Plot
Undead killer Jason Vorhees hops
aboard a cruise ship bound for New York and begin to slaughter the teenage
passengers who have hired the boat for a graduation party.
Review
Probably the Friday the 13th
film that gets the most stick from the fans, Friday the 13th Part VIII:
Jason Takes Manhattan continues the series tradition of managing to
create almost exactly the same film around the most flimsy of stories and
formula. Like most of the others, this 100-minute slash ride features a
variety of one-dimensional characters get sliced, diced, maimed and
mutilated by a massive, zombie-like killer who is resurrected in some of the
most highly ridiculous ways imaginable and still harbours a grudge from the
sight of his mother being beheaded. Suffering from the hands of the censors
who demanded plenty of cuts before release, this last true entry into the
series seems to have entirely run out of steam and creativity. But do you
know what - it's one of my favourite entries into the series.
You've got to hand it to the filmmakers though for trying
something new - after all it did take them until the eighth part to get away
from the summer camp setting! It's a very misleading title as most of the
action takes place aboard the ship - only the final third is based in New
York and even then most of the action takes place around abandoned docks,
back streets and sewers. Taking the story away from Crystal Lake does make
the film a little bit more fresh. It's just a shame that getting Jason out
of his comfort zone wasn't capitalised on to the greatest extent. The film
goes through the same motions as the rest - introduces us to a cast of
pretty bland teenagers, throw in an odd adult, a crazy old guy who warns of
everyone being doomed and then proceeds to strike off the cast as quickly as
possible by Jason. To say this is a graduation party, there's only about
eight teenagers aboard.
The cast don't really
need discussing in films like this. Their characters, especially the main
ones, seem to have too much back story going for them to link them in with
Jason's past and it gets confusing and pointless. Only Peter Mark Richman as
the overbearing principal Charles McCulloch manages to eek something out of
his character but that's only because you want to see him meet a grisly end
as soon as possible. The minor characters simply fill up the roles of "geeky
guy, slutty chick, rocker, jock, crazy doomsayer, etc" without any so much
as an attempt at characterisation.
The real star of the show
though is Kane Hodder. He IS Jason now (much the
same way that Robert Englund has personified Freddy Kruger) and his various
deadly poses and hulking frame give the character much
needed menace and personality. Just look at the way his shoulders move up
and down whenever he breathes or when he cocks his head to side as if he's
taunting his victims and telling them to bring it. He has a real physical
presence which makes the character even more intimidating and frightening
than the weak make-up has any right to be. As I stated earlier, the censors
clearly had a field day before this got released and a lot of the death
scenes have been trimmed down so that there's hardly any blood at all, even
in some death scenes which demanded some creative make-up effects. Death by
burning hot rock to the abs needed to be gorier than it was! Without the
camp setting, Jason is without his usual array of tools to kill people with
so here there's death by guitar, harpoon, flag, heroin needle, spear gun and
he even drowns some poor git in toxic waste in New York (the film presents
the fact that barrels of toxic waste are in every back alley in NYC, ready
for psychotic killers to use). There's a body count of around 17 here so
you'll never be bored. But the deaths lack panache like they did before -
the lack of gore is a true shame. Nudity was also a massive
ingredient of the series yet we're not given much
here. The token sluts in the last few episodes have kept
their clothes on which has been a travesty. Finally if there was one thing
to really take the fun out of this film, it's the terrible ending in which
Jason drowns in toxic waste in the sewers and reverts back into a small boy.
It makes no sense at all and you'll shrug your shoulders at just how poor
the writing is, not just with the finale but with the whole back story of
Jason. In an attempt to flesh him out and flesh out the "final girl" they're
given some connecting storyline from when they both young.
Verdict
If you don't like these sort
of films then you won't even be contemplating reading this review. If you
love slasher films you can do a whole lot worse (believe me, this is like a
masterpiece compared to some). And as far as Friday the 13th films
go, you can do a lot worse as well. It just suffers from
bad writing and bad censorship. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes
Manhattan is one of my favourite slasher films.
