Long considered to be an unlucky day due to superstitions involving the number thirteen and religious connotations, Friday the 13th is perhaps equally as well-known as being the title for a long-running series of slasher movies. As a result, this is clearly the best opportunity to take a look at the Friday the 13th (Various, 1980 to 2009) horror series and to commemorate this unlucky and dreaded date.
Released: 1 August 1986
Director: Tom McLoughlin
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Budget: $3 million
Stars: Thom Mathews, C.J. Graham, Jennifer Cooke, Renée Jones, Kerry Noonan, and David Kagen
The Plot:
After being released from a sanatorium, grown-up Tommy Jarvis (Matthews) attempts to cremate the body of deceased serial killer Jason Voorhees (Graham). However, an errant lightning bolt resurrects Jason and only Tommy holds the key to stopping him.
The Background:
After the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (Carpenter, 1978), which basically gave birth to horror’s “slasher” sub-genre, Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980) proved a surprising box office success. Although producer/director Sean S. Cunningham distanced himself from the franchise, which was plagued by negative reviews, Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981) and Friday the 13th Part 3 (ibid, 1982) were financial successes. Yet, Paramount executives were embarrassed by their association with the franchise and planned to close the book on Jason with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984). A box office gross of $33 million made The Final Chapter a commercial success, meaning this “Final Chapter” was nothing of the sort. Although Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985) seemed to be setting up a new killer, its disastrous critical reception and audience backlash convinced the producers to bring Jason back the following year. Director Tom McLoughlin was given free rein to accomplish this and took inspiration from the classic Universal Monster movies to reimagine Jason as an undead monster. He also consciously shied away from nudity, anticipated censorship struggles, and adopted more comedic slant. Despite this new direction, star John Shepard was approached to return as Tommy but turned it down, allowing horror alumni Thom Mathews to step into (and take over) the role. Initially, stuntman Dan Bradley was cast as Jason but he was replaced by former soldier C.J. Graham after the producers were dissatisfied with his performance. Ironically, despite returning Jason to the franchise, Jason Lives actually made less than A New Beginning, totalling $19.4 million worldwide, leading producers to consider a horror crossover for their next instalment. Incidentally, Jason Lives was also met with mixed reviews; while some labelled it as predictable and nonsensical, others have called it one of the best in the entire franchise.
The Review:
I’ve mentioned it before, but I was not a fan of horror movies as a child. I would hide behind my comics and often had nightmares after catching even a glimpse of the genre’s most iconic killers. Because of this, I was a late bloomer when it came to the Friday the 13th franchise and the first entry that I ever saw was Jason Lives, though I was acutely aware of Jason’s status as a mainstream horror icon. Jason Lives actually went a long way to helping desensitise me to horror, with its tongue-in-cheek presentation and over the top aesthetic that made it more entertaining than terrifying. However, I remember watching it with only the vaguest knowledge of the franchise and being a little confused by the opening sequence. At the time, I genuinely thought Tommy was remembering Jason murdering his family and that the echoing cries of “Die! Die! Die!” were from Jason rather than the young Tommy! Obviously, I now know better but I think that’s a fun anecdote, almost as much fun as the film’s opening sequence, which mirrors the opening of A New Beginning but expands upon it. It now takes place in canon, for one thing, against the background of a stormy night. For another, it has Tommy (now recast and reimagined to be far less volatile) be the one who digs up Jason’s grave. Like his predecessor (the canonicity of which is up for debate), Tommy is traumatised by his encounter with Jason but, while one could argue he’s a bit dull compared to John Shepard’s unstable ass-kicker, he exhibits an intense drive to not only confirm for himself that Jason is dead, but to destroy his body forever. To that end, he risks reincarceration to return to Crystal Lake (now rechristened Forest Green) alongside his reluctant and anxious friend, Allen Hawes (Ron Palillo), with Jason’s mask in his possession in order to cremate his remains and set his demons to rest once and for all.
Although it’s said that Tommy suffers from hallucinations of Jason, this isn’t an aspect we see here. Instead, Tommy hopes that destroying Jason’s body will stop the visions and his recurring nightmares, but he’s driven into rage upon the sight of Jason’s rotting corpse and reliving his childhood and stabs the worm-infested remains repeatedly with a metal fence pole. Unfortunately, Tommy accidentally provides Jason with the means to return to life (something he could’ve never predicted) and is thus responsible for the mayhem and murder Jason causes throughout the film. Although Tommy tries to get ahead of this by warning the local sheriff, Mike Garris (Kagen), he is met with hostility and scepticism because of his maniacal behaviour and background. Frustrated and branded a nut-job, Tommy can only sit in his cell and wait to be transferred back to his psychiatric hospital since Sheriff Garris is determined to help Forest Green move on from Jason, Crystal Lake, and the horrors associated with both. In a desperate attempt to prove his story, Tommy escapes custody when being escorted out of town, only to find the cemetery groundskeeper, Martin (Bob Larkin), has covered Jason’s body up. Tommy is even implicated in the murders that follow since Sheriff Garris refuses to believe that Jason has returned and finds it far more likely that Tommy is going on a killing spree. Burdened by guilt and desperate to atone for his actions, Tommy is frustrated at the lack of support he receives, especially considering his unique insight into Jason. Where John Shepard would attack anyone who provoked him with an explosive violence and was sullen and withdrawn, Thom Matthews presents Tommy as intelligent, flirtatious, and determined to put Jason down for good, by any means necessary, even if it means employing quasi-supernatural means to counter Jason’s otherworldly force. Although it’s disappointing that we didn’t see Tommy take over as the new killer, Jason Lives does play with this a little bit. Sheriff Garris is convinced that Tommy is behind the recent killings and even refers to him as Jason at one point, though Tommy remains the pure-hearted, if flawed, hero of the piece.
While locked up, Tommy catches the eye of Sheriff Garris’s playful, rebellious, and provocative daughter, Megan (Cooke). One of the new breed of camp counsellors, Megan and her friends – responsible Paula Mott (Noonan), cackling Alice Cooper aficionado Carter “Cort” Andrews (Tom Fridley), and prankster Elizabeth “Sissy” Baker (Jones) – are left to look after the young kids who’ve arrived for summer camp. However, they have no clue what they’re supposed to do since head counsellors Darren Robinson (Tony Goldwyn) and Paula’s sister, Lizbeth (Nancy McLoughlin), fail to show up due to a slight case of death. Sheriff Garris isn’t immediately bothered by Megan’s plight and is more concerned with keeping her away from Tommy, who warns of Jason at every opportunity. Since she apparently likes a bad boy, Megan openly flirts with Tommy right in front of her father and willingly goes out of her way to assist him, even briefly hiding him for her dad by thrusting his head between her legs in her prized convertible. Megan was raised believing Jason was nothing but a legend but, while she and Sissy are intrigued by Tommy’s wild claims about Jason’s return, they find the idea of caring for the crop of screaming, cynical kids a far more pressing and terrifying threat. The teens try their best to entertain the kids but they struggle to impress or interest the pessimistic youngsters. It doesn’t help that they’re distracted by Darren and Lizbeth’s absence or that Cort takes off with the rambunctious Nicola “Nikki” Parsley (Darcy DeMoss). Still, while the wannabe counsellors are as painfully cliché as ever, I found them enjoyable. With the exception of Paula, they all exhibit a fair amount of personality, meaning it was genuinely distressing when Jason tore through them. I also enjoyed the cantankerous Sheriff Garris, who’s just trying to protect his daughter and maintain peace after years of bloodshed. His aggravation and aggression towards Tommy is perfectly reasonable, but I liked how he protected Megan from Jason in the finale, even though it meant his death. Finally, Jason Lives impresses by including a bunch of enjoyable (if disposable) tertiary characters to up the body count. The company executives paintballing in the woods are surprisingly entertaining with their banter and annoyance, Darren and Lizbeth exhibit an awareness of the genre and situation (though it does little to save them), and even Martin makes an impression by being a bitter, paranoid drunk.
Although A New Beginning stated that Jason had been cremated, this is ignored (and the explanation was sadly excised) and Jason begins the film as a festering, ghastly corpse. While Jason exhibited superhuman strength, stamina, and dexterity in the previous films, to the point where he was an almost supernatural force, Jason Lives explicitly reimagines him as an undead and nigh-unstoppable killing machine. Resurrected by lightning, Jason immediately showcases his newfound, unnatural strength by ripping Hawes’ heart out and stalking the surrounding woodland with almost a brazen arrogance. In previous films, Jason’s appearance was often hidden or accomplished through first-person perspectives that built up to his eventual full reveal and dominance of the final act. While some aspects of this remain in Jason Lives, Jason gets far more screen time than ever before and is unquestionably positioned as the star. Jason Lives adds a surprising humanity to Jason, especially considering he’s a mindless, rage-filled zombie now. For the first time, the local summer camp is populated by little children but Jason never attempts to harm them. Young Nancy (Courtney Vickery) is terrified when she sees him, and Jason comes dangerously close to her, but he seems more curious and perhaps sympathetic towards them. Indeed, the only reason he even comes near them is when he’s pursuing his more traditional quarry and I liked the implication that he feels a kinship towards children, even though he was clearly trying to kill young Tommy in The Final Chapter. Although we never get a good look at his mangled, rotting visage, this is one of my favourite looks for Jason. He dons his iconic hockey mask and sports dirty, dishevelled attire that he progressively adds to throughout the film as he takes Tommy’s gloves and a tool belt from the ill-fated paintballers. I also appreciated that Jason used a variety of means to dispatch his quarry, including the metal pole Tommy stuck him with and his immense undead strength rather than relying solely on his trademark machete.
The Nitty-Gritty:
While I fully admit to being biased towards Jason Lives and consider it one of the best in the franchise, the film boasts perhaps the best score of all the Friday the 13th films. Harry Manfredini returns as the composer, delivering the classic “Ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma!” theme and bolstering it was a truly haunting, almost sing-song melody that creates a haunting atmosphere and some solid, impactful orchestral whenever Jason appears on screen to really give him a bombastic presentation. Jason Lives is full of cheeky nods to horror cinema: Jason’s resurrection evokes Frankenstein (Whale, 1931), as does “Karloff’s General Store”; there’s name-drops to Friday the 13th creator Sean S. Cunningham and the great John Carpenter, and little Nancy and her terrified prayer surely reference A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984). Oddly, horror isn’t the only genre referenced in Jason Lives as the opening titles include a parody of the James Bond gun barrel sequence. Indeed, parody (or, at least, comedic metacommentary) is a prominent aspect of the film: Martin addresses the camera and comments on the youth of the day, the immortal Alice Cooper’s music features prominently throughout the film; and we get such amusing scenes as Jason slamming a victim into a tree and leaving a bloody smiley face in the bark and a desperate woman offering Jason cash and her American Express card floating uselessly in a puddle next to her body. There’s just a sense of playful self-awareness throughout the film that really leans into the idea of Jason being a mainstream icon. While you could argue that this diminishes Jason’s terrifying aura, there are plenty of shots and moments that frame him as a horrifying threat and it’s fun actually rooting for him rather than against him. He’s like the straight man to a handful of more ludicrous characters, which actually allows him to be more dangerous and unhinged than ever.
If there’s one downside to Jason Lives, it’s that it’s very light on sex and nudity. We get one scene where Cort is getting it on with Nikki but it’s extremely tame and Nikki doesn’t even take her shirt off. Luckily, the film makes up for it was some fun and surprisingly gory kills. Jason wastes no time asserting himself and making the most of his ridiculous new strength. He rips Hawes’ heart out within the first ten minutes and takes to the forest, metal pole in hand, encountering the lost counsellors, whom he first intimidates and then impales with his pole. Jason (played by Dan Bradley for this one scene) increases his body count considerably when he encounters five corporate executives paintballing the forest (with three of them already helpfully wearing bandanas that read “DEAD”). He rips angry sexist Burt Dennenbrough’s (Wallace Merck) arm off, acquiring his machete, scores three kills in one when he beheads Katie Rice (Ann Ryerson) and siblings Stan (Matthew Faison) and Larry Irving (Alan Blumenfeld) with one swipe. Of course, not every kill is as memorable as I’d like thanks, as always, to censorship. Sissy’s head twist and decapitation is sadly tame, and Martin and lovers Steven Halavex (Roger Rose) and Annette Edwards (Cynthia Kania) are offed in disappointingly lame fashion. Yet, on the plus side, bland Paula ends up splattered all over in the inside of a cabin. Cort and Nikki’s ends are equally impressive, with Nikki having her face rammed through the RV wall and Cort being stabbed right through the head, leading to a fantastic shot of Jason standing triumphantly atop the flaming wreckage. Easily the best kills come in the film’s final act where Jason crushes Officer Pappas’ (Michael Swan) head (thankfully with no lame-ass 3D eye popping effect) and then folds Sheriff Garris top to tail, snapping his spine and leaving him a mangled mess right before her daughter’s eyes.
Since Jason has literally returned from the dead and is a walking zombie this time around, he’s even more impervious to physical harm than ever. He shrugs off a shovel to the back of the head, rips limbs from bodies, barely registers gunshots and easily pops right back up after being blasted by a shotgun. Thus, stopping Jason this time requires a far more unique approach than just hacking his head in, so Tommy researches the occult to figure out how to dispose of his nightmarish enemy. Despite constant opposition from Sheriff Garris, and being labelled as a psychotic murderer, Tommy receives help from horny, rebellious Megan and acquires the supplies he needs to enact his plan. Unfortunately, a large part of this plan involves luring Jason into the open, which puts both him and Megan in considerable danger. With all her friends dead, her father and his deputies dead, and the little kids terrified out of their minds, Megan almost meets her own end when Jason tries to crush her head with his bare hands. However, he quickly forgets about her when challenged by Tommy. Clearly recognising his enemy’s voice, Jason willing pursues him into the lake, where Tommy waits with a chain attached to a boulder and surrounded by a ring of fire. While this seems like an oddly practical and far less supernatural solution than Tommy’s reading implied, Tommy wraps the chain around Jason’s neck but not before the undead killer trashes the boat. Although weighed down by the rock, Jason drags Tommy under and throttles him, seemingly killing him, so Megan swims out to rescue him. Although she almost suffers the same fate, she gets the boat’s outboard motor running and (despite the inconsistencies between shots and the distance between Jason and the blade) slices the propeller into Jason’s neck, apparently killing him once more. Once back on shore, Megan desperately and haphazardly manages to revive Tommy (conveniently Jason didn’t crush his neck) and he breathes a sigh of relief knowing Jason is finally in Hell once more…unaware that the monster still lives, trapped beneath the lake, burning with hatred and waiting to rise once more!
The Summary:
As I said, I’m biased but Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is still one of my favourites in the franchise, alongside The Final Chapter and the surprisingly brutal remake. I love how meta the film is, how tongue-in-cheek it approaches the material, and how it unapologetically knows exactly what it is: mindless shlock horror made to appeal to the masses. Jason Lives really has fun with the traditional slasher formula, commenting and playing with it and never taking itself too seriously, which was the shot in the arm the series needed after not just the last film but also falling victim to repetition. It’s outrageous to think that this once grounded, semi-realistic horror series now features a full-blown zombie killer, but it really works. Jason’s new undead abilities allow him to take centre stage and be the horror icon everyone wanted to see, and the film is a celebration of his iconography after trying to kill and replace him in the last two films. While it’s still clearly been censored, Jason Lives features some fun and unique kills with a fair amount of blood and Jason is continually framed as both a feature and a terrifying villain, especially in the enraged brutality and renewed aggression of his actions and stature. While Thom Mathews is admittedly quite dull and Tommy loses much of the edge he had in the last film, I think he did a good job as Jason’s more pure-hearted opposite, and I liked how he was treated as a pariah and a poison rather than the only one capable of stopping further bloodshed. Add to that a rocking soundtrack courtesy of Alice Cooper, some surprisingly memorable supporting characters, fun parodies and Easter Eggs to horror cinema and other genres, and you have a bombastic return to form for cinema’s most notorious masked madman! Entertaining from start to finish, Jason Lives is the perfect horror to slap on with some mates, a few drinks and snacks, and just have fun celebrating this long-running franchise. It set a new standard for Friday the 13th movies, one that not many after were able to live up to, and remains an absolute favourite of mine to this day.
My Rating:
Great Stuff
Are you a fan of Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives? Do you consider it one of the stronger entries or were you put off by the change in direction? What did you think to Thom Matthews’ portrayal of Tommy and the way Jason returned? Which of the new characters was your favourite and which death scene entertained you the most? Do you think the series should’ve tried using Tommy as the killer or do you think it was the right decision to bring Jason back? Which Friday the 13th movie is your favourite? Do you consider Friday the 13th to be unlucky? Are you watching a Friday the 13th movie today? Whatever your thoughts on Friday the 13th (the movie, franchise, and day), go ahead and leave them down below and be sure to check in again for more horror content in the near future!
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