Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN (1989) *
The tragically titled Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan just might be the first movie that I ever considered a bust, a disappointment, and a great big ripoff.

I remember looking forward to Jason Takes Manhattan because I had already seen Part III and Jason Lives on video and liked them a good deal and, let’s face it, I got all hyped up on promotional material that included the trailer and TV spots, the poster and print ads, and Jason Voorhees himself making a guest appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show on Friday, July 28, 1989, the date of the film’s release.

At that very point in time, I thought Jason Takes Manhattan would be the greatest thing ever in the whole wide world.

Boy, would I ever be wrong on that one!

Let’s see here, where to start, other than none of the human characters are exactly likable in the slightest degree, just like most of the later Friday the 13th sequels starting with A New Blood and running through both New Line Cinema films and the 2009 remake.

Uncle Charles, played by veteran character actor Peter Mark Richman (1927-2021), just might possibly be the most reprehensible character in the Friday series. Other worthy contenders right off the old head are Axel from The Final Chapter and Roy Burns from A New Beginning, but there’s so many loathsome characters in the later Friday films.

Jason Takes Manhattan almost feels like an episode of The Love Boat … seriously, the movie spends far more time on a boat than it does Manhattan. It’s unfortunate that Jason Takes Manhattan came out 30 years before Lonely Island’s I’m on a Boat.

Takes Manhattan? Seriously, are you kidding? More like Barely Walks Through Manhattan! It takes more than an hour of the longest entry in the Friday series to even get to Manhattan, and it’s disappointing even after we get there.

Director and screenwriter Rob Hedden possessed a vision to incorporate landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Madison Square Garden, naturally, but parent studio Paramount decided to be the Grinch and slash the budget for what turned out to be the final Paramount entry after a series of declining returns starting with A New Beginning and continuing through Jason Lives, A New Blood, and finally Jason Takes Manhattan.

They spent very little time in the actual Manhattan, and of course Vancouver stands in for the Big Apple most of the time.

Guess you could say Jason Takes Manhattan paved the way for Rumble in the Bronx, which makes up for featuring even less of the Bronx than Manhattan’s featured in Jason Takes Manhattan by having some absolutely fantastic Jackie Chan action scenes.

The kill scenes in Jason Takes Manhattan are disappointing, just like about every other single thing during the 100-minute motion picture.

In the film’s most famous scene, Lakeview High School boxing champion Julius Gaw engages our anti-hero Jason Voorhees in a boxing match and punches Jason many, many, many times before Jason knocks Julius’ block off with just a single punch.

I’ve always been underwhelmed by that scene, and I far prefer a similar scene the year before in Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

I don’t even want to think about another one of those patented beyond weird Friday endings that leave viewers dumbfounded and stupefied.

Here instead is a transcript of the Arsenio interview.

A: How are you?

That’s good.

You know what I’ve noticed. I see all your movies, man, and you know what I’ve really noticed. You’re angry.

I don’t mean to laugh. Excuse me, it’s just the way I am, but you’re you’re you’re angry.

What happened, man, where did it all begin?

[Long pause]

You know what I mean? Was it a woman? Did you get cut from the hockey team in high school?

What happened? What’s up?

Let me ask you this.

I saw the new movie, Jason Takes Manhattan.

You killed 16 people … I don’t know why I’m laughing.

You killed 16 people and you were responsible for the death of eight others. Total, that’s less than what you usually kill in a movie.

Are you getting soft? Are you losing a step?

You’re trembling, man.

Oh, you brought a clip.

Would you set it up for us?

Set up the clip, like tell them you know how this fits into the movie and what they’re about to see and all that kind of stuff.

Jason Takes Manhattan, here’s his clip.

[Times Square clip plays.]

Working on the streets of New York, did you get a lot of people come up to you to ask for your autograph and stuff like that?

Ever think about doing a musical?

[Another pause.]

I’m running out of questions, man.

Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you.

You didn’t kill anybody with that big knife you used to kill people with, did you change because you were afraid of being typecast as just being a big knife killer?

So what’s next, man?

Some more of Jason Part Nine, I got some great titles I put together.

Jason and the Three Babies. What do you think of that?

Jason’s Big Top would be funny.

Oh … Jason Rabbit.

That would be great.

Oh … When Jason Met Sally … would that be funny?

You don’t do many comedies, do you?

Um … I’d like to thank you for coming by. It’s a pleasure.

(Jason shakes Arsenio’s hand very, very, very strongly.)

Jason, ladies and gentlemen.

Definitely another case where the promotion is a whole lot better than the picture.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) ***1/2
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man starts with an absolute big bang and we have possibly the greatest five minutes in any classic Universal monster movie.

That includes such immortal movies as Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, all stone cold classics essential to every horror movie lover.

The opening gets everything absolutely right: two grave robbers, a cemetery in the middle of the night, Larry The Wolf Man Talbot’s crypt, a full moon, a whole bunch of wolfbane, the revived Wolf Man’s hand, and enough overall spooky atmosphere for approximately 50 scary movie scenes. Yeah, it’s such a phenomenal sequence that director Tom McLoughlin revived it for his opening in Jason Lives, the one film during that long-running series most influenced by classic monster movies.

The rest of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man does not quite measure up, especially once Frankenstein’s Monster enters the picture, but it’s still a great deal of fun.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt any that Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-73) returns as Larry Talbot, one of the greatest horror movie characters. Chaney Jr. played Talbot five times from 1941 through 1948 — the original Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Talbot’s a tortured soul — in fact, mondoshop.com hypes its Wolf Man poster, The most tortured soul in the Universal Monsters universe is unquestionably that suffering bastard Larry Talbot, a.k.a. The Wolf Man — and we feel great empathy for this character because he essentially doesn’t want any damn part of being the Wolf Man. Your own son Bela was a werewolf. He attacked me. He changed me into a werewolf. He’s the one that put this curse on me. You watched over him until he was permitted to die. Well, now I want to die to. Won’t you show me the way?

In that way, he’s different from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. Lon Chaney’s Phantom in the 1925 classic The Phantom of the Opera inspires similar feelings as Talbot and the Wolf Man. To his enduring credit, Boris Karloff (1887-1969) worked some pathos into Frankenstein’s Monster, especially in Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. Still, Talbot stands apart from most cinematic monsters and maybe it’s because he’s the most explicitly human.

Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) passed on Frankenstein’s Monster in Frankenstein, much to his eternal regret, and so he signed on for the Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man after playing Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein. During the latter film, one might remember that Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein accidentally put Ygor’s brain into the Monster’s head — he speaks poetically at one point in the film, I am Ygor. In a series that paid minuscule attention to continuity from one film to the next, the Monster originally spoke and explained his plight in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but Universal studio heads apparently laughed their heads off at Lugosi’s dialogue and demanded it be excised from the final cut, rendering the monster absolutely ridiculous and his scenes basically a washout. I am not sure why Lugosi’s voice suddenly became laughable. Lugosi’s stunt double stands in for the 61-year-old man in many scenes. Ironically, though, whenever people imitate Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s the Lugosi version from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. (Lugosi played Bela in The Wolf Man and Chaney Jr. was Frankenstein’s Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein after Karloff bowed out.)

We’re not sure exactly why the Monster’s encased in ice or why there’s a production number that must have moseyed on over from MGM. The second half of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man often leaves us feeling awful perplexed.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man finishes strong, thankfully, and we do see our titular monsters slug it out, though it presents an internal struggle because while we’d love more battle royale between the monsters we do love the 90 seconds they give us. This movie paved the highway for King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason.

In most every way possible, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man proves to be a red hot mess, but a lovable and thoroughly entertaining one nonetheless.

Leonard Part 6 (1987)

LEONARD PART 6

LEONARD PART 6 (1987) No stars

Before all Bill Cosby’s legal troubles, LEONARD PART 6 was merely one of the worst movies ever made.

After more than 60 women accused Cosby of crimes such as sexual assault, rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, and sexual battery dating back to 1965, we can now safely call LEONARD PART 6 the worst movie ever made.

First and foremost, there’s not a single laugh to be found during the 85 minutes of LEONARD PART 6.

Seriously.

Not one.

Epic fail, especially for a man considered at that point in time by millions of viewers to be one of the funniest people in the world.

At the time of the release of LEONARD PART 6, Cosby was star of the No. 1 show on TV, “The Cosby Show.” “The Cosby Show” spent five consecutive seasons on top of the ratings, from Fall 1985 through Spring 1990. It honestly seemed like Cosby was inescapable during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, between his TV show and product endorsements. Coca-Cola, Jell-O, home computers, E.F. Hutton, Kodak, you name it.

Speaking of Coca-Cola, the beverage company based in Atlanta, it owned Columbia Pictures at the time of LEONARD PART 6 and there’s an obscene amount of product placement for Coca-Cola and Coke in LEONARD PART 6. Who released LEONARD PART 6? Columbia. In one infamous scene in particular, Cosby holds a bottle in his hand and it says Coca-Cola on one side and Coke on the other. They make sure we see both sides very subtle like.

Jane Fonda and her workout make a cameo and I believe that Cosby’s super spy Leonard Parker even showers in Perrier.

This movie is drenched in product placement, including Cosby himself.

How do I proceed from here with this spoof of secret agent and spy movies?

Guess we should briefly hone in on the joke of the title. Yeah, that’s right, this is the sixth Leonard Parker super spy adventure. Get it? Sure, we all do. I say that we all should consider ourselves blessed in that we did not actually have to see the previous five adventures. I just reviewed JASON LIVES and it does a greater job of spy spoofing (than LEONARD PART 6) with its brief parody of the famous James Bond gun barrel sequence.

Leonard is a retired CIA spy and millionaire restaurant owner. Of course, he’s brought out of retirement to save the world (or at least Northern California, anyway) from Mephistophelian vegetarian Medusa Johnson. Medusa’s played by Gloria Foster (1933-2001), who should be remembered as the Oracle in THE MATRIX and forgotten as Medusa. I believe that she would have wanted it that way.

What happened to the CIA agent to create the need for Leonard Parker’s return? He’s eaten alive by diabolical rainbow trout. Yes, that’s all part of the plan for Medusa and her thugs. She’s enlisted the animal kingdom on her side.

I don’t know if my brain can handle any more thoughts or if my fingers can bang out any more words about LEONARD PART 6, but I must persevere and if just one person out there reading this review decides to never watch LEONARD PART 6, I know that I have done my job and performed humanity a great and honorable service.

Nothing about this stupid film makes any sense.

TROLL 2 did a touch better job with the evil vegetarian plot on a $200,000 budget, whereas LEONARD PART 6 blew $25 million. Now, if somebody could just piece together Darren Ewing’s infamous “Oh my God!” reaction from TROLL 2 with a scene from LEONARD PART 6, that would be utterly fantastic and would make my year.

Why does it say “Ipso Facto” on Leonard’s helmet? Why oh why is there a flying ostrich? Who thought it would be a brilliant idea to have vegetarians killed by raw hamburger meat and glittery hot dogs? Why does Leonard’s wife enjoy pouring food on him? Why? Why? Why?

Cosby himself went on Larry King and denounced LEONARD PART 6 before its release. How often does that happen with any movie? Of course, LEONARD PART 6 is not just any movie, it’s the worst one ever made.

We should be thankful LEONARD PART 7 never happened, although, to be honest, it’s bad enough that Cosby gave us GHOST DAD, perhaps the second worst movie ever made, three years after LEONARD PART 6.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

JASON LIVES

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES (1986) Three stars

I find the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies that I like the most are the ones with the best sense of humor.

That’s why I’ll call PART VI: JASON LIVES the best film in the entire series, beating out PART III and THE FINAL CHAPTER. JASON LIVES includes several intentionally funny scenes and that helps its 86 minutes go down smoothly.

Director and writer Tom McLoughlin wanted to satirize a slasher movie all while making one, turn Jason into a supernatural zombie, and not simply churn out a carbon copy of the five previous movies in the series. There are moments intended to recall classic horror movies, like the beginning scene in the cemetery echoes the grave robbers at the beginning of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. Jason’s revival from the dead courtesy lightning also recalls Frankenstein’s Monster.

“I set up a lot of visual gags,” McLoughlin said in the book “A Strange Idea of Entertainment — Conversations with Tom McLoughlin.” “Like when my wife Nancy is killed by Jason. She tries to bribe him, offering him her wallet to keep him from killing her. She’s got money and a credit card in her wallet, and when Jason kills her in this giant mud puddle, the money sinks and the American Express card floats. I held on that shot for a few extra beats because I knew there would always be some joker in the theater that would yell, ‘Don’t leave home without it!’ And someone always did.”

McLoughlin’s background proved to have a strange influence on Jason Voorhees.

“I was recently interviewed about it, and someone said, ‘Your Jason seemed to be much more communicative,’” McLoughlin said. “I said, ‘That’s because I was dealing with a mime character.’ When he sees the motor home bouncing up and down because a couple are having sex in there, Jason just stands there and stares, with his head tilting back and forth — like a dog trying to figure out what’s going on. It got a big laugh. I wasn’t making fun of Jason … I just figured he would be processing what was going on in that motor home. Whenever I find a way to put my mime training to use in storytelling, I do it.”

Marcel Marceau influenced Jason Voorhees. Makes perfect sense to me.

McLoughlin sang in a rock band before he went to Paris to study mime under Marceau. Back in the States, several years later, McLoughlin had a part as the mutant bear monster in the 1979 horror film PROPHECY directed by John (MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) Frankenheimer. All these experiences seemingly fed McLoughlin more insight into Jason than any other director.

Alice Cooper provided three songs for JASON LIVES: “Teenage Frankenstein,” “Hard Rock Summer,” and “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask).” Unfortunately, they are not classic Alice Cooper songs, a la the four-album period from “I Love It to Death” through “Billion Dollar Babies” when the band cranked out some of the greatest hard rock ever made, but I still enjoy “He’s Back.” SCREAM later made great use of the Alice classic “School’s Out.”

Speaking of SCREAM, apparently screenwriter Kevin Williamson wanted McLoughlin to direct his hot commodity screenplay, before the project ended up with Wes Craven. Williamson told McLoughlin that JASON LIVES and its humor made a huge impact on Williamson during his youth, so much so that it served as one of the inspirational springboards for SCREAM.

There’s a James Bond gun barrel sequence parody, dialogue that breaks the proverbial fourth wall, a camper reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play “No Exit,” a camper praying to God for the first (and only) time in the series, and even Jason surprised at his own astonishing strength. Also, for the first and only time in the series, young campers are in attendance at Camp Forest Green, er, Camp Crystal Lake.

“I’ve seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly” and “Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment” are lines that display how JASON LIVES influenced SCREAM.

The young children, who Jason does not harm, have their moments, as well, especially when one boy asks his little friend, “So, what were you gonna be when you grew up?”

All these words so far and I have not even mentioned protagonist Tommy Jarvis, who figured in THE FINAL CHAPTER, A NEW BEGINNING, and JASON LIVES. He’s responsible for reviving Jason in the opening sequence and Tommy even makes sure to bring that infamous hockey mask with him. Originally, it had been planned for Tommy to become the antagonist, but it was the extremely negative reaction to A NEW BEGINNING and its non-Jason killer which truly brought Jason back from the dead. Tommy never panned out like he should have and part of the problem is that he’s played by three different actors, Corey Feldman (THE FINAL CHAPTER), John Shepherd (A NEW BEGINNING), and Thom Mathews (JASON LIVES).

Anyway, definitely by this point in the series, Jason became the focus of attention and the antihero extraordinaire of the late ‘80s. Dan Bradley played Jason in the paintball massacre sequence, but former soldier C.J. Graham handled the rest of the duties. He’s a lot more interesting than Tommy Jarvis. That’s why the series moved forward with Jason (Kane Hodder the man behind the mask for four more sequels) and without Tommy Jarvis.