10 Fun Facts About ‘Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood’

Following Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Paramount began negotiations with New Line Cinema for a crossover film with A Nightmare on Elm Street killer Freddy Krueger. When negotiations for that fell through, the studio chose to produce a new Friday the 13th sequel instead. Associate producer Barbara Sachs envisioned a new movie inspired by Jaws about land developers building condos to sell at Crystal Lake, covering up Jason’s murder sprees to make a killing on the profits.

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Although Sachs was hopeful the movie would win an Academy Award, hired screenwriter Daryl Haney wanted to do something different. After pitching several ideas Sachs turned down, Haney’s final concept captured her attention. “There’s always a teenage girl who’s left to battle Jason by herself,” Haney recalls in Peter M. Bracke’s Crystal Lake Memories. “What if the girl had telekinetic powers?” Intrigued by the premise, Sachs soon after signed on Haney to develop his own concept for the movie.

Unfortunately, the production of The New Blood wasn’t very kind to Haney. The writer says in Crystal Lake Memories he had gotten into a contract dispute and was fired from the project before the shooting script was complete. According to Haney, he was to be paid $30,000 for a standard treatment, first draft, revision, and polishing, only to be released after writing around 15 drafts. An uncredited screenwriter was then brought in to rework the screenplay, adding many changes, and the identity of this writer still remains a mystery.

Officially, Haney is credited as the co-writer of the film along with Manuel Fidello, but that’s not actually a real person. It was an uncredited union writer who chose not to use his real name for the project, and the person has never come forward to take credit for their involvement. Worse yet for Haney, “Manuel Fidello” walked away with half of his expected payday.

“So here is this pseudonym getting a credit, and he was paid with half my bonus, and the other half went back into the movie,” Haney explains. “It was a very, very bitter lesson in the ways of Holllywood, but I guess that’s how we get wiser.”

After Jason Lives, Jason Voorhees actor C.J. Graham was keen on reprising the role for a sequel. Thoroughly enjoying his time behind the mask, Graham hoped to make himself synonymous with the character by being the first man to play the role more than once. Although he was considered, director John Carl Buechler ultimately decided to cast Kane Hodder.

This was based on Hodder’s work in the film Prison, where he plays a zombie emerging from the ground. Buechler was impressed by Hodder’s volunteering to film the scene with live maggots in his mouth.

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Although Graham was replaced for Friday the 13th Part VII, he still accomplished his goal of being forever associated with Jason Voorhees. Fans constantly seek him out at convention appearances.

Fans of the original two Friday the 13th movies all love Crazy Ralph. Portrayed by Walt Gorney, the character is known for telling those who venture to Camp Crystal Lake, “You’re all doomed!” An often-quoted fan favorite, Crazy Ralph was sadly killed in the middle of Part 2, but Gorney’s involvement in the series doesn’t end there.

For Friday the 13th Part VII, Gorney returns to the series as the movie’s narrator. His voice can be heard in the opening of the film, telling the story of Jason Voorhees and his murderous history at Crystal Lake. It’s definitely an awesome Easter egg for longtime fans of the Friday the 13th series.

During production, The New Blood was using the fake working title of Birthday Bash. Unaware that it was, in actuality, a new Friday the 13th movie, actress Kerry Noonan auditioned for the lead role of Tina. Once she was made privy to the story, she realized the movie was a direct sequel to Jason Lives. The problem? Noonan had already played a character in that movie as well!

In Jason Lives, Noonan plays final girl Megan’s best friend Paula. She’s the one who Jason captures alone in a cabin and proceeds to paint the walls with her blood. Because it wouldn’t make much sense for this same actress to play an unrelated character in the sequel, Noonan said at the audition she had just appeared in a Friday the 13th movie. Because of this, she understandably didn’t get the part.

John Carl Buechler aimed to make Friday the 13th Part VII incredibly violent, and the original cut of the film had certainly achieved that goal. In fact, there was so much explicit gore in the film that it would have been given an X rating if released as it was. This forced Buechler to trim down the violence in order to secure an R-rating, keeping the sequel in theaters.

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Almost every death in the film was originally much more graphic. Some of the alternate death scenes include Maddy getting sliced through the neck with a sickle, Jason completely disemboweling Dan, and a close-up shot of Melissa’s head getting chopped cleanly in half. Fortunately, workprint footage of these scenes and more can be seen in the bonus features of the Deluxe DVD Edition.

Jason Voorhees seems to have met his match when he encounters Tina Shepard in The New Blood. Because of her telekinetic abilities, Tina is able to use the environment as a weapon against Jason, ultimately defeating him with the help of her undead father. Close to his defeat, Tina even sets Jason on fire, resulting in an amazing scene where we see the infamous Crystal Lake killer going up in flames.

This movie came out in 1988, meaning there was no advanced CGI to use to digitally insert the flames. Instead, Kane Hodder was set ablaze for real, surrounded by flames for a full forty seconds and setting a new record for the time. It’s just one example of the extreme commitment Hodder had immediately given to the Jason character upon his casting.

It’s not uncommon for directors to have cameos in their own movies. M. Night Shyamalan utilizes self-cameos just as often as he does twist endings. It’s pretty common across the board. So perhaps it wouldn’t be too strange for you to know The New Blood director John Carl Buechler has a cameo appearance towards the end of this movie as well.

After Jason is defeated, a firefighter can be seen discovering his broken mask on the ground. It’s Buechler himself who picks up the mask just before the film comes to a close.

Something every Friday the 13th movie prior to The New Blood utilized was some kind of jump scare ending, usually with some kind of dream sequence or hallucination. The idea is to scare the viewers one last time before the credits roll, even though Jason has been “killed.” For The New Blood, a fisherman is pulled underwater and drowned in the original ending sequence, but the scene was axed prior to the film’s release.

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So, what happened? According to screenwriter Daryl Haney in Crystal Lake Memories, it had to do with the release of the Glenn Close movie Fatal Attraction. At the end of that film, a similar idea to what’s seen in the Friday the 13th movies is used when Close comes flying out of a bathtub. Concerned that the jump scare trope had become too mainstream and predictable, producers axed the scene, giving The New Blood the first “peaceful” ending of the series.

Tina Shepard doesn’t receive even a mention in the next sequel, Jason Takes Manhattan, but there wasn’t a lack of trying to bring her back. Buechler wanted her to return in a direct sequel, picking up after her release from the insane asylum following the events of Friday the 13th Part VII. Even Tina, who plays Lar Park Lincoln, was very hopeful of reprising the role in another movie, co-writing another screenplay with her husband. This draft would have followed the final girl, now working as a psychologist.

However, the weirdest sequel concept comes from Kevin Spirtas, who plays Tina’s love interest, Nick. Written to be a “vehicle” for his acting career, Spirtas’ script presents a story revealing everything from The New Blood, which was actually a dream. Nick himself is also revealed to be a Jason copycat who murders Tina – because fans were just so happy when the franchise did that with Roy Burns.

None of these ideas were used, for better or for worse, and Jason Voorhees ended up taking a sea cruise to Manhattan instead.

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