After an entire second season, audiences must have been itching to see some more of their favorite slasher villain. What they got was an odd mix that's going to take a while to explain. I, for one, have always enjoyed Part VIII, but I know I'm in the minority.
As always, we begin with the trailer. The trailer is like a teaser. None of the shots are actually in the movie. It's just that: a tease. It plays a familiar song and shows shots of New York in the background. It zooms in on someone looking at the city, just then he turns around and it's JASON! Everybody screams, show the title. It's a nice trailer, but it doesn't really advertise the movie very well, or at least what the movie became. The tagline, New York has a new problem, is kinda lame if you ask me. Another note of trivia: the original poster for the film had the classic I <3 NY, only Jason's machete and face were tearing the sheet away. That's an awesome poster, even thought it's a total gimmick. That's the problem with this film's advertising. They advertised a gimmick, not what the actual film was.
As far as the film itself, this entry has some of the best drawn characters of the whole series. I really love the characters, however, the deaths are lackluster and there's hardly any tension in the film. The best death is kinda a jokey death. A side character has a boxing match with Jason. He punches him until he can't punch any more. Jason gives one blow to the head and it decapitates him. What a memorable sequence!
Director Rob Heddon, who we've run into before a couple of times on the TV series, was told that he could assume that Part VIII would be the last entry. This is where some of the final version of the film gets muddled. There's a lot of deleted lines that mention that the senior class in the movie is the LAST senior class at Crystal Lake. This would make sense that Jason would resurrect one final time. Rob obviously had a ton of respect for the original. He gives a good amount of time to retelling the original in the opening scene of the movie. This is great because it adds to the idea of bookending the series. HOWEVER, too many lines are deleted mentioning that they're the final senior class. A lot of the work for bookending gets lost in translation.
Rennie, as a character, is a great final girl. She wants to be a writer, she's afraid of the water, AND she has had a previous encounter with Jason. You actually feel for this girl as well as the final guy. Rennie's uncle lived on Crystal Lake. He pushed her into the water to 'teach' her how to swim. Little boy Jason pulls her under...now we have a revenge worth looking at. Rennie learns to fight for herself really quickly in dire consequences. She throws toxic waste on Jason at the end. Jason resorts back to his little boy position. Another GREAT bookend, if not weird. The only problem is that the actress for Rennie is not very good. If she were better, I think her character would be remembered a lot more fondly...however, Rennie is vastly more memorable than the final girls to come in the New Line years.
This more went wrong on a couple of counts. First, the gimmick isn't really paid off. Two-thirds of the movie are spent on a cruise ship to New York that gets sunk. The boat is called Lazarus...get it? It's because Jason got resurrected. He's resurrected by electricity again, but it's cool enough. My favorite movie's Titanic, so spending time on a sinking ship is never a problem for me, but I can see why it's considered such a disappointment. The second thing is that the film got a little too supernatural, it was a little too Nightmare on Elm Street. Rennie has premonitions of Jason as a little boy, the water in the faucet turns to blood, etc... They're really cool shots, it's just not the right series to put them in. The gore is toned down in this one, which I'm fine with.
This movie is also significant due to the fact that it is the first time EVER that Jason has a returning actor. Kane Hodder returns and is slowly but surely becoming the face of the franchise. His presence is undeniable even in this film. Regardless of all it's faults, Kane's presence is something to be commended and respected.
As far as the music goes, Fred Mollin is back. He did the original stuff for Part VII and the TV series. It's all of Fred's music for Part VIII which really helps the score overall. MUCH improved over Part VII, and for the first time instead of doing Ki, ki, ki...Ma, ma, ma, it's Jason, Jason, Jason. This makes more since because Jason's not his mom. He's no longer asking his mother to kill for him, but again it's different so I can see why people have a problem with it.
I think the biggest problem with Part VIII is that we're no longer in the woods. I have a problem with this too because we never truly make it back there again until the remake. This decision rendered the rest of the original series problematic, but more on that later.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan premiered on July 28, 1989. On a budget of $5 million (the largest budget to date for the series at that time), the film only grossed $14,343,976, which is a series low. Although they still doubled their budget and it still made more than it's budget on opening weekend, Paramount was through. With the diminishing returns and the horrendous reviews, Paramount opted not to make another sequel. They decided to focus solely on the TV series which was about to begin it's third season. The third season was getting a two-hour premiere. Unfortunately, the third season is the last. The days of Paramount's Friday the 13th are numbered. But before that, audiences were wondering how Johnny would come into play in the TV series and how many more antiques there could possibly be to retrieve...
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