I try and do a couple of these every time there’s a Friday the 13th. Here’s the list so far:
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part 3 – in 3D!
Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter
Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives!
Friday the 13th: Jason X
Freddy vs Jason
Friday the 13th (2009)
This time around we’re doing one of the films I used to hate, but which I’ve revised my opinion on, and one which I consider the worst of the series. I think which is which will probably be apparent, but you can read my ranking of all the Friday the 13th films here, and the SAW community ranking here.
The Mediums
Thanks to the largesse of Screenager liquidsoap89, I have the Shout! Factory Blu-ray set of all the Friday the 13th movies. After years of VHS and low-quality DVD’s it’s a damn impressive upgrade with a ton of extras. Well worth the scratch, though you can find collections cheaper nowadays.
There are currently no free or subscription streaming options, but both 7 and 8 can be rented on Amazon, AppleTV, Microsoft and Spectrum or purchased via AppleTV and Microsoft. With October coming up, I’m sure they’ll be available somewhere soon.
‘Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood’ (1988)
“This how they wear their jackets back at the mental hospital?”
So, full disclosure, I hated this movie when I first saw it. That was probably 1989 or ’90, as I know I didn’t see it in the theater. For the longest time I refused to watch it again – that’s how much I’d hated the experience. I didn’t watch Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason Goes to Hell in part because I remembered disliking The New Blood so much. (I suppose I should be thankful on that count.)
So when I finally got around to re-watching it a couple of years ago I was astonished. What the hell was my problem? It was the same movie – Jason vs Carrie, essentially – but my experience of it and reaction to it was completely different. It’s still not my favorite, but man – I couldn’t tell you why I’d had such a visceral reaction to it back then.
Critics called this film “Jason vs Carrie” and it kinda does feel like they got Stephen King to pen a Friday the 13th movie. Traumatic childhood incident where a girl, Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), uses her burgeoning psychic abilities to accidentally kill her father. Ten years later overbearing establishment figure bent on using (now teenage) girl’s abilities to further his own career/agenda. Protective mother figure is blind to what’s really going on until it’s too late. Escalating emotional stress exacerbated by adolescence, a budding relationship, and torment by peers leads to a final confrontation where psychic girl kills everyone in a pyrotechnic display of her powers.
Actually, wait – no, it’s Jason who kills everybody and HE’s the one on the receiving end of the pyrotechnics.
This movie features my favorite Jason design, with rotting flesh, exposed spine, chain around the neck and gooey fluids. This is Kane Hodder‘s first outing as Jason and he’s just great, with excellent physicality and various head movements and ticks that – pardon the pun – really bring Jason to life. His background in stunts and willingness to do whatever it takes to get the shot also serves the film well in the final third, when Tina starts kicking Jason’s ass six ways to Sunday.
My main complaint about the film at this point is that the teenagers and the kills are pretty boring. We get stabbings and impalements and head crushings, but they’re not very… well, exciting. This film also suffered at the hands of the MPAA, being sent back 9 times (as with Part 6). As a result, it too is fairly bloodless, with lots of kills that are cut away from at the last minute. It’s too bad, as the director, John Carl Buechler, was actually a special effects guy first. I understand quite a bit of the original gore was excised – including a rotting father from the end sequence. We do get some gooey Jason shots, including what looks like pus and brains leaking from his head as Tina constricts his mask. There’s also a hilarious attack when Jason picks up a camper in a sleeping bag and swings them against a tree. (Reminding me of an even more ridiculous attack in Prophecy – the skinless bear one, not the Christopher Walken one.)
Things really get going for me when Tina and Jason finally square off, because this is really the first time Jason has had a foe that can actually take him on. And Tina can – she electrocutes him, hits him with lights, tvs and someone’s severed head, she strangles him, crushes him, drops him through the floor and then sets him on fire. Then she escapes while the house blows up around him. This is all pretty epic and a fantastic tour-de-force of a final girl fight. It’s not, y’know, ENOUGH to kill Jason, but damn does she give it the old college try.
And then Tina resurrects her dad to grab Jason and drag him under water. And suddenly I remember why I hated this movie so much. Schlubby McWifeslapper is brought back from the dead to save the day by taking out Jason? HE’S WEARING A CARDIGAN. Guys who wear cardigans should not be the ones to take down Jason – even if they’re summoned back from the dead by their psychic kids. (Apparently there was a much more decayed version of the dad in Buechler’s original cut, which you can see if you search for it online. Still wearing a cardigan, though.)
The Bottom Line
The psychic powers angle is pretty fun, even if the characters are generally more annoying and less interesting than usual. Love the Jason design as well, and Kane Hodder adds an intensity to Jason that’s been missing. Tina and her new boyfriend survive – continuing the trend of “final girl plus one” from the previous film. I kinda wonder if Tina is still out there, ready to take Jason on again. There needs to be a big Expendables style team-up of all the Friday the 13th final girls where they hunt Jason down and beat the crap out of him.
Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
“You’re all gonna die. You’re the last ones. He’s come back for you.”
As you may have guessed, this is my least favorite Friday the 13th film. Sorry Duke, I know this is one of your faves. I seriously thought about doing a one sentence review, rather than have to go throught his again. Something like:
Jason gets on a boat, kills a bunch of teenagers, follows the survivors to New York and then gets turned into a little kid by toxic waste. I’m not kidding.
I decided against it, but it was close.
I’ve only seen Part 8 a few times, and I’ll give the film this – it’s not as cheap-looking as I remember it being. It’s still got all the ambiance of a first-season X-Files episode (also shot in and around Vancouver), but the ship has some production value and not all the rooms look like soap opera sets. The teenagers are the least likeable bunch of victims in a Friday the 13th movie so far (which is saying something after the last entry), but at least they make an effort to protect themselves, arming up once they realize the danger. It doesn’t help, of course. It never does.
Did you know Crystal Lake connects to the ocean? Me either – not something they promote in the brochures. Still, that’s how Jason gets on the boat.
Kane Hodder is back as Jason, so at least we have that – not that he gets a lot to do. The kills are pretty anemic and Jason suddenly has magic powers (other than constantly coming back from the dead). He can teleport now – bebopping around a dance floor and instantly appearing at the top of a ladder. Also his child ghost is haunting the main character, whose name I can’t really be bothered to remember or look up. This ghost looks like it was played by three or four different kids over the course of the film and I couldn’t tell you why he appears, exactly. Maybe it’s supposed to be a flashback for whatshername… crap, okay, I’m looking it up… okay, Rennie (Jensen Daggett), got it. A flashback to Rennie’s childhood almost-drowning on Crystal Lake.
Yeah, Rennie’s guardian, uncle Charles “Complete Asshole” McCullough (Peter Mark Richman) threw her in the lake as child, even though she couldn’t swim. That’s why she’s afraid of the water. Also maybe drowned child Jason tried to kill her back then. I dunno.
Jason goes about murdering teens as usual, though several people get drowned off-screen by doing what the English teacher tells them to do. (There’s the one lesson you can take from this movie – the advice of English teachers can get you killed. That’s true in the Call of Cthulhu RPG as well, by the way.) Rennie, Charles, English Teacher, un-named boyfriend and Julius (whose name I only remember because of the one cool scene later on) escape the boat and end up in New York City. Which is apparently Times Square and an endless series of alleyways out of a Troma movie. There are druggies and would-be rapists that rob and separate them. Jason is the good guy in one scene, which is weird. Julius (Vincent Craig Dupree) and Jason have a boxing match on the roof, which is fun as hell and the highlight of the film for me. (It doesn’t go well for Julius.)
Jason chases Rennie and unnamed boyfriend onto the subway and in the most egregious move in a movie full of egregious moves Jason walks through a series of subway cars and DOESN’T KILL ANYONE. Not a single person. Not so much as a bunch of screams and blood hitting the windows. This… this offends me, somehow. This should have been a centerpiece, a monumental piece of bloody carnage that would culminate with a crowd of screaming, bloody people erupting from the subway entrance to be followed by Jason into Times Square.
Instead he just walks through, comes up the stairs and – so rude – kicks a gang’s boombox. And scares them by showing them his face.
That moment when Jason looks around and the camera shows us that he’s really standing in Times Square is pretty cool. It’s like 30 seconds of time. Jason doesn’t take Manhattan. He walks through it, quickly.
Rennie and unnamed boyfriend find themselves in the sewer. Which floods with toxic waste every night at midnight. I don’t know if this is a nod to CHUD or just what the screenwriter thinks really happens in New York. Some running occurs. Jason finally kills a guy. Toxic waste floods the sewers and the stupidest looking Jason makeup ever melts away to reveal… a kid in his underwear.
Rennie, unnamed boyfriend and dog I forgot to mention earlier survive.
The Bottom Line
I don’t… I just… I can’t.
