Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) Paramount Pictures/Horror RT: 100 minutes Rated R (language, graphic violence, nudity, sexual content, drug use) Director: Rob Hedden Screenplay: Rob Hedden Music: Fred Mollin Cinematography: Bryan England Release date: July 28, 1989 (US) Cast: Jensen Daggett, Scott Reeves, Barbara Bingham, Peter Mark Richman, V.C. Dupree, Martin Cummins, Gordon Currie, Kelly Hu, Saffron Henderson, Sharlene Martin, Alek Diakun, Warren Munson, Kane Hodder, Tiffany Paulsen, Todd Shaffer, Fred Henderson, Sam Sarkar, Michael Benyaer, Roger Barnes, Amber Pawlick, Vinny Capone, Peggy Hedden, Ken Kirzinger, David Longworth, Ace. Box Office: $14.3 million (US) Body Count: 20
Rating: **
Perhaps it’s time I explain why I equate the F13 movies with pizza. I subscribe to the theory espoused in the 1994 rom-com Threesome when a character compares sex to pizza by saying, “Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” That sums up exactly how I feel about the F13 flicks. Even if one of them sucks, it’s still Friday the 13th.
I’m hard-pressed to knock movies with high body counts which brings me to Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan. It should have been epic, plain and simple. The idea of transplanting Jason Voorhees in New York is filled with great possibilities. Wouldn’t it be cool to see how the hockey-masked killer deals with typical New York types? The teaser trailer shown before Star Trek V: The Final Frontier earlier in the summer had me cheering. It opens with the NY skyline and the camera pans down to a lone figure standing in Central Park. Said figure turns around, revealing himself to be Jason. If only the actual movie was that cool. It’s not and here’s why.
More than half the movie is spent on a cruise ship sailing from Crystal Lake to NYC. Once the characters finally arrive at their destination, they spend a majority of the time in dark back alleys, on rooftops and in the sewers. There are only a few scenes that take place in NYC proper. There’s a reason for it, but I’ll get to that later. For now, I just want to say that Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is a crushing disappointment and not just for the reason I just described. It commits the cardinal sin of horror movies. IT’S BORING! It moves as slowly as the boat where most of the action takes place. HOWEVER, it does have a high body count, so it’s not a total loss.
Once again, Jason is at the bottom of Crystal Lake and once again, somebody inadvertently resurrects him. This time it’s a couple of teens on a houseboat about to have sex. They drop anchor and it drags a live electrical wire over his corpse. ZAP! He’s alive!
The next day, a cruise ship containing the graduating class of the local high school is about to set sail. It’s the annual senior trip to NYC and the kids are looking forward to some serious partying. The chaperones are teachers Charles McCulloch (Richman, Santa Barbara) and Colleen Van Deusen (Bingham). She brings along his niece Rennie (Daggett, Major League: Back to the Minors) despite the fact she’s afraid of water. The ship sets sail with the wild bunch and one stowaway (guess who?) that proceeds to carve up the soon-to-be-graduates. They include bitchy prom queen Tamara (Martin), Ivy League-bound Eva (Hu), wannabe rock star JJ (Henderson) and video camera-toting Wayne (Cummins). That last guy is a real piece of work; he looks like a dark-haired version of Garth, the character played by Dana Carvey in SNL’s Wayne’s World sketches. Anyway, to make a very long voyage short, none of them live to see NYC. The ones that make it shore in one piece are Rennie, Uncle Charles, Colleen, the late captain’s son Sean (Reeves) and boxing champ Julius (Dupree). Oh yeah, Rennie’s dog Toby too. And, of course, Jason. So begins the pursuit and so climbs the body count. BTW, it would appear as though Jason is something of a vigilante as he dispatches a pair of mugger-rapists that accost the group.
Believe me when I tell you that Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan reads a lot better than it plays out onscreen. On top of everything else, Rennie sees visions of a young Jason all over the place. Then there’s the ending. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Jason drowns in the toxic waste that floods the sewer system every night at midnight. It’s what happens after the drowning that baffles me.
Now, back to what I mentioned earlier. The reason for the lack of New York settings is budgetary. The studio cut the budget forcing the producers to limit scenes set in New York. They had to substitute Vancouver for much of it which explains all the Canadian actors in the cast.
There’s much more wrong with Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. For one thing, writer-director Rob Hedden filmed all new footage of young Jason drowning in Crystal Lake in ’57 instead of using the preexisting footage seen in the previous installments. Why? WHY?! It’s bloody sacrilege, that’s what it is! He also scraped Harry Manfredini’s iconic score for a rather generic horror movie score by Fred Mollin. I guess his collaboration with Manfredini on the previous installment was on-the-job training. I’d have fired him for not following directions.
None of the performances stand-out at all (except for the goofy Garth sorta-lookalike). About the only thing Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan has going for it are the kill scenes. The highlights are as follows: a rocker girl gets killed with her electric guitar, a guy has a hot sauna rock shoved into his abdomen, another fellow gets electrocuted, a man is drowned in a barrel of disgusting waste and one of the punks is impaled with a hypodermic needle. I saved the best for last. The boxer dude literally has his head knocked off by Jason with a single punch. HOLY CRAP! Dad wasn’t lying, he could have knocked my head off. As for the body count, I witnessed 20 deaths. This figure does not include all the students that die when the ship catches fire and sinks. If not for the kill scenes, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan might have been a total bust. But like I said, it’s an F13 movie. There’s really no such thing as a bad F13 flick (2009 remake notwithstanding).
