Undermining the Moneygrubbers, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Friday the 13^th Part V

Abstract

I have written elsewhere about film form and aesthetics in the Friday the 13 ^th film series and even about the particular strengths of this specific entry in the series; however, there is still much to be said about Friday the 13 ^th Part V: A New Beginning (1985; dir Danny Steinmann).¹ It may not have been contemporarily nor retrospectively popular, but this film still stands out as a unique and subversive entry in a successful and exemplary slasher film franchise.² Consistent with my other writing on the film, I maintain that it is so innovative that it remains a prophetic, as opposed to influential, harbinger of the abilities of the slasher to transcend its base connotations as ‘low’ art, which it arguably appears to have done within the last decade.