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Synopsis:
After dropping anchor from his boat on Crystal Lake, Jim Miller
(Todd Shaffer) tells his girlfriend, Suzi Donaldson (Tiffany
Paulsen), about the legend of Jason Voorhees. The anchor drags some
distance across the lakebed, finally making contact with and
damaging an electrical cable. A blast of electricity is released –
and engulfs the decomposing corpse that lies beneath the shattered
remains of a wooden dock.... Having heard a noise and sent Jim to
investigate, Suzi is terrified by the sudden appearance of a
hockey-masked, knife-wielding figure....but it is only Jim playing a
prank. The two go to bed, unaware that the hockey mask has been
claimed.... As Jim and Suzi begin to make love, Suzi screams at the
sight of Jason Voorhees, and the spear-gun in his hand. She
scrambles out of a window as Jason impales Jim with the spear,
before hunting Suzi down in a storage locker.... As the graduating
class of Lakeview High prepares for a celebratory cruise to New
York, principal Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman) and teacher
Colleen Van Deusen (Barbara Bingham) clash over the presence of
Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett), McCulloch’s niece and ward and Van
Deusen’s star pupil, who has suffered from a terror of the water
since a traumatic incident during her childhood. On the bridge,
Admiral Robertson (Warren Munson) hands the cruise ship’s departure
over to his son, Sean (Scott Reeves), a member of the graduating
class, but Sean earns his father’s ire by blundering during the
operation. Rushing from the bridge, Sean encounters a deckhand who
tells him mysteriously that the voyage is doomed. Bitterly, Sean
agrees. The ship pulls out, and the students begin their
celebrations. Sean’s mood improves abruptly when he discovers Rennie
on board. Elsewhere, aspiring rock musician J.J. (Saffron Henderson)
warns film-school hopeful Warren (Martin Cummins) that he is wasting
his time mooning after Tamara (Sharlene Martin). J.J. then climbs
down into the ship’s boiler room to make use of its acoustics for
her guitar practice, only to discover that she is not alone down
there.... As Rennie changes clothes in her cabin, she is startled by
the sound of a child’s voice – which is followed by a vision of a
drowning child.... Tamara and her slavish imitator, Eva (Kelly Hu),
watch through a window as Julius (V.C. Dupree) boxes with a sparring
partner. Tamara pressures the reluctant Eva into using cocaine,
during which they are first surprised by Rennie, then almost caught
by McCulloch. Assuming that Rennie reported them, Tamara plots
revenge. The second boxer is recovering from his bout with Julius
when Jason enters the steam room and drives a red-hot sauna rock
deep into his body.... On deck, as Colleen encourages Rennie to
confide in her, Tamara “stumbles” and knocks the girl overboard. As
the terrified Rennie screams and thrashes in the water, she is
suddenly pulled under – and looks down to find her ankle in the grip
of a disfigured young boy....
Comments:
For one reason or another, there is quite a lot of boxing in
Jason Takes Manhattan; and it is this that inspires me to
observe that ever since Jason Voorhees was resurrected – or rather,
not – in A New Beginning, the Friday The 13th
franchise had been staggering around like an over-the-hill
prize-fighter, punch-drunk enough to climb into the ring just one
more time, and with the knock-out blow both inevitable and imminent.
After the back-to-basics storyline of The New Blood, it was
obvious even to those of the most limited intelligence – and [*cough*]
to those involved in making the F13 films – that Crystal Lake
had at long last exhausted its slender dramatic possibilities. The
idea of sending small-town boy Jason Voorhees on his first trip to
The Big Smoke must have been attractive in theory, and it might have
worked in practice, had not the stinginess of the Paramount
executives intervened to leave us with one of the most notoriously
misnamed films of our time; a film in which, far from taking
Manhattan, Jason never gets to do anything more than stare at a few
billboards, take a ride on the subway, and gruesomely slaughter a
couple of muggers. You know – just your average day-trip. The rest
of the film is spent in the unattractive confines of a vessel that
can’t quite make up its mind whether it’s a cruise ship or a
freighter, and whose passage from Crystal Lake to New York is as
puzzling of purpose as it is geographically ludicrous. The result is
a film that resembles nothing so much as – to return just once more
to my boxing analogy – what was left after Apollo Creed’s hubris met
Ivan Drago’s fist.
Brief Encounter 2: Jason
Takes Manhattan
Broadly speaking,
Jason Takes Manhattan is probably the most despised entry in
the franchise. Certainly, my complaints about earlier entries have
frequently been met with cries of Just wait ‘til you get to the
eighth one! Yet as I now look around the net for other opinions,
I find a surprising number of people prepared to defend it....and
even more surprisingly (not least to me), I find myself prepared to
join them – up to a point. For everything this film gets wrong (and
while I can sum up its virtues in a sentence or two, it will
probably take me another fifteen pages to tell you what’s wrong with
it), there are a couple of points in its favour. For one
thing, it has (I think) the second highest onscreen body count in
the franchise, at least to this point, and doles out its death
scenes at a rate of about one every five minutes, avoiding the
excruciating Final Chapter tactic of making us sit through
about half an hour of – AAACCKK!! – character scenes before
it gets down to business. (Indeed, a number of the killings are
entirely pointless except as a way of breaking up the
character scenes.) While not everything in Jason Take Manhattan
that is laughable is intentionally so, there are a couple of
deliberately humorous moments that work quite well, so if you like
Jason Lives, you might well like this; and conversely, the
film again steers clear of the blunder of a couple of earlier
entries, by not inflicting upon us an Odious Comic Relief. Jason
Takes Manhattan is also notable as the only F13 film to
date to feature a black character who isn’t just – “The Black
Character” – but a distinct individual with a fairly major role;
compare him with Token Black Couple in Jason Lives and you’ll
see what I mean. Of course by the end of the film Julius is just as
dead as all of his white brethren, but that’s Equal Opportunity for
you.
And now for what’s
wrong with Jason Takes Manhattan. Lord – where to start...?
Well, with the
obvious. In tone and execution, the previous entry that this film
most resembles is Jason Lives, and nowhere so much as in the
way it recapitulates that film’s crowning sin: with the exception of
one oddly out-of-place sequence, Jason Takes Manhattan is
almost inoffensive. Despite the body count, the film is
practically bloodless, and most of the killings are out of shot or
from Jason’s POV. As far as nudity goes, there is one brief boob
shot in the opening sequence....and the girl who shows all is, of
all the girls, the one with the least to show. Dispiriting as it is
to think of, somewhere along the line the Friday The 13th
films forgot that they were supposed to be exploitation.
BUT – we open on
Crystal Lake – we do open on Crystal Lake – on a boat, with
two half-nekkid teens, Jim and Suzi. Prior to hopping into the sack,
Jim drops an anchor – not a very good anchor – one that hops
and skips along the lake bed until it hooks itself on an electrical
cable, upon which it tugs and tugs. The cable is damaged, a blast of
electrical power is released....and who should be lying nearby,
under the shattered remains of a wooden dock (oooh, continuity!),
but good old Jason? (No sign of Tina Shepard’s undead daddy,
though.) Some poorly animated electricity runs through the chains
still wrapped around Jason, and with a bit of thrashing and
twitching he is resurrected. Just like that.
(Perfunctory as
this is, I suppose the opening of Jason Lives goes some way
to legitimising it.)
I should make
mention of the film’s music. As was the case with The New Blood,
Jason Takes Manhattan was scored by Fred Mollin; Harry
Manfredini’s classic chh-chh-chh-chh-hah-hah-hah-hah only
appears as a kind of Special Guest Star (“Jay-hay-hay-hay-sohn-ohn-ohn-ohn....”).
When Jason escapes his watery confinement, the second quartet of
notes ceases to be hah-hah-hah-hah and becomes, unmistakably
– ha-ha-ha-ha!
We’ve already had
the traditional “Legend Of Jason Voorhees” speech (although given
that there are seven surviving witnesses to Jason’s existence –
eight if you count the one in the nut-hatch – nine if you accept
that Paul didn’t die at the end of F13:2 – I’m not sure how
he can still be considered a “legend”), and remain steeped is
tradition as Suzi sends Jim to investigate A Strange Noise,
following up with a Jim-Is-That-You? wander around. A figure in a
hockey-mask leaps suddenly into shot and plunges a knife into Suzi –
but the knife is one of those retractable trick things, and it’s Jim
behind the mask. Ha-ha-ha-ha, indeed. We then get proof, if
we needed it, that these things are written and directed by men –
and not particularly mature men, at that: within moments, Suzi has
forgiven Jim and is back in the sack with him. If a guy pulled a
stunt like that on me, he’d have to spit out his own
testicles before he’d be physically capable of uttering the apology
I’d so richly deserve. Anyway, while Jim and Suzi are writing their
own death sentences, Jason climbs on board, and we observe sadly
that the film’s continuity begins and ends with his presence on the
lake bed. In place of the thoughtfully and gruesomely rendered Jason
of The New Blood, with his rotting flesh and bare bones
poking through his tattered clothes, this Jason is back in
one piece with a new set of duds. Pity. (But I do like the shot of
his hand as he climbs on board, with a pink and healthy thumb and
finger showing through the make-up.) Jason appropriates Jim’s
hockey-mask (which, we observe, comes with a ready-made axe-wound in
it!!) and Jim’s spear-gun, and for a moment it looks like we’re
going to re-work the coital shish-kebab of F13:2, as Suzi
sees Jason over Jim’s shoulder. Instead, a strangely casual Jason
fires a spear that misses and allows Suzi to scramble out of a
window. An equally casual Jim just sits there obligingly as Jason
advances on him, and ends up with the spear-gun – not the
spear – rammed into his body. We get our first example of censorial
interference here, as we see little but Jim staring in horror at his
own bloodied hands before wiping the blood over the window nearest
to him and carking it. Originally, the plan had been for the
spear-gun to re-exit Jim’s body carrying his guts with it....but not
in this universe. (Actually, there is a shot from this
sequence left in, but it is so poorly done that it wasn’t until my
third viewing that I realised that the skinny pink things dangling
from the spear-gun were supposed to be Jim’s intestines.) Jason then
goes hunting for Suzi, who instead of sensibly making a swim and a
run for it (they’re all of fifteen feet from shore), has trapped
herself in a storage compartment, where she too just sits and
whimpers as Jason takes his sweet time about killing her.
Intestines. Really.
Daylight, and we
meet the setting for the bulk of Jason Takes A Sea Voyage For His
Health, a ship called – get this – the Lazarus. We
are introduced to Rennie, our water-trauma Final Girl; to Colleen
Van Deusen, her favourite teacher; and to Charles McCulloch,
Rennie’s uncle and (I think, although this is never clarified) the
Lakeview High principal, who is exactly the kind of tin-pot Hitler
familiar to anyone who ever attended high school, and who divides
his time between bellowing “I’M IN CHARGE HERE!” and doing his best
to scar his students for life with a stream of viciously disparaging
remarks. As McCulloch snots out Colleen for encouraging Rennie to
join the cruise and/or being a few minutes late, Jim’s boat (bloody
windows and all....although not the right windows) drifts
into shot. This moment is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the
arrival of the boat is observed by someone billed only as
“Deckhand”, but who is no-one less than Crazy Ralph Junior, and who,
yes, spends his admittedly brief screen time telling everyone that
they’re DOOMED!!!! Secondly – the inference here is that the
substantial shipping port at which these scenes take place is
contiguous with Crystal Lake! I’ve pointed out before the
ever-increasing dimensions of this mysterious body of water, but
here we discover that it joins up with the open ocean!!
It’s a lake, Jim,
but not as we know it.
We then get into
the mystifying business of the trip to New York. (I might as well
say here that our school system is very different from the American
one, and the film’s various references to “senior predictions” and
“handing in your final project” [on a graduation cruise!?] and so on
meant nothing to me, so I’m just going to ignore them.) As the
Lazarus pulls out of port (a sequence highly by some lovely
shots of what is very distinctly the coastline of Vancouver),
McCulloch voices his concerns for Rennie to her, and she responds by
confessing that she doesn’t even remember the incident that
traumatised her in the first place. Meanwhile, Sean, who is (at
least in context) hunky and angsty enough to qualify as Final Boy,
is up on the bridge. We learn that the Lazarus is under the
command of one “Admiral Robertson”, Sean’s old man, who is one of
those complete gits whose only ambition in life is to turn his kid
into a mindless replica of himself. In pursuit of this aim he hands
command of the vessel over to his less-than-thrilled – and
less-than-qualified – son. Sean panics and stuffs up, his old
man shows his disgust and disappointment, and Sean runs away. As he
heads for the deck, we get a cut-away showing Jason pulling himself
on board via a rope hanging down the side of the ship. Why? Who the
hell knows? Even by Jason’s usual kill-anyone-who-crosses-my-path
standards, his behaviour in this film is very nearly inexplicable.
Having survived an
encounter with Crazy Ralph Jr (CRJ: “This voyage is doomed!” Sean:
“Tell me about it.”), Sean runs into Rennie and, awwww, don’t they
make a cute couple? Then it’s the always painful Meet-The-Meat
sequence: J.J., a Joan Jett (geddit?) wannabe; Wayne, the aspiring
film-school geek (and this must, surely, be one of the very earliest
deployments of the kid who feels compelled to film everything?);
Tamara, the Bitch; Eva, her copyist; Julius, the boxer; and Miles,
who, um, is there too. (There are, by the way, noticeably more teens
on board when the ship sets out than we ever see once Jason gets
going.) J.J. is the first to depart, venturing down into the bowels
of the ship to practice her guitar licks, and ending up by taking a
few guitar licks herself instead.
And then it’s time
for Rennie and her mystifying childhood trauma. Down in her cabin,
Rennie is making use of her graduation present from Colleen, a pen
that “Stephen King supposedly used in high school”. (“I don’t know
what to say,” Rennie utters upon receipt of this embarrassing gift,
presumably being too polite to yell, “Oh, horseshit!”)
Unbeknownst to her, Jason is peering through her porthole (wow,
doesn’t that sound dirty?) – but what Rennie sees is a
small, submerged boy, who pounds on her window and cries for help.
Curiously, this vision causes Rennie’s dog, Toby (who I forgot to
mention earlier), to bolt in a panic, implying that Rennie’s vision
is real. Uh, not an hallucination, I guess I mean. Rennie’s search
for Toby leads her into the depths of the ship, where she sees
Tamara and Eva using cocaine. Rennie has barely departed when
McCulloch also stumbles over the guilty pair, who have just
concealed most of the evidence. Assuming that Rennie dobbed them in
to her uncle, Tamara plots revenge.
As Rennie is
wandering around the ship, so is Jason; and we get a Distinctly
Ominous shot of a dart board and its darts – which turns out to be
the last we’ll see of them: more censorial intervention disposed of
a death-by-dart. Instead, the unbilled guy we’ve seen sparring with
Julius in the gym is lying in the sauna (assuming it’s him – there’s
a towel over his face) when Jason wanders in, picks up a hot lava
rock, and rams it into his gut. Or he does initially. An overhead
shot shows the thing lodged in the poor SOB’s chest cavity. Eh?
On deck, Colleen is
trying to induce Rennie to confide in her when Tamara takes her
revenge, “accidentally” knocking Rennie overboard; an act greatly
facilitated by the Lazarus’s almost complete lack of
railings. Fortunately, the ship isn’t actually moving – or so we
judge by the ease with which Rennie stays near it. Colleen throws
her a life preserver, but as Rennie moves towards it she is pulled
under the water by her soggy young friend, who has her by one ankle.
She manages to kick herself free just as Sean jumps in to help her
out of the water. On deck, McCulloch manages to blame this incident
on Colleen and Sean, and is leading Rennie away in a huff when he is
brought by short by Crazy Ralph Jr, who remarks conversationally,
“He’s come back and you’re all going to die.” (As it turns out,
“He’s come back and we’re all going to die” would have been
more correct.) Rennie does a bolt for the bathroom, where after some
blood-from-the-tap shtick, she has yet another encounter with her
squelchy companion, who this time emerges from a mirror and tries to
strangle her. In contrast to his earlier appearances, the boy is now
showing some distinct signs of watery wear and tear – almost
liiiiiike....?
Railings - who needs 'em?
Meanwhile,
McCulloch, in quest of Tamara’s “final project”, has gone to her
cabin. (Even if Tamara weren’t Tamara, this is, surely, an
incredibly stupid thing for a male teacher to do??) After trying to
ply him with champagne, Tamara drops her robe to reveal her “biology
project”. She then pushes the stunned McCulloch back onto the bed.
He does – eventually – manage to disentangle himself, but too late:
by pre-arrangement, Wayne has filmed the whole thing. As McCulloch
storms off (“You can forget about attending any film school!
Ever!” he spits at Wayne – and of course, he’s right), Wayne
intimates to Tamara that he thinks he deserves a little reward, but
naturally she gives him the brush. As Wayne departs morosely, Jason,
that ever-ready defender of public morality, makes his move. After
waiting politely for Tamara to finish her shower – from which she
emerges bone dry – Jason smashes an arm through the bathroom door
and makes a grab for her, but only succeeds in grabbing her robe.
(You do get a quick glimpse of Tamara’s butt here.) As Tamara
cringes and cries in a corner, Jason smashes a mirror (ooh, isn’t
that Seven More Films’ Bad Luck?), grabs a large shard, and goes to
work....off-camera.
Where art meets science
And wouldn’t you
know it, there’s a violent storm building outside! Admiral Robertson
and his engineer have a D&M about children and how to raise them
“Don’t push him too hard!” advises the Admiral, striving for pathos
but just making me wish that Jason would get on with it. And
Jason does, taking out the engineer with a gaff and the Admiral with
what I wish with all my heart I could call a machete – what ought
to be a machete – but is really just some kind of big knife. The
Admiral’s death is perhaps the best example we can offer of the
slasher film’s demoralising journey from genuine exploitation into
the late-eighties realm of non-threatening horror. Technically,
Jason cuts the Admiral’s throat. This is realised by having Jason
grab the Admiral’s head and reach around with his knife, which
clearly gets nowhere near the throat. There is a pause – nothing
happens – the Admiral’s head tilts back a bit – a small cut opens up
in his neck – end of scene. Look back to the death of Annie the cook
in the original Friday The 13th, oh my brethren,
and weep.
After her third
ghostly encounter, Rennie has had enough, and Sean has resolved not
just to call the Coast Guard for her, but to leave the ship as well.
Of course, all this becomes rather moot when Sean discovers the
bodies of his old man and the engineer (who, apart from Crazy Ralph
Jr, seem to have comprised the entire crew!). Sean uses the PA to
call everyone else to the bridge, then tries sending a Mayday signal
– and actually gets as far as contacting the Coast Guard before
Jason remembers to wreck the radio (oh, yes, the radio).
“Everyone” makes it to the bridge – that is, the half-dozen students
we’re familiar with by eye, Colleen and McCulloch. The latter is so
shocked by the situation, for a second he forgets to behave like a
dick. Crazy Ralph Jr then looks in to make the following puzzling
announcement: “You’re the last ones. He’s come back for you.”
And no, we never do get an explanation of what he means by that.
McCulloch decides that CRJ is himself the killer, on the grounds
that, “Walking corpses aren’t real!”
Meanwhile, Eva is
looking for Tamara. She finds her dead body, Jason finds her.
And then, despite the fact that she started out by inquiring whether
Tamara heard the announcement – the one telling everyone to go
upstairs to the bridge – Eva runs downstairs to the
deserted disco.
And here---- Here,
my friends, two things happen of such combined suckiness, it’s a
wonder they weren’t enough to blow a black hole right through the
fabric of the universe.
Firstly, having
tracked Eva to the disco, Jason off-screen teleports. No, wait – let
me explain what I mean. We’re all familiar with the slasher film
convention that allows psycho killers to mysteriously appear
wherever they need to be, or to move dead bodies around without
being seen, or leaving a trail. This---- This is different. It isn’t
just a case of sloppy film-making being accepted into the
vernacular. Here, Jason teleports deliberately. As a
tactic. Remember how in the first couple of films, Jason ran
after his victims? And then he gave up running, and just walked
after them? Well, by this time he can’t even be bothered doing that.
Instead, he will spend the rest of the film popping in and out of
scenes like Samantha in Bewitched. Here, having trapped Eva
in the disco, he appears and disappears and appears again, just, it
seems, to screw with her mind – until he gets bored with the game
and kills her. Kills her by----
By....
....strangling
her....
By strangling
her.
Yes, it’s come to
this: Jason Voorhees, lord of the pointy implement, master of the
creative kill, is now so bereft of ideas, he just strangles people.
I think I said back
during The New Blood that the girl who got the party
noisemaker rammed through her head got the lamest death in the whole
franchise. I was wrong. This is, truly, one of the saddest things
I’ve ever seen. I mean, for heaven’s sake! – he could at least have
caved her skull in with the disco-ball!
The five boys who
at this point are all we’re seeing of the Lakeview High senior class
have decided to arm themselves and hunt down the killer.
Separately. (Julius chooses a rifle – oh, dear!) Wayne is
wandering around the boiler area when a blast of steam from a pipe
blows the glasses from his face, leaving him, as he puts it, in
serious trouble. (Believe me, Wayne, I sympathise!) In his
visually impaired state, and seeing movement in the distance,
decides to shoot first and ask for ID later – with the result that
he puts a bullet through one of his fellow students (although don’t
ask me who it is). As Wayne stares in horror – through the
re-focused eye-piece of his camera, of course – a pair of overall-ed
legs wanders into frame. The camera is sent flying, and the race is
on. Wayne stumbles over J.J.’s body and her bloodied guitar, and
pauses just long enough for Jason to catch him and send him flying
into a powerboard. Wayne and it go up in flames. The fire spreads to
the fuel tanks, which in turn go up in a blast. Ever helpful, Jason
breaks glass and sets off the fire alarm. Eh?
On deck, the
faceless Miles is the next to encounter Jason. He tries to evade him
by climbing the mast – eh? – but an instant later Jason’s up there
too, and Miles is tossed through the air to be impaled – off-screen
– on a pole. Julius finds the body before being confronted by Jason
and shooting him. Jason responds to this by – tossing Julius
overboard.
Man, he just isn’t
trying any more, is he?
Rennie, in her
cabin, has another vision of her increasingly deformed friend,
ventures too close to her porthole, and is grabbed by Jason when he
smashes through the window – using his mask! And it’s Stephen
King to the rescue as Rennie saves herself by ramming her pen
through the left eye-hole of Jason’s mask – although after all this
time, I’m astonished that there’s anything left back there to hurt.
During this scene, our little misshapen visitor watches in some
distress, fading away after Jason lets go of Rennie.
And then the whole
power room goes up in a massive explosion. Astonishingly, Colleen
has found four other students we’ve never seen before, but abandons
them immediately afterwards with an order to “Wait here until I get
the others.” And that’s the last we’ll see of them. Our four
central characters find Crazy Ralph Junior with an axe in his back
(settling the issue of who the killer is), then scramble into a
life-boat, only to find Jason standing at the top of the ladder
staring down at them. Not to worry, though, because he just lets
them go. Eh? Then – someone grabs the boat from the water!
It’s – it’s – oh, it’s Julius. (You know, this stretch is a whole
lotta nothing.) The five of them – and Toby the dog, who has
reappeared from nowhere – set out, Sean and McCulloch rowing.
Oh, just sit right back and
you'll hear a tale, a take of a fateful trip....
What follows is
probably the most gigglesome part of the film. For one thing, Our
Heroes being lost in the fog is conveyed courtesy of a teeny-tiny
sound stage and a fog-machine. Secondly, they start fretting over
“finding land”. Uh, yeah, I think there was a chunk of land
around there somewhere, wasn’t there? – like the frickin’ UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA!!?? Also, they did notify the Coast Guard
before Jason killed the radio. Not that they need the Coast Guard,
as it happens, because moments later they look up to find that they
have piloted themselves into Upper New York Bay without even
noticing. As the Statue of Liberty looms large in the
background, Julius bursts into a very bad rendition of “New York,
New York”, just to ensure that when his gruesome death does
eventually occur, we won’t have any regrets. The Famous Five (plus
dog) climb ashore, McCulloch bitching about Sean’s choice of a
docking sight. Moments later, Jason too climbs ashore. Eh?
(This idiotic
sequence does rather beg the question--- Just where the hell is
Crystal Lake, anyway? Is it in New Jersey? Or is New Jersey just
where the early films were shot, and I’m getting confused? In any
case, the mysterious voyage of the Lazarus leaves us with a
couple of tantalising possibilities. I suppose it might have
set out from Delaware Bay, and gone north up the New Jersey
coastline. Otherwise, the lifeboat ending up where it did, the most
likely option would be a trip down the Hudson from upper New York
State, or possibly even somewhere in New England.)
(Or am I just
putting way too much thought into this?)
The bewildering
geography of Jason Takes Manhattan is amusing enough, but
even more so is the film’s attitude to the city that it has, at this
point, spent just over sixty of its one hundred minute running-time
getting to. Don’t think you’re going to see any more of Manhattan
than one more look at the Statue and a glimpse of the lights of
Times Square: the New York served up here for our delectation is
every out-of-towner’s worst nightmare, a quagmire of vice and dirt
and toxic waste; a swarming jungle of muggers and junkies – and
junkie muggers – and apathetic locals who look on with a sneer while
you’re screaming for your life.
It is a matter of
record that Jason Takes Manhattan fell foul of the New York
Tourist Commission, which objected to, and demanded the withdrawal
of, the simply fantabulous teaser poster that is easily the best
thing about this entire exercise (and which is reproduced up above;
God bless the internet). The question is, did the NYTC object to the
poster because the film makes New York look like the @#$%hole of the
universe? – or did the film-makers make New York look like a
@#$%hole in revenge for their objection?
While we ponder
these philosophical mysteries, let’s return to our protagonists, who
at this point have been in New York almost two minutes, and are
therefore due to be mugged. On the face of it, the mugging seems
unlikely, as the dock region through which they are wandering is
bereft of even the most minimal signs of life. (New York’s
underbelly looks considerably more like a backdrop from a road
company’s production of Rent than a genuine urban wasteland.)
However, two unpleasant types who apparently eke a living by hanging
out around the docks and robbing any misplaced tourists who drift
ashore in rowboats take everyone’s money, then try to put a bullet
through the growling Toby. (The dog, remember?) Rennie knocks the
gunman’s arm, and he and his partner react by dragging Rennie off
and warning the others that they will be shot if they make any
attempt to help her. So – they don’t. Instead they decide that they
need to find a cop, and that the best way of proceeding is to split
up and wander around alone in the dark. Yeah, that oughtta
work.
All jokes aside,
the straight-faced sequence that follows of Rennie’s forced
injection with heroin and her threatened rape is both sincerely
disturbing and, it must be said, completely out of place in the
Friday The 13th universe. Normality is resumed when
we learn that Jason objects even more violently to forced sex than
he does to the voluntary kind – and good on him for that. One
potential rapist is relieved of his syringe and run completely
through with it. The other draws a gun and starts shooting – and
chooses to take a step nearer to Jason with every futile shot – as
if getting closer might make his bullets work better. He ends
up with his face slammed into a steam pipe. Rennie, meanwhile, has
struggled out from under Rapist #1 and taken to her heels.
So how’s that plan
of splitting up working out? Just fine and dandy – at least if
you’re Jason, who finds Julius just as he’s found a
phone-box. The chase ends with Julius trapped on a rooftop; and
although he knows he’s going to die, he decides he’s not going out
without a fight – literally. He’s a boxer, remember? And so he rains
upon Jason blow after blow after blow after blow (and if we
reluctantly admire Julius’s courage, we’re less impressed with his
intelligence: at least half of his punches land on Jason’s mask!),
with Jason – either as a ploy, or because he’s as freaked out by
this as the rest of us – doing nothing but taking a slight step
backwards each time. It finally ends with Julius exhausted and both
of them teetering on the roof edge. Conceding, Julius invites Jason
to, “Take your best shot.” And he does, severing Julius’s head with
a single punch – and so neatly, too! The head goes sailing
off the roof, completes a triple somersault, and drops right into a
dumpster – plop!
You may insert your
own “splitting up” joke here.
Creed Vs Drago 2: It's The Bout
To Knock The Other Guy's Head Clean Off His Shoulders
Meanwhile, Sean’s
aimless wanderings have led him straight to a spaced-out Rennie, and
McCulloch’s have led him to a cop – and what a cop, sure and
begorrah! McCulloch and Finnegan the Flatfoot then find Colleen, and
are immediately found by Sean and Rennie. New York must be smaller
than it looks. As the out-of-towners pile into a squad car,
McCulloch stresses the need to find Julius. He needn’t have worried:
Julius is – [*tee, hee*] – way ahead of him. Propped
up on the dash, in fact. The visitors scream. Patrolman Paddy grabs
for the radio. And Jason pounces. Rennie scrambles into the front
seat of the car and, to the consternation of the others, slams her
foot on the accelerator, speeding straight for Jason who has
teleported back into the road. BLAM!! So far, so good. Except that
Rennie next has another of her visions, and as a result sends the
car straight into a wall where, like all good movie cars, it
immediately goes up in flames. Rennie, Sean and McCulloch make it
out, but Colleen – and, presumably, Julius’s head – is still inside
when the vehicle erupts into a gigantic fire ball.
Some people have
expressed surprise at the fiery death of Colleen. They must have
overlooked the fact that on her first appearance, she spoke lightly
of Jim and Suzi being off somewhere having sex instead of joining
their classmates....and if you don’t know what behaviour like
that means by now, you haven’t been paying attention.
"Wow. Violent death is....mildly
disturbing."
Sean and McCulloch
stare in horror (or at least in mild consternation: check out Sean’s
lack of expression here!). Rennie stares too, but at a pool of
spilled oil....and starts to have another vision....of herself as a
small child, out in a boat on Crystal Lake with her dear old Uncle
Charles, who encourages her to learn to swim so that “you won’t
drown, like that Voorhees boy. He’s still at the bottom of the lake,
you know,” McCulloch adds, “ready to pull down anyone who falls in
and can’t swim.” And then – he pushes her in.
Yup. This guy was
made to be a high school principal.
“You’d better swim,
Rennie, before Jason pulls you down,” McCulloch goes on cheerfully
as the child screams and thrashes in terror. And then – Jason
does.
Ohhhh-kayyyy.....
The “Jason” who
pulls Rennie down is indeed the child Jason; the same one she’s been
seeing visions of all through the film – which, even by the most
liberal interpretation of Jason’s personal history (such as the one
I attempted re: The New Blood) is ludicrous unless this
encounter was just a fear-induced hallucination. The trouble with
trying to give the film that kind of out, however, is that it goes
on to---- Well, frankly, what this film goes on to do could make
your head explode.
(For the record, by
my calculations Rennie’s trauma must have occurred during the period
when Jason was mouldering in his grave pre-Jason Lives. So I
suppose, if you wanted to be generous---- Aw, hell, I can’t
be bothered.)
Post-revelation,
McCulloch is obviously doomed. Right on cue, Jason recovers from his
vehicular incident, grabs the principal (who Rennie and Sean have
abandoned) and drowns him in one of the numerous barrels of toxic
waste that, this film assures us, are to be found sitting on just
about every street corner in New York.
Jason pursues
Rennie and Sean into the subway and onto a train; a remarkable clean
one, decorated with some of the politest graffiti. Sean pulls
the emergency brake and the chase moves out onto the tracks for
another fake death scene, as Jason hits the third rail. We then see
as much of The Big Apple as the film’s budget would allow with a
brief glimpse of Times Square, before Jason reappears and the chase
is on again. It leads through a diner filled with indifferent Noo
Yorkers (including unbilled Jason-in-waiting Ken Kirzinger!!), then
down into the sewers. There is a false scare as Rennie and Sean
encounter a sanitation worker who – get this!! – tells them
they are in great danger, because every night at midnight, the City
Of New York floods its sewers with toxic waste.
I can’t imagine why
the NYTC objected to this film, can you??
The sanitation guy
is of course next to go – off-screen. Sean gets knocked out in the,
uh, struggle, and Rennie saves him by shining a light in Jason’s
face (?). “You didn’t get me in the lake,” she declares defiantly,
“and you’re not going to get me now!” And this, remarkably, is
enough to make Jason forget about killing Sean. Yeesh! Rennie could
have least done a Tommy Jarvis here, and called him “Maggot Head”!
Even more
remarkably, perhaps, is that this brief exchange is all the film
grants us by way of an explanation for Jason’s behaviour: even as he
came back to get Chrissie after she (somehow) escaped him in
F13:3, evidently he feels compelled to kill Rennie here. What it
doesn’t explain is Jason’s otherwise complete reversal of conduct.
Until now, as we have observed to our bewilderment, he has killed
every single person who has crossed his path regardless of whether
he had the slightest motive to or not. Here, in a city of
teeming millions, he has not lifted his hand against anyone but his
fellow tourists, except for the cop and the sanitation guy who
briefly got in his way. The hell - !?
As Jason chases
her, Rennie fights back by – oh, lord! – tossing more toxic
waste in his face. (At least this bucket had a lid on it!) This
causes Jason’s face to melt in one of the worst pieces of make-up
work in the whole franchise. Rennie runs back to Sean, brings him
to, and helps him away. They are climbing a ladder out when Jason –
sans mask – staggers towards them.
And then things get
weird.
As Sean struggles
with the grating at the top of the ladder, Jason teleports down the
passageway and grabs Rennie by the ankle (he really does have a
fetish, doesn’t he?). Just at that moment – midnight strikes
– and the promised toxic waste comes pouring through the sewer.
And Jason Voorhees
– in a helpless, little boy voice – speaks.
“Mommy? Don’t let
me drown!”
And then he vomits
water. (A real up-chuck here, apparently; one of Kane
Hodder’s myriad talents.) The waste engulfs Jason without touching
or otherwise inconveniencing Rennie and Sean. (Movie toxic waste
must be like movie lava: it doesn’t hurt you unless you touch it.)
Jason sinks under the flood, and we get another vision – his?
Rennie’s? who knows? – of Jason as a child drowning in Crystal Lake.
And then adult Jason – bursts into flames!? We cut outside and see a
violent lightning storm breaking over the city (and hitting the
Statue’s lamp – ooh, art) before cutting back underground to
where the tide of waste is receding, leaving us with – with....
....a small boy – a
perfectly normal boy – curled up at the edge of the sewer....
There are countless
times in the reviewing game when a film provokes you to an eh?
or a what? There are other times when that’s not nearly
enough, and you have to resort to a WTF!? to express your
emotions.
And then there are
those rare moments where the brain refuses to process the
information that the eyes are sending; moments that have you
scrambling for the ‘Format’ menu and the ‘Font’ control, in a vain
attempt to find a way of conveying the utter inexplicability of what
you have just witnessed – thus:
WTF!!!???
And I was not the
only one for whom this ending was evidently the last straw. As long
as healthy returns from the Friday The 13th films
were rolling in, the Paramount executives found themselves able to
quell all those pesky ethical qualms about the nature of the
material they were marketing; but when Jason Takes Manhattan
gave the lowest return of any entry in the franchise, they decided
it was time to retreat to some high moral ground, and finally to
wash their hands of their red-haired, hockey-masked step-child. And
of course, by “wash their hands” we mean “sell off at a tidy
profit”. New Line Cinema became the new owners of Jason
Voorhees....although evidence suggests that having acquired him, New
Line was rather at a loss to know what to do with him. For
cinema-goers of the time, it was a full four years before Jason was
resurrected yet again.
For others of
us----well, it might not be quite so long.....
This film has that effect on me,
too
Want a second opinion of Friday The
13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan? Visit
1000 Misspent Hours - And
Counting. |
Director:
Rob Hedden