It's the dreaded crap movie point of our podcast cycle, and in this episode we are delving into the murky world of 1980s slashers and one of the worst outings for Mr Jason Voorhees esq. Yes, it is the infamous Friday 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, in which the iconic killer visits New York in circumstances that beggar belief!
The days are long at the Famous Monsters Retirement Home, but it’s the evenings that stretch on forever as the assorted ghouls and creatures cluster around the TV, all harbouring in their rotten hearts the forlorn hope that some obscure channel may rerun of one of their movies in the dim watches of the night, and maybe, just maybe new fans will be created and one day, one glorious day, there will be enough demand for a return to the silver screen…
And Jason wasn’t happy. He’d been here for years, freaking years now; so long in fact that now the Old Boys, even that stuck up Count, who had been so hostile when he’d first washed up here were looking upon him with sympathetic eyes. And while he’d been delighted that his great rival, Krueger had wound up here too, the warm fuzzy glow of schadenfeude had long since paled, as now if was ever to escape this genteel hell it would be for their long promised, but never materialising Freddy Vs. Jason. Their fates were now bound together and furthermore they were both united in their anger that that Shatner faced goon Myers kept on getting released time and time again. It just wasn’t fair dammit, and there’s only so many times an undead psychopath can visit the Giant Radioactive Monster petting zoo…
Then after nearly nine years since the disastrous Jason Goes To Hell, the call at last came. There was a new script in the offing and much to his pointy fingered friend’s chagrin it wasn’t a treatment for their epic clash. A young writer called Todd Farmer had pitched a concept to New Line, a fresh film that would bring Jason back to the movie goers’ attention while Freddy Vs. Jason writhed on Development Hell…
Now hang on, had he heard this one before? Jason was sceptical and made sure he asked all the right questions this time… Would there be young scantily clad fools to slay? Yes? Ok, but did he actually get to do the slaying? Yes? Great! What? It’s set in space? Well as long as he wasn’t demoted to a demonic slug again, what the hell!
So then in 2002, just shy of a decade since his last taste of freedom, Jason X rocketed onto our screens. Well actually ‘rocketed’ is going a bit far – meandered onto them briefly and quickly off again is nearer the mark judging by the dismal box office takings. This movie saw the lowest takings of any of the Friday 13th series, just managing to claw a meagre couple of million in profits worldwide.
So what went wrong? Now the obvious answer is that the film was ghastly beyond belief, and it is true that Jason X was panned by the critics. However this is largely par for the course for a Friday 13th flick – indeed given the outsider status of horror films, a bad review from a mainstream critic is almost a badge of honour. However the movie wasn’t exactly keenly embraced by the Friday faithful.
Essentially before anyone had even seen Jason X, the film had three big hurdles in its path. Firstly the name – although the committed horror fans would know that this was the latest instalment of the Friday 13th series, New Line didn’t actually have the rights to that title and be able to label it clearly as “part 10”. There had been the same problem with the last movie but at least they got “The Final Friday” in the title. Now as we all know branding is important, and although they couldn’t use the franchise’s name I think a better title could have been found. The problem is that by 2002, an X in your title would not make the causal movie goer think of roman numeral but the recent box office smash X- Men (2000) or The X Files TV series. And with a poster design featuring a fairly unrecognisable Jason – seriously just look at him, he looks more like a lump of coal than sporting the iconic hockey mask - and looking very sci-fi flavoured you can understand why people may well have assumed that this was some knock-off cash-in rather than the latest adventures of Mrs Voorhees’ little boy.
Secondly I can quite understand that having suffered through the somewhat lacklustre Part VII – The New Blood, the appalling Jason Takes Manhattan and the misbegotten Jason Goes To Hell, even hardcore fans of the series were reluctant to spend their hard earned on a ticket for this movie; I imagine “I’ll catch it on cable or maybe rent it” was the battle cry of the all but the most committed fans. And if the last two flicks in the franchise hadn’t kicked all expectations into the gutter, our final third factor was guaranteed to plunge them into the sewers…
Basically setting the movie in the future was widely received as a sign that the movie would be awful and that it was time to unplug the life support systems on the series. Back in 1996, Hellraiser: Bloodline took the Pinhead and the Cenobites into the starry void, and this fourth entry was such a mess that Alan Smithee ended up directing and was the last film in the series to receive a theatrical release. Similarly a year later, the already gone straight to video series Leprechaun squeezed out a further helping of Oirish slashings by sending the wee fellow into space with the imaginatively titled Leprechaun 4: In Space. You see, in the world of horror, space isn’t the place where no can hear you scream, it’s where franchises go to die; a portent that all the ideas are exhausted and somehow pairing your villain up against spacemen and robots is going to get the creative juices flowing again… And if you really believe that, may I interest you in some magic beans?
So then with all this against the movie before a soul had seen a single frame, it’s hardly surprising the film fared so poorly. Now of course some would say that there is a fourth factor to consider; that Jason as a character had simply lost his appeal. However considering that little over a two years later Freddy Vs Jason made profits in the hundreds of millions, it’s clear there was still an big appetite for everyone’s favourite psychopathic slaphead.
Admittedly Freddy Vs Jason was a better flick but although Jason X is still something of a divider of fan opinion, it’s fair to say that his interstellar antics are a dramatic improvement on the previous few entries in the franchise. And weirdly enough, it appears Jason X plays very well to non Friday 13th fans – I’ve met numerous people who in general have no time for slasher films but thought this entry in the series was a hoot.
And I’d have to agree - Jason X is marvellously silly fun. While it never quite exploits the knowing ironic humour as well as Scream, or ever be held up against An American Werewolf in London or Shaun of the Dead in the bestest horror comedy ever stakes, this movie is very entertaining. It doesn’t quite capture the mix of horror and laughs that Part 6 – Jason Lives does but it comes very close.
The premise actually works quite well here – in the then future year 2008, Jason is captured, later cryogenically frozen and subsequently awoken in 2455 where he finds himself on board a starship bound for a distant Earth colony and surrounded by his favourite prey, teenagers! In this case, the teens are students who have been on field trip back to Mother Earth to salvage artefacts from the smoking ruins. However just ensure maximum mayhem there’s also a compliment of space marines and the ship’s cyborg to contend with.
Now although the plot plays exactly like every other Friday 13th i.e. Jason slaughters every one bar a couple of survivors, the fact that the action takes place on space ship does actually freshen up the format. As all the victims are actually crew members gives the cast more character and depth than usual, admittedly not a lot more, this is still a Friday 13th film after all, but they do have roles to fulfil and duties to perform which spares us the typical filler scenes of characters clowning around in the woods. And also as some of the crew are military types, we have characters who can fight back – and as we saw in Part 6, Jason seems all the more menacing when we see him taking down tough cases with guns as well as the usual screaming airheads.
Setting the majority of the movie on a ship in deep space also brings back a theme that has been mostly missing from the preceding two entries – isolation. As you may remember from the earlier entries this mammoth retrospective, original screen writer Victor Miller has always said that the key element in Friday 13th is that the characters are cut off from the rest of society. And Jason X plays this card rather well; rather than have our anti-hero just picking off the cast one by one, the plot gets great mileage out of the complications of having Jason Voorhees running amok on your ship and makes its characters smart enough to realise that the sensible thing is to try and contain him until they get to Earth 2. Plus the sci-fi setting introduces the opportunities for some original and fun kills, such as death by liquid nitrogen.
Now I do understand why this film leaves some fans cold, as sometimes the humour is very broad, with characters uttering blatant one-liners. However there are not quite enough of these gags throughout the running time to properly qualify as a horror comedy. Similarly although Jason X plays the irony card much like Scream did, and has a lot of fun with some of the clichés of modern science fiction, there isn’t really enough of it either.
And this is where Jason X falls down – the humour and irony stop it working as a straight horror film, but there’s not enough laughs to qualify as a spoof, nor enough post modern toying with the clichés to do for sci-fi horror/action what Scream did for slashers. It’s not just falling between two stools but three as it were.
However director James Isaacs and Todd Farmer’s script has the action solidly romping along none the less. OK it’s not a brilliant picture, but it works well enough; it’s undemanding fun and while it may be cheesy it is still competent despite the stumbling with the overall tone and the comedy not being quite smoothly integrated. As I remarked earlier it does go down well outside the Friday 13th faithfully, who largely aren’t upset by the inclusion of humour and are often surprised by what a good fun flick it is.
Of course for Jason fans, there is another divisive issue other than the humour – Uber Jason – which bring us nicely round to our customary look at how the character is handled. Now before we get to his cybernetic incarnation, let’s check the background continuity levels with our faithful tricorder…
Now this movie was specifically designed to not to mess up the end of Jason Goes To Hell which set up the then forthcoming Freddy Vs Jason. So then according to the plot, Jason was captured in 2008, and given the lack of any other evidence, Freddy Vs Jason takes place in the year it was made (2003). Hence logically Jason X chronologically actually occurs after the then still forthcoming clash of the slashers. However there is an interesting alternate interpretation…
Now when we discover the imprisoned Jason, scientists (including legendary director David Cronenberg in a cameo) are very keen to find out what makes him tick. However at no point do they ever mention that he is a walking corpse… Yes, you guessed it – we have yet another return to the old question of Is Jason Alive or Dead!
From what we see and hear on screen, the boffins only keep referring to his ability for rapid cellular regeneration – which would suggest that this Jason is in fact still alive. There’s no mention of demons slugs, or the general decay he’s been sporting for the latter half of the saga. There’s no sign of any post Part 8 toxic waste burns, the mask though battered is the right size again, but most importantly, Jason has hair again. And in addition to resprouting locks of sparse lank hair, also the tattered jumpsuit he’s been wearing has been replaced with a mountain man jacket and trouser combo.
So then you could read this movie as being an alternate sequel to Part 2. OK I know he got the famous mask in Part 3 but barring that the version we see in Jason X is most similar to his appearance in the first sequel. Certainly if we assume that this is a separate time line, branching off from either Part 2 or Part 3 it certainly would explain his Timex constitution (i.e. he takes a licking and still keeps ticking).
Of course this isn’t the only look he models for us in this film, as after a nanotech make-over he becomes Uber Jason. Now there some who love the new robo-slasher incarnation, and there are those that see his transformation as needlessly messing up an icon. And personally I tend to agree with the latter – the augmented Jason design is good enough but my big problem is that it’s has lost the iconic hockey mask, which strikes me as superfluous tinkering with his trademark look.
But if you take this entry in the series as an alternate timeline story - a What If…/ Elseworlds issue as it were - then we needn’t get too hot under the collar about this cyber redesign. It’s a one off stunt - – after all there were no sequels * – that works well in the film as a surprise twist in the last act. And let’s be honest here, New Line weren’t exactly planning on relaunching the series as a cyber-splatterpunk franchise, this flick was intended as another placeholder entry until they could get Freddy Vs Jason into the theatres.
And although ultimately Jason X failed to find much love at the box office, it did get the character back on track. Despite the shift of setting to deep space in the far future, the movie still delivers a better Jason than either of the previous outings, proving that if you stick with the essentials of the character you can place Jason anywhere and just turn him loose. Admittedly by this stage of the game, there isn’t a great deal of terror to be wrung from the character but Jason X does use our favourite slasher effectively.
While the inclusion of humour freshens up the somewhat stale same old scenario of killing off victims one by one, the movie is smart enough to know not to send up Jason himself. And although by now as a villain he’s too familiar to be terrifying, Jason can still be threatening – you might not be able to generate much fright from a figure that the audiences now love but if take him back to being an imposing physical presence and make him an unstoppable killing machine again – no satanic slugs or random ghostly teleporting – Jason can still conjure up the thrills.
So although Jason X may have failed to ignite the box office, undoubtedly this outing won him some brand new fans and in a small way perhaps did keep the legend alive. Certainly I feel that Jason X, while not hitting the heights of the best in the saga, is still highly entertaining; far better than a premise makes it sounds and definitely far better than a Part 10 of anything should be.
And surprisingly an even better film was yet to come…
* Although there were 5 books from Black Flame and two comics from Avatar Press that continued Uber Jason’s story.
“Dear God no! For the love of Christ no! You can’t do this to me! Make it stop!”
No, that’s not a quote from the movie – that was me when I realised I was going to have to watch this flick yet again before penning this review. If you were wondering exactly why it’s taken so long to get through this marathon of Friday 13th reviews, you can lay the blame squarely on this movie; or rather my reluctance to slip this particular cinematic atrocity into the old DVD player once again.
Yes, this is the film that stank so bad, Paramount finally pulled the plug on the franchise. And it is truly horrible. Yes, they kept cutting back the budget and forcing director Rob Heddon's script through the rewrite mangle, but even so the frequent changes to the story line don’t excuse the huge swathes of nonsense this flick delivers. It’s easily the worst film in the franchise, severed hands down. And while there are a few memorable scenes, on the whole the film is so irredeemably shoddy it doesn’t even cut it in the so-bad-its-good stakes. It’s just plain bad and the only way to get any enjoyment out of this one is to drink heavily and merciless mock the nonsense as it unfolds. So then, let's cry havoc and unleash the dogs of sarcasm…
Right from the start, you know you are in trouble when instead of a proper opening theme we have a very ‘80s slice of pop-rock tosh blithering on about life in the big city. And as we see more of New York in this credits sequences than we do in the rest of the movie, I can only assume the decision to play this even then terminally uncredible song over the top of it was just a vain attempt to justify the film’s title. Look we're in the big city! The electro funk man says so!
You see the biggest problem for this outing is that Jason doesn’t really take Manhattan, in any way, shape or form... And not just because the Muppets had already beaten him to it, or that Leonard Cohen had proposed a similar manoeuvre the preceding year either.
Thanks to Paramount’s budget cuts, scene after scene in the original script were axed. So sequences of Jason wreaking havoc around the Big Apple landmarks, such as Madison Square Gardens, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State building and Broadway, were sliced away one by one until all we were left with was a quick stroll through Times Square in the film’s finale. So instead, we spend most of the running time stuck on a boat. And it is a huge let-down - really this one should have been called Cruise-Alonga-Jason.
Now when you hear the title Jason Takes Manhattan, you instantly start imagining scenes of colossal carnage. Up until now our slaphead anti-hero has been confined to the American backwoods; an isolated milieu where he only ever encountered small numbers of people. And every single person he's ever met, he's attempted to brutally slay. Hence the title of this flick has you picturing him going completely berserk in the metropolis; with tens if not hundreds of people falling to his machete. Entire squads of police dying while trying to halt the unstoppable undead killing machine. The National Guard are called into no avail. CIA, FBI, NSA and sundry other acronyms mobilised and the carnage all builds up to an apocalyptic finale where they have to airstrike a large area of Manhattan in order to stop the tsunani of slashing.
Alright, the studio coffers probably wouldn’t have stretched to all the above mayhem but you get the idea. Jason turning up in Manhattan should have been one long killing spree causing a city wide panic. So then having him stuck on boat for three quarters of the movie was a big disappointment – and for me, more of a slap in the face than The New Beginning and its-not-the-real-Jason Scooby Doo twist.
But it’s no use crying over spilt milk and pondering what could have been. However what we did get unfortunately just doesn’t really cut the mustard either. Now in terms of the direction, in fairness the film is better shot than the hobbled by 3D Part 3, but unfortunately the story contains far more stupidity than Miner’s second Friday flick – some mean feat as that wasn’t going to win any awards for coherence either. Now I’m reliably informed that in the commentary for the US DVD release, director Rob Heddon tells us that his first cut was around the two hour mark, so you may be thinking that in pruning it down to the more acceptable 90 minutes mark accounts for some of the outright weirdness in the plot. However judging from the list of cut scenes on the IMDB trivia page, although the excised material may have built up the characters more, as far as I can see none of the missing material would make sense of some of the highly annoying loopiness the film delivers.
Lordy lordy, where to start… Right, first up the damn boat. Now I can ignore the thoroughly bizarre bending of all the laws of geography of having a lake that leads to Manhattan. We’ll just let that one go, along with the fact that judging from the exterior shots of the ship we see and the interiors we are shown, it would appear that this craft was built with Time Lord technology. Nope, the thing that bothers me most is what the hell happened to the swarms of kids on board? We see a few minor cast members despatched by Jason but the rest vanish into thin air never to be mentioned again. Not even when the ship sinks. What was going on there? An oblique reference to the Marie Celeste?
Next up, why can Jason now teleport? Slasher films are notorious for having their usually slow walking killers catching up with their sprinting prey and popping up in unexpected places, but in Jason Takes Manhattan he does literally appear to have gained to the ability to materialise anywhere he damn well likes. Now presumably this ties into Things That Make Don’t Make A Shred of Sense - Even For This Series #3…
..Which is the whole business of Rennie and her visions of Jason. At first he appears to her as a normal little boy and then throughout the course of the film proceeds to gradually mutate into his more familiar monstrous form. Now firstly in the original movie, we are shown a flashback of Jason drowning and despite the brevity of the shot it is clear he was deformed then, so where on earth this normal Jason fits in is anyone’s guess. The implication seems to be that Rennie has some psychic connection to some deeply buried good side of Jason and that hulking killer we all know is some kind of revenge driven ghost. Yes, I know that sounds nutty but it’s the only thing I can think of to explain what we see on screen. Hedden has stated that the end where we see Jason seemingly transform back to a little boy is meant to represent his spirit going to rest, which sort of fits. I get the impression that this element of the film was meant to clear up the long standing questions over when Jason actually died, and how come if he died as a boy he reappears as a full grown psycho in Part II.
However none of it adds up – if Jason is some vengeance powered apparition, as his teleporting suggests, how come he has a body, which has been buried, sunk at the bottom of a lake and twice revived by electricity? While I applaud the attempt to make some sort of sense of the series’ mythos, it is done in such a way as to actually confuse matters further rather than clarify anything about Jason’s back-story. From the finale, you could be forgiven for thinking that as well as killing him, the toxic waste has caused him to physically regress in age. Indeed on my first exposure to this scene – I caught the second half on late night TV – I assumed that either a) the first half explained this or b) The New Blood - which I hadn’t seen at the time - had something to do with it or finally c) I’d had a bad pint down the pub and was now mildly hallucinating.
And if this wasn’t enough to contend with, there is also the utterly bonkers circumstances leading up to it. According this film, New York flushes its sewer system every night by pumping the afore-mentioned toxic waste through it. Yes, you did read that right! Flushes. Sewer system. With toxic waste. Every damn night. To CLEAN it!!! A large pint of WTF please barman! Considering that the New York Tourism Committee complained about the posters which featured Jason popping through the ‘I heart NYC’ logo, I’m amazed they didn’t sue when they saw the movie itself. One wonders why not … does Heddon know something we don’t?
At this point, I think we can safely say that the case for the prosecution now rests, and this flick is guilty as charged on numerous counts of Grievous Intellectual Harm, and Assault and Battery With A Deadly Weapon to whit the script. All that remains now is sentencing…
Now when watching horror flicks, you do not apply the same laws for assessing story credibility or narrative logic as one does when watching serious cinema. And when watching entries in the Friday 13th saga, we usually are not even apply a version said laws revised for the genre. After the first few entries, this franchise is operating in a bubble universe of its own making, complete with its own rules of cinema. And while the better films in the series, like the original, Final Chapter and Jason Lives, may be fit enough to survive outside this pocket critical environment, most do not. They may only be judged in relation to the following criteria - how cool is Jason, how spectacular are the deaths, is the acting competent rather than howlingly bad, and can you stand any of the characters for more than 10 seconds without wanted to machete off their heads yourself.
So then, is Jason cool is this flick? Well largely no. Kane Hodder stalks and looms well enough but the teleporting antics are frustrating and his look in this movie is frankly poor. After the superb bone-tastic Jason of The New Blood, this rendition just looks cheap - no visibly decay, just a bit of token tattering on his outfit, and mainly he just looks a bit soggy. And as for the unmasking scene, oh dear Lord! Not only does the toxic waste appear to possess the power to restore ones youth, it also has trans-species mutagenic properties too! For when the hockey mask comes off, it appears that Jason is now a melting albino chimp! Were they planning a cross-over with Planet of the Apes? Or was he trying to blend in Manhattan’s Muppet overlords?
In the absence of any sensible answers, let’s move on to the slayings. On the whole, they are fairly standard fare, nothing too shabby but possessing no real wow factor either. That is, apart from Julius’ death. Credit where credit is due, not only is this the best scene in the movie, but one of the best kills in the entire series – Jason literally knocks his block off, decapitating him with a single punch. It’s beautifully set up and executed; spectacular, very funny and a satisfyingly ironic end to Julius, one of the most annoying characters in the movie.
And speaking of which, I’ll also have to give some credit to the characters and acting. The script attempts to give our protagonists some depth and the performances are too bad either. Yes, Julius is a monstrous arse but I think he was meant to be. Jensen Daggett and Scott Reeves are pretty likeable as a leading pair, and special mention must be made of Peter Mark Rickman who has good fun hamming it up as the harsh and overprotective Uncle Charles. As well as chewing the scenery, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Harris, in both looks and performance, which just adds to the fun – indeed, on the first viewing I was convinced I was watching Jason hunting down evil Dr Zachery Smith from Lost in Space.
But the trouble is despite trying to create proper characters, the script is so full of errant nonsense, they get very little to do that passes for basic common sense. Even Jason himself acts very out of character on a couple of occasions. As he normally slays anything or anyone in his path, it is somewhat perplexing him to see him seemingly rescue Rennie from those muggers fresh out of Clichéd Street Punk School. Similarly when he encounters the Times Square hoodlum wannabes, he scares them off by raising his mask. While it's understandably they'd leg it sharpish considering the terrifyingly poor make job lurking under there, and it's meant to be a funny scene, it's not nearly as hilarious if he’d kebabbed them all in one go.
And this is another major problem the film has; although there are flashes of humour, there are not nearly enough gags to indicate that we shouldn’t be taking anything that happens on screen too seriously. On the contrary, the stream of nonsense that is masquerading as a plot, with its psychic visions and psychological elements of Rennie’s story arc suggests that Heddon and co. set out to play this straight.
There was a decent concept behind the film which Paramount's budget cuts scuppered, and the script shows some signs that there were some interesting ideas that were mangled on route to the screen. But the problem is, Heddon is simply too competent a director to make the film so bad it’s unintentionally funny, which may be the biggest back-handed compliment I’ve ever given out. All of which adds up to a film that is very unsatisfying and the few good moments in it taunt you with what the movie could have been.
And this is the crux of the matter, Jason Takes Manhattan is just annoyingly bad rather than entertainingly so. It isn't directed with an ironic trash aesthetic which encourages us to laugh WITH the movie, nor is it such misbegotten dreck you can laugh AT it. Admittedly with a few beers, a few chums and an ample supply of Mystic Jim’s Patent Michaels Remover, you could enjoy this flick as a piece of comically bad cinema – but you will just be laughing NEAR the movie and have to supply most of the comedy yourself…
More scarred than Blofeld! More cunning than Kojak! And yuckier than Yul Bryner! Everyone’s favourite psychopathic slaphead is back! And this time - it’s final!
Apparently tired of catching grief from the bosses at Paramount, series producer Frank Mancuso Jnr. decided enough was enough and it was time to wrap up the Friday 13th saga. Although Part 3 has out performed it’s predecessors during opening weekends (handy box office league table here fact fans!), the general critical climate was mounting against the franchise and slashers as whole. Plus there was the beginnings of a backlash against the increasing sequelitius infecting studios at the time – audiences were starting to learn that often a sequel’s worth could be calculated by divided the quality of the original by the number in the title.
Hence The Final Chapter appeared in theatre sans numeral. And apart from hoping to avoiding ending up in the comedy sequels league tables that were fast becoming a staple of end of the year film round ups, one does wonder whether it was also an attempt to airbrush the 3D fiasco out of history. Certainly Mancuso seems to have recognised that Jason’s latest screen adventure needed to raise its game and so set about assembling a quality crew for the picture.
His first shrewd move was to get Tom Savini back on make-up duties. The man who Fangoria had dubbed ‘the sultan of splatter’ was an immediate box office draw, and horror fans had already proved they’d endure the most incompetent cinematic dreck just to see Savini’s wizardry. With Steve Miner not wishing to return to the director’s chair, Mancuso then hired Joseph Zito, who had recently proved his slasher credibility with the fan favourite The Prowler. Finally though, demonstrating he’d learnt some most important lessons from Part 3, he hired some decent actors – netting up and coming stars Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. All was set to give Mrs Voorhees’ little monster a spectacular send-off.
And indeed The Final Chapter is a rousing return to form, working the slasher formula to fine effect. All the usual elements here, but where this movie scores over the previous outing is they utilised in a story that actually makes sense, and even contains some characterisation.
In what is rapidly becoming traditional in the series, we are introduced into yet another previously unknown settlement on the shores of the geographically morphing Crystal Lake. However in this flick, we are shown a brace of houses nestling in the deep woods, one is a family home and the other a holiday property – a far more believable setting than the crowded Higgins Haven milieu with its multiple stores and that crazy farm stocked up on hay for non-existent horses. Zito returns the basics of the first two films, heeding Victor Miller’s wise words that a key plot mechanic is that the character should be placed in an isolated setting. Hence we get some good use of location filming and some nice camera work that emphasises the vast brooding woods that surround the houses.
In addition to creating a more effective location for the action, from the first shots of the hovering police helicopter and emergency services gathering at the aftermath of the Higgins Haven, The Final Chapter establishes a firm sense of reality. This time around it feels far more like the events are unfolding in the real world, rather than the Scooby Doo-esque universe of Part 3.
And also unlike the last instalment, the script writers actually seem to be familiar with real teenagers. Obviously in such in a Friday film the majority of the cast are just there to be Jason fodder, but the screenplay actually does bother to try and give all the characters some individual stories of their own. Certainly a lot of these are merely sketched in, such as the tension between Sam and Paul over his attraction to one of the twins, and the tentative romance between Sara and Doug. But these little touches make the characters believable and the group of teens a realistic dynamic. Plus they are not saddled with a pair of aging potheads in a ‘why they hell are they there?’ fashion.
Some of the group may be a little anonymous but the script avoids the tar-pit Part 3 sunk into -reducing the cast to a bunch of archetypal clichés i.e. The Goofy Joker, The Good Girl, The Bitch & The Smug Bastard Who Walks On His Hands. Indeed the script actually sets up two possible Final Girls and a number of potential male survivors, ensuring a pleasing element of suspense. It’s one of the challenging entries in the series for the game of Who Dies Next – admittedly it’s not massively taxing to guess correctly but it’s refreshing that Zito and co made the effort not to be totally predictable.
But where the film shines is the characters it follows most closely – Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), Ted (Lawrence Monoson) and Jimmy (Crispin Glover). The mere fact that I’ve bothered to credit the actors should give you a clear indication of how well the characters work. Ted and Jimmy have a convincing friendship in the film with real chemistry in the performances. The script deftly captures exactly the kind of banter between guys their age and avoids the stereotypical jock and his nerdy friend path. They have real character and heart and are scripted as if they were in a John Hughes movie. But best of all we get to The Glover throwing some shapes!
Now when you’ve all stopped laughing, I’d like to point out that Zito doesn’t play it as a comedy scene – rather we have a rather accurate portrayal of a young fella trying and rather making a mess of pulling some cool moves to impress a lady. Perhaps only Crispin Glover could ever capture the required mix of weird gawkiness and attempted cool. It’s nice touch of verisimilitude which in the hands of other directors would have descended in slapstick. And, for you trivia fans out there, apparently the music in this scene was originally AC/DC’s mighty ‘Back In Black’ – and believe me it’s well worth the bother of syncing it up! Start the track at the 5 second mark of the above clip and watch the fireworks!
Corey Feldman also turns in a great performance; he’s cute without being cloying, smart without coming over as a wise ass, and most crucial for a child actor, natural. His character hits the right marks and come off as charming and relatable rather than an annoying brat. It’s often claimed that Tommy hobby of monster making is a homage to Savini – and indeed the masks and creatures that fill his room are mostly from Savini’s own works. But actually in addition to providing a plot point for the final showdown with Jason, Tommy’s love of all things monstrous instantly endears him to the target audience of horror fans.
Also having a family, and specifically a child in the plot adds greatly to the film’s dynamics. Firslty it helps establish a more realistic setting for the action, rather than the usual bubble universe s of slasher film where adults are nowhere to be found and teen do what ever they like. But more importantly we expect that all the teens are fair game for Jason, as are any adult characters who cross his path. But placing a kid in Jason’s sights, and particularly the well drawn and likeable Tommy, significantly ups the levels of threat and the horror quotient, making Jason all the more threatening and monstrous when it becomes clear he has no qualms about butchering children.
It’s exactly this sort of well considered plotting and characterisation that makes this film such a success. You can adhere to the slasher formula as faithfully as you like, but if you neglect the setting and the characters, all the gore and nudity in the world will not prevent your film boring the audience.
Of course, being both a Friday 13th movie and the fourth part of a franchise there are some weak points in the script and perhaps inevitably some plot holes, but mercifully none of the yawning logical abysses of Part 3. One example is that we never see what happened to Mrs Jarvis – we see her encounter an unseen Jason but we are never shown a body later; it feels almost like there is a scene missing here. Another is that Jason seems to get away with dispatching the teens in the holiday house without anyone else hearing a sound – although to be fair this is a classic suspension of the normal laws of sonics prevalent in horror movies.
The big plot niggle however is the film’s timeline. Conventional wisdom holds that the events in this movie take place the day after Part 3, which leads to awkward questions about Rob, a character who has come to Crystal Lake to seek revenge on Jason who killed his sister in the previous massacre. If this is the day after, he must be particularly revenge fuelled to leave his family’s side so soon and why are his newspaper clippings – some of which presumably from that morning’s paper - so tatty.
However the film never actually explicitly states it is the day after. It makes more sense to assume that a few days at least have elapsed since the end of Part 3, and would explain why Tommy doesn’t get more of a roasting for leaving the door unlocked after there’s been a mass murder down the road the day before. But the bottom line is I’m inclined to forgive this logical lapse purely on the ground that the script succeeds on most other levels.
There is one other problem with Rob though. I did feel that the movie somewhat fumbled his story’s conclusion. Considering he’s been set up as the avenging hard man, he goes down very easily. Which in itself is no bad thing, but it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. I think they could have set up more effectively as a surprise twist. And we certainly didn’t need as much dialogue from him while Jason’s killing him – “Aargh he’s killing me!” is perhaps the dumbest line in the movie and stands out in a script that has largely avoided such lazy hokum.
With Savini back on board, obviously the make-up effects are to notch. Sadly a lot of his work has suffered from the censors’ scissors, but the scenes left in still pack a punch. As it stands, as the cuts are generally to the earlier gore set pieces, and so we are left with the most graphic splatter in the final act. This gives the movie an decent curve of escalating mayhem which culminates in the grand guinol killing of Jason. In Going Pieces – The Rise & Fall of the Slasher Film, Savini reports that audiences went berserk when they saw his epic tableaux of Jason falling face first onto the machete and sliding down the blade. And you can still see why today – it’s a fantastic effect and a satisfying piece of poetic justice for the villain.
And speaking of the villain, it time for our traditional look at Jason himself. As you’d expect with his creator Savini on the makeup duties, this Jason is easily the best so far. He’s still powerfully built but the lumbering quasi-hunchback look is gone, and rather than the rather pink and rubbery flesh as been replaced with a far creepier frog belly white skin and nasty blackened fingernails. And he’s far better served by the script, rather being seemingly retarded he’s smart, cunning and menacing. In The Final Chapter, he moves with swift shark-like deliberation instead of shambling about as he did in Part 3.
As mentioned earlier that he’s as keen to kill Tommy as anyone else really ups his villainy and fear factor. But it also nicely scotches the myth that his killing is a form of punishment on teens indulging in the old sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Also this is probably the last time we see Jason portrayed truly as the evil monster. Sure, he doesn’t have a road to Damascus style conversion, mends his ways and I looks after injured wood land animals in later films, but by his resurrection in Friday 13th Part 6: Jason Lives, he definitely become the anti-hero, the monster the audience loves.
And speaking of resurrections… Yes it the Dead or Alive question again. Now if previous entries have had fans debating Jason’s status, in this entry things become really murky! At the film’s start he is seemingly dead. Now the Alive camp could argue that he’s just in death-like coma, but there’s a fantastic shot when his (possible) corpse in placed into the morgue cabinet. Just before the door closes, we see a sudden plume of breath arise in the frosty air. Is it normal breathing returning to our hockey masked friend or him literally getting a second wind?
Of course such questions don’t really matter – what is important though is zombie or not, he does die at the film’s close. Not only do we have the marvellous Savini shish- kebab bonce sequence, but after this when he is showing signs that even this isn’t doing to stop him, Tommy Jarvis does thing we’d all do if faced with a slasher villain… Keep hacking at the creepy masked bastard, just be sure he can’t pull that “Haha I’ll not dead routine!” and impale us with a sharp implement of his choice.
Again it’s the great combination of action, character and performance that make this one of the most satisfying Jason defeats in the series. An iconic monster like Jason needs an equally iconic death in the last reel. And it also nicely sets up the interestingly downbeat ending. It’s a final nod to reality, showing us that triumphing over Jason has come at a great cost.
Friday 13th – The Final Chapter is one of the finer entries in the series and indeed one of the better slashers of the period. In many ways is it quite predictable, but while it doesn’t break new ground, it does deliver the fun and thrills in a deft fashion. Indeed this film’s strengths ensured the best yet box office figures and predictably the franchise would return again…
