A dirty trick, this. Part IV, with its subtitle "The Final Chapter," promised an end to this ridiculous film series, and the next year another episode came out as usual, just like clockwork.

Part V actually starts out promising. In fact it's the first in the series not to adhere so strictly to the formula of "a bunch of teenagers go up to Crystal Lake and get bumped off without anybody noticing until it gets down to the One Who Lives, followed by a twenty minute wrestle/chase with Jason, followed by a false dream-like final 'shock'." Still, the familiar cliches and pitfalls are present: characters are introduced for no other reason than to get killed (more so here than ever), a cat jumps out from somewhere providing a false scare (actually this time it's obvious the cat was *thrown* into the camera's view), people die until it gets down to the last couple potential victims, car trouble is an important plot point, and what Friday flick would be complete without a body being thrown through a window from outside? Then there's the obligatory quasi-dream ending. In this case, it is tiresomely LONG. The characters this time around aren't so much indistinguishable as they are annoying. They're all extreme caricatures. I didn't believe a one of them for an instant, even the more sane among them.

The bad movie laughs are few. Most of them are inconsistencies one notices but does not necessarily laugh at. Others are worth a chuckle or two. Among these:

- The main character, Tommy, pulls out a jackknife of some sort. He opens it up, checks it out, then closes it. The "closing" sound on the soundtrack is out of synch with the image, happening noticeably sooner than it should.

- In an early scene, someone is chopping some wood with an axe. The camera focuses on a character standing nearby, watching, and the chopping occurs just in front of the camera, so that all we see of it is the blur of the axe swinging up and down and wood chips flying up when the axe hits. There are way way WAY more wood chips flying around than there should be.

- As I mentioned, the obligatory cat scare scene looks like the cat was thrown into view. It was supposed to look like the cat jumped from something, but there wasn't anything on the set the cat could have possibly jumped *from*.

- At the end, there's three surviving characters who do battle with "Jason," which is a remarkably high number for this series. It is incredible the number of times they go through the following sequence: (1) one of them gets knocked down for the count, (2) the other two go hide, (3) Jason is about to kill one of the other two, (4) one of the others comes to the rescue by knocking Jason down. Repeat ad nauseum.

- Good thing this kid just happens to know how to drive a plow.

There is, however, one good solid bad movie laugh. It's the completely disposable "It's showtime!" scene that Dave mentioned as the "scene to watch for" in his official IABBBBM review of the movie. It's as confusing as it is funny. I don't understand what the intent was. If it was a joke, I don't get it. If it was a "character building" moment, I don't get how. If it was just supposed to be a gratuitous cheap thrill, why so conspicuous, and why with that line of dialogue? I'm not even sure how to take it as one of those plain old random bad movie moments. I can't call it a failed scene, because I don't know what it failed to do. Maybe that's why it's funny.

Rating: 1.5 turkeys.