Review: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Tommy Jarvis (Thom Matthews) wants to make sure killer Jason Voorhees is really, really super dead and in hell. So he digs up his corpse and tries to impale him. Unfortunately, it’s a dark and stormy night and poor Tommy ends up inadvertently resurrecting Jason instead. Thanks a lot, Tommy. Whilst Jason is hacking youngsters at Camp Crystal Lake like old times (except the town is now called Forest Green to disassociate itself from its bad reputation), Tommy has a Dickens of a time trying to get law enforcement to take his rantings seriously. David Kagen is the local sheriff, Jennifer Cooke is the local sheriff’s daughter who is totally not gonna get mixed up with Tommy against her father’s wishes.

When getting ready to revisit this franchise for the first time in about two decades, this film and the subsequent “The New Blood” were the ones I remembered the least about. With good reason it would appear watching this 1986 slasher film again, as it’s quite brutal but boring beyond belief. Written and directed by Tom McLoughlin (who has subsequently worked on mostly TV movies like “Sometimes They Come Back”), this one goes back to the ‘Jason hacks young people in the woods at Summer camp’ trope, but this time adds a dose of another horror franchise to the mix. Here, the recurring character of Tommy (now played by Thom Matthews) essentially functions as a mixture of Jamie Lloyd and Dr. Loomis from “Halloween 4 & 5”. Jason, meanwhile is in full-on Terminator mode here seemingly getting shot like a billion times and still keeping on stalking and slashing like it’s nothing.

Things don’t start so great. Yes, the fog and Gothic atmosphere in the opening scene are nice but Ron ‘Horshack’ Palillo acting like Lou Costello is a bit WTF, and with all due respect to Mr. Matthews, I don’t think Tommy really needed to be here. Like I said, it just gives off “Halloween” vibes, and Jason getting revived via lightning? Yeah, that’s Freddy Krueger “Elm Street” sequel stuff right there. Perhaps the franchise was struggling to figure out the formula for remaining relevant in the mid-to-late 80s. I do like parts of the opener though, including a very funny James Bond gun barrel parody, but again, that’s a bit “Elm Street” sequel too, isn’t it? The best thing in the entire film is the cinematography by Jon Kranhouse (“Kickboxer” of all things), which is easily the best in the entire franchise. On the other end of the spectrum is the overly busy, overly loud music score by Harry Manfredini (known for this franchise and nothing else of note), which feels like it’s just been added to scenes for the hell of it.

After 30 minutes the whole thing becomes a snoozer, in spite of being good-looking, in spite of being quite brutal, and in spite of the fun, hammy performance by David Hagen as the sheriff. Alice Cooper’s “Teenage Frankenstein” plays at one point, so that’s cool, even if “Feed My Frankenstein” is better. Otherwise the only things worth noting here are small appearances by former soap actress Renee Jones (Lexi from “Days of Our Lives”), and an uncredited Tony Goldwyn, who has been both better elsewhere. If you’re a fan of the ‘ol ultra-violence (and let’s face it, that’s probably 100% of the film’s target audience), this one’s not terribly bloody, but certainly very brutal. One poor person gets an especially nasty end where her head is twisted and pulled off. It’s probably the film’s most memorable moment outside of the Bond parody. There’s a nice crunch to another person’s death, too. I just wish the film were interesting. It’s not.

Violent, good-looking sequel with a few familiar faces but (for me at least) a whole lot of boredom. It’s not the worst film in the franchise, but it’s far from the (mild) best, though quite a few people seem to think it’s one of the best, for whatever it’s worth.

Rating: C-