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Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning (1985)

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If there were such a thing as truth in advertising, the previous installment, subtitled The Final Chapter , would have closed the book on the Jason Voorhees saga, and it would have snuffed him out on a bloody high note. In the seemingly definitive conclusion, the hockey-masked, machete-wielding half-man, half-monster finally met his match in the form of a most unlikely opponent: a 12-year-old boy with a penchant for video games and mask designing, whose clever imagination and ability to thrive under stress led him to shave his head and manipulate Jason into believing he was staring at a doppelganger of his 11-year-old pre-drowning self. While Jason had his back turned, Tommy picked up a machete, snuck up behind him, and embedded the blade into the side of his skull. After detecting a flicker of movement from his fingers, Tommy began hacking away at Jason until he was finally dead.  In the closing scene, Tommy visits his sister, Trish, in the hospital and embraces her, glaring sinis...
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Jaws (1975)

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The ocean is the Devil's playground. A vast expanse of salty, wavy water in which vacationers are permitted to relieve themselves of the oppressive heat of the sweltering sun shining down from the sky. For many people, including yours truly, the beach represents the ideal setting in which to enjoy the lazy, liberating days of summertime. Even if you're just sitting on a sand chair for the majority of the day, staring out at the ocean before you, the sensation of your feet in the sand is unsurpassable, as is the view. As soon as you step into the ocean, however, you assume a degree of risk. Wander in just deeply enough to where your waist is submerged but your feet are still planted on the sand, and you're within a straight line across the lifeguard, and you should be safe to enjoy the refreshing invigoration of the water, free to ride the waves along with your fellow beachgoers. At worst, you may step on some broken shells or get nipped by a small crab. Wander out just a li...
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Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter (1984)

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In the climactic confrontation of Friday the 13th Part 3 , Chris Higgins buried an axe in the right side of Jason Voorhees' skull. Following a next-morning chase that's revealed to be nothing more than a nightmare, the final shot of Jason is of his body lying lifelessly in the barn, the axe still protruding from his skull. If this were intended as the final chapter of a trilogy, it would have made for a definitive conclusion. But where would the fun have been in that? Jason, after securing his official wardrobe, in particular the goaltender mask stolen from Shelly Finkelstein, had already established himself as a horror icon, and there's too much money to be gained from the boatloads of teenagers who come flocking to the theater on Friday nights to witness the beheadings, impalements, and eviscerations of their fellow onscreen teenagers. At six future sequels, a crossover with the equally iconic Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, a remake, and now an impending prequel serie...
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Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)

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The ending of Friday the 13th Part 2  is somewhat ambiguous. After driving a machete into the shoulder of her assailant, the undead and pillow-cased Jason Voorhees, final girl Ginny Field escaped the woods of Crystal Lake with her final-boy boyfriend, Paul Holt, by her side. However, after returning to a cabin, a still-alive (and now unmasked) Jason suddenly came crashing through a window and grabbed a screaming Ginny, pulling her out. The following morning, an ambulance carried Ginny to safety on a stretcher, but Paul was nowhere in sight, leaving Ginny to call out his name in panic. Was he killed or already taken to a hospital? His fate is left uncertain.  In continuing the story for a third go-around, two potential drafts were conceived and subsequently dropped: one sounds like it would have been a rip-off of Rick Rosenthal's Halloween 2 , in which Ginny is confined to a psychiatric hospital, and Jason, having naturally recovered from his shoulder injury, tracks her down, s...
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