Review #9: Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Cast/Notable Credits:
Rob Hedden (Director)

Jensen Daggett (Rennie): Major League: Back to the Minors (1998)

Peter Mark Richman (Charles): Dynasty & Battlestar Galactica 1980 T.V. series

Kelly Hu (Eva): Nash Bridges T.V. series, Scorpion King (2002), Cradle 2 the Grave (2003), X-men 2 (2003), Devil's Den (2006)

Trailer:




Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan. No he doesn’t. Really. My friends and I have a “Crap Movie Night”. We sit back and watch crappy movies and make fun of them in a Mystery Science 3000 way. I chose this flick for one of my selections. And it worked like a charm.

The film is 1 hr and forty minutes (1 hr. 32 min of actual movie), and Jason doesn’t get to New York until the 1 hr 6 min mark. The leaves him in New York for...26 minutes. And the majority of the time is spent in back alleys and sewers.

New York is a city of what…18 million plus…and the survivors who were trying to escape could never managed to find more than three other people. The city that never sleeps apparently went to bed this night.

Honestly, this movie should have been called Part 8: The Love Boat. He spent the majority of the time trapped on a cruise ship. After all, he does spend more time on the boat than he does sight seeing the attractions of New York.

Oh by the way, if you haven't guessed by the title of the film, there's not much in the development of the movie plot: Jason gets on cruise boat with teenagers destined for New York. Killing and mayhem ensue. It's as simple as that. But if you must know the story, I break it down a little bit more in detail.

We pick up some time after Part 7 and Jason's still hanging out dead on the bottom of Crystal Lake. Once again the scenery surrounding the lake has changed into a couple of houses.

Two graduating teens are on a little yacht in the lake having fun drinking and grinding out the bodies upon one another. The dude drops the anchor to park the boat. As the anchor drags along the bottom, it hits an underwater submerged power line which sparks and brings a dead little somebody laying next to it back to life.

Jason climbs up into the boat and dispatches are two teenage love birds. The mini yacht somehow floats away from the lake and into a larger channel of water where graduating seniors are taking a pleasure cruise to New York city. WTF!?

First of all, when did Crystal Lake become part of some water channel system connected to other bodies of water. I always thought it was some isolated little lake in the woods. Now it has access to the ocean, since when?

If you haven't seen where this is going...Jason climbs aboard the pleasure cruise and hitches a ride to New York with the rest of the unsuspecting teens. Jason turns the ship into his own personal killing playground killing people one by one. Surviving members abandon ship in a row boat during a vicious thunderstorm leaving behind the cruise ship and Jason. Some how I doubt that.

They row their way through the night and finally come across the shipping docks of the Big Apple. Relieved to escape their nightmare, they venture off into the alley systems to find help. Surprise! Jason climbs out of the water and follows them. What the hell? Was he holding on to the bottom of the row boat or something. All of a sudden he just shows up at the same place they do?

Unable to escape the labyrinth maze of the Big Apple's alley system from the shipping docks, Jason catches up and continues to pick off members of the group. Two of them escape, Rennie and Sean, and finally find their way into Times Square. But someone's hot on their trail.

After a minute chase through the actual parts of Manhattan, Rennie and Sean find themselves running around and hiding in the sewer systems of New York. What a great idea! You're being chased by a madman through the street of New York and you take refuge in the sewer system. They eventually defeat Jason in the sewer system (see below for further details), and everyone's happy and safe. Except the paying customer.

Villain:

What's to talk about that I already haven't said. I can't dwell too much more on this, it's Jason. At least Kane Hodder returns as Jason, making it two movies in a row with the same actor. Way to go!

Cast:

Part 8 featured too many unwanted annoying teenagers (or young adults portraying teenageers). The lead female role is Rennie, who shares a troubled past and has a little history with Jason.

While out on the Crystal Lake when she was young, her dad was trying to teach her to swim. Struggling in the water she went underneath and met the child Jason living in the water. Now she's tormented by her father, and past. Yep. Pretty gay.

It marks Kelly Hu’s first movie appearance (pictured right). She eventually goes on to play the smokin' hot counterpart to Wolverine in X-Men 2. As for the rest of the cast...well...let's say they don't really cut it. I'm glad they all pretty much got axed at one some point in the film.

SFX/Gore:

The body count in the movie was pretty hard to account for. I counted sixteen deaths, but probably missed some off screen deaths. After all it was like a senior trip on the boat, but only two survived the ordeal. There had to be more than 16 students on the trip.

The special effects were up and down. The kills were pretty much well done, but Jason’s sewer melt down special effect sucked big time. Truly it was cheesiness at it's best. The coolest death or my favorite death was:

The lava rock death: * Highlight to read * Two of the seniors were boxing on the ship and after the match, one of them went to the sauna to relax and sweat off some pounds. He goes in a places a towel over his eyes and lays down. Jason enters the sauna and takes some hot lava rocks and buries them into his chest. * End. Pretty interesting death.

TNA:

Well the Friday franchise continues to deliver in the TNA portion of the grading system. Unfortunately these are late 80's chicks. There are three or four hot chicks (Shark Factor) thrown in the mix. Including Kelly Hu pictured below. Yes. She's hot. We are treated to two set of twins and a sex act. On top of that, throw in a token shower scene and there you go.

T.Gun's Take:

Bad sequel. Strike that from the record, a very bad sequel. It was a nice attempt at an original idea (Jason in New York!) which suffered from Paramount and it’s tight budget. There were scenes were written for Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State building but were cut and rewritten due to budgeting tightness. Just imagine what could have been.

-Jason splicing Patrick Ewing and the Knicks in Madison Square Garden or complementing Mike Ritcher on his goalie mask during a Ranger’s game.


- Jason stopping traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge like the Thing did in the Fantastic Four. Smashing the front of a fire engine stopping it dead in it’s tracks.

- Jason falling from the top of the Empire State Building like King Kong. It would have been a better death.


Instead all of those possible "cool" ideas, we get Jason on a love cruise. A cruise which happens to end up in New York. So they can give it the title, "...Takes Manahattan" to entice the fans.

Which brings me back to one of my original gripes, how the hell does he get from a lake to the ocean? Again. From what I recall, Crystal Lake does not empty out into the Atlantic Ocean. Agh!

I cannot keep myself from repeating...Part 8 is a bad, bad, bad movie, but it’s a great movie for crap movie night. One of the biggest laughs and head scratchers from the movie pops up in the sewer system scene and Jason's demise. The Best and Worse line of the movie came here:

“…At midnight toxic waste floods the sewers…”

Wait. Did I hear that right? Toxic waste floods the sewers of New York City! At midnight! WHAT THE F*CK!!!

A. How does toxic waste get in the sewers? Does the city of New York have a contract with the defense department to dump toxic waste into their sewers?

B. How do we know when midnight officially hits? Does Dick Clark stand in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop and then hits a lever releasing toxic waste into the sewers?

We literally had to stop the movie and rewind it to listen to that line again. Are you serious? Toxic Waste? Horrible. The franchise reached an all time low. Throw that on top of the fact Jason didn’t really get to New York until the movie was almost over, and you have a great crappy movie.

A movie tidbit, the big dude in the diner that gets thrown into the mirror by Jason is Ken Kirzinger (the man who will eventually replace Kane Hodder in Freddy vs. Jason). So if you look at it…current Jason throws future Jason around like a rag doll…now whose the better choice for Jason?

Director Rob Hedden is also the man responsible for the Knight Rider 2000 T.V. movie. He should be ashamed of himself. He was the writer and producer of the film. Retire. Right now!

It was the last Friday movie that Paramount had released. New Line Cinema picks up the rest of the franchise. The Friday Franchise made so much money for Paramount, but it is considered the bastard child of the company.

Paramount has treated it like the plague, theywon’t even release a descent special edition DVD set of the flicks? At least until now...Paramount has finally seen the light, and with the re imagining of the franchise, they've decided to dip into the pockets of the fans, and actually do something cool with the DVD's. It's about time!

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on July 28, 1989 and made $14.3 million at the Box Office ($6.2 million opening weekend)
-Elizabeth Berkley and Dedee Pfeiffer were up for the role of Rennie
-Originally timed at over 2 hours long. Wow. Imagine how painful that would have been to watch. Based on the cut scenes, they all took place before arriving to NY. That would have really been a rip off if 26 minutes of a 2 hr movie took place in NY.