Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
| Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan | |
|---|---|
 Original Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Rob Hedden |
| Produced by | Randy Cheveldave Barbara Sachs |
| Written by | Rob Hedden |
| Starring | Jensen Daggett Scott Reeves Barbara Bingham Peter Mark Richman Kane Hodder |
| Music by | Fred Mollin |
| Cinematography | Bryan England |
| Editing by | Steve Mirkovich |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 28, 1989 |
| Running time | 100 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5,000,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $14,343,976 (domestic) |
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is a slasher film released on July 28, 1989. It is the eighth film in the Friday the 13th film series, and deals with Jason Voorhees stalking a group of high school graduates on a ship en route to (and later in) New York City,It was the last film in the series to have been distributed by Paramount Pictures in the United States (the 2009 reboot of the first film was distributed by Paramount in non-US countries). The film's tagline is, "New York has a new problem." It took in just $14.3 million at the domestic box office, making it the lowest-grossing film in the series.
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[edit] Plot
One year after the conclusion of the last film, a boat's anchor hits an underwater power line cable, causing a short circuit at the bottom of Crystal Lake, the undead serial killer Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is resurrected once again. He immediately finds the boat's occupants, a high school couple named Jim Miller (Todd Shaffer) and Suzie Donaldson (Tiffany Paulsen), having sex. Obtaining a new hockey mask from the boat (which Jim had previously used to scare Suzie), he kills Jim with the barrel of a harpoon gun. Suzie attempts to hide in a storage hatch, but Jason discovers her and jams the harpoon into her chest.
The next morning, the SS Lazarus, containing the senior class of Lakeview High, is bound for nearby New York City for the school's graduation. The trip is chaperoned by Colleen Van Deusen (Barbara Bingham) and biology teacher Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman), who has also brought along his niece, Rennie (Jensen Daggett). Before the ship sets sail, Jason grabs a hold of the ship's anchor and climbs aboard. As the night continues on, Rennie keeps having visions of Jason as a child (Timothy Burr Mirkovich) when he drowned. Jason then starts murdering the people on board, starting with a wannabe rock star named J.J. (Saffron Henderson), whom he kills by bashing her head with her own electric guitar. He then ambushes a young boxer in a sauna and hits him with a sauna rock in his chest. Tamara Mason (Sharlene Martin) goes to take a shower. Jason breaks through the door and strips Tamara, leaving her completely naked. She begs for mercy and tries to hide her nakedness with a bathroom towel as Jason shatters the bathroom mirror and impales her with a broken glass shard. Her dead body is later discovered lying on the floor.
Jason then kills the captain of the Lazarus, Admiral Robertson (Warren Munson) and the chief engineer Jim Carlson (Fred Henderson), leaving the two chaperones, Rennie, and the remaining students to try to track down and kill Jason. They fail, after Jason strangles one of the female students, Eva Watanabe (Kelly Hu), on a dance floor, then throws one boy, Miles Wolfe (Gordon Currie), over the captain's quarters and onto the deck post. However, Wayne's death, after accidentaly killing a passenger, involving being thrown into a control panel, causes a fire, burning the fuel tanks, and blowing a hole in the ship's hull. Jason then comes extremely close to killing Rennie by almost choking her to death. She then manages to stick a pen up his left eye. Then Charles, Rennie, Colleen, two other students, Julius (V. C. Dupree) and the captain's son, Sean Robertson (Scott Reeves), and Rennie's dog, Toby (Ace), abandon the ship in a row boat but not before finding the deckhand dead.
As the group continues to row to safety, they finally arrive in New York City. However, Jason has followed them there. The group is almost immediately mugged by two gang-bangers who take Rennie and chase off Toby. Charles suggests the group split up to find help. Meanwhile, the gang-bangers take Rennie to their hideout and forcibly inject her with heroin. Jason then shows up and stabs one with the discarded needle and bashes the other one's face into a pipe. Julius finds a phone and tries to call for help and is immediately attacked by Jason who chases him onto a rooftop. Julius then punches Jason over and over again until he is exhausted. Jason then decapitates Julius with a single punch with his head falling into a nearby dumpster. Colleen is walking around looking for help when she runs into Charles and a cop (Roger Barnes) who also run into Rennie and Sean. The cop puts them all in the back of his car and they see Julius's head in the front. Jason kills the cop and Rennie gets in the front seat and runs him over. She sees a hallucination of a young Jason and tries to run it over and smashes into a brick wall which causes the car to explode. Colleen is killed in the explosion as she was still in the car. Rennie has a flashback to an event from her early childhood where she was learning how to swim in Crystal Lake and was almost killed by a young drowned Jason, looking as he did in the original Friday the 13th. She remembers that Charles was the one who pushed her into the water in the first place trying to get her to swim. Her and Sean run from Charles leaving him alone. Jason soon attacks him and Charles is dunked in a barrel of sewage. Rennie tells Sean that her parents were killed in a car crash when she was young leaving her in the care of Charles. Jason shows up making Sean and Rennie run for their lives.
The infuriated Jason is now on the warpath. Rennie and Sean run onto the New York Subway system but are trapped by Jason. Sean pulls the emergency brake and the two escape followed by Jason. Sean tackles Jason and Jason is electrocuted by the ground wires seemingly killing him. The two leave the subway and come up into Times Square where Jason, still alive, follows. The two run from Jason. Jason disturbs four punks while chasing them who want to fight him, but Jason merely lifts up his mask to show them his face and they flee. Rennie and Sean run into a diner but are forced to run when Jason crashes through a wall to get to them. They run onto the sewers of Manhattan, where Jason follows and kills a sanitation worker (David Longworth). Rennie attacks Jason with toxic waste. Much of his body melts; all that is left is a young boy lying at the bottom of the sewer. Rennie and Sean reunite with Toby on the streets above.
[edit] Cast
- Jensen Daggett as Rennie Wickham
- Scott Reeves as Sean Robertson
- Barbara Bingham as Colleen Van Deusen
- Peter Mark Richman as Charles McCulloch
- Martin Cummins as Wayne Webber
- Gordon Currie as Miles Wolfe
- V. C. Dupree as Julius Gaw
- Kelly Hu as Eva Watanabe
- Saffron Henderson as J.J. Jarrett
- Sharlene Martin as Tamara Mason
- Alex Diakun as Deck hand
- Warren Munson as Admiral Robertson
- Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees
- Amber Pawlick as young Rennie Wickham
- Ace as Toby
[edit] Box office
The film opened in 1,683 theaters making $6.2 million its opening weekend. Domestically, the film made only $14.3 million, making it the lowest-grossing Friday the 13th movie.
[edit] Reception
On his commentary track for the film in the box set, director Rob Hedden acknowledges the faults and even agrees that more of the film should have been set in Manhattan, citing budgetary and schedule problems. The film failed to generate a substantial amount of money at the box office, which continued the decline in grosses the series had been suffering, and Paramount sold the franchise to New Line Cinema soon afterward, and they would later distribute the 2009 reboot together. Rotten Tomatoes details that only 10% of the critics who reviewed the film gave it positive reviews, making it the poorest-received film of the series. It holds an average score of 3.9/10. Entertainment Weekly labeled it the eighth-worst sequel ever made.[1]
Part of the film's appeal was the idea of setting Jason, a psychopathic killer, loose in 1980s New York, which was both crime-ridden and noted for its colorful method of deterioration (e.g. the garish nature of Times Square, complete with streetwalkers and drug dealers openly selling their wares, and graffiti, gangs, and homeless panhandlers contributing to the anti-social nature of the city). This notion was the idea of Jason both fitting right in in Manhattan and also a bit of Paul Kersey/Death Wish desire for a killer to cleanse New York of its crime. However, as reviews made clear, 90% of the film does not take place anywhere in Manhattan, and Jason's few interactions in Manhattan are limited to cast members from Crystal Lake and a few shots of docks and sewers.
[edit] Soundtrack
On September 27, 2005, BSX records released a limited edition CD of Fred Mollin's Friday the 13th Part VII and VIII scores.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made
- ^ "Friday the 13th Part 7 and 8 - Original Score By Fred Mollin". BuySoundtrax.com. http://buysoundtrax.stores.yahoo.net/frid13par7an.html. Retrieved 2012-01-15.
[edit] External links
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan at the Internet Movie Database
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan at AllRovi
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan at Rotten Tomatoes
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan at Box Office Mojo
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