Halloween Marathon: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

This weekend was extremely efficient and I’ll be on track to get them all reviewed before Halloween arrives 🙂

Next up, its Part 9 of Friday the 13th franchise with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. It was released a few years after the rather destructive Part 8.  I’m a bit worried about how this one will go but I tried to be extremely objective with this.  With expectations as low as mine, I really don’t know how it could be bad.

Director: Adam Marcus

Cast: Steven Freeman, Kari Keegan, Kane Hodder, Steven Williams, Steven Culp, Erin Gray, Rusty Schwimmer, Richard Grant

A special FBI task force is sent in to trap Jason Voorhees and blows him up to pieces.  Picking up the remains, they believe that he is dead except he is not.  Coming back from the dead, he can now morph into whoever he “kills”. As he tries to trace back his path to find other blood-related Voorhees, the secret of what can really kill him is revealed.

As of today, I’m only one away from completing the entire Friday the 13th franchise.  Its hard to imagine how the last one I have to see or any other movie will have that crap factor more than this one.   Look, I thought Jason Takes Manhattan was bad.  I really just wanted to write “WTF This is crap” and end this review there.  This one doesn’t deserve the attention and time spent to even put this post together.

So, for the sake of everyone, I’ll just do this in point form of why it doesn’t work:

– No continuity.  

Jason takes Manhattan ended where he was ruined by toxic waste and gone back to his child form. However, he is very much a grown and menacing man that Kane Hodder portrays him as.  So it just took back what Jason Takes Manhattan did.  Last I check, this franchise wasn’t rehashed till that last movie in 2000s.

– Supernatural body invasion stupidity

There are no words to describe how disgusting these scenes are to watch.  Its literally revolting…too revolting and yet so pointless.  What has this franchise turned into? WTF!

– Extremely low budget

None of the Friday the 13th flicks are high budget.  But this one owns up to it because it just feels like there was no money put into it at all.  The effects were bad, the acting was bad, everything was sloppy.  It was so messy.

I’m going to fume over how this wasted my time on a weekend that I could’ve used it for other or better movies.  Still, I watched this whole thing.  Word of advice: DON’T watch this for dinner.  I did that and I ended up not really eating much after the first scene and the following ones after that also.  It was pointlessly disgusting.  Probably as disgusting as it is crappy.

I get wanting to put an origins story on this but seriously, it was pretty ridiculous.  Oh right, and that ending.  Dragged into the ground..to hell, I presume. And that alien looking thingamabob at the end sequence.  WTF!!!

Its a short write-up because it really doesn’t deserve more of my time than this. I have no good words for this one.  If Shitfest was going on right now, this would be a worthy one for it.

Onto the next one! Let’s hope it gets better, right?

Thoughts on Jason Goes to Hell?

Halloween Marathon: Friday the 13th Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Moving right along, I’m starting to think this franchise is going to go downhill when I saw the name: Jason Takes Manhattan.  There is going to be a lot of ever weirder and harder to believe stuff than telekinetic powers and rising from the dead. Anyways, I really have nothing else to say about this so lets check it out 😉

Director: Rob Hedden

Cast: Jensen Daggett, Tiffany Paulsen, Todd Caldecott, Kane Hodder, Barbara Bingham, Peter Mark Richman, Kelly Hu

A small cruise ship carrying a graduating class leaves for Manhattan for their grad trip.  Jason ends up hanging on and boarding this ship unknowingly.  While one of the girls, Rennie that decided to go.  Rennie is raised by her uncle and has a profound fear of water because she believes that some little kid tried to drown her (or she saw drown) when she was young. Jason slowly goes after them one by one.  Question is: who will survive this?

Okay, confession time.  I was nodding off halfway through this one and then only caught glimpses of the ending portion.  I have a general idea of what happens but the first half wasn’t good enough to make me want to redo this.

Because of that confession, maybe some facts aren’t complete.  Thats okay because there are no spoilers.  Except Jason Takes Manhattan is false because by the time I was nodding off, they were just getting on a boat (I guess this is kind of a spoiler) and escaping the cruise ship.  Relentless as Jason is, of course, he follows them and they, by some odd chance, land in Manhattan.  This one has SO MANY plot holes.  The acting, especially with Uncle Charles, was just an unexplicable amount of bad.  I think I rolled my eyes so much and laughed at the movie and that probably was why I was so tired.

Jason is played by the same dude, a pretty menacing man called Kane Hodder.  The only continuity of this is here.  BUT, somehow sitting in the bottom of the lake after the last one, instead of rotting more, (if thats possible anymore for him), he acquired gloves.  Thats just the start of it not making any sense whatsoever.  Let me point out that I usually get sold on plot holes easily but seriously, this one was just so out there.  I mean, apparently humans are flammable.  Not exactly sure thats possible unless our veins are pumped with gasoline suddenly.  Some teen gets thrown on the electric board and he went on fire immediately.  This director apparently likes fire going off for no logical reason.  And then, the kid I mentioned up there that drowned or tried to drown Rennie was apparently Jason but he’s not disfigured anymore.  Question marks are floating around my head.  And the “final kill” for Jason is kind of laughable. I mean, the effects are really even worse than the previous ones and those are older.  I think my boyfriend had it spot-on: low budget.

So far, its sounding pretty negative.  In the heart of finding something redeemable, the picture up there on the right should be someone you recognize.  At least, I did.  Thats Kelly Hu, in a much younger role in a really meh movie but if you don’t recognize her, she is also in one of the shows I am currently obsessed with.  ARROW 🙂 She’s China White *gasp*. Still, she was one of the sillier kills and  not all that logical.  Hey, its the role, not her, right?

Overall, Jason Takes Manhattan was pretty blah. I’m pretty sure I won’t see this again. Definitely my least favorite of the franchise so far.  If its going down in quality in such an exponential pace, I’m a little worried about what’ll happen in the next one.  I really do.  Plot holes, ridiculous acting, illogical effect: this one has it all.  I really hope that it gets better because with that ending, I have no idea how it’ll continue.  Even the ending made no sense….

Time to end this review and move on to the next movie…

Thoughts on Jason Takes Manhattan? Anyone like this? If you do, please enlighten me on what made you like it?