Jason Voorhees | 31 Nights of Horror Challenge

For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 13 prompt was Jason Voorhees, it was Friday the 13th, after all. I picked Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes on Manhattan (1989) and boy was that a mistake. It was probably one 0f the worst movies in the franchise.

Storyline

A whole high senior class is finally graduating. For that, they get into a luxury cruise called ”Lazarus”. At the beginning they are all having fun, including our main heroine ”Rennie” who has a serious problem with the water because of past traumatic events ” Almost got drowned when she was little”. When we get to see all the young teenagers our friend Jason who got on board the ship starts with his killing rampage until we get to see only the main characters of the movie.. After that, they decide to look for the killer and kill him… Unfortunately, Jason got them first… After only a few of them escaped and got off the ship reached N.Y where they now have a bigger problem. Jason managed to get there too! He’s cashing the survivors so he can kill them. Now the young teenager couple must escape or die in the dark waters of New York.

What we Thought of Friday the 13th Part VIII (1989).

This was just awful. Like much of the cast, we immediately wondered how the ship got out of Crystal Lake and into the Atlantic Ocean. Since most of them were just happy to be in a film they didn’t bring it up to the producers or director. Actor Vincent Craig Dupree was quoted in an interview about the plot hole saying “this damn boat could have come from the Sahara Desert and gotten into the Atlantic”. “I don’t care, I’m not gonna challenge the concept.”

I grew up on Jason movies. The first one came out when I was ten years old and watched most of them right when they came out until I was well into college.

Of course they are cheesy, that’ part of the charm but this one was really bad.

Even the opening credits are different… “ki ki ki ha ha ha” has been replaced with “Jay-Jay-Jay son-son-son”. The great Psycho-style music scores for the opening credits have been replaced with a cheesy song from the 80s, to accompany footage of New York, a.k.a. Vancouver. The “flashback scene” of how Jason drowned has been re-filmed, with some normal-looking kid (with a full head of hair!) playing him. The opening kill scene is over- acted and not inspired, personally I could have done without the girl’s annoying screeching.

…and that’s the first 10 minutes!

Then, the rest of the damn movie takes place on a boat. Except the last 15 minutes, in which Jason finally gets to New York, and even then nothing exciting happens.

After forcing myself to sit through this one several times (thanks to the From Crystal Lake to Manhattan box-set), I still can’t see it’s appeal.

2 out of 10

Trivia

Kane Hodder says that one of the most fun parts of his tenure as Jason were the scenes in Times Square. He says that spectators were lined up and down the block watching the filming and he didn’t want to take off the mask to destroy their illusion of Jason. He said that every once in awhile he’d turn his head and look at them and watch them all go crazy.