You may be asking yourself, "Why, of all the films in the legendary Friday the 13th franchise, would this jackass pick one of the most reviled?" And you'd be right to do so. But hear me out. I am a product of 1981, and on this film's release date - Friday, August 13th, 1993 - I was a mere 11 years of age. By that point, however, I'd drunk in every tale of Jason Voorhees on a nearly obsessive level. My favorite film has always been Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). Most fans of the series would be likely to agree with me since it is arguably the best one, but I also had to good fortune to have seen it when I was really young. And it scared the fucking shit out of me. Once that dread wore off, and I attained my Horror Fanboy Badge of Desensitization, I rabidly consumed every film I could get my little hands on. This wasn't terribly easy back in the analog age, though. I had to resort to sneaking rentals of the series on VHS down at the local Wherehouse (god, I miss that place), where my Dad would distract my Mom long enough to let me get what I came for. Or, barring that, I'd have to make due with whatever hacked-up version was showing on cable late at night. Point being, I had to be crafty and sly if I wanted to get my fix.
Which leads me to Jason Goes To Hell. I only have vague recollections of seeing ads for the film. I'm not even 100% sure if I caught a trailer anywhere, but that hot-as-shit poster spoke to me. It told me to get my Jason-lovin' ass into a theater. The problem was that MY parents wouldn't take 11-year-old me to see R-rated Jason. But my friend Donny's parents were more than happy to oblige.And so, thanks to their own brand of lax parenting, I was able to finally see my first Friday the 13th flick in a theater.
And that's the problem.
I'm sure all of us have movies near and dear to us that, in a more objective setting, would be rightly torn to shreds by critics and fans alike. Hell, you'd probably join right in. But you can't. Because you watched that damn movie when you were still young enough not to know any better. And it wound up sticking with you. Chances are you have many of these films in your roster.
For better or worse, JGTH is one of those for me. I just barely understood how much it sucked in my adolescent mind. For starters, that fucking poster. That thing was an eye-catching, demonically fiery slice of horror ephemera that could have convinced any Friday fan to see the movie. Jason's mask, now all chromed-out and looking rather spiffy, with some weird snake/worm/baby graboid demon thing slithering out of it, presented in front of a wall of flame. Sounds bitchin', no? Except none of that is in there. Sure, there's some shitty little creature that is probably supposed to be the thing on the poster, but where's that damn mask? I was hoping that Jason, now without a mask thanks to his toxic sludge bath in the Big Apple, would manage to find himself with the mask he's always deserved. You know, like how Leatherface earned that fucking magnificent chainsaw in Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990). Freddy even got an updated glove (which, frankly, was totally overdone and ridiculous) in Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). [Side note: I took a group of friends to see that film at the Fashion Island cinema in Newport - this would've been my 13th birthday - and I hated it then; still hate it now. I just don't get why anyone would give it a pass. Have you seen Bob Shaye's acting? My god...]
So Jason doesn't get his mask we were (sort of) promised. The film also neglects to mention how ol' sackhead got back to Crystal Lake from the sewers of Manhattan. I realize canon elements such as this aren't all that important. We fans just want him to get back to doing his day job, regardless of however the current filmmakers want to get him there. I thought it would've been cool to pull a reverse of his exit from Crystal Lake as used in the Jason vs. Leatherface comic (which features insanely killer covers from Simon Bisley), where a submerged Voorhees is scooped up by a waste company cleaning up the lake and dropped into a barrel, which is then loaded onto a train out of town. Here, they could've had Jason barreled up as part of someone dumping NYC's toxic waste, at which point he'd be "disposed of" in Crystal Lake and - BAM! - he's back. See, easy.
Anyway, I was shocked when the extremely stereotypical (even for a F13th film) opening turned into... the FBI blowing him up? Uh, isn't this supposed to happen before the end credits, guys? I came to see Jason, and 7 minutes later he's a side of smoked brisket. Great. You know the rest... coroner eats his black heart, dude starts spewing up blood and moaning like the shark in Jaws: The Revenge, he's now possessed by Jason. Spew and repeat a few more times until we finally get the big guy back in the picture with a whopping 11 minutes left in the film. Whereupon he gets his ass kicked by the least-convincing tough guy lead (John D. LeMay) I've probably ever seen. And then he goes to hell. And then Kane Hodder's arm, playing the role of Freddy Krueger, snatches his mask.
Once it was over, I had that sinking pit of disappointment in my stomach. That same feeling I got after my first viewing of Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning, when I learned an EMT had been playing Jason Fauxhees the entire time. I felt cheated. Clearly, with the film's tried-and-true formula more worn than Jason himself, the filmmakers wanted to do something noble and inject fresh life into the decaying series. They obviously forgot this is often met with extreme fanboy hostility. At least screenwriter Dean Lorey will admit they may have been wrong. He penned a great read on the film's production history that all fans should read - check it out here. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and director Adam Marcus' film is now seen as one of the worst Crystal Lake has to offer.
So why the hell do I like it? More than anything: it takes me back to a happy place and time. It reminds me of the people I saw it with, the now-long gone theater I saw it at (the old El Toro 1-2-3/4-5-6!), and a time in my life when new horror - regardless of probable quality - genuinely excited me. The cockamamie mythology retroactively ascribed to the Voorhees family is embarrassingly horrid. There's a Voorhees mansion. Jason is actually some kind of sperm-y red demon thing that can only be killed by a Voorhees. He's got a sister that never received a mention until now. Evil Dead's Necronomicon is curiously - and conspicuously - placed in one of the main rooms. They have to use a... magic... dagger... to kill him. Christ, typing this out, it all sounds so cliche and callow. Magic dagger? You gotta be fuckin' kidding me...
There's at least some good gore. You wouldn't have seen it in the theatrical cut, but once the 4-minutes-longer director's cut was released on home video there was a noticeable amount of crimson glory restored. The most glaring omission to Jason's body count - wait, does it still count as Jason if it's just a guy possessed by Jason? God, that sounds so stupid... - was the infamous tent spike sex scene bifurcation. In a somewhat ironic twist, that scene never existed before the film started test screenings. Audiences complained there wasn't enough of the expected teen sex and drug use the series was known for, so they added in a scene where Stephen picks up a trio of hitchhikers and drops them off by the lake. He declines an invite to stay with the single cute blonde, they all die. And the one who gets it the worst - a girl just about to enjoy a post-orgasm decompression - gets spiked through the chest and viciously torn in half. It's one of the goriest, nastiest deaths in the series. That might not have been true if the MPAA hadn't torn most of Jason's adventures in the '80s to pieces, but they did.
I also have a bit of a soft spot for Harry Manfredini's score. After eight films of the same ki-ki-ki/ma-ma-ma and overused cues, JGTH shook up the compositions to produce something that works quite well in the context of the film. I'd love to have a copy of the score for myself, so I can hear how it plays without the aid of a film overlaid. Manfredini, oddly enough, turned in his worst score for the next installment, Jason X, which is just atrocious. I don't know what the hell happened, but whatever sound he was going for there he failed epically in achieving. Or maybe he succeeded and I just hate it.
Despite the film clearly blowing chunks, I can still watch it whenever it's on. Maybe I'm a bit of a masochist, maybe I'm too nostalgic for crappy things. It's never one of my go-to films in the series, that's for sure. But there's just something there, for me. I find a certain comfort in watching it, and it isn't half bad if you can view it and pretend it isn't really a Friday film, which is fairly easy since you almost never see Jason. Of course, when you're viewing anything through an old set of rose-tinted lenses there's bound to be some elevation to the material.
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