Harefooted Halloween: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

What I Liked: Instead of a straight ahead Friday the 13^th they went for something new altogether.  Jason gets blown up in the opening by a SWAT team but his heart seduces the coroner and the spirit of Jason takes over his body.  He can pass to any person via a giant slimy mouth worm and continues this trick until he can be reborn by invading the body of a blood relative.  While the story initially seems bonkers keep watching because it slowly wins you over and eventually finds its groove about half way through.

Part of what makes this entry enjoyable is how action packed it is.  There’s little down time in between “Jason” knocking off teens, passing his worm along to others, people busting out of jail and the many fights in various locations.  The second half turns into a total Terminator picture with “Jason” constantly charging after his niece and her child so they’re always on the move and battling him wherever they go.  The diner scene is a highlight where they employ nice gunplay, slow motion, moody blue lighting and naturally they put the deep fryer to good use.

The effects are a bit of a mixed bag but holy shit the melting scene.  In one part the Jason worm jumps to a new body causing the old body to convulse and horrifically melt away.  The guy’s shaking all over the room and blobs of his skin stick to the wall and floor until he completely liquifies.  It’s unbelievably nasty to witness and fuckin’ badass as hell.

Our hero (John D. LeMay (Friday the 13^th: The Series)) is a nerdy guy with a short haircut and glasses who wears a letter jacket and I like the subversion of expectations.  This is not at all what your lead in an action/horror movie looked like in the early 90’s.  He’s totally up for fighting Jason though and never shies away from the seemingly impossible task so he definitely proves his worth.

*Slight spoiler here* They totally deliver on the whole going to hell angle with demon arms shooting up from the dirt grabbing Jason as he struggles to stay on earth.  And what a cute touch to have Freddy Krueger nab Jason’s mask from under the ground like “I think you forgot something buddy”.  I remember hearing about that at the time in school and thinking it was the coolest thing.

What I Didn’t Like: There’s a certain cheapness to the production that’s slightly unfortunate.  The all-knowing all-wise Duke character (Steven Williams (The X-Files, Birds of Prey)) is pretty cartoony and convenient, the music uses a lot of poor sounding synth horns and strings that was popular at the time on lower budget productions, while there’s plenty of effects work in general they don’t use the regular Jason in full makeup very much and his mask has a sort of plasticky sheen.

Speaking of Duke, I wish they had found a way to incorporate this character better.  He’s introduced in the beginning as having all this knowledge about Jason and his family (we don’t know how he acquired this) and then he kind of disappears until the ending so he can tell the protagonists how to defeat Jason.  He’s important to the story and should’ve been fleshed out more and given more to do.

Overall Impressions: To give a little background this is the first film to be made after New Line Cinema purchased the rights to use Jason (everything else associated with the series was off limits like the name “Friday the 13^th”and any other characters).  And Sean Cunningham (director of the first movie) returned as producer and meticulously oversaw the production.  So that’s why this has a different vibe.

Writer/director Adam Marcus has talked in recent years about how he came up with a fascinating new backstory when he wrote this movie that Jason is actually a deadite from the Evil Dead universe.  Jason’s mother got ahold of the book of the dead and used it to turn her son into a killer zombie.  This would explain why he keeps coming back in all the sequels and can’t be destroyed by conventional means.  However, NONE OF THIS IS IN THE FILM.  Only a quick shot of the Necronomicon in the old Voorhees house provides the connection.  But what a neat idea!

I can see the concepts they tried out here probably working better as a graphic novel because I think some aspects come off silly or cheesy on film.  Plus it’s perhaps too much of a departure for the majority of fans.  I kinda dig it though.  It doesn’t exactly feel like a Friday movie but the baseline of a relentless demon man machine who kills anyone that crosses his path is there.

Over the years I’ve always had a soft spot for this one due to its weirdness, elements of body horror, quick pacing and largely likeable characters.  It might be like the third best one, top half of the list for sure.

Harefooted Halloween: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

What I Liked: Giving lead Rennie (Jensen Daggett (Major League: Back to the Minors)) haunting visions of young Jason drowning isn’t a bad idea.  As a child she was thrown into Crystal Lake in a harsh effort by her uncle to teach her to swim and little ghost Jason grabs her causing her to nearly drown.  Some character having a connection to Jason is welcome especially one that avoids having a blood link which would’ve been the easy thing to do.  These visions go unexplained for too long though in my opinion leaving you wondering what the fuck is going on until near the end.

What I Didn’t Like: Everyone always complains how the subtitle is “Jason Takes Manhattan” but so little of the movie is actually spent there and it’s a valid complaint.  To be fair the last half hour technically does take place in the Big Apple but 99.9% of it is in back alleys, docks, rooftops, sewers, etc.  Even the subway and diner scenes could be practically anywhere.  When they show Jason in Manhattan for real, this is unmistakably NYC, we did it folks, here he is, it’s less than a minute in Times Square.  And he looks as out of place as you can imagine.  The image reminds me of those dirty costumed characters that hang out there taking pictures with tourists.  The lesson learned from this is you can’t put Jason in a highly populated area.  He loses his menace.

And maybe I could get on board with such a strange premise if the rest of the movie wasn’t so terrible.  Now, trapping victims on board a ship with Jason is a perfectly acceptable idea.  There’s nowhere anyone can hide, no help is coming, parts of a ship can certainly be eerie and so on.  That’s not the issue.  The issue is having almost no plot again, making all your characters be extremely irritating, giving Jason teleporting powers and then having the guy stomp through one of the biggest cities in the world for no real reason other than the filmmakers thought it would be a good selling point.  The whole thing is so messy and lazy.  Here’s a quick example: some street thugs kidnap innocent high schooler Rennie and force her to shoot heroin at knife point but it doesn’t affect her at all.  She even drives a car right after.  What was the fucking point of including that?

The teleporting power I just don’t understand either.  The movie is clear that Jason can move from one place to another instantaneously yet he still chooses to stalk after his prey most of the time.  Like when the last group of survivors rows away in a lifeboat he simply stands there watching.  Why doesn’t he teleport into the boat and kill everyone?  It opens the door to this character being even more god-like which is completely unnecessary.

Overall Impressions: There’s an odd carelessness to this installment that’s very frustrating to sit through.  But I wanna be careful because this isn’t the film writer/director Rob Hedden (writer: MacGyver) intended to make.  Originally he wrote a lot more scenes using NYC landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and Madison Square Garden but the budget wasn’t there.  Well, if they couldn’t get the locations they needed to make the film work (particularly if you’re gonna advertise a specific locale in the goddamn subtitle) then they should’ve nixed the idea altogether.  Hedden wasn’t happy with the results and is just as disappointed as anyone in the final product.

Knowing the backstory doesn’t make the picture go down any easier though.  Like they use a large creepy cargo ship for a handful of people to go on a cruise, and only about ten kids from the graduating class go, and the dock they launch from is very obviously somewhere in the pacific northwest and not New Jersey, and NYC is devoid of people outside of Times Square, and one of the teachers/Rennie’s uncle (Peter Mark Richman (Naked Gun 2 ½)) is an absolutely insufferable asshole who does nothing but shit on everyone around him and etc.

I feel bad saying this because Hedden seems like a nice enough guy but this is a dumb fuckin’ movie that’s kinda shoddily made.  There aren’t many redeeming qualities about this entry.

Harefooted Halloween: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

What I Liked: Ok, Jason looks fucking incredible.  Best design we’ve seen yet.  He’s been under Crystal Lake for a while so he’s been decaying quite a bit.  His clothes are all torn, you can see pieces of his skeleton sticking out like his spinal chord and his bony hands, the chain around his neck leftover from the previous film adds a ghostly element like one of the spirits from A Christmas Carol or something, his hockey mask is falling apart in some areas and you can see his torn up jaw and teeth and it’s prefect.  This is how I want Jason to look every time.

To piggyback off of the previous paragraph, the makeup effects work on Jason when he loses the mask and we see his face for the final portion is fantastic.  I thought he looked nasty in Part 4 The Final Chapter but this tops that.  His face has become so gnarly with mangled teeth, decaying skin and almost no nose.  And this would certainly be an acceptable creature design for any horror franchise.  I mean the hockey mask is iconic, you can’t ditch that, but in a parallel universe if this were the design of Jason from the beginning I’d be on board.

Jason uses a wider variety of weapons than usual like a sickle and a party horn.  This one also has probably the most infamous kill in the series which is when Jason picks up a woman in a sleeping bag and whacks her against a tree.  Honestly I don’t exactly get why that one is so beloved.  It’s unique and has a definite degree of silliness but it’s not the craziest thing I’ve seen these movies dish out.  For my money the one that stands out the most and seems genuinely frightening (which is another well known kill) is when Jason wields some sort of portable gas powered buzzsaw with a long handle.  Can you picture encountering that fuckin’ bullshit in the isolated woods at night?!  Jeez is that an image.

What I Didn’t Like: While the filmmakers tried to craft a story about a girl with telekinetic powers (Lar Park-Lincoln (Knots Landing)) who killed her father at Crystal Lake many years ago it’s not something I’m terribly interested in.  It’s a slightly unusual direction for the series to introduce other characters with supernatural abilities.  It also doesn’t help that Halloween 4 used a similar gimmick the same damn year.  They wanted a character who could go toe to toe with Jason and basically they came up with Carrie.  Freddy is a better matchup in my opinion.

Besides the story about a lady with mind powers and her doctor (Terry Kiser the year before Weekend at Bernie’s) who’s trying to exploit her in some way (his full intentions remain very unclear) this is another sequel that’s simply about killing the partying teens in the house next door.  A definite step backwards from Part 6 Jason Lives.

Overall Impressions: It’s no wonder the makeup effects are so spectacular in this installment because the director, John Carl Buechler, is actually an effects guy who worked on a bunch of stuff including Re-Animator, From Beyond and Prison before getting this gig.  Afterward he worked on tons of other stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Halloween 4 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  So yea, he’s legit.

Other than that it’s not very interesting.  I would say it’s better than Part 5 A New Beginning though.

Harefooted Halloween: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

What I Liked: Holy crap there’s a bona fide plot!  Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews (The Peacemaker)) digs up Jason’s corpse because he doesn’t think he’s dead.  Ironically this brings Jason back to life via a lightning bolt.  So now Tommy must stop him again but he also has to contend with the local sheriff (David Kagen (Boris and Natasha)) who thinks Tommy is behind the recent murders.  Everyone has something to do and a motivation and all the pieces come together and wow, like a real movie.

Writer and director Tom McLoughlin (Sometimes They Come Back) added a bunch of loving homages to horror like having a scene set in a cemetery at night with thunder and lightning crashing, reviving Jason Frankenstein style with an electric jolt, a nod to occultism and giving places around town names like Karloff (Boris) and Carpenter (John).

The opening is the best thing in any sequel so far.  Great atmosphere with the eerie graveyard in a thunderstorm while Tommy digs up Jason’s plot (turns out he wasn’t cremated like Part 5 A New Beginning said).  And when they open the casket to reveal a totally disgusting rotting corpse covered in cobwebs and a mass of bugs crawling everywhere it’s fucking awesome looking.  The gothic imagery employed works perfectly, especially when Tommy uses a piece of ornate iron fence to stab Jason in the chest making it seem like he’s impaled with a huge metal cross.  Bravo.

We get some nice variety in this installment like a modest car chase, a spectacular RV crash, a unique solution to try to kill Jason and I love that the filmmakers flirted with the idea of Jason going after little children.  At one point he quietly walks through a cabin of sleeping kids and later he comes after them implying he’s gonna chop them up.

What I Didn’t Like: While Jason looks fantastic in the intro I’m not a huge fan of his design in the rest of the film.  He’s too neat and tidy and has sort of a weekend hunter look about him.  I think it’s the utility belt and gloves that mostly don’t fit.

I don’t get the James Bond reference before the opening credits where Jason turns and slashes the screen imitating Bond shooting down a gun barrel at you.  That’s…kinda weird.  There’s no other connection to James Bond that I could find.

Overall Impressions: Now we’re talkin’.  I understand why this entry either tops a lot of people’s Friday list or at least is generally considered the best sequel because it’s a giant step up for the series.  We’ve been treading water and being thrown half baked ideas since Part 3 so this feels like more of a relief than anything else.

Giving the characters purpose is the biggest improvement.  Even though Tommy accidentally brings Jason back he takes full responsibility and goes on a quest to destroy him once and for all.  Jason is slowly heading back towards Camp Crystal Lake so he has direction as well.  Some nice backstory is here too with the camp being renamed Camp Forest Green to distance itself from the murders that took place there.  In fact I think the entire town and county got renamed.  (Have no fear, they’ll retcon this in the next movie).

This is just a fun picture guys.  Yes there’s more humor inserted than you’re used to with the series but it’s so much better executed than Part 5 A New Beginning.  Well, everything is better executed.  Hell, the movie actually takes place on Friday the 13^th.  I mean that should be a no brainer for each of these but strangely some do and some don’t’.  It’s that attention to detail that makes this one stand out.  You can tell McLoughlin and co are avid horror and cinema fans and put a lot of care and respect into their film and that makes you wanna root for it.  So if you only see one of these goddamn sequels this is it.

Harefooted Halloween: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

What I Liked: Not a whole lot…more EXPLODING credits!

It’s hilarious when Tommy full on body slams one of the other hospital patients into the breakfast bar out of nowhere WWE style.  What an audacious move to pull on someone!  I don’t think it was meant to be funny though.

What I Didn’t Like: Exploring how little Tommy Jarvis’ (Corey Feldman (License to Drive)) life has been affected by Jason’s murder spree as an adult (John Shepard (The Hunt for Red October)) has potential as probably more of a dramatic film.  As a part 5 in a slasher series it’s used as brief setup to connect to the previous installment but ultimately nothing is done with it.

Believe it or not there’s a microscopic plot that, well, not unfolds…happens?  This entry is sometimes referred to as the murder mystery one because you’re kept in the dark the majority of the time as to who’s bumping off all these people.  The attacks are very similar to Jason’s MO but we thought he was dead.  The conclusion is not satisfying and pretty friggin’ stupid.

They cut way back on the gore often only showing the victim’s brief reaction or cutting away before the weapon makes impact (the MPAA was notoriously harsh on the Friday sequels).  Additionally, four folks get killed off screen bringing the total body count (including the bullshit dream sequences) to a staggering twenty one.

An attempt was made to add more humor to this one (example: a guy almost shits his pants on the way to the john because he ate an enchilada) but oh my god, the backwoods ma and son characters that are filthy, surly and all around rotten irritating assholes are possibly the worst two things in any Friday the 13^th movie.  My guess is they’re supposed to be comic relief with a grown man acting like a bratty toddler and his pissed off mother yelling at him all the time but they certainly are not.

Overall Impressions: *Spoiler* The bad guy isn’t Jason which I don’t get.  If the guy was gonna act exactly like Jason the entire time then why the switcheroo?

The filmmakers wanted to change shit up but had no fuckin’ clue what to do.  Bringing Jason back undoubtedly felt too repetitive so they cook up this Tommy Jarvis character to tease as a successor but abandon that and throw a completely separate dude into the mix and abandon that as well.  As I mentioned in my Part 4 The Final Chapter review there isn’t any sort of through line that connects the Fridays besides Jason.  They never setup a universe to explore.

Usually I appreciate when a sequel goes for something different even if it fails because at least they attempted to delve into new territory.  But with Part 4 The Final Chapter, and this one especially, it comes off half-hearted at best.

Harefooted Halloween: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

What I Liked: Having the opening credits EXPLODE in some fashion is a silly tradition that I’m into.

The opening shot showing the aftermath of Part 3 is really well done.  We wander through the crime scene showing cops all over the place carrying body bags, paramedics investigating any possible survivors, a helicopter shining down a spotlight and Jason still lying there with an ax in his head.  It’s madness and sorta makes you realize how devastating an attack like this would be.

The gore gets turned up a touch with perhaps the nastiest death being the first (aside from Jason’s demise).  A morgue technician gets his throat sliced with a hack saw and then his head twisted a hundred and eighty degrees around (don’t worry, he’s setup to be a horny pervert so it’s ok that he got horrifically murdered).

Tom Savini’s (From Dusk Till Dawn) makeup job on Jason is excellent.  I particularly like how the fingernails on his hands are dark and long and chipped.  Gross.  But of course the real prize is when the hockey mask is finally removed at the end to reveal how grotesque Jason has gotten.  He looks partially melted even.  And the final blow he receives is an absolutely astounding gruesome effect that’s a standout moment in any horror film.

*Spoiler on this last item* Having a twelve year old be the one to take down Jason and in such a frenzied way is a ballsy move.  I mean when Tommy (Corey Feldman (Gremlins)) wails on the guy with his own machete hitting him over and over it kinda feels like it comes out of nowhere because they don’t have a history or anything.  But that catharsis for the audience’s sake works well enough I suppose.

What I Didn’t Like: Once again like Part 3 there isn’t a plot really.  It’s your standard teens show up to party at a secluded house and get killed routine.  We get introduced to nerdy Tommy who’s into making elaborate professional level monster masks and was clearly supposed to take over for Jason after this film but there wasn’t any follow through on that.

The teens are annoyingly horny.  All they do is talk about sex, have sex, make out, flirt and skinny dip.  There’s even a long stretch where they watch like 1920’s porn.  They’re all so one dimensional that I didn’t give a shit when any of them died.

Overall Impressions: This entry is worse than I remember.  There isn’t some overarching story that runs through the sequels so it’s essentially another stand alone film.  And neither the lore nor the universe is expanded upon here in any meaningful way.  The filmmakers flirted with the idea of Tommy Jarvis picking up the mantle but they must’ve realized what’s the point?  If you’re gonna eventually put the hockey mask on him and turn him into a silent unstoppable brute anyway then it boils down to just changing the name of the character.  Their backstories would be slightly different but that’s about it. 

Part 4 The Final Chapter on its own isn’t the greatest.  However, introducing Tommy here and having him take center stage in a good sequel later on (Part 6 Jason Lives) makes both films stronger.  So thankfully this wasn’t truly the last one because I think I would like it even less.

My worries about the Friday sequels are coming true.  They’re not all that interesting or different from each other (well, until we get to Jason Goes to Hell) so I don’t have a ton to break down for you guys.  Alright, enough of that.  Next!

Harefooted Halloween: Friday the 13th Part III

What I Liked: That devil disco banger that plays during the opening and closing credits doesn’t fit with the movie at all but I still like it.

It took three goddamn films but we finally get Jason in the hockey mask and it’s a major improvement over the sack from the previous installment.  He looks and feels right now not only in his appearance but in his movements.  He acts with a drive that was missing last time.

The deaths have more of an impact in this one.  The cutting isn’t as quick as in Part 2 and some victims meet a particularly nasty end like getting sliced up through the crotch area and one guy gets a meat cleaver bluntly stuck in his chest.

There are a few creepy images that the movie leaves you with like Jason being hanged and of course the classic moment when he gets an ax laid in his head but still stumbles forward hands outreached desperately trying to grab for his target.

What I Didn’t Like: One of the biggest problems is there isn’t a plot.  A group of friends go to a cabin in the woods near Crystal Lake and get picked off one by one.  That’s it.  They attempt to establish a backstory between the protagonist (Dana Kimmell (Lone Wolf McQuade)) and Jason where he attacked her outside her home however long ago but it goes nowhere.  Originally he was supposed to rape her but thankfully they cut that shit out.  I have no idea what this encounter adds to the story or to the relationship between the characters.

A bunch of the acting is kinda bad.  Some of the actors have stiff deliveries and others put on melodramatic performances.  Richard Brooker (Deathstalker) who plays Jason does the best job.

You need to know going into this sequel that it was shot and meant to be seen in 3D because they push that angle hard throughout.  All the crap flying or being poked at the camera is incredibly unnatural and distracting.  That shit doesn’t hold up in the slightest.  And once you learn that shooting in 3D was the prime directive handed down by Paramount all the energy put into the stupid sight gags begins to make sense.  In fact it was such a grueling task for the cast and crew requiring dozens of takes to get any one gag right that the filmmakers basically gave it their sole focus and all other areas of the production were neglected to some extent.  Hence my comments above.

Overall Impressions: Ninety percent of this film is people investigating something they saw or heard.  It’s so much of people just wandering around various spaces with a curious look on their face.  The script must’ve been like five pages long.

Not only that but the entire cast is simply cannon fodder.  A bunch of characters are introduced only to be killed off minutes later.  And the ones that stick around for the majority of the run time are your usual annoying teens that are either sex crazed, stoned or playing pranks to misdirect the audience.

Another thing I don’t understand is Jason’s motivation.  Are these people invading his space?  That’s not made clear.  Does he wander around and kill anyone in the general Crystal Lake area?  Why?  We need something, anything to latch onto guys.  At least in the Halloweens Michael Myers was terrorizing his blood relatives so there was that connection.  Well, until that weird ass cult used him for assassinations and spawning a devil baby or whatever dumb fuckin’ bullshit they were up to.

While this is technically a worse picture than Part 2 (and kind of a clusterfuck in my opinion) I would rather watch this one because it definitely has some memorable moments.  Plus we get the final evolution of Jason making this another important film.  Without it we wouldn’t have this legendary icon of horror.