Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Today I’m going to take a look at a Friday the 13^th movie that is unlike any other in the franchise. Mostly because we don’t get much Jason and instead get a back story that explains he is really an evil slug/worm that likes to take up host in bodies. Though he can only live in the body of a Vorhees for long, so he needs to be reborn in the uterus of his sister… wait Jason had a sister? You know what I’ll get to that in a minute.

The movie opens with a woman driving to an isolated cabin. She finds the lights out and has to go to a spooky shed to get a spare bulb. Then stumbles thru the dark cabin to finally get the light screwed in. Then immediately goes to take a shower and therefore gets naked. These are all things where Jason should show up, right? Well, he does, and she runs in the woods wearing only a towel. Okay movie I’m digging on you after the screw up that Friday VIII was. Then boom… spotlights illuminate our favorite zombified killer and dozens of cops/soldiers blaze away at him with automatic weapons! They eventually “kill” him with what I think is a mortar. This was all a setup you see.

Now Jason Vorhees is nothing more than a pile of parts. When the coroner starts to do a postmortem, he is possessed and eats Jason’s black heart. The spirit of Jason takes control and sends the doctor back to Crystal Lake so that he can be reborn in the uterus of his sister or perhaps her offspring. This is how for most of the movie Jason is a worm that crawls in and out of people taking them over so that they can continue his homicidal work. Eventually we the audience and the characters find out that only a Vorhees can kill him. So, the magic knife gets plunged into his heart and Jason goes to Hell! Which leads us to the coolest ending I’ve ever seen in a theater one that took a decade to pay off. You see it is Freddy Kruger’s gloved hand that grabs the mask and takes it down!

For this review I watched the unrated version that came with the new Blu-Ray set that was released a few years ago. I had never watched this version and was shocked at how great the gore was. Shouldn’t be that surprised since it was KNB that did the work, and those guys always delivered the goods. This is a gory movie filled with some twisted stuff and great kills. There is a neat gag with a straight razor that looks painful, a neck gets smashed in a door, a formerly possessed deputy melts after Jason exits the building, bones are smashed, faces crushed and deep fried. All around this is a good time. My favorite kill though is a “cowgirl” getting stabbed and split in half. Trust me if you watch the movie, you will understand whom I am talking about. I was a bit disappointed with the actual Jason makeup, but we don’t see much of it, so I suppose that is okay. The evil worm thing is a neat effect and looks good, so there is that.

This may be the greatest teaser in movie history!

We also get a fun cameo from the Necronomicon and the dagger from Evil Dead II. Mostly this was because KNB also worked on that movie and not to connect the two universes. But as a horror nerd I was totally geeking out on this. The movie also has some self-aware moments with characters talking about smoking weed and having premarital sex after skinny dipping. Hell, they even have Kane Hodder out of costume and playing a security guard. So, there are many references tucked in the movie for fans of the genre to appreciate.

I’m torn on this movie. It has some great gore and funny moments that I enjoyed. But it isn’t a Friday the 13^th flick or at least doesn’t feel like on. There isn’t much Jason, and what we get is him getting his ass kicked not once, but twice. Jason doesn’t get to kill anyone in this movie! Let that sink in for a minute. If they had called this the evil killer worm from upstate New York I would probably like it more. Though I suppose that is just me splitting hairs. Regardless I do really like Jason Goes to Hell, which is a sentence I never thought I’d say or write. Just make sure to watch the unrated version.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

 

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason takes Manhattan (1989)

Honestly, I’ve not been looking forward to this one. The last few Friday movies before Jason X I don’t remember fondly. But since I’m a completist and I’m also running out of things to cover for the slasher movie marathon I guess it was about time to tackle this turkey. I watched my new Blu-Ray of the movie from the box set that was released a couple of years ago.

Jason is sitting at the bottom of the lake again. This time a couple of horny kids are doing what they do in a slasher flick. But being responsible they toss the anchor of the yacht overboard which snags on an underwater electrical cable. There is a short and Jason is shocked back to life. He climbs aboard and kills the kids then takes the boat down the river to the ocean. Yeah, I guess Camp Crystal Lake now connects to the Atlantic Ocean now… Okay.

This brings me to my first issue with the movie. How the hell does Jason manage to navigate the river and take the ship to sea? More importantly why would he do that?  Luckily it just so happens that he passes a large party ship that is filled with high school graduates from the high school near Crystal Lake. So, he hitches a ride with them and then starts killing everyone he finds. Jason on a boat isn’t cool. But I’ll get to that later. In between character development, aka. these are all annoying kids and adults that we have seen before, Jason murders a few here and there. Finally, Jason sinks the ship… you heard that correctly he sinks the damn ship! Why? I guess he got tired of stabbing people.

Now we get to New York City. It appears that our survivors paddle their life raft for a couple of days to finally arrive in the city. They manage to land in the crappiest neighborhood and get mugged right away! Here what is supposed to be our female lead character, Reenie, is hauled off by the muggers to be raped and drugged. Luckily Jason shows up and kills everyone… except her of course. So, I guess that Jason doggie paddled to the city after the ship sank? Anyway, he is still wanting to kill the kids, but stops long enough to scare some punks. Why didn’t he kill them? The only excuse I can see is that he had too many targets sort of murder sensory overload I guess. Eventually Jason chases Rennie into the sewers and is caught in the nightly flood of toxic waste because that is a thing. This doesn’t kill him so much as turn him into an adolescent. Yeah, Jason is a kid now? The end.

If you can’t tell from my sarcasm, I don’t like this movie. Still don’t like this movie. Taking Jason out of the environs of Crystal Lake might have seemed like a clever idea, but it didn’t work. The movie drags badly while the action is on the ocean. We spend far too much time on unlikeable characters doing stupid things. None of their motivations seem legitimate and border on absurd. They hint at some connection between Rennie and Jason that would explain why he pursued them, but it isn’t fleshed out at all. This results in a movie that seems to be a random series of Jason kills loosely held together by what passes for a plot.

There are a ton of kills in this movie, nineteen in all! Not one of them is noteworthy. Many are off screen and others generic throat slashing/stabbing. The most memorable kill in the flick is a dude’s head flying off a roof. That is okay, but nothing special. They double down on the gag by having it put in a police car to scare people. I guess Jason is all about the pranks now?

This is just a terrible movie. By far the worst Friday the 13^th flick in the franchise and I’m including that CGI fest remake in this! If this movie had the best gore ever, I still think it would have been killed by the dull pacing of a script that had nothing going for it at all. I’d avoid this movie like the plague. I don’t recommend Jason Takes Manhattan.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

I like to wrap up these marathons with a familiar movie or dip into a franchise. I figured that I should cover this… the last Friday the 13^th… the one that ends the series… yeah, we all know how that turned out. That said I’m going to cover this as if it was the last one. They did some very clever things to wrap up the franchise and I want to acknowledge that.

The movie kicks off with scenes from the first three flicks. They show some of the greatest hits aka. the best kills and reference some of the older characters. They explain about Jason’s origin and how he saw his mother killed, which apparently pushed him over the edge. Then we see the end of part III. The police have arrived and are picking up the bodies. One of those bodies is Jason who wakes up in the morgue and after dispatching a couple folks heads back to the familiar environs of the lake.

After that we are introduced to our main cast. There are a group of young people headed to a cabin to spend the weekend partying. Next door is a family including a sister, Trish, and her younger brother Tommy. Well Jason dispatches a hitchhiker and then gets to work on the kids! Oh, and the older brother of one of Jason’s earlier victims hikes his way in with a rifle. He thinks that Jason is alive since the body disappeared from the morgue and is hunting him! Shenanigans ensue with some skinny dipping, dancing, paring off, and dying going on until the final credits roll.

This is one of the better installments of the franchise. Again, they were thinking that this was going to be it so the greatest hits to start the movie out felt less like padding then it did remind you of why these flicks are great. It then jumps from the recap into the action. It isn’t long before Jason is tearing thru the cast of this movie. Final Chapter might have the best pacing of the Friday movies since the original. They do a decent job of introducing the characters quickly and getting to the good stuff.

What is the good stuff? Well, the boobs and blood of course. There is a lot of nudity in this flick. Yeah, I know that sounds creepy but as I’ve stated in my other slasher reviews that is part of the formula, like it or not. They spread these scenes out with the gore to keep the action moving along briskly with something interesting and eye catching happening at almost all times. We also get the infamous Crispin Glover dance that once you have seen you can’t ever forget. A young Corey Feldman plays Tommy and does a great job portraying the monster kid who doesn’t run away but instead plays psychological games with Jason to save his sister. I know that if you haven’t seen the movie that sounds weird, and it is, but it works.

Because this was going to be the last one effects maestro Tom Savini returned to finally kill Jason off. And boy howdy does he! Jason ends up sliding slowly face first down a machete blade leaving no doubt that he wasn’t going to survive this. And technically I suppose despite returning, sort of, in another seven sequels he did die here. We also get some stellar kills/gore throughout. A neck gets sawed, heads get twisted, cleaver to the face, several stabbings thru people, someone gets tossed out of a window, a spike thru the ear, and my favorite an axe to the chest. This is a bloody movie and is a great example of Savini in his prime.

I don’t know what else I can say about this movie that hasn’t already been discussed. If you haven’t seen Final Chapter you need to. Even if you haven’t seen another Friday the 13^th flick that is okay. This one stands alone and again recaps things so that you get the gist of what is going on. While not my favorite slasher, or even my favorite Friday the 13^th movie I can’t think of a better executed example of the formula that made for a great “kids go in the woods and get dead” movie. I highly recommend it.

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Friday the 13th part VII: The New Blood (1988)

My trek thru the Friday franchise continues with one of my least favorites. Affectionately known as Jason vs. Carrie this movie does boast some decent characters and inventive kills, which is better than the next couple can say. But the franchise was starting to show its age.

Tina is first seen as a little girl running away from her parent’s fighting. Her dad follows her out to the dock where we first see that Tina has some powers and can move things with her mind. She ends up killing him and the action moves to the teenage Tina who is wracked with guilt over what she did. Her doctor, played by Teri “Weekend at Bernie’s” Kiser, takes her and her mother back to the lake house to work out her issues. Of course, that just so happens to be the same lake Jason is in… Tina freaks out after a nightmare and some tough therapy resulting in her powers accidentally waking Jason up.

Right next door is a house full of teenagers partying, doing drugs, and premarital sex stuff. Add Jason to that mix and you get a body count. This goes on in typical fashion until Jason kills the wrong person and ends up feeling Tina’s wrath as she goes angry telekinetic teenage girl on his ass! See where I got the Jason vs. Carrie?

Still not a fan of part VII but I will say it is better than I remembered it being. We get a lot of kills, fifteen in all. While most of them are off screen or heavily censored there are some fun gags left in the movie. You get a girl stuck to a tree, an axe to the face, one of those plastic party horns jammed into an eye socket, and Jason punches thru a guy’s chest. The movie also gives us the requisite amount of nudity and sex to fulfill the formula. This movie also features the first performance of Kane Hodder as Jason. He has always given what I consider to be the best performance under the makeup, so that is a positive. There is also a lot of Jason unmasked which is a nice design. At its core the movie isn’t too bad. But I still have some issues with it.

Even though we all know what is coming all of the Friday’s up to this point at least tried to toss in some jump scares. The closest we get here is a cat jumping out of a closet. Seriously they did the old toss a cat at a cast member gag! All of the kills are telegraphed as we see Jason right before the deed gets done. We know it’s coming and where from before the action is on screen. It is cool to occasionally see the killer sneaking up on the soon to be victim, but not every time.

The makeup for Jason unmasked is stellar!

I’m also not a fan of them giving the girl supernatural powers because by the time it is down to her being chased by Jason it turns into her kicking his ass. I don’t want to see a teenager girl throwing a television at him with her mind powers. There was no concern or fear for her because she was more than a match for Jason. The reason people watch Friday the 13^th flicks is because Jason is a murder machine that you barely survive. They kind of make him a joke here as he clearly loses to the girl who also for the first time manages to save her love interest too. I get wanting to do something different, but this was a bit too far for my tastes.

I’m a completest and will continue to revisit this one every few years. Not because I like to but mostly just because I throw mini marathons on Friday the 13^th and like to mix in an odd one. I’m still not thrilled with this movie, but Kane Hodder is good and there are some decent gags. I will recommend checking it out if you haven’t seen it or haven’t seen it in a while. But there are much better entries to this franchise.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Friday the 13th part V: A New Beginning (1985)

Time to kick off the summer of 2020 Slasher movie marathon. This has been a tradition here at the website since I launched four years ago. Honestly it is getting harder to avoid the franchises and dig up one off Slasher movies. With that in mind I thought I’d kick things off with a couple entries from the biggest of all the Slasher series.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with this movie. When I first saw it I hated Friday part V. It was so different from the other movies to that point that it annoyed me. As I’ve gotten older, I come to appreciate the movie due to both understanding it was supposed to be a new beginning as well as having had a chance to see some of the sequels that followed. Really guys Jason vs. Carrie? Such a terrible idea. More on that next time for now it is time to check out director Danny Steinmann’s take on Jason Vorhees.

For those in the know you will remember that in the previous entry to the Friday the 13^th franchise we clearly saw a young Tommy Jarvis, played by Corey Feldman, kill Jason. I mean the dude slid down a machete face first. This movie picks up years later as an adult Tommy is being released to a halfway house for those with mental issues. Seems he was screwed up by the events of the last movie and has been medicated and shocked back to health. Or at least we are meant to believe so. They establish right from the start that he has some anger control issues and without his medication keeps seeing Jason.

After we are introduced to the quirky characters, including the neighbors Ethel and Junior, the killing starts. Though the first one is perpetrated by one of the other patients who snaps and chops up a kid named Joey. After that bit of onscreen violence Jason shows up and starts picking people off one by one. But how is that possible? I mean we saw Jason die, so is it Tommy who has snapped? Could it be one of the other patients who lost it after seeing Joey killed? Remember now this is before “zombie” Jason showed up in the franchise, so this is very confusing. No worries as all is explained by the end.

The plot of this movie seems to be fairly straightforward as the characters are setup and then knocked off in a familiar pattern. But there is more going on here as the filmmakers try to both explain how the killings can continue as well as giving us the best twist since the original Friday the 13^th. I’ve gone back and forth about spoiling the movie but have decided against it. Just in case you have forgotten the ending or somehow have managed to have never seen this one. What I will say is that the surprise twist reveal was great and well thought out. There are some obvious clues that upon a second watch are pretty obvious tells that most audience members totally miss. This is a very clever movie that doesn’t try and beat you over the head with how clever it is.

This movie might also have some of the best characters in the history of the franchise. Oddly enough I found this version of Tommy Jarvis, he returns in part VI recast with Thom Matthews in the role, to be the least interesting character. The best characters by far are Ethel and Junior, the angry neighbors that torture and complain constantly about the residents of the halfway house. Honestly the dialogue written for Ethel is genius and the delivery from actress Carol Locatell is brilliant. We even get a Miguel A. Nunez sighting in a supporting role.

I’ve gone on long enough about the plot and characters now we need to get to the good stuff. The gore and nudity… hey man this is a Slasher movie so it is very important. Without sounding too creepy the appropriately named Deborah Voorhees has some of the best “assets” to ever appear in a horror flick. That alone meets the requirements that is expected from the Slasher genre. But what about the gore? There are twenty kills in this movie. Let that sink in for a minute. We get all sorts of fun with axes, metal spears, flares, and meat cleavers. Heads get both lopped off and squeezed with leather straps. One unfortunate lady meets her end with shears to the eyes. None of the kills are as explicit as some of those from earlier in the decade but given how harsh the censors were by the mid-eighties this is some damn fine work.

This is a great movie. I do remember what really bugged me about the movie in the past, but I can’t really talk about it without some serious spoilers. Again, I don’t want to do that so all I can say is that I’ve changed my mind. I really dig what they did to try and relaunch the franchise. As much as I enjoy the unstoppable zombie Jason killing machine that we would soon be seeing, it is a bummer that they never pursued what was an interesting idea that they were clearly setting up with the ending of this movie. It is well worth checking out and comes with the highest of recommendations from me.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Friday the 13th Part VI (1986)

The second Slasher in this summer’s marathon is another of the Friday franchise, though I skipped ahead from Part III to Part VI. Mostly because I was in the mood for this one. Lots of kills and the movie references the classic Universal Monster flicks. Plus, Horseshack is in it!

A grown-up Tommy Jarvis, played by Return of the Living Dead’s Thom Matthews, returns to get closure against the now dead Jason Voorhees. He feels the need to dig up the body and burn it to ashes. When faced with the corpse he flips out and starts stabbing it with a metal pole, only for lightning to strike and bring back Jason as a zombie! The body count starts with Tommy Jarvis’ friend and continues after he flees from the undead killer. He goes right to the sheriff’s office and they are of course not too sympathetic to the maniac running thru the doors screaming that Jason is back.

The sheriff’s daughter Megan is a member of the summer camp that has reopened on the lake. Jason heads there, killing as he goes, until most of Megan’s friends are dead. Well actually all of Megan’s friends are dead! Lucky for her Tommy has a plan. Lucky for Tommy she has a crush on him! He sets off to trap Jason under the waters of Crystal Lake forever and seemingly succeeds in doing so. But of course, there are four more sequels, a vs. Freddy, and a remake so he didn’t do that great of a job!

I’ve always felt that part VI is the perfect example of the Slasher movie formula being executed. The kills are spread evenly throughout the duration and while we don’t have any nudity there is plenty of scantily clad pretty girls to look at. The kills are inventive and while not overly bloody I’ve always found them fun. You get a head off, an arm hits the ground, a couple gets skewered (a reoccurring gag that has a fun twist here), a neat bit with the side of a Winnebago, and a sheriff that gets folded in half! I give them an “A” for effort as they squeeze an impressive eighteen kills in! Considering how much the censors were neutering horror flicks by eighty-six this was an accomplishment.

I mentioned that we get a “classic” Universal monster movie feel with Part VI. Most of the best stuff happens at night. There always seems to be that “spooky” storm with thunder and lightning happening. Hell, lightning brings Jason’s dead body back to life! That should sound familiar. We also get a neat bit at the end with our hero and the monster doing battle surrounded by fire. There is also a prominent sign advertising Karloff’s General Store as one of the set pieces.

Jason sucks at paintball!

If this isn’t enough for you the movie is clearly winking at the audience. One of the campers is a little girl named Nancy that is having nightmares about a man chasing her. They mention a nearby town called Carpenter, there is a Cunningham road, and the sheriff’s name is Garris. Someone was having fun with the references to other horror icons related and unrelated to the Friday the 13^th franchise. There is even a great line where one of the characters breaks the fourth wall and looks right at the camera to say, “Some people got a funny idea about entertainment”.

There is a little bit of something for everyone in this installment of the franchise. You get a good Slasher movie with references that horror nerds will get a kick out of and some funny jokes both for and at the expense of the audience. I’ve always felt that this was the best written of the series with the exception of the original. I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, things started to go downhill after this one.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer