FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN (1989)

After seven installments, it was becoming clear that Sean S. Cunningham's FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise was running out of steam. Whilst they still turned a profit, the producers and writers were so bereft of ideas for their location-centred horror icon that they resorted to changing Jason's location instead in increasingly desperate ways. Over the course of the next three films they would move him to hell and outer space, but not before having him carve out a slice of the Big Apple: New York City. Tragically, if this movie was a skyscraper there, they'd have condemned it for being unsafe on every level. This is easily the most abysmal entry in the series so far.
The premise had some merit when you consider how many urban horror movies there already were where a serial killer thrives anonymously in the potentially soulless urban space. Handled well with more support, maybe JASON TAKES MANHATTAN could have worked. The returning Jason actor Kane Hodder certainly felt the love from fans on the street when he filmed a defining shot standing in Times Square. Appreciative crowds had to be roped back in their hundreds during the shooting as they witnessed his backwoods big-game human hunter framed in the neon glow of the metropolis. However, under a studio regime whose only interest was in spending as little money as possible to amplify the dwindling profit margin, the finished movie was sabotaged from the outset.

Writer/director Rob Heddon approached the project sincerely. He had previously directed a couple of episodes of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES and was delighted to be offered a crack at his own movie sequel. Although Paramount's Executive Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. was now taken up with higher class studio fare, he merely replied "Go for it" when Heddon asked how much leeway he had to kill off Jason for good. The studio knew that no matter what corner the indestructible behemoth was painted into, they'd find a way to resurrect him if the box office numbers were good enough.

Heddon's vision was to have at least half the movie take place in New York - to justify the title and get the most value out of having Jason juxtaposed against familiar city locations. In a gradual war of bottom-line inspired attrition, this was whittled down to the point where the studio would only finance a single week there. In the final edit, sixty-three of the film's one hundred minutes takes place on the so-called cruise ship that transports the graduating cast of Crystal Lake High students. In effect, the movie largely becomes JASON TAKES A CRUISE. Even the ship itself was victim to cost-cutting. The chosen one was downgraded to a cheaper, smaller craft. This ended up sinking the leaky vessel of the franchise even further.

It's best to cut a swathe through the young cast as Jason mercifully does, for this sequel features the worst performances in the series so far. There's nary a scene that goes by where a discerning viewer doesn't self-administer a face-palm of "Good grief, couldn't they have recast this guy or at least tried another take?" Even the editor's son Tim Mirkovich playing the boy Jason in hallucinations suffered by Final Girl Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett) is atrociously weak.

JASON TAKES MANHATTAN also contains the dullest staged kills in the franchise so far, which wouldn't be such a focus if, let's face it, that weren't their sole raison d'etre. Kelly Hu's student is simply strangled in an unimaginately shot sequence on the ship's disco floor; worse still is the teen who is merely tossed overboard! These would be forgivable if they were intended to be stronger meat pre-certification, yet Heddon had conceived most of them in multiple versions that were still tedious when extended

The only murder that stands out is the impromptu rooftop boxing bout between Jason and V.C. Dupree. This does look like a reasonable attempt at giving our hillbilly hockey-mask killer a somewhat worthy opponent. Dupree lands roughly sixty-seven authentic punches to Jason's torso, Hodder recalled, and as he staggers with convincing fatigue, inevitably Jason literally knocks his block off, sending Dupree's head spinning down onto the street.

Because of those pesky budget limitations, what are mainly passed off as New York scenes were actually filmed in Vancouver, a physical challenge as the spotless Canadian city sets had to be dirtied considerably to imitate the pre-Giuliani era in central New York.

The overall look and feel of the movie is extremely dated, a very Eighties, saturated neon cityscape coupled with a guitar and keyboard-heavy hair rock sounding score from Fred Mollin (his first as sole composer for the series). Fans of Troma films may find the tone awfully, in every sense, reminiscent of Lloyd Kaufman's deliberately bad meisterwerks, especially in its reliance on TOXIC AVENGER style chemical waste to dispatch Peter Mark Richman's humdrum uncle Charles to Rennie - and even Jason himself. Arguably this represents a comeuppance for Charles since in a flashback he gave Rennie a tough love swimming lesson by pushing her into the same Crystal Lake that Jason spent two decades unbelievably living beneath.

The aforementioned biohazard brings us to the climax that aptly takes place in a sewer. Rennie and Sean (Scott Reeves) escape from Jason as the tunnels flood with toxic liquid garbage. Heddon decided that as part of his terminal mark on the series he would finally erase the adult Jason by restoring his post-chemical body to that of the pre-pubescent innocent boy before the horror began. If this seems sufficiently well up to the former standards of nonsensical endings, you should see the one Heddon opted not to use, where the child emerges from inside the jaws of the man.

JASON TAKES MANHATTAN ultimately took relatively little in ticket sales. From a budget of $5m (almost a million over the planned $4.2m), it grossed only $8.1m, leading to a final tally of just $22.2m. For the first time, the figures showed Paramount that they could no longer coast on automatic pilot from the inherited goodwill of former sequels. There would be a gap of four years before they dared to try again...