Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
1984
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Film director, Producer. Joseph Zito (born May 14, 1946) is an American film director and producer, best known for directing several cult and genre films throughout the 1980s, such as Missing in Action, Invasion U.S.A., Red Scorpion, The Prowler, and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.
- Film director, Producer
Joseph Zito is a well known action film director. Three of his movies--Missing in Action (1984), Invasion U.S.A. (1985) and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)--each reached the #1 box office position of top grossing film in the country in their opening weeks of U.S. theatrical release.
- January 1, 1
- Producer, Director, Writer
- New York City, New York, USA
- Joseph Zito
Mini Bio. Joseph Zito is a well known action film director. Three of his movies-- Missing in Action (1984) , Invasion U.S.A. (1985) and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) --each reached the #1 box office position of top grossing film in the country in their opening weeks of U.S. theatrical release. "Missing in Action" is Chuck Norris ...
- May 14, 1946
Joseph Zito – soldier in the Manhattan faction (the West Side Crew) under capo Rosario Gangi. Zito was involved in bookmaking and loansharking business. Law enforcement labeled Zito as acting underboss from 1997 through 2003, but he was probably just a top lieutenant under official underboss Venero Mangano. In the mid-1990s, Zito frequently ...
- 1890s; 132 years ago
- Giuseppe Morello
- c. 1890s–present
- New York City, U.S.
- Plot
- Themes
- Production
- Release
- Legacy
- External Links
On March 12, 1944 in Avalon, California, during World War II, a woman named Rosemary writes a letter to her boyfriend, breaking up with him. On June 28, 1945, Rosemary is attending a graduation dance with her new boyfriend Roy, who suggests they go out to lovers' lane. While there, they are attacked by a mysterious prowler wearing an army combat un...
Critic Stephen Deusner of The Washington Post has interpreted The Prowler as a "a sly, strange statement about the stakes of war". Deusner cites the film as transgressive in the genre due to its portrayal of a war veteran as its villain: "Not every movie could get away with casting a spurned veteran as its villain, especially not a WWII vet. Even i...
Development
The Prowler was co-written by Glenn Leopold and Neal Barbera, son of Joseph Barbera. Director Joseph Zito read the screenplay and was drawn to its "misty quality": "It had this strange, dreamlike mood in it. It wasn't trying to be real, it was trying to be surrealin a way".
Casting
Farley Grangerwas cast in the film through his connection to the wife of an executive producer, with whom he was enrolled in an acting course.
Filming
Initially, Zito had wanted to shoot The Prowler in Avalon, California, where it is set, but later decided to shoot the film in Cape May, New Jersey instead, which he felt had a "ghost town quality". The film was shot over a period of six weeks, which each consisted of six days' work, beginning in October 1980. Contemporaneous newspaper reports cite a budget of between $400,000 and $500,000, though Zito has stated that the film ultimately cost $1 million to produce. During production, the film...
Box office
Initially, Avco Embassy Pictures, who had previously released the slasher Prom Night (1980), expressed interest in distributing The Prowler. The film was ultimately distributed independently in the United States by Sandhurst Distributing Corporation. It opened regionally in Louisville, Kentucky and Dayton, Ohio, on June 26, 1981, followed by a release in Kansas City, Missouri, on September 4, 1981. It premiered in Los Angeles on October 9, 1981.Overall, it ranked 135th at the U.S. box office...
Censorship
The Prowler was released under the alternate title Rosemary's Killer in Australia and Europe in a cut that excises much of Tom Savini's gore effects. The German version omits all of the gore scenes (including the revelation of the killer's identity) and replaced the soundtrack with bird sounds for daytime scenes, cricket sounds for the night scenes, and Richard Enhorn's score with synthesizer music by an uncredited musician. This version goes by the title Die Forke des Todes (The Pitchfork of...
Critical response
Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times panned the film for its violent content, adding that "director Joseph Zito prowls around aimlessly without creating an authentic sense of locale. Instead, he delivers a spaced-out nightmare in which the characters act like zombies". Stephen Deusner of The Washington Post described the film as "bloody, terrifying, [and] often sadistic... The Prowler is a war movie re-imagined as a slasher flick. And its message is clear: Take your military heroes for grante...
The Prowler has been cited as a classic of the slasher sub-genre from its "golden age" in the early 1980s and has acquired a cult following. In 2017, Complex magazine named it the 24th-best slasher film of all time. The following year, Paste included it in their list of "The 50 Best Slasher Movies of All Time", while the film's killer was ranked th...
The Prowler at the American Film Institute CatalogThe Prowler at IMDbThe Prowler at Rotten Tomatoes- Joseph Zito, David Streit
- Richard Einhorn
- June 26, 1981
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Apr 13, 1984 · Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: Directed by Joseph Zito. With Erich Anderson, Judie Aronson, Peter Barton, Kimberly Beck. After being announced dead and taken to a morgue, Jason Voorhees spontaneously revives, escapes from the hospital, and stalks a group of friends renting a house in the countryside near Crystal Lake.
