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Synopsis:
A young woman (Julie Michaels) makes her way to a deserted cottage
by the shores of Crystal Lake. She is preparing to take a bath when
suddenly, the lights go out. The woman is investigating when she
hears a strange noise. The next instant she is fleeing from her life
from Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder). The desperate chase leads through
the surrounding woods – and into a clearing ringed by light towers.
As the lights come on, the woman dives for cover; and a team of FBI
agents breaks cover and opens fire upon Jason, before launching a
mortar attack that blows him literally to pieces. The agents
celebrate, the young woman – FBI Agent Marcus – is congratulated;
but the bounty hunter Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), watching
secretly from a distance, shakes his head sceptically.... What is
left of Jason is shipped to a Federal morgue in Ohio for autopsy. As
the coroner (Richard Gant) examines Jason’s heart, it begins to
beat. Overcome by an uncontrollable compulsion, the coroner picks up
the heart – and devours it. Strange glowing lights fly out from
Jason’s remains, and into the body of the coroner.... The TV program
“American Case File” does a profile on Jason. The host, Robert
Campbell (Steven Culp), goes on to play an interview with Creighton
Duke, who insists that what we think of as Jason is nothing of the
kind, but rather an entity capable of borrowing bodies and wearing
them “like a suit”. Duke then offers to kill Jason once and for all
for $500,000; an offer that Campbell takes up. One of the viewers of
“American Case File” is a resident of the town of Crystal Lake
called Diana Kimble (Erin Gray). As Diana returns to her job at the
local diner, she finds that her first customer is Creighton Duke
himself. Duke tells Diana that the supposedly dead Jason is on his
way to Crystal Lake and that he will be looking for her,
adding, “I know who you are.” Diana approaches Steven Freeman (John
D. LeMay), who is the ex-boyfriend of Diana’s daughter, Jessica
(Kari Keegan), and the father of her baby. Diana tells Steven that
there is something about Jessica that he doesn’t know, and begs him
to meet her at her house that night so that they can talk. On his
way to Diana’s, Steven picks up three hitch-hikers who are
celebrating Jason’s supposed death by camping out at Crystal Lake.
One of the three, an attractive young girl, propositions Steven, but
he – not unregretfully – declines. After swimming in the lake, the
three settle down for the night, the couple in the tent and the
single girl outside by the fire – but they are not alone.... In the
diner car park, the deputy sheriff, Josh (Andrew Bloch), and his
girlfriend are suddenly confronted by the coroner from the morgue in
Ohio.... At home, Diana gets a phone-call from Jessica, who tells
her excitedly that she is coming for a visit and bringing her new
boyfriend – Robert Campbell. Suddenly, Diana is grabbed by Josh. As
they struggle, Diana catches a glimpse of the two of them in a
mirror, staring in horror not at Josh’s reflection – but at that of
Jason Voorhees....
Comments:
There is a certain perversity in the belated return of Sean S.
Cunningham to the Friday The 13th fold following
the comparative failure of Jason Takes Manhattan – as indeed
there is in the ninth film’s tagline: “The creator of the first
returns to bring you the last!” When Cunningham re-claimed the
franchise rights from Paramount Studios, what he bought and
subsequently sold to New Line Cinema was not, in fact, the title “Friday
The 13th” – Paramount held onto that – but the rights
to the character of Jason Voorhees. The irony here, of course, is
that Cunningham’s only previous direct involvement in the
long-running series was as producer-director of the original
Friday The 13th: a film that has less of
Jason Voorhees in it than anything except A New Beginning –
and if we accept Tommy Jarvis’s hallucinations there as being of the
“real” Jason, possibly not even than that. Cunningham’s lack of
connection with the horror icon who had unexpectedly hijacked his
creation should, perhaps, have been seen by the hard-core fans as a
cause, not for celebration, but for apprehension. By the time that
Jason Goes To Hell was finally released in August of 1993,
the public had already been promised (or warned of) a shake-up of
the by-then venerable franchise. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that
anyone could really have anticipated the extent of that shake-up, or
the form that it would take. In fact, so drastically different is
Jason Goes To Hell from its predecessors that for the first time
in my lengthy consideration of the life and times of Jason Voorhees,
I am compelled to respond to one of these films with a formal review
and not merely a recapitulation.
Remember, kids: unsafe sex kills.
In doing so, I
might as well cut to the chase: in Jason Goes To Hell we
learn that Jason Voorhees doesn’t actually exist; that the “Jason”
with whom we have lived and died and suffered throughout the
previous seven movies is a dead body animated by a supernatural,
slug-like entity capable of continued survival by moving from body
to body as the fate of its latest host requires it, the transmission
being accomplished by mouth-to-mouth contact between host and
victim.
I should, I think,
pause here for a moment to explain clearly my own feelings towards
the Friday The 13th series. Although my journey
from Friday The 13th to Jason Takes Manhattan
has been a long and often arduous one, on the whole I’ve enjoyed it
– or at least, not been sorry to have made it. I have, at various
times, been amused, grossed out, exasperated, bored, mystified,
angered and, yes, even entertained by these films. For all that, I
cannot in all honesty say that I have any true emotional involvement
with them. There are plenty of people who do, however; who have
loved and supported this franchise from its inception; and for them,
Jason Goes To Hell must have been like a slap in the face
with a hunk of rotting meat. Make no mistake: that this film is a
shameless rip-off of The Hidden is the least of its sins.
There is not a single aspect of the pre-existing Jason mythos that
this film does not re-write, re-invent, contradict, or simply
ignore. As a Friday The 13th film, Jason Goes
To Hell is a disgrace.
However – you just
knew there was going to be a “however”, didn’t you? – however,
if Jason Goes To Hell is judged, not as a Friday
The 13th film, but simply as a horror film, it is a
work with a surprising number of virtues. For example---- Well,
imagine if you can my astonishment when all of a sudden I realised
that I was watching a Friday The 13th film –
for the story and characters....!
(Before I go any
further, I should explain which version of this film it is that I’m
discussing. I’ve seen a number of reviews of Jason Goes To Hell
that, while despising the film on the whole, forgive it, or at least
give it points, for the quality of its gore and its sex scene. As it
happens, however, the print released here was the cut version, which
is missing most of both – in particular, the moment in which the sex
scene turns into a gore scene. So unfortunately, I am unable to
judge the film on that basis, either pro or con. [And to add insult
to injury, the print is pan and scan – grr!])
The opening of
Jason Goes To Hell is – certainly with hindsight – extremely
clever. A young woman drives to Crystal Lake and takes up residence
in a solitary cabin. After some false scares involving lights going
out and doors slamming, the woman strips off to take a bath. Ah! we
think appreciatively. Gratuitous nudity in the opening sequence!
This is more like it! Better yet, the woman hears a strange
noise, wraps herself in a towel – one of that magical Nev-R-Budge
variety always to be found in motion pictures – and goes to
investigate. The next instant, that gallant towel clinging to her
tenaciously, she is fleeing for her life through the woods, Jason
Voorhees and his machete in hot pursuit. So far, it is all the
F13 movies distilled to their very essence.
"Thirty-Second Theatre
presents....the first eight Friday The 13th films!"
The film then
proceeds to throw us its first curveball: the chase leads through a
clearing ringed with light towers; the woman dives for cover; Jason
freezes in bewilderment as the lights come on; and from all around
him FBI agents open fire. This barrage culminates in a mortar attack
(!!), and Jason is blown to pieces.
The presence here
of the FBI task-force acts as a segue into what I personally think
is the strongest and most enjoyable aspect of Jason Goes To Hell.
In a move that was perhaps the contribution of Sean Cunningham, this
is the first film in the franchise since Friday The 13th
itself to posit a Crystal Lake that is not merely a lake, but a
town; a community; a community that has lived and suffered
with the reality of Jason Voorhees for “almost twenty years”. I’ve
long argued that supernatural horror must be given a real-world
grounding to be truly effective, and in delineating the various
responses of the local population to the existence of Jason Voorhees
and to his supposed destruction, the screenplay has a substance that
its forerunners were entirely lacking. This change in direction
is particularly welcome when you contrast the ridiculous opening
to Jason Takes Manhattan, where a girl – who lives near
Crystal Lake – still has to be told about “the legend of Jason
Voorhees”! Here, conversely, we are given a Jason whose existence is
a very grim reality – and one, moreover, whose modus operandi
and personal obsessions are so well known, the FBI can use one of
their own to bait an irresistible trap for him.
Another thing that
Jason Goes To Hell has in its favour is its rather black
sense of humour. Thus, while some of the residents of Crystal Lake
react to Jason’s supposed death with relief tinged with the dread of
being offered – again – false hope, others see the occasion
as an opportunity to make a little money. The sign over the entrance
to the diner where we will spend a fair portion of the film
advertises a “JASON IS DEAD 2-FOR-1 BURGER DEAL”. (The meat removed
to make one hockey mask-shaped patty, explains diner owner Joey B to
her admiring family, makes up the “free” second patty.) “People
are going to come to see Jason’s home town,” insists Joey B when
her employees protest this crass exploitation of the local tragedy,
and of course she’s right. The first to do so is Creighton Duke
himself who, after studying the menu, orders, “A Voorhees burger and
a side of Jason fingers.” More visitors arrive in the shape of the
three hitch-hikers, who plan to celebrate Jason’s demise by camping
out by Crystal Lake in new-found safety. Hearing of their
destination, Steven, who picks them up, responds cheerfully,
“Planning on smoking a little dope, having a little pre-marital sex,
and getting slaughtered?” – apologising, when he sees the kids’
dismayed expressions, for his “Crystal Lake levity.” This range of
reaction – hope, fear, opportunism and sick jokes – is entirely
credible.
Life and death in the land of
free enterprise
The biggest
surprise of Jason Goes To Hell, however, is how well it works
as the story of Steven Freeman. At first glance we hardly recognise
Steven as our central character, still less as someone who can
justly be described as the hero. Rather, he strikes us as a
bit of a jerk, whose immaturity and irresponsibility have led him to
walk out on Jessica Kimble during, perhaps because of, her
pregnancy. (The fact that Steven’s misdemeanours are all off-camera,
and his good actions on, helps retain audience sympathy.) But time
and reflection have brought regret; and the film tips its hand with
regard to Steven when, having dropped the hitch-hikers at Camp
Crystal Lake, he declines an offer of casual sex. Oh, he’s tempted;
but he’s also on his way towards what he hopes is a reconciliation
with Jessica, and that keeps him on track. (Of course, we
know, even if Steven doesn’t, that if he’d succumbed here he would
have lost a great deal more than his chance to patch things up with
his ex.) Arriving at Diana’s house, where he is to hear “something
important” about Jessica, Steven sees Diana being murdered by Jason
in his Deputy Josh incarnation – and after the shot, impaled and
pushed through a window Josh has up and run away, Steven is caught
with Diana’s body and promptly arrested. His cell happens to be that
next to Creighton Duke’s (we never do find out what he was
arrested for), and in this way he learns – after proving his
physical courage in a sequence painful even to watch – that Jason
has come back to Crystal Lake in murderous quest of Jessica and her
daughter. This prompts Steven to stage a jailbreak and to risk his
life in a desperate bid to save the girl he dumped and the baby he
has never seen, ultimately being rewarded with the re-won trust and
love of Jessica. The “estranged couple reuniting during a crisis”
trope is, broadly speaking, one of the most annoyingly overused
conventions of the modern horror film, but here it actually works,
with Steven and Jessica joining forces to take on Jason and to
protect their child.
The screenplay of
Jason Goes To Hell scores major points with its recognition
that this is a small town where everyone knows everyone, and knows
them well. Thus, despite the strength of the circumstantial evidence
against him, hardly anyone really believes that Steven has
murdered Diana Kimble. (The exceptions are Sheriff Landis, who was
Diana’s boyfriend and is too grief-stricken to be objective, and
Jessica, whose mind is made up when she witnesses Steven “killing”
her new boyfriend – Jason’s latest hiding-place, unbeknownst to
her.) When Steven is arrested, it is one of his best friends,
Officer Randy Parker, who has to escort him to his cell, but who
does so all the while declaring his belief in Steven’s innocence and
his determination to prove it. It is Parker, too, who eventually
re-arrests Steven, after a fight during which the two men threaten
each other with guns that each knows very well the other would never
dream of using against him. Before this, however, Steven is found in
the back of the diner by Joey B’s son, Wade, making tentative
contact with his infant daughter. “That’s the first time I’ve ever
been able to touch my baby,” Steven says helplessly. Wade’s response
is not to call the police, but to facilitate Steven’s escape by
handing over his car-keys. Jason Goes To Hell is absolutely
unique in the franchise for giving us well-drawn supporting
characters that we can like – and whose ultimate fates,
consequently, actually mean something. The performances of
Allison Smith as Vicki the waitress and Kipp Marcus (the director’s
brother, a rare instance of positive nepotism) as Randy Parker are
particularly good.
(Kipp Marcus is not
the only example of “inside” casting here: director Adam Marcus
plays an FBI agent; co-writer Dean Lorey is the assistant coroner
who becomes the first victim of the newly resurrected Jason/coroner;
and, most amusingly of all, Kane Hodder plays a security guard who
says something that hurts Jason’s feelings – and regrets it.)
Jason doesn't like being
called "a big ol' pussy."
So far, so good.
However---- It’s just like the rhyme says: when Jason Goes To
Hell is good, it is good; but when it’s bad----oh, my
friends, it’s horrid.
Now, I’m not saying
I don’t understand and even sympathise with what the film-makers
were trying to do here. The problem is, they went much too far. It’s
one thing to add a few new twists to a stale formula; it’s another
to demolish everything that a film series has ever had to say about
its premise, while serving up in its place a stream of gobbledygook
that doesn’t even make sense on its own terms.
Creighton Duke is
the source of all our re-worked information about the resurrected
Jason and his motives. “In a Voorhees was he born. Through a
Voorhees may he be re-born. And only by the hands of a Voorhees will
he die,” intones the wild-eyed Duke to Steven, further revealing
that – are you ready for this? – Diana Kimble is Jason’s long-lost
sister, Jessica his niece, and the baby Stephanie his great-niece.
It’s like something
out of Dickens, isn’t it? Or Melrose Place.
Steven makes his
way to a huge creepy mansion on the edge of town that you just know
is referred to locally as “the Voorhees place” (and where the family
name is misspelled “Vorhees” on the letterbox – classy),
finding inside a collection of vaguely occult-ish paraphernalia that
is supposed to “explain” the connection between the Voorhees clan
and the parasitic entity that is the “real” Jason. (Amongst the
items found in the house are the book from The Evil Dead and
the expedition crate from Creepshow, while outside is the
jungle gym from The Birds. Best we can tell, the Voorhees
family gained its mystical powers through its devotion to collecting
movie props.) Of course, it actually explains precisely
nothing. What is this thing, and how did it become entwined
with this family? How was it (he, Duke calls it, curiously)
“born” in a Voorhees? Why should only a Voorhees be able to kill
it? And why should that process require – wait for it – a
magic dagger? Why is Creighton Duke the only one who knows any
of this? And how on earth did he find it out? And what about Diana,
the secret Voorhees? How could she have lived her whole life in
Crystal Lake without everyone knowing she was a Voorhees? Or
if that secret was somehow kept, how did Creighton Duke know
about it?
(And why, come to
think of it, should a supernatural slug-creature be so devoted to
the slaughter of sexually active young adults?)
"Check out this book! It looks
old. Maybe it can help us?"
I suppose you could
argue that the volte-face that Jason Goes To Hell
pulls here is no more drastic than the one that took place between
the original Friday The 13th and its first sequel.
Still---- There is a difference, I think, between what you can
forgive from a bunch of writers forced to invent a way of coming up
with a sequel to a film never intended to have one – and whose
ending hardly allowed for one – and what you’re prepared to take
from people working with eight films and thirteen years’
perspective. Besides, F13:2 handles the shift in focus from
Pamela to Jason fairly cleverly, negotiating a path between Jason as
real-world killer and Jason as boogeyman by emphasising what they
say about him (“They say he saw his mother
decapitated....”). Jason Goes To Hell, in contrast, courtesy
of Creighton Duke, simply piles bullshit on top of bullshit until
(rather like Lou Diamond Phillips in Bats) we are up to out
armpits in guano. It’s insulting.
What disappoints
most about all this is that by going so far and so ridiculously over
the top with their plot twists, the writers, far from revitalising
the franchise, only succeeded in dealing it another death blow –
when by reining it in and simply tweaking the existing story a bit,
they might indeed have given it some new life. Suppose, for
instance, that instead of cooking up this idiotic slug story, they
had made Jason’s hitherto unmentioned father, Elias Voorhees, their
focus? Suppose that after the deaths of both his wife and his child,
Elias turned to the occult to resurrect his drowned son, only to
find, monkey’s paw-like, that he got rather more than he expected?
(A move, it occurs to me, that would have resolved the contradiction
between the first two films!) Similarly, the long-lost sibling
shtick would have been a bit easier to swallow if they had made
Diana Jason’s half-sister – that is, Elias’s child but not
Pamela’s.
Still – what we’ve
got is what we’ve got, with “Jason” moving from temporary body to
temporary body as he seeks a permanent resting place in a Voorhees
(once abandoned, Jason’s hosts undergo a spectacular meltdown), his
quest highlighted by two incredibly violent mass slaughters staged
at the police station and at the diner. The climax of the film, in
contrast, is a let-down, with Steven supposedly fighting for his
life as Jessica struggles to possess herself of the – sigh –
magic dagger that she needs to kill Jason once and for all. In
trying to build suspense here, the film-makers grant Steven a
ridiculous Hero’s Death Battle Exemption©, as, having
been re-born via the dead body of Diana Kimble, the Jason Voorhees
we all know and love, he who has casually crushed, ripped, snapped
and otherwise dismantled scores of human beings throughout this
series, suddenly proves incapable of doing anything worse to Steven
than slapping him around. Now, don’t get me wrong: far more than
most alleged “heroes”, Steven has earned a HDBE; but the
staging of his miraculous survival is terribly weak. (Not that I
wanted to see him dead, but dramatically it would have made a far
stronger ending if Steven had given his life for Jessica and
his baby.) Jessica does finally possess herself of the dagger, and
between them she and Steven make good the promise of the film’s
title, with Jason banished to the nether-regions of the world, and
only his hockey-mask left behind to tell its tale....
Free in every box of Stabby-Oh's!
So, in the end, am
I giving Jason Goes To Hell a positive review or a negative
review? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. The bits of it I like, I
really like; the bits of it I despise, I really despise.
As Stephen Blackpool would say, ‘tis aw a muddle.
As we are only too
aware by now, Jason Goes To Hell was the second film in the
franchise with the word “final” in its subtitle that turned out to
be nothing of the kind....and this, perhaps, we can blame
upon the film-makers’ sense of humour. At any rate, they swear it
was only a joke, not a set-up, when in the film’s very last
moments, a certain clawed glove reached up out of the bowels of the
earth and made a grab for Jason’s hockey-mask. However---- As any
B-movie fan could tell you, you should never – never – NEVER
– joke where a Hollywood producer might hear you: from the moment
that the credits rolled on Jason Goes To Hell, a Jason
Voorhees/Freddy Krueger cross-over was inevitable. Nevertheless, it
was a full ten years before Freddy Vs Jason saw the
light of day, being in the meantime stuck in a production hell to
compare with the one we just witnessed Jason Voorhees being cast
into. In the interim, an impatient Sean Cunningham teamed up with
the original Friday The 13th screenwriter, Victor
Miller, to create the tenth film in the series, Jason X; a
project doomed from the moment that the film-makers decided to set
their newest sequel not just in the future, but – in space.
As any B-movie fan
could also tell you....that’s never a good idea....
Be careful what you pray for.
Very, very careful....
Want a second
opinion of Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday? Visit
1000 Misspent Hours – And Counting and
Stomp Tokyo. |
Director:
Adam Marcus