13 Things You Didn't Know About Friday 13th: The Final Chapter

Although the film still takes place on the lakeside with a quivering, hormonal bunch of teens, director Joseph Zito was determined to try to vary the established formula for what was expected at the time to be the last Friday The 13th movie.

The previous films in the series had set up good-looking young women as the ones to take out the killer. Alice Hardy, Ginny Fields and Chris Higgins were the protagonists of each movie, and each 'final girl' would be the sole survivor (saving Paul, aka Schroedinger’s Boyfriend).

The Final Chapter pays lip service to the final girl formula by establishing Trish Jarvis as the primary protagonist but leaves the killing blow to her younger brother Tommy, as Zito didn't think it had been done in a slasher before.

The inclusion of the family next door to the party house was another deliberate attempt to change the dynamic. It had been suggested that audiences were cheering Jason because the teen protagonists and supporting cast were so unlikeable.

For Zito’s movie, it was vital that Jason's death come as a cathartic climax, not a let down.By trying to make the teenagers more rounded, three-dimensional characters and introducing a loving single-parent family, Zito intended the audience to root for the potential victims instead, and by doing so shift Jason from antihero to villain once more.

By all accounts, his storytelling paid off: theatre audiences were on their feet cheering Tommy on as he hacked Jason to pieces...