    Those who viewed the previous episode in the series will remember that it ended with a young Tommy Jarvis, played with B-grade gusto by a young Corey Feldman, killing Jason for what appeared to be the last time. Fast forward about ten years, and Tommy is now a young adult played by John Shepherd, and being taken to a halfway house, presumably after being treated for the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that the events of the previous film would have caused. We are soon introduced to a motley crew of troubled teens, and it isn't long before one of them who goes by the name of Victor (Mark Venturini) blows his stack, chopping another one named Joey (Dominick Brascia) to bits.

    In case that last sentence doesn't reveal a great deal about the quality of the script on offer, it is not even vaguely possible, especially in today's lawsuit-happy world, that anyone prone to such murderous rages would be placed in a halfway house. The most relaxed security that such a teenager with such sloppy impulse control would be placed under is the use of two nurses, probably both of them being at least two meters tall and armed with tazers or tranquilliser guns. Of course, it isn't revealing too much to say that one of the paramedics, who goes by the name of Roy (Dick Wieand) doesn't take too kindly to this security faux pas, but I will leave it to those who haven't seen the film to find out why.

    I'll admit right away that I am in the minority with this instalment of the franchise, as I found it to be much better than at least three of the ones that came before it, and miles ahead of the three that came after. While the whodunnit aspect is poorly handled to say the least, bringing the premise back to its original form was an idea that should have been more creatively explored in future episodes. It would have made a nice change from the "psychopathic wild man of the woods goes and chops a few anonymous idiots apart" script that is shared by eight of the other nine films. Still, if you have a craving for what we like to call date flicks, then this will fit nicely in your collection.

Video

    Ironically, Friday The 13th, Part Fifty, was the first in the series to be shot with something approaching decent production values, and it shows in this transfer.

    This transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and it is 16x9 Enhanced.

    This transfer is sharp enough that the individual bristles in John Shepherd's beard stubble when he is being transported to the halfway house can be counted. The shadow detail is average - while it is much improved upon the previous instalments of this franchise, it is also relied upon a lot less, which makes a mighty big difference when it comes to the story making sense. There is no low-level noise in the transfer.

    The colours in this transfer are rather bright and vivid, which reflects the settings of the film, especially the forest around the halfway house. No composite artefacts were noticed.

    MPEG artefacts were not noted in this transfer, in spite of the bitrate sometimes getting as low as three megabits a second. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some occasional aliasing, most of it extremely minor, such as on the neon sign at 46:37. There was one rather noticeable instance on a corrugated iron outhouse at 51:15, but that was well within acceptable limits, too. Film artefacts, however, returned with a vengeance, especially during the first ten minutes of the film, where a plethora of black and white scratch marks were noticed all over the Paramount logo as well as the opening sequence. The most objectionable film artefact I found was a cluster of white marks in the upper left corner of the picture at 37:14.

    There are English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles present on this disc. In typical Paramount tradition, they contain some serious blunders or variations from the spoken dialogue, such as at 75:37, when the person who wrote the subtitles refers to the younger Tommy's voice as that of "2nd Man". You'd have to be quite seriously Hearing Impaired yourself to mistake a twelve year old Corey Feldman's voice for that of a man.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are five soundtracks on this DVD, all of which are in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192 kilobits per second. In order, these are the original English dialogue, which is the default soundtrack, with dubs in German, French, Spanish, and Italian. I stuck with the English dialogue.

    The dialogue, what there is of it, is clear and easy to make out at almost all times. There are occasional words that get lost in the clutter of sound effects and score music, but these can be considered inconsequential. There are also no problems with audio sync.

    The score music in this film is credited to Harry Manfredini. Again, numerous pieces of music from previous episodes in the franchise are used, with only slight variations distinguishing each piece of scoring (so it is in keeping with the theme of the franchise). One thing worthy of note, however, is that the hissing effects which have become a strange sort of trademark for the series and its scores is present and accounted for.

    The surround channels had the night off with this audio transfer. There was also precious little in the way of stereo separation, which is not surprising given that this is a B-movie from the mid-1980s.

    The subwoofer also had the night off, but those who set their main speakers to Small in their receiver's configuration will get plenty of redirected signals in order to support the impact of the machete or the thunderstorms.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Again, considering that we could have had a Mystery Science Theatre-style commentary track, the effort we have here is a real disappointment.

Menu

    The menu is static, and features what can only be described as a childish typeface. It is 16x9 Enhanced. I have to say this, but fourteen chapters is woefully inadequate, even for an eighty-eight minute film with as minimal a plot as this.

Theatrical Trailer

    This one minute and forty-eight second trailer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, and it is 16x9 Enhanced. Watching it before the feature will ruin some of the few surprises that this film contains (and one of them is actually quite good).

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on all of the foreign languages excepting French. According to the review on Widescreen Review, the picture on the Region 1 disc is also of lesser quality.

    A New Beginning was a bold, but ultimately doomed attempt to bring the Friday The 13th franchise back in line with its origins. It made for a much more satisfying sequel than any that have come before or since, but this is not saying a hell of a lot. Still, fans of blood, gore, and wobbly bits will have no trouble viewing this instalment.

    The video transfer is good.

    The audio transfer is okay.

    The extra is a disappointment.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall