WARNING: The following review contains violence and Strong Language. Readers Discretion is Advised.
Anthony: Well Ayla, I think we’re only have one more Friday the 13th film from the 8-Movies collection, I hope the last one “Jason Takes Manhattan” will be a good one. Cause… This is the first time im watching it…
AZ-06 Ayla: You sure about this? Cause it received a very bad reception and it got a very poor box-office.
Anthony: Yeah, but that’s just the past, im sure everybody in nowadays have a completely different opinions like loving it, hating it or a guilty pleasure. Lets just sit down together and im sure its not gonna be bad as The New Blood that I’ve covered.
A Few Hours Later
Anthony: MOTHERF--
(Review starts)
Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review…
(sigh) Yup, Friday the 13th marathon is back after months after since I’ve covered Part 7: The New Blood and… I was expecting if we’re going to have another positive note for the next one… But Ohhh… BOY, was I wrong, when we’re in a trip to New York… Very, Slowly…
“Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan” is a 1989 Slasher film that was written/directed by Rob Hedden and produced by Randolph Cheveldave
After disappointed result of Part 7, the late director, John Carl Buechler, wanted to make a direct sequel from Part 7 to continue the story of Tina Shepard who has a mental vision of Jason Voorhees while she’s in the asylum and having a new character being a new killer like Jason. But that plan was ultimately thrown out when we’re getting the new subject with new filmmaker joined in named Rob Hedden. After been working with Universal Studios, Rob Hedden haven’t written nor directing movies, the only times he has done was a couple of episodes of “Friday the 13th: The Series”, so Jason Takes Manhattan will be his very first film he have ever made. This got attention to Part 7’s executive producers Barbara Sachs and Frank Mancuso Jr, so Hedden was hired to be the filmmaker. Hedden came up the concept that, after 7 movies taking place in Crystal Lake, he wanted a new plot taking place outside of Crystal Lake, maybe something like… Bigger place than the camp ground, so the answer is going to the Big Apple, aka New York City. Since Mancuso Jr. suggested the idea outside of the camp, Hedden was more than happy that he wrote a butt load of drafts about the scenarios of teens chasing away in many locations in Manhattan like Brooklyn Bridge, inside of Madison Square Garden, Broadway and to the top of the Statue of Liberty, you name it! But the major downside is that the draft were cut down due to budgetary restrictions (despite the film’s budget costed $5.1M to $5.5M, the most expensive film in Paramount’s Friday the 13th back then), they had to rewrite almost everything that, clearly, it was doomed what they’ve hoped for, which il save the presentation later.
Once Jason and graduate students went on trip to New York on July 28 1989, Ohhh how the mighty has fallen…! Critics and audience gave it a negative reception that its a broken down, time and money wasting film they’ve ever done with all the bad writings, production issues and weak kills. And of course, it ended up becoming a box-office failure by earning $14.3M, even if its over the budget, but still, it failed so bad that Paramount was calling quit that they sold Jason Voorhees away to New Line Cinema, right before decades later when the late Victor Miller went on Court of Appeal for owning some of his stuff from Friday the 13th, though its a very long story.
But like I said before, when I watched it from Dead Meat’s Kill Count to the film I watched… It just baffled me that im gonna ask a question to you all… “How bad can it be?!”
Well, lets find out…!
The Story
For movie about survival trip to New York, you think this could be both terrifying, fascinating and maybe an improvement and creative plot for the movie? Well… It could… IF THE WRITING COULD’VE WORKED…!
After the opening credit in the shot of New York and “Not-New-York” scenes with the song “Darkest Side of the Night” (which the opening and the song is probably the ONLY best part of the movie, especially I love this song, but this is just the beginning…!), the movie begins in Crystal Lake (which it doesn’t look right after we last saw on “The New Blood”), where in the houseboat, Jim and Suzi and making out together, but at the same time, Jimmy tells the same old tales about Voorhees family where Jason drowned, Mama Voorhees took her revenge and died, blah blah blah blah blah blah, just get over it, we’ve heard it multiple times…! Sorry… Anyway, after dropping the anchor which it ends up hooking up the electric sea wire to electrocute Jason back to life in the same way as Part 6. After pulling the prank at Suzi with toy knife and replica of hockey mask (why is there a replica of Jason’s hockey mask is just beyond me), Jason has climbed up from surface to houseboat, appeared to be bulkier and muddier than before (its more like fourth or fifth favorite next to Part 3 and Part 7 and some others if I forgot), and kills both Jim and Suzi in the slowest and probably anticlimactic kills I’ve ever seen (again, more on that later). The next day, somehow, Jason pilots the houseboat, which Crystal Lake as connect to Atlantic Ocean for… God knows how for movie’s questionably stupid logic, where the ship called “SS Lazarus” is filed with graduated senior class students from Lakeview High School, followed by biology teacher named Dr. Charles McCulloch and English teacher Colleen Van Deusen, while at the latter, she brought her niece and our main protagonist named Rennie Wickham, whom, despite she’s okay to going on a trip to Manhattan, but she’s has aquaphobia from her childhood, meanwhile we also introduce the second protag, Sean, who’s the son of Captain Robertson, who’s been told that he’s gonna be a next generation of ship captain, much to to his unsure to be prepare for his future. But at the same time, Jason swims and stowaway to the ship, sneaking around to kill more people like he always does, much to warning (in students and teachers oblivious from Deck Hand guy), its up to Rennie, Sean, Dr. Charles, Colleen and boxing student named Julius gotta find the way to survive from Jason while in their Loooooong way to New York.
Yeah, its the same old same old survival from hockey masked killed its gotten rather boring with lack of creativity. Well okay, there is the plot about going to the Big Apple and Rennie’s struggle from PTSD from her childhood, I can probably give credit for that, but the problem is that it was poorly executed that its nearly gotten slow and boring that I’ve been begging to give us something good and likable characters, but not even the writing couldn’t help for the depth and how the characters were written. Speaking of which, there are many settings and such just didn’t make any sense for the movie franchise’s setting and others, such as the aforementioned scene where the houseboat passing back to the dock for the trip to New York, which it is said that Crystal Lake is connected to Atlantic Ocean, which it just doesn’t make any sense how Crystal Lake is meant to be taking place in the forest and lake out of nowhere in New Jersey, but never in our freakin’ life to be connected to the ocean. But of course, another non-sense part of this movie is how the heck does Jason reappears randomly when the senior class students and teachers are chasing away. I know lot of people were all like “Well yeah, its probably a cheap-ass teleportation”, I kinda understandable, but if we watched the previous films, we saw Jason does either fast walking or running, like he’s much more quicker than Michael Myers, but here, Jason is not only too slow, but randomly swapping places out of nowhere without showing, its just both stupid and non sense that, again, it easily made us think he can teleporting out of Fucking nowhere! For example, there’s a scene where Eva ran away to the dancing club with all doors locked that she sees Jason just randomly appears around her before he strangles her to death, it just didn’t make any sense from locked doors for no reason to looking around like a headless chicken, which when I saw it, I confused and asked myself “What the hell was that, was she on drugs? Am I on drugs?? Or is EVERYONE on drugs?!”. Not to mention, it makes the film’s pacing gotten so bad in flip flop all over the place, its just overwhelmingly confused for what we just watch in various locations where the characters are trying to hiding somewhere to survive or be killed. One part that really bugging me the most are the scenes where Rennie sees the ghost of drowned young Jason several times from shown in porthole, the mirror and potential drowning. Which it turned out it was Hedden’s idea to add some supernatural element in this movie for competing against A Nightmare on Elm Street. Well okay, I get he’s trying to add something new element in this movie, but it just that it feels so out of place and trying a bit too hard to be like in Part 5 when Tommy sees Jason from his vision, especially for, again, poorly executed that we’ve been begging for why Rennie has a aquaphobia until the third act after all those pop-up of ghostly young Jason. Of course, they also tried to add some humors, but a lot of them are rather boringly flat I barely had some chuckles, though I did have a chuckle like Dr. Charles’s distracted reaction from Tamara’s stripping into her black undies to, of course, the scene where Jason kicks the boombox out of his way and unmasked to scare the thugs out of the way (but again, to bad a lot of humors aren’t helping either for how boring it is).
The movie is just so slow and boring, along with pacing problems and terrible writing that they’re trying for the depth, logic and humors…! But ohh boy, this is all just the beginning once we’re going to the next subject…!
The Presentation
Like I said before, the movie’s budget costed between $5.1M to $5.5M, pretty nice for being, at the time, the most expensive film of its franchise. Alas, it just didn’t work for many problems to pointing at.
Like I said before for development, after seven movies they came up the idea of having Jason and survivors into New York, where Rob Hedden suggest several locations in the script, which its gonna be fully focus on New York such as going to Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Central Park and few others. But the major problem for the concept is that filming in New York City is VERY EXPENSIVE for both filming and other setups for production, as a result, in order to save their budget, they only filmed in Manhattan for two days from Time Square to the shot of Statue of Liberty, while the rest were filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia to imitate New York. But even with filming in Vancouver, it feels unrecognizable compared to the Big Apple, it feels like we’re in a generic city than Manhattan. But to add even worse for budgetary reasons, the movie is 75% focus on a boat trip. Im not making this up, because it took over an hour to reaching at the Big Apple, which is even more boring that it feels like the title for this movie is misleading when the title is called “Jason Takes Manhattan”! I mean, we might as we renaming it as “Jason Takes Boat Trip” for all the time wasting potential for this Fucking movie…! Like I said for The Story, since Crystal Lake is somehow and confusingly, connected to the ocean, it barely feels like in fictional(?) New Jersey, its possibly that its filmed somewhere in Vancouver based on couple of cloud on the mountain. I know its common for relocation for sequels, but this takes an illogical cake for broken down geography of Crystal Lake.
Despite the problems for the filming for budget reasons, at least some of the filming shots are good for say the least as the shot outside of the boat, some shots in Vancouver (even if it barely looks like Manhattan) and the Actual New York, the latter of which is the ONLY best part for their production, for two freakin’ days…! One of which is the scene where Jason looks around in Time Square, which is like the first time Jason appears on public (in the movie at least), even Kane Hodder said he had a blast to be in New York as Jason based on couple of people in Time Square are both exciting and cheering on behind the scenes, so good for him.
However, since the budget is leaning towards filming New York for two days and the focus on the boat trip, I barely talked about the kills in this movie, but this one is quite possibly even worse than the previous films, its barely graphical, its too slow, and we can barely see some kills, AGAIN…! Just like Part 7, they were both forced and suffered by the strict MPAA that they’re forced to do the unseen kills, cheap close ups without how they were killed, and some of the original kills were cut, such as the zoom out of Tamara being stabbed by shards of mirror or even Julius boxing opponent was supposed to be killed by being stabbed to the eyes with darts, but it was changed into sauna where he was killed by sauna rock because MPAA said so for their warning. Not to mention, it has some of the weakest kills I’ve ever seen such as one of the junkies was by being cheaply face smashed to the pipe with a single blood, a waiter in the restaurant (played by future Jason, Ken Kirzinger) being thrown to the mirror to death or a sanitation engineer to smashed by wrench to death with a cheap blood splatter in defying laws of physics. But the ONLY best kill in the movie is where Julius punched at Jason (in no-selling like something out of pro-wrestling) for over a minute on the rooftop (even though it was originally taken place in MSG, but it was cut for, again, budget cap), Jason decapitates his head off with a single hard punch (Eat your heart out, Mike Tyson…!). But once again, if you’ve ever watching YouTube channel called “Dead Meat” with the show called “Kill Count”, if wondering the amount of body counts? Well, it has 42 kills in this weak-ass film, that’s a lot, but not a lot that we bare see some extras getting killed… How lame was that we barely see them either escaped, drowned or be killed…?? I don’t freakin’ know, I just asking too many questions that left unanswered that just gave me (and some of you) a massive headache of questioning…!
Although the last one that I like to point out that, while this is the first Friday The 13th film that it wasn’t fully composed by Harry Manfredini, meaning he was replaced by Fred Mollin (since Part 7), which the soundtrack is… Average for say the least. But only one is worth is the aforementioned song called “Dark Side of the Night” by small group called “Metropolis”, its another one of the small redeeming quality of this movie, its probably an underrated song, even though its only used on the opening and the end credit.
While the are some have a redeeming quality, but this movie is suffered with budgetary problems for filming in New York (especially that, again, its barely recognizable from numerous shots), lackluster focus in the city and weak kills… Even for, at the time, expensive budget, its not good enough with all the plans for what would’ve been.
The Characters
Despite of bad writing, you think the characters would help the movie mak-- Oh who am I kidding? None of these characters are memorable nor likable. Well, except for one, for the most part.
Lets start with the return of Kane Hodder returned as Jason Voorhees since Part 7. Like I said before Jason’s appearance in Part 8 looks good, looking a lot more bulkier and muddier after being drowned at the end of Part 7. The downside is that most of exposure of his skeletons are back to be covered and not to mention, he moves a lot slower based on the amount of weak kills and he barely getting more abused like getting hit or knocked out more than once, which made survivors vs Jason being very anticlimactic. Though im aware Kane Hodder came up his moves and ideas to Rob Hedden for either safety and stunts, but come on, it makes it slower and less fun than Part 7’s climax. Though I’ve nothing against Hodder, he’s great and menacing as Jason, but its just some execution aren’t as relevant than when he was started. Still, it could’ve gone much worse, which il save Part 8’s climax later.
Lets get to the new main survivors, starting with Rennie Wickham (played by Jensen Daggett), she’s main final girl who’s a graduated from Lakeview High School for the trip to New York. But the downside is that she suffered a aquaphobia from her childhood, pretty much viewing herself as an outsider for the trip, along with constantly seeing young Jason from her vision. While Jensen’s performance is fine, but the way she was written is just very weak, especially that, unlike the previous final girls, she barely able to fight back against Jason, for the most part, she’s mostly a damsel in distress with mental trauma from her childhood for seeing Jason over and over, we can barely rooting for her that, again, the writing of her is just badly executed that made her both cowardly and bland if she tries to overcome her fear, and her fear is stuck for the rest of her life. Such a weak protagonist that we get to see her built up depth from, again, shitty writing.
Next we have Sean Robertson (played by Scott Reeves), he’s the son of Captain Admiral Robertson (played by Warren Munson) and Rennie’s love interest. He’s meant to be the next generation to becoming a ship captain before his father was about to retire (SPOILER ALERT, not really after Papa Robertson got his throat slit by Jason), but even he’s going to take his father’s torch, he’s not good enough for handle the ship, along with awkward urgent call before Jason torn the electric wire from antenna. However, once we’re in second act, he’s pretty much no longer becoming the next generation of sea captain, but becoming protective boyfriend to Rennie, even though if he tries to fight Jason, but lackluster for trying to do more counter fit on hockey masked killer, because, like Rennie, he’s also been poorly written that we wanna root for him for how lackluster he’s become. While Scott did an okay work of his role, but again, he’s not helping from shit-ass writing.
Then we have Dr. Charles McCulloch (played by the late Peter Mark Richman), he’s a biology teacher and the chaperon for the trip to New York. However, he’s also a protective uncle to Rennie based on her fear of water from her childhood that he constantly scolding to either the students or even his partner and English teacher Colleen Van Deusen (played by Barbara Bingham). I find him to be a forgettable neutral role, he’s meant to be caring to his niece, but didn’t care much to let some students doing their actions for helping hand, always treat them to stay low instead of… You know, trying to help those teachers about the killer on the loose. However, he’s also being a backstabber at the third act? Well, get this, it turned out he’s responsible to teaching young Rennie to swim, but rather than let her went out from boat to swim, he pushed her to swim immediately, but to add more salt to the opened wound, he let her getting nearly drowned by ghost of young Jason (did I forgot to mention the Friday the 13th’s timeline is a broken down mess?), which it really bothered me for why would he took care of Rennie, WHEN HE FUCKING MISTREATED HER WHEN SHE WAS YOUNG!! Jeez, even though Richman did a nice work of his role, but good god, what a hypocritical character depth he has for this Fucking movie…! Oh and as for English teacher Colleen, she’s good, but pretty lackluster she’s meant to be lovable and sympathetic to Rennie, I guess they wanna make in a same way as Miss Collins from Carrie, but didn’t executed for, again, she’s rather lackluster she appears in the movie, but in fairness, at least she’s not as bad as Dr. Charles.
The last and probably the only one likable character in this movie is Julius (played by V.C. Dupree), a cocky graduate who likes to be a boxer when we saw him in the ship. I think he’s rather more fun character in this movie that he’s meant to help the students when dealing with Jason like Sean. Though unlike Sean, Julius is the only who’s worth of damn to fight against Jason, though didn’t last long from the aforementioned decapitation punch. Despite his lackluster appearance, at least Dupree did a good and fun work of his role, even if he could’ve saved it for this goddamn movie…
As for the rest, again, they’re pretty bland and lackluster for obvious appearance to be killed by Jason.
There’s Tamara (played by Sharlene Martin) who’s a cocaine addict mean girl who likes to bullying Rennie (despite we barely see her bullying other students) and likes to be pretty for distraction, especially with her buddy Eva (played by Kelly Hu), Wayne Webber (played by Martin Cummins) who’s a camera graduate that he looks like 99 cent version of Garth from Wayne’s World, Miles Wolfe (played by Gordon Currie) is an underdeveloped rift-raft, despite in the deleted scene, he’s meant to be a diver champ (Why did they cut that out? I don’t know), and Deck Hand guy (played by Alex Diakun) is basically a ship version of Crazy Ralph (sounds like somebody wants to bring up the same way as Ralph, but not as enjoyable as Ralph).
While Julius is the only good character, but all of them are bland for being generic, lackluster and short-lived for the sake of body counts. A very VERY weak body counts.
SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t seen this movie or if you don’t care.
If you think the whole Nothing Burger Plot and illogical elements of this movie gotten worse? Well, get a load of climax.
After revealing Dr. Charles is a backstabbing uncle from Rennie’s childhood, Charles ran away from Jason after being abandoned by both Rennie and Sean, but after being thrown out of abandoned building from Jason’s teleportation into the building after his slow walking, Jason dumps Dr. Charles into barrel filled sewage of death, Rennie and Sean live happily ever aft--
AZ-06 Ayla: Um Anthony, its not over, cause… Look at the length.
Anthony: Wait-- THERE’S 20 MINUTES REMAINING!? WHAT THE FUUUCK?!?!
AZ-06 Ayla: You do know this is your plan to watching this one, huh?
Urrgh!! After Jason bursts in by breaking the door for like many forced habits, it goes into a very underwhelming chase from alley to downstairs of subway. But when they took the train, Jason still slowly walking after Ren and Sean, until Sean pulls the lever to stop the train to make Jason falls down from the brake like a cartoon, then once they exit the train, Sean launches himself like an invisible cannon at Jason to electrocutes him on a third rail (But didn’t he comes back from electricity like… Oh I don’t know, a Frankenstein’s Monster?!). After that, Sean and Rennie walked up the stairs to reaching at Time Square section of New York, despite Jason will ALWAYS got up, while curiously look around like he’s been in Manhattan for the first time. And after fun gag of scaring the thugs from Jason’s unmask, Sean and Rennie are in a restaurant in urgent to call the authority to stop the undead hockey masked killer, but the waitress just shrugged off by welcoming them to the Big Apple, that is until Jason burst the door out, AGAIN he throws future actor Jason to the window to… We presumed he killed him, Ren and Sean go down to the sewer, until they meet the sanitation engineer, warning them in the most accurate sewer system in New York;
“Toxic waste son. The sewer floods out with the stuff every night at midnight”
Oh sure, at every midnight in New York City, there’s a toxic waste system to clean everything up by flooding it down there, that’s how it totally works in real life, right?
WROOOOONG!!!!
After the engineer gave us this plot convenient Bullshit, he was killed off very shortly by Jason’s reappears in the sewer by cartoonishly smash him to death with a wrench on the shadow, after Sean got knocked out by Jason, Rennie distracts the masked killer for the chase, until she grabs a small barrel of toxic waste to pouring at Jason, cause him to ripping his mask off in the Derpiest face I’ve ever seen! Good god, this is ugly, but not in a good way! To make even dumber, Jason walks around like drunken headless chicken while trying to going after Rennie! But then the clock ticked in that the flood of toxic waste is coming, as Rennie and Sean are climbing to the latter to escape, but Jason tries to climb, but for some reason, he starts… Emotionally traumatized from incoming toxic waste with vomiting and getting flooded by the waste, desperate to come out and burnt and melting to death, along with unnecessary scene of lightning strike to the Statue of Liberty?? What…? What the fuck did I just watch to end this climatic mes?!
Oh, if you thought this is bad? There’s a deleted ending… Which is somehow EVEN WORSE!! Where it shows little young Jason comes out of adult Jason’s puppet mouth of vomit in Rennie’s vision…?!?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCKING SHIT?!?!
You know what?! Im done!! im not gonna bother to give my thought on this cluster fuck of the climax, its a full of what the fuck and boring lever of this fucking shit!!
This is quite possibly the WORST sequel I’ve ever seen since I watched Superman IV: Quest for Peace or hell even the Godawful Star Wars Sequel Trilogy!!
Despite it has a few redeeming quality that I wanna give, But EVERYTHING ELSE is a Big Pile of Dog Shit that I got both bored and frustrated with all the stupidity!! It has very bad writing, lame-ass plot, unlikable characters, weak-ass kills, lackluster presentation of New York and a butt load of bullshit logic that really baffling us the most!!
I’ve never been so angry in my reviews for the past years, but this one takes another Shitty Cake of another Worst Movie in my experience, its not surprising that this movie is SO BAD, it killed off the future of Friday the 13th movies at Paramount, which again, they sold out Jason Voorhees to WB to this day (that is until Paramount has merged with WB nearly month ago, and its already doomed since the bidding..!). So folks, if you guys ever wanna see Friday the 13th movies, do yourselves a favor, Stay Away from Part 8, its not worth of your time and curiosity to see, because good god, doing a review with this movie for my curiosity and gawking just gave me a massive headache of frustration and boredom…!
For my rating, im gonna give this one 1.5/10, along with earning the Dumpster Fire of FAILURE! What a Piece of Shit sequel have I just watched…! I really need to take a shower to clear my mind…!
So this ends of my review, but before I wanna end right away, I have an announcement for the future of Friday the 13th reviews. Despite next year, there’s the one and ONLY Friday the 13th, I decided to stop my marathon right here, cause I usually stick to 8 movies from the DVD pack of 8 movies of Friday the 13th. Sure we have later movies after Paramount, such as “Jason Goes To Hell” in 1993, “Jason X” 2001 (even though they weirdly later released in US a year later for… Fuster Cluck reasons, its a very long a confusing story about this), “Freddy vs Jason” in 2003 and the last movie of its franchise is the 2009 remake. But then month ago (as im writing this), there’s a show called “Crystal Lake”, which is actually a prequel of Friday the 13th, which I was very surprised what I’ve heard, but haven’t plan to watching this miniseries.
So yeah, after reviewing 8 movies, im gonna stop this marathon and moved on to do other things like working on other Movie Reviews and my art/literature contents. Unless if one of you want me do the continuation with Jason Goes To Hell, but il make my conclusion if il come back to continue or not.
Anyway, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.
Thanks for reading, Happy Friday the 13th, and im Anthony, signing out.
