- "I saw my father get killed when I was just a kid. It really messed up my head a lot."
- ―Tina Shepard to Nick
Tina Shepard was the daughter of John and Amanda Shepard, who was gifted with immense telekinetic and precognitive abilities. After she accidentally drowned her father at a young age, Tina was kept in a psychiatric institute for seven years, before returning to Crystal Lake. Tina accidentally freed Jason Voorhees from the lake with her powers, subsequently did battle with him, and emerged victorious. She was the main protagonist of the 1988 slasher film, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.
Biography
- "I hate you! I wish you were dead!"
- ―Tina to her father
Tina Shepard was the only child to John and Amanda Shepard and the Shepard's owned a cabin on the shore of Crystal Lake. While they stayed there on October 13, ten-year-old Tina overheard her parents arguing over whether or not to keep the cabin. After she heard her father smack her mother, Tina fled down to the dock and into a small boat. John came out onto the upper dock to convince Tina to return to the house. A furious Tina then wished that her father was dead, suddenly a power within her manifested, which caused the dock to collapse, and trapped John underwater and drowned him.[1]
Tina was heavily traumatized by that experience, and was soon remanded to an institution under the care of Dr. Crews. Crews accompanied Tina everywhere when she was not in the hospital and soon made the discovery that she was heavily gifted with immense telekinetic and precognitive abilities, which were provoked when she was in an extreme emotional state.[1]
Return to Crystal Lake
- "Why am I seeing things, Doctor Crews?"
- ―Tina to her doctor.
As part of his plan to provoke Tina into psychic acts, Dr. Crews got the hospital to allow Tina to return to Crystal Lake under the pretense that it was part of her treatment. Upon their arrival, Tina and her mother found that a group of teenagers were staying at the cabin next door. Seventeen-year-old Tina soon caught the attention of Nick Rogers, whose cousin, Michael, was the cause of the gathering as the teenagers planned to throw him a surprise birthday party.[1]
Dr. Crews began "treatment" almost immediately upon Tina's arrival and provoked her into setting a matchbox on fire. As night fell, Tina began to remember her father's death and ran outside in tears. Tina stared across Crystal Lake and desperately wished that she could bring her father back to life. Tina sensed a presence underwater and focused her powers on bringing it to the surface. However, Tina was shocked to discover that she had uncovered the undead killer, Jason Voorhees, who rotted in Crystal Lake for seven years. As she saw the grotesque image of the murderer that she had unwittingly rescued, Tina passed out. Jason spared her and went off to another part of the woods. Tina was found by Amanda and Dr. Crews, the latter of whom was convinced that Tina suffered delusions due to returning to the place of her father's death.[1]
Tina was invited to Michael's birthday party next door by Nick, although Michael didn't make an appearance yet. There, she met several of Michael's friends before she experienced a terrifying vision: the murder of Michael elsewhere in the woods by Jason shortly after it occurred. Tina ran home in a panic and was even more disconcerted at the sight of a thirteen-inch spike that stuck in the porch of the cabin -- a spike that was identical to the one that she had seen Jason murder Michael with. However, when Dr. Crews went to see the spike, he surreptitiously removed it from the porch in an effort to make Tina appear unhinged.[1]
The following morning, Tina had a serious conversation with Nick at the edge of the lake, during which they revealed their respective pasts to one another. Tina expressed her doubt that something as good as Nick could last in her unfortunate life, but they eventually kissed. Later in the day, Melissa Paur, a friend of Michael's, who was jealous of Tina's rapport with Nick mocked her by dressing her admirer, Eddie McCarlo, to look like a mental patient in a straight-jacket. That provoked Tina into momentarily losing control and shattering Melissa's pearl necklace. Frightened that her powers were once again endangering lives, Tina returned to her cabin and pleaded with Amanda and Crews to leave Crystal Lake. While Amanda agreed that the "treatment" did not work, Crews was adamant that Tina's emotionally wrought state had to be controlled. Furious, Tina telekinetically threw a TV at Crews's head and then began to make preparations to leave.[1]
At nightfall, Tina had her suitcase packed and was ready to depart. However, she overheard a conversation between Amanda and Crews, during which Crews asserted that the danger that Tina presented to others was cause enough to permanently remand her to the mental hospital. Tina fled the house in her mother's car, but some ways down the road, she experienced another vision of Jason: that time killing Amanda. Frightened and shocked, Tina crashed at the side of the road, and then dashed back to the cabin in order to warn her mother of danger.[1]
Tina encountered Nick in the woods and the two eventually came upon Michael's mangled body, where it was left following his murder by Jason the previous evening. Tina and Nick returned to the cabin, but Amanda and Crews already left in search of Tina. Tina searched for her father's gun, which was still in his old desk, the spike that Crews had hidden, and a scrapbook that contained newspaper clippings that concerned the Voorhees murders, as well as Jason allegedly left at the bottom of the lake seven years previously. Faced with the truth of who she had accidentally reawakened, Tina's emotions got the better of her and caused the entire cabin to shake. Nick escorted the shell-shocked Tina downstairs and told her to wait while he went to gather the others so that everyone could leave together.[1]
Tina vs. Jason
However, Tina was too worried about her mother to stay in the cabin. She left the cabin for the woods, and soon came upon Crews, who wandered aimlessly through the trees with blood stains on his clothing. Confused, frightened, and heedless of Crews' warnings to not go deeper into the woods, Tina ran away once again. Eventually, she found what she had dreaded: the dead body of her mother, slain by Jason just as she had seen in her vision. Tina found the remains of even more of Jason's victims scattered among the trees: Kate Pataki, leaned against a trunk with a party horn in her eye; Maddy Paulson, nailed to a tree and her throat slit; Russell Bowen, left dangling from the branches and his face axed open; his girlfriend, Sandra Casey, drowned and in a red one-piece swimsuit on the ground. That shocking carnage was compounded by Tina's next discovery: she suddenly came face to face with the hockey-masked figure of Jason himself.[1]
Tina then focused her telekinetic powers to defend herself against Jason She tied Jason in place with tree roots that were pulled from the ground and electrocuted him with severed electrical wires. Jason soon stood up again and pursued Tina, who sought refuge in the empty party cabin. When Jason resumed his pursuit, Tina equally resumed her own telekinetic defense and assaulted Jason with a closed door and a pot-plant that contained the head of another of Jason's victims, David Peabody. Finally, Jason was buried as Tina collapsed the front porch of the cabin.[1]
Exhausted and crying, Tina returned to the cabin, where Nick and Melissa waited, with the news that she had killed Jason. Melissa yelled at Nick and Tina and tried to leave in exasperation -- only to be axed in the face by a still-standing Jason as she opened the door. Tina and Nick ran up the stairs but were soon confronted by a locked door. Resolved to battle, Tina turned around and hit Jason in the face with a ceiling lamp, which caused him to fall through the staircase. That was only a momentary reprieve as Jason promptly attempted to murder Nick and Tina telekinetically tore Jason's hockey mask off his deformed and rotted face. She then tried to strangle him with a cord before she sent him plummeting down into the basement.[1]
After a few moments of unconsciousness, Jason came to and dragged Tina down with him while she bent over Nick. Tina then sent a number of long nails that flew into Jason's chest and face, but that too barely impeded him. As a final defense, Tina doused Jason with gasoline and caused the boiler to cover him with flames. Soon, Jason was a lumbering and shambling mass of fiery fury. Nick and Tina quickly escaped the house and reached the dock just as the cabin exploded. Just as Tina began to dissolve into tears, Jason, who had apparently been thrown into the lake by the explosion and was rescued from the fire, once more attacked and threw Nick into a canoe, which knocked him out. Tina, beyond desperation, seemed to witness the mud-covered form of her father rise from the lake, chain Jason up, and dragged him back into the depths of Crystal Lake. She then passed out.[1]
Aftermath
The following morning, Tina and Nick were rescued from the wreckage of the crime scene by paramedics and the Fire Department. While Tina and Nick were loaded into an ambulance, Nick came to his senses and wondered aloud what had become of Jason. Tina, victorious, proclaimed that they had "taken care of him."[1]
When Tina and Nick told their story to officials, they were detained in custody, as the police were suspicious that they may have had a hand in the murders at the crime scene.[2] But due to Jason's confirmation, they released Tina and Nick and apologized.
The Nightmare Warriors
In July 2009, Tina was recruited by Maggie Burroughs as a member of the paranormal killer-battling unit that was called the Nightmare Warriors.[3]
Appearances
Films
Novels
- Friday the 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat (2005) (Mentioned)
Comics
Trivia
- The character of Tina Shepard was created by director John Carl Buechler and writers Daryl Haney and Manuel Fidello.
- Tina Shepard is the main character from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.
- Tina Shepard is a pastiche of Carrie White, who was the eponymous figure from the novel Carrie by author Stephen King.
- Actress Lar Park Lincoln receives fourth billing in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.
- Actress Jennifer Banko, who plays young Tina Shepard, also played Babi Sawyer in Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III in 1990.
- Tina Shepard is the third character named Tina in the Friday the 13th film series.
- The first was Tina Moore, who was the twin sister of Terri Moore from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. The second was Tina McCarthy, who was the well-endowed woman from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
- Tina is the only female Jason has faced off with special abilities.
- Tina's actress Lar Park Lincoln was approached for the sequel to Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, but declined to sign on after not being given a script. She did not want to portray Tina again if she was going to die "in the first ten minutes" of the next film due to her affection for the character.