PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Last year, we took a look at the ins and outs of the important relationship between the “final girl” and the killer in A Nightmare On Elm Street (read the article here). This time, I wanted to break down a less traditional, but even more layered relationship; Jason Voorhees and his greatest nemesis, Tommy Jarvis, in Friday The 13th.
Tommy Jarvis appeared in three separate Friday The 13th movies and was portrayed by three different actors. Jason Voorhees also had his mask donned by three different people during these showdowns. But the complexity of the relationship stands as the best piece of character storytelling in the Friday The 13th franchise.
In Friday The 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter, we’re introduced to a very young Tommy Jarvis (played by Corey Feldman: The Goonies 1985). In spite of the fact that this installment’s Jason (played by Ted White: Demonoid 1981) hated Feldman’s immaturity on the set, the two had great chemistry. Tommy was a nerdy loner, much like a younger Jason when he was neglected and drowned as a boy. Tommy represented the kind of life that Jason would’ve lived, and Tommy seemed to understand him in a way that few characters ever had. At the end of the film, Tommy shaves his head to look like the mentally challenged killer, and eventually whacks Jason “to death” with his own machete. The last frame of the film shows that this encounter has scarred Tommy and potentially introduced a new dark side into the franchise.
In Friday The 13th Part 5: A New Beginning, Tommy is now grown (and played by John Shepherd: Thunder Run 1986). He’s been shipped off to live in a halfway house for behavioral folks who are trying to recover from mental illness. Jason isn’t actually Jason in this film. He’s Roy, (played by Dick Wieand: Romantic Comedy 1983) and stuntman Tom Morga, an EMT who snaps after the murder of his son at the halfway house. He uses the Jason attire and lore to avenge his child’s death.
In spite of the convoluted story, the movie is still highlighted by Tommy seeing visions of Jason and being haunted by their life-changing encounter. In the movie’s climax, Tommy dons the Jason mask and the movie alludes to him becoming the next Voorhees. While this movie lays rather weakly in the middle of two franchise favorites, the psychological impact of Jason on Tommy can’t be understated.
In Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives, we open with Tommy as a free man (played by Thom Mathews: Return of the Living Dead 1988), heading to the cemetery to check on Jason’s corpse and put an end to his own mental misery. In trying to destroy his captor, a rod that he puts through Jason’s heart gets electrocuted and brings him back to life. Tommy’s own torment and selfishness winds up resurrecting the very thing that he was trying to stop.
Tommy himself has now inadvertently turned Jason (played by C.J. Graham: 13 Fanboy 2021) into an indestructible superhuman machine and he spends the movie trying to right his wrong. In the end, he has to go out to Jason’s personal domain, in the middle of Crystal Lake. As he chains up his personal demon amidst a lake of fire, Jason pulls Tommy down with him. Two sides of the same coin, two anguished children, two battle tested rivals, both gasping for air, entangled together. In the end, Tommy comes up, and Jason stays chained until the sequel. Jason was down there waiting at the bottom of the lake, but the Tommy character never returned.
At least not until the Friday The 13th video game released in May of 2017. The survival game saw the Thom Mathews version of Tommy Jarvis return as a character that you could call on to help stop Jason in the campers’ fight to escape. The programmers thought of Tommy as the most beloved character and best possible Easter egg to combat Jason, and it’s hard not to agree. Several fan films have gone in the same direction over the years.
Every antagonist needs a rival on equal footing, and we saw Tommy as a broken survivor for three Friday The 13th movies (nobody else has ever survived two). From similar childlike states to a game of mental cat-and-mouse, Jason Voorhees will never see another person like Tommy Jarvis. But we can only hope for another battle between the two in the future. If Jason ever does REALLY die, it has to be Tommy who gives the eulogy.
