FRIDAY 13TH CHANGES FOR 'BETTER'
Times Union, The (Albany, NY) - August 8, 1986
Author: Martin Moynihan, Staff writer
Appropriately enough, it is a gravedigger who provides the mot juste for "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives."
Drunk and clearly not a part of what's happening now, the old man looks straight into the camera and says "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment!"
Then - sploosh! - the undead machete-wielding maniac Jason Voorhees strikes again, adding the gravedigger to the pile of corpses for the entertainment of gore fans.
Violent horror movies have pretty much lost their popularity, except for the deadening butchery of the hugely lucrative "Friday the 13th" series. But the gravedigger's dying words do mark something of a change in the series. Actually, it's a change for the better, although it doesn't take much to be better than the morbid movies that presented strings of graphic killings and little else.
The gravedigger represents all those - including critics, parents and most adults in general - who have decried the movies in the past. Bumping him off is one of several inside jokes aimed at the fans, jokes that occasionally work.
Credit must go to director-screenwriter Tom McLoughlin, directing his first feature and showing some real promise. Suspense and humor were almost absent from these geek show movies, but McLoughlin manages to squeeze in some of both. He has characters who are more than cardboard targets, moves the series in the direction of gothic horror movies and de-emphasizes grisly killings somewhat, alhtough there are buckets of blood. At the end, however, it collapses back into form.
But it's all relative. McLoughlin's work is derivative, but at least it's not entirely derived from "Friday the 13th" Parts I through V.
Still, the formula absolutely requires an opening in which it is learned that - gasp - Jason isn't dead. He's the worse for wear, though, dripping maggots when Tommy Jarvis (Thom Matthews) pries open his coffin. Tommy, the character who as a boy "killed" Jason in an earlier episode intends to completely destroy the corpse to end his nightmares. Instead, Jason springs back to life, dons his hockey mask and sets out to kill a new generation of young campers.
The local Chamber of Commerce, tired of being associated with endless slaughter and sequels, has changed the name of the town from Crystal Lake to Forest Green, but Jason finds it anyway.
Tommy runs afoul of the local sheriff, who can't believe the killer is back. Tommy has more luck convincing his beautiful daughter (Jennifer Cooke) who - as coincidence would have it - is also a counselor at the fatal camp. The movie has moments as a middling horror thriller before it changes into mostly the same old chop.
"Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives" is rated R for violence and vulgar language. * 1/2
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JASON UP TO OLD TRICKS IN LATEST "FRIDAY 13TH'BY CARYN JAMES
NEW YORK TIMES
Fresno Bee, The (CA) - August 5, 1986
It is a dark and stormy night. Tommy Jarvis escapes from the mental institution where he has been since he killed Jason, the town terror who hacked his way through dozens of bodies in five previous "Friday the 13th" movies. Tommy is a driven man, compelled by a logic known only to scriptwriters of sequels. He is determined to dig up and destroy Jason's corpse, just to make sure he's dead, like going back to make sure you've turned off the stove after you've left the house. Tommy digs up the decomposing body, the music swells, lightning strikes Jason through the heart and . . . well, you know the rest. This movie, after all, is called "Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives." Why Tommy couldn't let dead enough alone is just one of the trifling questions you can amuse yourself with while watching the film. You might also wonder why Tommy was thoughtful enough to bring along Jason's hockey mask, so the reborn monstrosity can pick up right where he left off, without even a change of apparel.
And why do the sheriff's daughter and her friends become counselors at the camp that was the site of most of Jason's murders? How did their parents convince them Jason was not real, when the series has only been around for six years and these kids are old enough to drive?
Teen-agers with no sense of history, they seem doomed to repeat the victims' roles in Jason's cut-'em-up rampage, because repeating history is what the "Friday the 13th" series is all about. It has fans who admit it's trash but watch just because it's there and don't expect any surprises.
Jason's new director and screenwriter, Tom McLoughlin, tries to liven up the formula with traces of humor and acknowledges the film's cult status with some self-directed irony. "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly," says one of Jason's first victims, when she and her husband encounter the killer on a lonely road.
But despite a few lighter touches, the film is still a gory waste of time that plays its murders for all the blood and guts they're worth.
There are plenty of cliched reaction shots of faces in terror, more than enough frames filled with bloody knives and severed heads. There is not, however, any suspense about Jason or his victims. He stalks, they scream, he kills. None of it is enough to make you jump out of your seat, though it may be enough to make your stomach churn.
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Bolt brings Jason back in `VI'
Houston Chronicle - August 5, 1986
Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff
"Nothing this evil ever dies," the ads proclaim.
And nothing this profitable.
After five box-office hits, the R-rated "Friday the 13th" films have reached a half-dozen Roman numerals - the first series since James Bond to last that long. The latest incarnation has the unwieldy title of "Friday the 13th", Part VI: Jason Lives (try remembering that at the box office).
Like the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween" series, the "Friday the 13th" films have a conveniently indestructible bogyman - in this case, Jason Voorhees, the mute, crazed survivor of a legendary summer camp tragedy who wears a hockey goalie's mask as he runs murderously amok amid nubile camp counselors and terrified kiddies.
The new film opens with Jason in his grave, buried by "Part V." But a tormented survivor of Jason's crimes is compelled by his worst nightmares to unearth the fiend, thus assuring himself that Jason is nothing more than a moldering, maggot-ridden and far from ambulatory corpse.
He needn't have worried. The only activity in Jason's casket is that which inspires the ditty "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. . ." But our anguished hero isn't satisfied, and he thrusts a spearlike pole from the cemetery fence into Jason's gooshy gut. Naturally, all this occurs in an ominous thunderstorm. And, naturally, lightning strikes the pole and brings Jason to Frankensteinian life.
From then on, the film could be called a remake as much as a sequel. Jason returns to his old stalking grounds, and the body count mounts (it's 17 at the end, plus one squashed bug) until a final confrontation "seems" to put Jason down at last.
Ah, but we know better, don't we?
Fortunately, director-writer Tom McLoughlin spikes the punch this time. His basic plot may be slavishly imitative of his predecessors, but he paces the film well and adds some stylish visual flourishes and wry humor, including the obligatory in-jokes ("Cunningham Road" is clearly named after the first "Friday the 13th" film's director).
The acting isn't much, but that can be part of a low-budget horror film's charm. David Kagen, in particular, chews the scenery with relish as the skeptical, tough-talking sheriff whose daughter is a typical "Friday the 13th" heroine - a camp counselor who looks like a fashion model for Seventeen.
The film was shot almost entirely at night on locations just outside Atlanta, where the scenery is handsomely verdant but oddly autumnal for summer camp, with lots of fall leaves blowing across Jason's path of carnage.
McLoughlin, who has written two episodes for Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories", shows a fine hand with the young kids who populate the luckless camp. The sweet little girls are properly terrified and disarming; the slightly older little boys - one of whom is reading Sartre's "No Exit" - ruefully speculate that they're all "dead meat." Not to worry - none of the children are victims. Bloody this series may be, but it's not "perverse."
Some would argue that any violent film is perverse. Fine. Don't go. There probably are three minutes of violence in this entire 90-minute production. The violence is swift, it's sudden and it isn't always bloody. No one agonizes slowly.
Jason may be insane, but as a murderer he is cooly efficient, quickly dispatching victims with a wrench of their necks or a thrust of his machete.
That's entertainment? No, that's horror fantasy, a genre that makes no more pretense of echoing reality than a thrill ride at the amusement park. Neither should be taken seriously, and you're a lot more likely to grow queasy from the latter.
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'JASON': YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MADMAN DOWN
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - August 4, 1986
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic
"Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives." A thriller starring Thom Mathews and Jennifer Cooke. Written and directed by Tom McLaughlin. Photographed by Jon R. Kranhouse. Music by Harry Manfredini. Running time: 85 minutes. A Paramount release. In area theaters.
As I approached the box office of the Eric Route 38 Twin (in South Jersey), it seemed to pull away from me, just like one of those elongated corridors in horror movies.
What I was experiencing was the feeling of dread - and more than a little embarrassment.
"I-I-I'm ashamed to say this," I stuttered, "but I want to see 'Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives."'
"What?" the cashier asked.
"'Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives,"' I repeated.
Her piercing eyes seemed to look right through me. "That'll be $2.50," she snapped, without any humor in her voice. My blood ran cold.
I stood there in a catatonic state for a few seconds, prompting her to point me towards the entrance. Inside the theater, I bought a small popcorn and a small coke.
"What movie are you seeing?," the salesperson inquired.
"' Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives,"' I repeated.
She smiled. It gave me the creeps.
As I walked into the auditorium, all eyes seemed to be on me - deadly, lifeless eyes. Who are these people? - I thought - what do they want?
The answer was fairly obvious: blood. They were there to see some bloodletting. But would the film be enough? Would they want mine?
The theater darkened and the movie was preceded by a trailer for ''Extremities," with scenes of Farrah Fawcett slicing and dicing some guy who apparently had broken into her home. It was the nastiest preview that I think I've ever sene, but the audience seemed to enjoy it - and wanted more. Their appetites were successfully whetted. Mine was ruined: My popcorn container seemed to stumble off my lap.
The movie opened with the usual Paramount logo, followed by a maggoty grave-digging sequence during which the infamous Jason Vorhees is resurrected for the fifth straight time. Then the title comes on the screen, not "Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives," but "Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI."
I missed the next five mintues or so of the movie because I was trying to figure out why the film has an on-screen title that differs from the one in its print ads.
I tuned back in to catch the moment when the now completely revived Jason stops a VW bug and kills the two kids inside. As the woman fearfully squirms away from our killer's bloody blade, she offers him money to spare her. She even takes out her credit cards. As she dies clutching her American Express card, the camera lingers on her as if to remind us that, well, at least she didn't leave home without it.
Farther down the road, Jason bumps into a trio of people indulging in war games and makes meat out of all three. In the meantime, the kid (Thom Mathews) who dug up Jason is trying to explain what happened, but the local sherriff (David Kagen) thinks Tommy - that's the kid's name - is a psychopath and is responsible for all the murders. The sheriff's daughter (Jennifer Cooke), who has developed the hots for Tommy, thinks otherwise.
By this time, Jason, wearing his usual goalie's mask, has made his way to Crystal Lake, the camping site where he originally made his name. Only now, it's called Forrest Green.
At the camp, Jason kills an assortment of young camp counselors in the throes of sex. There's something about sex that bothers him, particularly if the young woman of the duo is especially hot for it.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that this is serious stuff. Not only have the makers of this series made the same exact film six times (and that ain't easy) but they've conveyed the same point six times - namely, that sexually free young women have robbed insecure men of their sexual identity. Hence, Jason's mask.
The people around me had no idea that these movies appeal to their most puritanical attitudes toward sex. They seemed to enjoy Jason's purgative violence as he hacked away at couples enjoying sex.
Now, that's really scary.
Parental Guide: Rated R for the usual (i.e., violence and sexuality).
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FILM: THE SIXTH 'FRIDAY THE 13TH'
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 2, 1986
Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic
Calling all counselors, calling all counselors. Friday the 13th, the slice- and-dice series about Jason, the vengeful camper who put the splat in splatter movies, has added yet another chapter to its bloody saga.
How can this be? When last we saw the remains of the lumbering zombie in the hockey mask, Jason Voorhees was dead and buried, right?
Well, let me tell you, Jason's alive. Which means everyone in the vicinity of Forest Green (also known as Crystal Lake) is dead meat. And that includes this movie.
Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, like the previous five installments, is a real crowd-sleazer. You've got your cemetery on a thunderstormy night. You've got your bodysnatchers trying to make sure Jason's really dead. (To the honchos at Paramount Pictures, Jason is unkillable. This series is such a cash cow that they'll raise the dead just to make more bucks.) You've got the maggoty corpse of Jason reanimated by a lightning bolt.
At one point during this picture - after Jason kills a survivalist by pulling his arm out of its socket, but before he decapitates a pretty counselor by twisting her head off - I was reminded of kindergarten sadism.
I went to a pretty tough grade school in East Los Angeles where Dion, a male classmate, liked plucking out strands of my hair. He tied one end of a follicle to a scrap of construction paper. With the other end, he made a slipknot and tied it around the body of a fly he had trapped. The fly would struggle with this excess weight, trailing its confetti-sized sign, then collapse. I felt like an unwitting accomplice in Dion's sadism. Jason Lives provokes the same sensation.
As one of Jason's soon-to-be victims says when she sees the indelible hulk in the middle of the road on a rainy night: "I've seen enough horror movies to know well enough that any weirdo wearing a hockey mask isn't friendly."
Neither is Jason Lives. Oh, Jason, go take a spike.
JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI *
Produced by Don Behrns, written and directed by Tom McLoughlin, photography by Jon R. Kranhouse, music by Harry Manfredini, distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 25 mins.
Tommy - Thom Mathews
Megan - Jennifer Cooke
Sheriff - David Kagen
Sissy - Renee Jones
Paula - Kerry Noonan
Parent's guide: R (extreme violence, language).
Showing: At area theaters.
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