Review

Tommy Jarvis, still suffering from his machete tête-à-tête with Jason, is on his way to a cemetery that we soon learn is the final resting place of Mr Voorhees. Along for the ride is Allen Hawes, cause what’s a bit of late night grave robbing if you don’t have a friend or two tagging along? Surprised they didn’t pack some brews, chips, and dip to be honest. After digging up Crystal Lake’s most infamous son, Tommy does what he does best and goes absolutely ballistic on the mouldering corpse. Grabbing an iron fence post, which just happens to be unattached, Tommy repeatedly stabs the remains of Jason in what can only be described as a frenzy of excess. Having worked it out of his system Tommy goes to get his trusty can of petrol as he plans to crispy fry the remains of his nemesis. During the course of this Allen is simply hanging around like a big girl.

Wouldn’t you know it, a bolt of lightning hits the iron fence post still stuck in the big goalie and the sparks begin to fly. I did mention this is all going down at night while a thunderstorm brews overhead right? A second bolt of lightning finishes the job of reanimating Jason, Frankenstein fashion. Naturally this is bad news for Allen, but Tommy surprises us by not only getting the hell out of there but by being able to do so when his truck actually starts. I’m talking a first for the slasher genre right there. Further amazement ensues as Tommy heads to the nearest police station in the sleepy hamlet of Forest Green. Naturally, since some youth has burst into a police station in the middle of the night raving on about reanimated corpses, Sheriff Michael Garris deduces it isn’t Morris West and throws Tommy’s skinny arse into a holding cell. Maybe in hindsight Tommy might want to reconsider grabbing for police weapons while raving like a lunatic.

The sheriff’s daughter, Megan, takes an instant liking to Tommy, cause he’s a certified nutter or something, and helps out our boy as he is repeatedly given the arse from the township. Oh, and just to prove it’s a small world, Megan is one of the newly minted counsellors at Camp Forest Green, which just happens to be built next to a lake! With Jason headed home and no one believing him, Tommy resorts to the occult, as you do, and comes up with a plan to once and for all give Jason a final resting place. Same old same old ensures, hey it’s a F13th flick – what are you expecting exactly?

Just a point of order, then we’ll get down and funky with the actual review. Feel free to skip this paragraph if you don’t happen to be a horror geek. In the opening scene, where Tommy and Allen (Welcome back Cotter?) are doing some grave digging, the camera keeps switching focus to this statue of a small girl. It doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense in Jason Lives but friends and neighbours that’s the exact same statue the producers of Stephen King’s Red Rose have in the grounds of America’s most haunted, where it does make perfect sense. Now either there’s a lack of stone carvers in L.A. or the crew behind Red Rose were referencing Jason Lives! Yes, that factoid has joined my top twenty list of cinema absurd trivia.

Does this now make Jason a zombie?

Director/writer Tom McLoughlin was stuck with a problem when he got handed the keys to Jason Lives: how exactly do you resurrect a serial killer who has been dead for a decade or so and whose body was cremated in the preceding movie? Well okay, we could forget about the whole cremation deal – hey, it was only the Mayor who was probably taking time out of his busy schedule of not closing beaches or something, who mentioned it and it did happen off screen. Of course, we could have a dark and stormy night, the rain water seeping into Jason’s grave/urn/whatever could revive him like one of those packets of freeze-dried food you take hiking with you. See, I’ve been tramping through the bush ergo why I thought The Blair Witch Project sucked golf balls through garden hoses. But enough about me, back to Tom’s problems. Clearly the easiest solution would be to forget the cremation thing; fans of the franchise are hard pressed to remember to wipe their bums after using the bathroom so no one is going to call foul there, except maybe my editor. Okay, so we have an interred Jason Voorhees, how are we going to get him up and slashing again? Start of the last movie they had Tommy circa Corey Feldman checking out the grave when two disposable extras showed up. We could have Tommy and some disposable digging up the grave this time, thus adding some continuity to previous movies (if we forget the cremation thing), and ensuring no one will think we knocked off A New Beginning’s opening. Okay on a roll here, but how do we reanimate Jason? Well would people accept a lightning strike? I mean, people might notice we knocked off an idea from Frankenstein, but would this really affect our artistic creditability, and does the typical Friday the 13th viewer ever watch something like Frankenstein?

You can no doubt see the problems Tom McLoughlin was faced with. The studio thought the whole Tommy taking up the mantle of Jason was a dumb idea, or at least their focus groups thought it was a dumb idea, so Jason had to be returned to the franchise for artistic reasons. Oh, and to ensure the fans would pay to see the next feature. See, the idea of fans influencing movies was going down long before Snakes on a Plane misread a whole bunch of teenage arsewipes as representing the general movie going public. McLoughlin managed to write himself out of the hole the studio had by and largely made with the previous movie but then found Paramount had even more requirements for the next film. By 1986 the battle lines were clearly drawn between the moral majority and those who simply wanted some violence, and let’s not beat around the bush here, a healthy dose of T&A on their movie menu. The curtain was coming down on the hard core “R” rated slasher flick and Paramount helped out by abandoning the barricades and allowing the religious right and allies to dictate what movie goers would get to see. Just getting the above out of the way as a lot of the criticism ladled out on Jason Lives is unfairly lumped on Tom McLoughlin’s shoulders. The culprit here is Paramount, who allowed a vocal minority to dictate what it could and couldn’t do. Ironically it was the same minority who bitched and whinged loudest about slashers in the early 1980s that had got the subgenre much needed and otherwise unavailable media coverage leading to its explosion though the mid 1980s.

Anyway, Director McLoughlin delivers a couple of surprises in Jason Lives right before the opening credits; the name is Voorhees, Jason Voorhees. The unmasking of Jason, which is normally reserved for the final five minutes or so, happens right off the bat here. Must say Jason hasn’t aged well. And for the rest of the movie it’s hockey mask to the fore with the odd, and I mean odd, shot of Jason’s eye for no apparent reason. Equally, the requisite lightning storm happens straight away with no ominous warnings or critics being able to make “darkness falls” statements. Of course the storm does add a couple of required plot points – lightning strike Jason (available at all good toy stores, please note not a flying toy) and the whole soggy match thing – but still nice change of pace. Having got his opening in the can, McLoughlin then spends the rest of the movie upping the body count in what he hopes are new and fascinating ways. I actually put each death on Tommy’s tab cause of that whole reanimation thing.

It’s during the middle part of the movie, while the audience are waiting for the nudity and gore to go down, that you are finally confronted with a frightening notion. The Friday the 13th franchise has “jumped the shark” with Jason Lives. Consider, in previous movies Jason, Pam, or Pseudo Jason have been pretty ruthless and efficient in what they do. There’s a body count to get through, so let’s get that happening before lunch and finish in time to catch Stargate this evening. Got to love that work ethic. In Jason Lives, most of the death scenes are being played for laughs. That’s a pretty sick notion in itself, but doubly so when we are talking a slasher movie. Come on, we are in ghetto filmmaking here, this stuff self parodies enough without someone intentionally trying for a laughter track.

During Jason’s epic journey back to Crystal Lake – renamed Forest Green by Jason Lives time, possibly as a tourist promotion idea – the big guy runs across a company paintball team-building exercise. By team-building, read “sales-team-building”, as the rest of us who don’t overtly lie for a living are fracking monkeys at our companies. First up, Jason gets himself a machete from a paper cut-out of an angry guy. Machete on a paintball range? Don’t ask, plot holes in F13th movies will simply make your head explode if you try and figure them out. Jason then makes good use of his new found toy by going for a “three for one” deal. Normally this sort of scene is meant to have fanboys grabbing for the tissues, but here unfortunately McLoughlin seems to think we’ll find it the funniest thing ever. I wasn’t laughing over here, McLoughlin! Just when you think Jason has had enough of paintball he’s confronted by a weedy guy, introduced earlier trying to stick a branch he broke off back onto a tree. Mr Weedy does the only thing he can do, he raises his paint gun, aims squarely at Jason, and lets him have it. Naturally, since axes to the head etc didn’t lead to the big fella going down, the paintball injury is a minor inconvenience. We do get to see Jason’s reaction to this, however. Was it just me or did Jason really bring across the impression that he was thinking “you are so going to pay the laundry bill on this one, pal”? The whole paintball thing is sans blood, gore, and pretty much the metal meeting the meat happens off screen. Is this a fracking Friday the 13th movie or an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine?

Although I hate to say it, without the expected gore Jason Lives is simply a pale reflection of previous F13th outings. The dialogue, plotting, themes, etc have never been strong enough to carry a Jason movie and that’s really brought to the surface in this film. Previously I have stated a horror movie must first and foremost work as a movie in order to be successful. To a certain degree slasher flicks are armed with a “get out of jail free” in regards this as the audience have a limited requirement going into them. When even that limited requirement isn’t catered to then you really are in deep trouble.

Before I forget, another couple of points to get out of the way before we continue with this masque of the red death review. If we count Jason Lives, Mr Voorhees has appeared in four of the first six movies, and surprisingly this also marks the third appearance by Tommy Jarvis in one form or another. Not sure what that has to do with the price of fish in Freemantle but thought I would mention it. Even more pertinent is what exactly has Jason become? Is he like now Frankenstein’s Monster, which would make Tommy Frankenstein, or is Jason meant to be a zombie? Welcome to geek central, folks, where things like this are eternally debated by people with all the passion, and actual worth, of university English professors.

When Jason does finally make it back to Camp Crystal Lake Forest Green it’s back to your normal slicing and dicing of the local counsellors. Surprisingly, and a first for a F13th movie, there are actually kids at the camp as well which is probably meant to up the tension and concern or something. You ain’t fooling anyone here, McLoughlin, we damn well know you would have been under strict instructions from Paramount not to be seen to put any of the kids into harm’s way. Now if Miner had helmed this one we may have expected an entirely different outcome. It’s actually way too painful to recount the various characters at the camp, so let’s just say Jason paints a couple of cabins red while he fills in time on his dance card till Tommy and new squeeze Megan can make the scene and put into play their aquatic master plan.

I just don’t have the jam to continue going through the scenes here so let me finish this part of the review by stating that at 34:20 we get the best ever use of “ki ki ki ma ma ma” in a F13th movie as Jason comes across a camper van with a couple inside doing the thing he really, really hates .

Thom Matthews (Tommy) does serviceable work and I for one was digging his input to Jason Lives. Jennifer Cooke (Megan) does the wild young middle America teen that never quite comes off as credible. She’s probably a very capable actress but isn’t giving much to do here. David Kagen (Sheriff Michael Garris) is spot on with his portrayal of a small town law enforcement officer that does surprisingly go out to investigate happenings at the camp, not just clean up the mess in the aftermath.

Henry Manfridi was back in black with the score and once again delivered a winner, the dude really does have these movies down pat.

Woy Woy watch: Frack me, have headphones on and the music turned to maximum, read damaging, and I can still hear these two chicks fracking rabbiting on about sheer shite over the top of it. Some people lead very boring lives if this conversation is anything to go by. For my fellow commuters’ benefit, leave the carriage if an old blonde chick gets on at Woy Woy; she could talk the head off a wooden soldier.

What Would Rob Zombie Have Done Differently? Since Tom McLoughlin didn’t exactly put one over the fence, there are numerous instances where Zombie could have improved a scene. For mine, though, the opening scene of Tommy and Allen in the graveyard really could have done with that extra bit of loving. Zombie would have had “Monster Mash” playing during Jason’s re-animation and surely our two grave robbers should have had girlfriends who, while the boys were getting busy digging up graves and the like, stripped off for a lesbian scene. Of course, numerous f-bombs going down as Jason does his thing. Wonder if Zombie could have worked Sid Haig in there somewhere?

I kind of thought Jason lives was okay in a sort of guilty pleasure fashion. It works as the ginger-haired cousin of the franchise that most people would put down as their third favourite, I would imagine. The film is certainly toned down from previous outings and unfortunately the overall violence is missed. These movies are never ever going to be strong enough to stand up to close scrutiny without the requisite body counts.

Jason Lives was the first instalment in the franchise to dip below $20 million in box office receipts in North America and pretty much spelt the beginning of the end for the franchise at Paramount.

The original script contained information about Jason’s father, which to date remains the closest the franchise has ever come to throwing some light onto the character who has appeared in a few of the novels written around F13th.

Guess if you are a Friday the 13th completist, join the club, then Jason Lives is going to find its way onto your play list at some stage. As I’m running down to next month’s theatre release of the new Friday the 13th I caught it to ensure I get through all available movies in the franchise. Whether or not Jason lives is probably not as interesting as the fact that it was the beginning of the end for the Voorhees family at Paramount.