Like a ball dropped into a discount bin, the FRIDAY THE 13TH series hit rock bottom with A NEW BEGINNING but then rebounded unexpectedly with style and energy under writer-director (and occasional actor) Tom McLoughlin. Seeing that the franchise had been reduced to grim and schlocky torture-porn, he spent a whole day at Paramount watching all the previous five entries to catch up. He concluded that the series could be refreshed if he was allowed to introduce a knowing amount of humour and a fan-boy sensibility - "...some bit of a wink at the whole series" - as he says in the documentary. Executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr agreed to this risky new direction as long as Jason was not mocked. McLoughlin assured him that Voorhees would be preserved, indeed amplified, as a villain; one who had been gradually reduced in stature and threat level to a weak, pedestrian slasher. McLoughlin was true to his word. Not only is the resulting film funny and well-paced with decent acting performances, he simultenously creates a more terrifying Jason, staging dramatic set-pieces and using foley effects to enhance minor elements like the heavy weight of his footfalls. The actor inhabiting the role was stuntman and former Marine C.J. Graham who brought discipline and an imposing character to the part.
McLoughlin choose to shoot in the south, fifty miles outside Atlanta and assembled a likeable cast to carry out his vision. From the pacey opening, we feel we are in the hands of a director who loves horror film with a fan's respect for the genre's history. It's no accident that the scene-setting electrical storm recalls Universal's FRANKENSTEIN cycle. The return of Tommy, now played by Thom Matthews from the RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD movies, links us to the earlier sequels and then hits us and Jason with a Gothic blast of lightning to bring audience and series back to surging life.
The rest of the cast features an early role for future GHOST breakout star Tony Goldwyn as one of two head counsellors who never make it to Crystal Lake - here renamed Camp Forest Green, but of course they're fooling no-one. The director's wife Nancy plays his colleague Lizbeth who signals the post-modern tone when Jason appears in front of their truck: "I've seen enough horror movies to know that any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly". McLoughlin is careful not to let the soon to be fashionable meta aspect pull us out of the horror possibilities throughout the movie. Such is the commitment to terror in fact that Graham almost hit Nancy when he plunged the rail through the windscreen - (no-one could have predicted that the glass would deflect its intended path toward her rather than away).
Another nice macabre McLoughlin touch is enabling Jason to carry out supernaturally powerful kills impossible for a normal human being, thus reminding us of his awesome rebirth - imprinting victims' faces upon a tree trunk and the inner metal wall of an RV pushed outward like a death mask respectively. That scene also allows Graham a particularly memorable tableau when he stands atop the flaming RV like a monarch surveying his kingdom. Welcome back, sir...
The prosthetic FX courtesy of Gabe Bartalos and his team attempted not to stint on the gore, yet like his predecessors were often hamstrung by the similar looming presence of the MPAA: a lovingly staged triple decapitation of three corporate paintballers at once was entirely excised. At least his retooled Jason mask is always on display, created from vacu-formed plastic over a 'cement buck' for greater durability.
Daring to use sight gags in this FRIDAY THE 13TH movie was a bold decision, one that would have been tonally unimaginable (albeit welcome) to mitigate the others' weaknesses. They land well though, such as the weekend warrior klutz who painstakingly tries to put back a branch he's knocked off a tree. There are sly in-joke references like the convenience store named after Boris Karloff. My favourite though is the literary visual gag played as the camera pans across the innocent kiddie campers tucked up in their bunks - one little girl has fallen asleep under an open copy of Sartre's existentialist play No Exit.
The calculated choice of including children at all in JASON LIVES is worth mentioning. This device had never been used before due to understandable fears about the taboo nature of placing them in jeopardy in this type of horror movie. Rest assured that none are harmed (and that the MPAA would no doubt have erased any evidence if they were). The fact of their presence increases the perilous stakes and helps to drive the tension as the plot moves to ultimately send a chained Jason back down to the watery grave from whence he unfeasibly emerged at the end of the first film. McLoughlin teases us though as Jason confirms his unholy stamina by opening an eye to fiercely glare at us. You can't keep a supernatural killer down....
The Region 1 DVD edition contains an alternate ending, storyboarded and voiced, in which town drunk Martin (Bob Larkin) encounters Jason's father at his son's graveside. It's a tantalising idea, although on reflection there was enough milking of the existing mythology without adding formerly unmentioned family members, not to mention the trip-hazard of over-explanation of our enigmatic anti-hero.
JASON LIVES grossed $19.4m from a budget of $3m. By no means a big hit, it still profited well enough to earn a deserved continuation of the series, with Paramount making all the right noises about having learned their lesson and wanting to carry on with higher budgets and other talented creatives behind them. This was not to prove an untroubled path.
Aside from working on the console video game FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE GAME (2017), McLoughlin acted in a fan film sequel to JASON LIVES this year called FRIDAY THE 13TH: VENGEANCE alongside C.J. Graham. On the evidence of his 1986 take on the franchise, an official version would be welcome...
No comments:
Post a Comment