Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

 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.

Friday The 13th (2009)

This is something I wrote back in '09, but I've always liked this review so I'm re-posting it for the F13th fans who might care...

Before I even delve into this review I need to preface it by making one thing perfectly clear: I have a tremendous bias at play here. The Friday the 13th series was my Star Wars when I was growing up. I watched The Final Chapter on a seemingly endless loop. I used to sneak late night viewings of the series on USA long after my parents had tucked me into bed. I bought every single VHS tape and wore them out from continuous play (except for A New Beginning, I always hated fake Jason). I went into this remake with a mix of excitement and trepidation. On the one hand, I was happy to see all the love Jason has been getting lately. There is something awesome about seeing Jason pop up all over the place again – on subway posters, billboards, websites, magazine covers… it’s so refreshing to see my childhood icon being re-introduced to a new generation that missed the original series. Then again, on the other hand, I was worried Jason would be dropped into a 21st century flick that couldn’t do his legacy justice. This is, after all, Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay ’s production company, at the helm. Marcus Nispel, he of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake fame, would be directing. I was concerned since the Chainsaw remake failed to hold up after successive viewings, and I couldn’t stomach seeing the same fate for Friday the 13th. As luck would have it, it didn’t turn out quite as bad as it could have, although it also wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.


Do I really even need to provide any kind of plot synopsis for a Friday film? Attractive 20-somethings head out to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of sex, drugs and unexpected death. That’s really the long and short of it. The only addition to that most tried-and-true of plots is that there’s a guy (Jared Padalecki) who’s also headed out to Camp Crystal Lake to look for his missing sister, one of the film’s female leads (Amanda Righetti) from the fantastic pre-title sequence.


While it’s true that all the right elements of a Friday film are here, this certainly isn’t the series I grew up on. First and foremost, let’s discuss just how Jason has evolved over the last 30 years. For those not in the know, and there are surprisingly many of you, Jason isn’t really in the original Friday the 13th. Aside from a seat-jumping cameo during that film’s final 12 seconds, he was just there to provide the impetus needed to get Mrs. Voorhees’ blood boiling. The Jason of Parts 2-4 was a lean, forest-dweller who lived in a ramshackle cabin deep in the woods and hunted anyone unfortunate enough to enter the camp grounds. He was a mongoloid, but he had intelligence enough to eke out a meager living in the woods. After he was (seemingly) killed for good in The Final Chapter, A New Beginning resurrected “the legend” of Jason Voorhees and pissed off fans were bummed to find out that the film’s slasher was merely an imposter posing as the real Jason. Jason Lives brought back the real Jason, only now he was an indestructible zombie. Regardless of the liberties they took with him, that film, along with The New Blood, were plenty of fun to watch. Jason Takes Manhattan turned him into a goddamn teleporter. I shit you not. Jason Goes to Hell, aside from about 10 minutes at the beginning and end where we see he’s a fat, mutated demon-thing, doesn’t even have him in the film. Jason X finally took him to the only place he hadn’t gone: outer space. And you know what? It was way more fun than it had any right to be. Then horror’s two leading icons finally got the match-up everyone had been waiting for, the only problem was that Freddy vs. Jason (for the most part) sucked.


Jason in 2009’s remake is a much different beast than we’ve all become accustomed to. It isn’t really made clear whether he survived his apparent drowning as a child, or if he did indeed come back from a watery grave to exact revenge, but the film establishes that he’s been living comfortably by himself in the woods of Crystal Lake for some time. Hell, even the local residents seem to know he’s out there, killing lots of people, but they’d rather just leave him be than call the police (?!?). Also, we get two different flavors of Voorhees in one film. Sackhead Jason hangs around for the first third of the film until he finds his iconic hockey mask and chooses to don it for the remainder of the flick. And despite what the writers have said, there is nothing remotely cool about how he gets the mask. Considering his acquiring the mask in part 3 worked well in relation to the story, the way he does so here just seems way too convenient. Now, here is the area where I have the most issue: Jason is too intelligent in this film. He sets booby traps, has a rigged up lighting and security system, uses wounded victims as bait to lure others and, most confounding, he’s managed to dig a series of tunnels around Crystal Lake. I kept waiting for him to take off his mask to reveal Bob Vila has been behind it all. I can accept that Jason is a skilled marksman with a bow-and-arrow, as we learn in a typically grisly manner, and it’s a series fact he’s good with throwing knives and various weaponry. But the writers here are giving Jason a little too much credit in the brain department. He’s like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, just with a machete. He’s big, he’s dumb and he plays rough.


Another staple of the series that got the short shrift here are the kills. There are a few that are memorable here, but there are a couple others that just seemed extremely lazy. The worst offender of all is when Jason suffocates someone before impaling them on a clothes hook. Suffocation? Really? People have watched the F13th film for years for 3 reasons: the sex, the drugs and the kills. When you’re lacking in originality for a film like this, as a fan, I have to wonder why. Also, despite the filmmakers touting just how grisly this entry is, I was under whelmed by the level of gore on display. I don’t need an ultra bloody film necessarily, but when you’re going all over town talking about how graphic your film is then it should at least live up to that hype. I’ll cut Jason a break on this one, since it’s his first big new outing and all, but I expect them to ratchet up on the kill creativity when the sequel hits.


The cast here is, surprisingly, not nearly as bad as I expected. I didn’t recognize anyone, aside from The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond star Nick Menell, but they all did slightly better than I anticipated. Jared Padalecki plays Clay, the guy searching Crystal Lake for his missing sister. Aside from looking very serious the entire time I thought he did well. Hell, even Trent , the pole-smoking douchebag whose parents own the cabin, was good in his respective role. I think I most enjoyed Arlen Escarpeta as Lawrence, the film’s token (and majorly tokin’) Black Guy. We all know the fate of the Black Guy in a horror film, but Lawrence does better than most and the audience was definitely rooting for him.


I’ll admit that much of my initial hesitation to this remake was due to the choice of writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. This is the same duo responsible for Freddy vs. Jason, one of the worst entries for both respective series and featuring some of the most poorly written characters and dialogue of any film in either. To say Friday the 13th is a marked improvement would be a fair statement. Some of the dialogue here is actually smart and there is some wit to their lines for once. While I have stated that I don’t like some of the liberties they took with Jason as a character, they still retained some of his trademark qualities and did make some minor improvements to his behavior. I hate to say this is a complaint, but they should have given us some more time to get to know the characters for who they are. Shannon and Swift seemed to be so concerned with reminding us that the series loves sex and drugs that almost every other scene features one or the other. I love a good smoke session or cheesy sex scene on screen as much as any Friday fan, but after a certain point you wonder if these people know how to do anything else.


Other than my concerns over changing Jason, my main gripe is with the music. Harry Manfredini created a legendary score for the series. His work on the first 4 films is a large part of what made them so endlessly re-watchable. The film retained many of its distinctive cues throughout all the entries, so to have someone new come in and completely blow all of that out was unfortunate. Steve Jablonsky, a longtime collaborator on Michael Bay films, comes aboard to provide a pounding jungle beat score that didn’t match the film on display. For one, his work sounds so reminiscent of Tyler Bates (Halloween ’07, 300, The Devil’s Rejects) that until I read his credit I was convinced this was Tyler Bates. I don’t need a bombastic track that makes me think Jason is going to break out glow sticks and starting popping dance moves in the woods at any moment. Jablonsky not only produced a lackluster score, but he also elects to go for cheap scares by tossing in stingers intended to make people jump at red herrings. That, in my opinion, is the lowest form of terror in a theater.


I had no problems with director Marcus Nispel. He wisely chose to use famed cinematographer Daniel Pearl (Texas Chainsaw Massacre ’74 and ’03), so the film looks absolutely gorgeous. Seriously, this is easily the best looking Friday the 13th film ever. The lighting is awesome, the location shots are awesome; everything looks really great. The film’s look will undoubtedly be compared to the Texas Chainsaw remake, since they do look similar, but overall this film maintains a better atmosphere and will no doubt hold up far better than that film does now. I think it’s also important to mention that the film doesn’t rely on that frenzied, quick-cutting style that so many filmmakers are fond of these days. The action is fast-paced, but the shots are broad and simplistic in their framing. You get a good feel for what’s going on without having to risk getting a headache following the carnage.


I think that’s probably more than enough information to form an opinion on whether or not you should see this movie. I want people to see it because I love the smell of Jason in the air, and the more money this one makes the more likely we are to keep getting sequels. I could argue that we have enough Halloween, Nightmare on Elm St. and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films that more don’t need to be made, but Jason obviously has a special place in my demented heart. I need to see the film a few more times to really let it all sink in… Not because it’s some deep Lynch-ian existential thinker, but because I need to see this Jason in action more to determine his rank among the others. Bottom line: this is a cool flick that probably won’t live up to the lofty expectation of hardcore Jason nerds, but as a horror film its far better than most of the detritus we’re treated to each year.