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DVD
Paramount
Publisher: Paramount
Bryan England
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Actors: Jensen Daggett, Kane Hodder, Todd Caldecott, Tiffany Paulsen, Tim Mirkovich
A passing boat bound for new york pulls jason along for the ride. Look out new york here comes hell in a hockey mask. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/22/2006 Starring: Todd Shaffer Scott Reeves Run time: 100 minutes Rating: R Director: Rob Hedden
Start spreadin' the news... Jason Voorhees, the cleaver-hoisting man in the hockey mask, has finally left Crystal Lake behind and taken his vagabond shoes to the Big Apple. Actually, Jason spends most of his time on a cruise ship bound for Manhattan, carving up the unluckiest high school graduation party ever. You'd think the change of scenery might breathe new life, or death, into the series, but chapter 8 is standard stalk 'em and slash 'em fare, albeit with a nautical slant. The title hints at a comic tone, but except for the one-joke idea that Jason fits right into the menacing urban scene, forget it. (The comedy would wait until the surprisingly entertaining Jason X.) This one does have a pretty leading lady, Jensen Daggett, whose visions of the young drowned Jason are occasionally creepy. The grown-up Jason, like "these little-town blues," is melting away. --Robert Horton
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| Terror In Time Square...Not Really |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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I was inspired by Sid The Elf to write this review.
When I saw this in theaters the seats were packed. Everyone anticipating what Mr. Vorhees would do in NYC, the city that never sleeps, the town where you would get mugged if you walked around at night. We were all disappointed that only the last 15 minutes were spent in The Big Apple. I later learned (a few years ago) that this was due to the studio not wanting to spend so much money on a budget for a horror movie (especially a slasher), and the shooting in NY would have cost an insane amount of money; think of what it takes to shut down the busiest city in the
world ... besides a "terrorist" attack!
It has the cheese-factor all slashers made at that time did: smokin-hot babes, dorks [with video cameras], jocks [and a colored one at that!], the crazy guy, and the anus-authority figure there to make sure the rest of the cast doesn't have a good time. In fact, he was the only saving grace of the movie. Him and the smoking hot chick who played Rennie(Jensen Daggett). The movie had no plot that made sense, the acting was high school grade, and the kills were...okay the kills were pretty good.
The ending was very unbelievable. But if you can buy the fact that a guy can be resurrected from an electric charge (stolen from Frankenstein), and the Captain's throat can be cut before the blade reaches his neck, then the sewers can flood with toxic waste (it IS 80's New York after all) and transform a monster into an ugly retarded boy with egg on his face.
This movie only gets 2 stars for the acting of Peter Mark Richman & Jensen Daggett, and for Jason smashing some kids radio. I'd say it's a must by for fans of the collection. But much like Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, and Jason Goes to Hell, it's a trow-away to the series. The last great one was Part VII - The New Blood.
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| Flashy, making a scene. Flaunting convention |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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We, Sid the Elf, are making our triumphant return this week with 3 horror B reviews. On the heels of the wildly enjoyable Friday the 13th, Part VI - Jason Lives Sid decided to delve further into Jason Voorhees's world. So we scoured the famed $5 bin and found that it was there, and not at the bottom of Crystal Lake, that Jason currently resides. So we chose Jason Takes Manhattan and uncorkes her for the very first time, mainly due to our memories of the extreme hype surrounding the film in our youth.
The film starts off with the approximate 50,000th ressurection of Jason due to an electric charge from a cable severed by a boat anchor. The couple in the boat are obviously toast. They're engaging in sexual relations with their classmates and the guy is actually wearing a hockey mask to scare his chick. The next morning, Jason climbs onto a ship packed with high school kids on their way to you guessed it, New York. One of the film's highlights is revealed here: the trip is being chapperoned by Charles McColloch. He got his wardrobe exclusively from the Caddyshack collection and plays the uptight jerk to a T. Another highlight is The Fear: Halloween Night alum Gordon Currie making an appearance, only he's not in his wheelchair from his watershed 90210 role as Brandon and Brenda's crippled cousin who tries to do Kelly Taylor only he can't. Anyway, Jason offs a bunch of the kids and even the ship's captain. None in more impressive fashion than driving the sauna rock through the boxer's chest. That was awesome. Eventually, the boat sinks, forcing the remaining few to try to evade Jason in the streets of Manhattan.
Charles's daughter Rennie, who was onboard, has a ridiculous flashback of her father teaching her to swim in Crystal Lake by throwing her in and letting her figure it out. Obviously, she has a memory of Jason almost killing her. At the end of the flick, only Rennie and Sean are alive and they take to the sewers to get away. In an attempt to finish them off, Jason dumps toxic waste into the sewers. Only he gets washed in it and it turns him back into a child. And that's your flick. Yep.
As the credits on this one rolled, Sid asked this question: "What just happened there? Anything?" Ok that's two questions, but you get the point. This film was incredibly shallow and pedantic and it seemed like just a vehicle for Jason to kill as many people in as mant ways as possible. That's the reason for the borrowed Bookman line for the title. There weren'e even any hot chicks in this one! But the jokes we were able to make from the principal/blonde champagne scene alone were worth 2 stars. But as a horror film, and even a B horror film go Sid says it's probably one you should skip and/or not revisit.
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| Could have been the best in the series. Never moves outside the lines enough to get there. |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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Jason Takes Manhattan (Rob Hedden, 1989)
Back in the day, I actually had some small amount of hope for Jason Takes Manhattan. The trailers made it look as if this was finally the Friday the 13th movie that was going to not take itself seriously and finally head over into the realm of comedy. Yes, fool that I am, I really believed that. If you can find the original trailers on Youtube, watch them and tell me I'm wrong. They play up the one-liners ("There's a maniac trying to kill us!" "Welcome to New York.") and give no indication whatsoever that this is going to be just another run-of-the-mill Friday the 13th film. So, yes, I had hope. More fool me.
The plot: Jason finds his way onto a cruise ship sailing to New York and does what Jason does best. Then, when the survivors get to New York, Jason tracks them down, though he also has various levels of street trash to wade through as well.
Yeah, it's your typical Friday the 13th movie, though with both Jensen Daggett and Kelly Hu emerging from this cast, in retrospect it had the most starpower going for it than any Friday film since the original. But this is a Friday film, and so the actors therein seem almost coached to give bad performances. (Never has this been more in evidence than in the case of Mark Richman in this film--one of television's most recognizable character actors falls just about flat here.) You'd never know from watching this they'd both go on to have successful careers, but there you go.
About the best I can say is that if you like the Friday the 13th series, this one (unlike the film that came after it) is not likely to put you off. If you're not a fan, this one isn't going to change your mind. * ½
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| Surreal Jason |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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Ok, the Friday the 13th series is probably my favorite movie series ever created. What's weird is that my favorite all time movie series also has within it's numbers one of my most hated movies ever. The movie i'm speaking of is of course none other than this turkey, Friday the 13th Part VIII Jason Takes Manhattan. More like Jason hangs out in Vancouver doing a poor job subbing for Manhattan for the last 20 or so minutes of the film. Whatever. This is the same series that said the 4th one was the final chapter so i'm not going to nit-pick on this. What I will gripe about are the bloodless deaths, terrible acting, inane dialogue, and complete lack of any sort of semblance of plot structure. Jason kills teenagers on a cruise headed for Manhattan. Jason chases the survivors in Manhattan. Jason is vanquished. Easy and painless. I've dealt with worse plots and in the same series (ahem Part V ahem) and still enjoyed the hell out of the film. Part VII though does a perfect job destroying my will. The acting is deplorable even for this series, they must have literally grabbed high school drop outs off of the street cleaned them up put them in front of the camera and gave them cue cards to read. That can be the only way I could wrap my head around these acting performances. I'm watching this movie right now and here is an example of one stellar scripted exchange: There are weapons laid out on the floor and everyone grabs one except Julius who stares intently. One guy asks, "what's up Julius you're not taking a weapon?" Julius replies, "No" he then pauses dramatically for about 10 seconds.........and exclaims, "except this gun!!". Wow. I am dumb-founded. This director must have been doing something in between takes to allow crap like this to make it into the final print. Either that or he just didn't care because he knew no matter what Part VII of any series is going to be stretching it. He was right to nap on this one except for one problem: he wrote the script! So this idiot has no one to blame but himself. He wrote himself into this mess. I also want to punch whatever executive at Paramount thought it was a good idea to ditch the classic Friday score and sub in generic rock instrumentals and truly bad 80's title music. It's laughable. Even the way Jason is resurrected is hokey and laugh out lout bad. At least the movie lets you know in the first minute or two how crappy it is going to be. The MPAA really hit this one hard as well and that certainly didn't help my views on this one. The movie is fulled with cutaways and aftermath shots and no real gore to speak of. I think this has the distinction of being the most bloodless Friday film. That's just the icing on the cake to me. Part VII sucked really bad too but at least it had decent kills and Kane Hodder running amok. Kane even looks tired in this one like he knew what kind of crap he was participating in. At least this movie put an end to Paramount's mis-treating of this franchise and allowed to go to New Line for a creative revival with Jason Goes to Hell.
There are a couple of positives though because it is a Friday movie it can't be all bad. There is one cool set piece kill where Jason stalks one of the teens in the disco-techque on board the ship. That scene is also famous for introducing us to magical teleporting Jason! Yes, i forgot to mention Jason teleports in this one. I kid you not. Why he does this I will never know but he does it throughout the film and everytime he does it makes me sigh in disbelief. See I tried to get positive and I just don't think it's possible here. Ok, I thought the main girl was really cute when she wasn't making me cringe with her crapt-tastic acting. On a nostaligc note, this was the first Friday film I ever saw so I think that's only reason I can ever watch this thing. If you're a Friday newbie I suggest you save this one for last, you'll be happy you did. For completists only.
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| Far and away the worst film in the series |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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Jason's my main man, and you know that - but Friday the 13th Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan is absolutely horrible in just about every way imaginable. It is far and away the worst film in the entire series. I simply have nothing good to say about this film. The only way I can even stomach its existence is to theorize that Freddy vs. Jason (New Line Platinum Series) might never have been made were it not for this cinematic atrocity. In other words, had this film not been such a flop at the box office (earning little more than fourteen million dollars), Paramount might never have sold the franchise to New Line Cinema, and I don't think we would ever have seen a battle royale between Jason and Freddy had the two slasher icons not been brought together under the same network.
Warning: beware of plot holes and inconsistencies of gigantic proportions. I won't even bother to tell you how Jason gets resurrected from the bottom of Crystal Lake yet again because it is extremely hokey. Suffice it to say that Jason's back, and this time he makes his way onboard a ship full of graduating seniors headed for a visit to New York City. As luck would have it, Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett) defies her uncle's wishes and decides to come along - despite her intense fear of water (which may or may not have something to do with Jason). Her uncle (Charles McCulloch) is one of the school's teachers and the man in charge of the big trip to the Big Apple - and he is an insufferable, stuck-up bore with some serious control issues when it comes to his guardianship of Rennie, whom he took in to his home after her parents were killed in a car wreck some years earlier. Guess what happens? Jason gets to work killing everyone on board the ship, and then he goes after the small band of survivors who manage to find a dock and escape into and under the mean streets of the Big Apple.
Even Kane Hodder was unable to show the least bit of inspiration or excitement in his work as Jason this time around. The whole film is just surreal, partly because it takes Jason out of his natural element, but mostly because the script is awful, the cinematography is awful, the acting is awful, and the ending is just ridiculously lame. I don't know what writer/director Rob Hedden had going through his head during filming. You have a dog that disappears and then reappears with no explanation, Rennie periodically sees vision of a young Jason trying to reach out for her, pointing to a past connection that would never fit into any possible Friday the 13th timeline, and the ending is just plain stupid. Then there's the soundtrack featuring some of the worst music I've ever heard in my life. Between that and the female actresses' hairstyles, I just have to hope and pray that young people today and in the future don't pick up this film and start to think it represents even the first thing about life in the glorious 1980s - or the otherwise sound Friday the 13th series as a whole.
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