I have to say the folks at Paramount Home Entertainment do know how to aptly time their DVD releases. The first wave of these Deluxe Edition DVD's for the original Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th Part II and Friday the 13th Part III 3D, came out a week and a half or so before the new theatrical Friday the 13th remake hit theaters, and this second wave, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th Part V - A New Beginning and Fridaythe 13th Part VI - Jason Lives, came out on the same day that the remake hit the DVD shelves and this new Deluxe Edition of The Final Chapter gives a spiffy new edition to perhaps the best entry of the entire series.

This fourth installment of the series starts out nicely, with a slick three-minute montage that catches you up on the story of Jason Voorhes from the first three films and then this film picks right up from where Part III left off - with Jason Voorhes dead in the barn and soon thereafter, being hauled away in the meat wagon. Of course, Jason (played in this installment by Ted White), isn't dead for long and after a few slayings at the hospital, he's back on the warpath. Deep in the woods, the Jarvis family lives peacefully with Trish (Kimberly Beck), a hot yet responsible young woman, Tommy (Corey Feldman), a precocious youth who has a propensity for fixing things like cars and also for creating some original horror masks. They live in a rustic cabin in the woods with their mother (Joan Freeman) when they suddenly find themselves with some newfound company in a gaggle of youngsters who just moved in next door, a mysterious, burly "bear hunter" named Rob Dier (Erich Anderson) and, of course, a mysterious, burly human hunter with a hockey mask named Jason Voorhes.

I honestly can't remember when the last time I have seen any of these films was, because I was so young, and at such an age where I "shouldn't" be seeing these films, that I can't really remember which ones I saw and which I didn't. So, with these new Deluxe Editions, I'm basically starting the series over from scratch and I have to say that this fourth entry is practically neck-and-neck with the first film as far as my favorite. What's interesting here is seeing all the first's pop up. The first film introduced the characters, the second film showed Jason with the burlap sack, the third is when we first see the now-iconic hockey mask and the fourth film basically completes this four-fecta of the Jason character, because it's here where the machete is first introduced. What's also great about this one is this is where they start to mix it up a little bit. Instead of just focusing on a group of young kids looking for a good time, Barney Cohen's script also gives us this nice parallel story of the Jarvis family living next door and, in Tommy, Jason finally meets a worthy adversary. They actually fit a lot of material into this 91-minute movie, which is essentially the runtime of all the films, but instead of focusing on corny jokes that don't work, (OK, there are some here, but not as many as the first three), they squeeze in the plight of the Jarvis' and an equally-cool but smaller sub-plot of Erich Anderson's Tom Dier, a character who is essentially the forerunner of Jared Padalecki's Clay in the Friday the 13th remake earlier this year. Structurally, it's probably the most sound of all of them, and has the most going on here as well.

Of course, most of the acting isn't the greatest here, but for what it's used for here, it gets us by just fine. There are parts of some performances, and Cohen's script that can go a bit too far (one of the characters yelling "He's killing me!" over and over again. Come on...), but I liked that they didn't try for a whole lot of humor here (with the exception of Crispin Glover's HILARIOUS dance moves... something I'm not sure was intentional or not). Speaking of Glover, he's not too bad here as Jimmy, the de facto doofus of the youngster group, but the dude-who-thinks-he's-slick-but-isn't guy, Ted, is played rather awfully by Lawrence Monoson, who could actually be Justin Long's father in real life, because the resemblance is kind of scary. It wouldn't be a horror film without some lovely eye candy, which is provided by Judie Aronson's Sam, the slutty one of the group, Sara (Barbara Howard), the angelic one of the group and the local twins Tina and Terri, played by real-life twins Camilla and Carey More. The collective group of eye candy aren't the best of actors, but they fin perfectly into these roles. The biggest parts, of course, are that of Kimberly Beck's Trish Jarvis and young Corey Feldman in his first major film role, after quite a few years working in TV. Whlie Beck carried most of the last half of the movie, quite nicely too, Feldman really steals the show here and his performance just at the end was probably enough to kickstart the career that has now spanned over 25 years. Simply amazing.

1984 was a pretty good year for director Joseph Zito, because not only did he direct this awesome slasher film, but also the Chuck Norris action classic Missing in Action... and he really didn't do much of anything in the 25 years since then. Still, I have to wonder why he hasn't done much, because Zito has quite a smooth and efficient style that lends itself to horror films quite nicely. There was one kill in the movie that was rather insignificant, but was probably the single coolest shot in the entire movie, a nice tracking shot that actually goes past the victim and, when the lightning flashes, you see Jason's shadow make the kill, which is reflected on the house. The film doesn't stumble at all, really, nor does it rely on gimmickry like the annoying 3-D in the last film and the preponderance of slow-motion we tend to see. Zito did a damn fine job directing this film, and I'm kind of sad that he really didn't work much after this, because it looks from this film like he could've done some impressive work down the line.

Friday the 13th The Final Chapter, of course, isn't the final chapter of Jason Voorhes, but maybe it should've been. It has some of the best kills of the whole series, a more streamlined story without all the unnecessary garbage of gimmicks or corny humor and, of course, friggin Corey Feldman! Now that's a way to go out on top, folks...

Like the rest of these Deluxe Edition DVD's The Final Chapter gives us a nice little does of extra features to dive into and the first one we get is a continuation of the last three DVD's as well. Lost Tales From Camp Blood - Part 4 continues this feature from the first wave with a new installment and, if you need a refresher, these are just little short films that tell peripheral tales from the movie that usually involve secondary characters, and such. This one features a dude who had his eyeball taken out trying to leave the hospital and gets caught in the parking garage. I don't know if they just can't use the mask for some reason, but this dude just has a hoodie on. Oh well. It's a little six-minute flick that is at least worth a look... even though it's not amazing or anything.

Slashed Scenes is next and we even get a nice little intro here from director Joseph Zito, and he explains that these are basically deleted scenes that don't have any sound, because they were just from the dailies, and Zito will be providing his commentary throughout the scenes. Most of these are kill scenes and we get some nice insights into Zito's filmmaking style and see some of the techniques of the reverse shot that Zito used a lot here. It's a nice little 15-minute feature that's well worth watching, and quite unique because I usually don't see too much commentary on deleted scenes.

Jason's Unlucky Day: 25 Years After Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is next and this is a pretty standard making of featurette that starts out nicely with director Joseph Zito, right off the bat, saying that they were told this would be the very last Friday the 13th film... and that they believed it. We get some really great stuff here in this 11-minute featurette, with most of the interview bits from director Joseph Ztio, screenwriter Barry Cohen, makeup effects guru Tom Savini and Trisha herself, Kimberly Beck. We get some really intriguing moments here with everyone that sheds some light on the production, like certain kills they were going to use, and the long process of finding out a kill that worked for Jason Voorhes, since, at the time, that was to be the last one. Any fan of this series will surely love this featurette.

The Lost Ending is next and we hear commentaries from director Joseph Zito and actress Kimberly Beck along the way. It is basically a "morning after" shot that's about three minutes long and, like Zito said, it's a very good thing that this ending wasn't used. I can see, in theory, why it was contemplated, but I'm really glad it was never used.

The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited Part I is the first of a simply hilarious three-part segment that spans through these three new Deluxe Edition sets. It's basically a mockumentary, told in three parts throughout these three discs, that treats the events in the movie as if they actually happened and Crystal Lake is an actual place... in a quite hysterical way. This features a lot of fake news reports, headlines and interviews from "actual" Crystal Lake residents and "experts" on the massacres and Jason Voorhees. This is really a perfect little series for any die-hard horror fan because it not only pokes fun at some horror trivia (for instance, a "Crystal Lake historian" tells us that one of Crystal Lake's neighboring towns is Haddonfield, the town that Michael Myers inhabits in Halloween) and it's a wonderful satire that pokes fun at some of the more illogical elements of the first four films in the series and some of the best stuff here is from these two Voorhes "experts" and another "expert" who claims in his book that all the Crystal Lake killings were done by copycats. It's quite a wonderful little dose of humor into this horror world that any fan will sure to get a huge kick out of.

The last thing we get here, besides the original trailer, is Jimmy's Dead Fuck Dance Moves and it we have some stuff from director Thomas Zito about the outlandish dance sequence that Crispin Glover pulls off in the movie and it's absolutely hilarious and unexpected. It's funny because I guess there was a point where some of the other actors couldn't do their parts properly because his dance was such a shock. It's only two minutes long but it gives some hilarious insight into one of the few true comic relief moments in the film.

The disc is presented in the widescreen format, enhanced for 16x9 televisions.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound format.

They're sticking to the format of the first wave of Deluxe Editions here, with just a title card and one main image on the front and some random pics, special features listing, synopsis and billing block/tech specs on the back. Simple, but it works fine.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is simply my favorite film in the series. It gets away from the gimmicky horror and cornball humor and gets right to the scares in inventive and awesome ways.