Friday the 13th Part VI - Jason Lives
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI - JASON LIVES (1986)
WRITER: Tom McLoughlin
DIRECTOR: Tom McLoughlin
STARRIING: Thom Matthews as Tommy Jarvis
Jennifer Cooke as Megan
David Kagen as Sheriff Garris
QUICK CUT: Tommy Jarvis struggles with old demons and makes new friends.
THE MORGUE
Tommy - A messed up young man with a lot of issues around Jason Voorhees. He will do anything, including risking jail time, to try and stop his nemesis.
Megan - The sheriff’s daughter who instantly falls for Tommy. She’s rebellious and stubborn, but is also a good person who will help a man in need.
Sheriff Garris - A good cop who won’t listen to the ravings of a known madman. He’s a hardass, but his position is understandable.
Jason - The unstoppable force, back from the dead.
TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions, and happy New Year! We made it through the dark times of 2018, and here's for a better 2019. But before that can happen, the new year is not only reborn, but so is Jason Voorhees, rising like a phoenix from his maggotty ashes. Yep, it is time to once more head to Crystal Lake and see what's going on at Camp Blood, with Part 6 - Jason Lives! So let's get down to camp.
Friday the Sixth opens up with Tommy Jarvis and his pal Horshack driving off to find Jason's grave, carrying Jason's mask, and looking to make sure the guy is really dead. Once he destroys the body, Tommy will be able to move on. In theory.
To me, this all seems like bad idea after bad idea, but I have movie awareness, so I am ahead of their curve.
Horshack and Tommy reach the grave, Tommy digs him up, sees the body, and in a fit of rage, grabs an iron post from the nearby cemetery fence, and rams it into Jason's chest.
Tommy is just about to get ready to torch Jason with some gasoline, when the oncoming storm strikes down a bolt of lightning right into the iron bar, reviving the unstoppable monster. Uhh. Science doesn't work that way, but sure, fine, whatever.
Oh, Tommy also sneaks in a "Fuck you, Jason!" and...that...that really hurts, man.
Jason crawls out of his grave, and Tommy sticks to his plan of dousing him with gasoline, but the storm is making it difficult for him to get a match lit.
Horshack rushes up behind the zombie, clobbers him with a shovel...and Jason shrugs it off like he was tickled with a feather. In fact, he is so unfazed by it, he casually punches out the guys heart.
Tommy drives off to regroup, and hope for dryer weather, leaving Jason behind to grab his mask, and new weapon, the iron spike, stalking into the credits.
Our hero makes a rather sensible choice of heading to the sheriff's station, but on the other hand, trying to explain to a cop that you're a mental patient who dug up a corpse, who has risen from the dead? Yeah, this doesn't go over well.
This is also a good point to mention...they're just tossing out the ending of the last movie, aren't they? Sigh.
Also, we find out they've changed the name of the town (And the camp!) to "Forest Green" because everyone knows the reputation of Crystal Lake.
Speaking of the camp! While Tommy is locked up for the night in a cell, we cut to a pair of counselors making their way to Camp Not Crystal Lake, and get stopped by Jason standing in the road.
They try and scare Jason off by driving towards him, but he stands firm. The guy gets out a revolver to try and get him to move, but gets killed. The girlfriend soon follows with her face shoved into a puddle of mud
In the morning, the sheriff's daughter, who coincidentally is working at the camp as well, is trying to get her dad to look for the two missing counselors.
Tommy overhears, and tries and tell them that they might have been caught by Jason. Sheriff Garris nudges the kids out and...wait, Garris? SERIOUSLY? Okay whatever. The kids are ushered out, and the sheriff escorts Tommy out of town.
Back at the graveyard, the caretaker has found the open grave, and starts filling it in. And in a hilarious moment of breaking the fourth wall grumbling about why people would dig him up, Martin looks right at the audience, "SOME folks have a STRANGE idea of entertainment."
Next we get some comedic relief of some executives on a paintball team building exercise that serves no purpose other than upping Jason's kill count. It IS notable for a pretty great rare *triple* kill.
I can't totally hate this scene because it IS a great series of kills, I just feel like it's a bit of padding, and a bit too goofy. But hey.
Meanwhile, Tommy tries to lose the cops and make a run for the cemetery, and show them the empty grave and his dead friend. But of course, the caretaker has actually done his job. The cops cuff Tommy and forcibly drive him to the county line.
Tommy tries to make a run for the grave still, and Deputy Rick pulls out his shiny new revolver with a HILARIOUSLY large laser sight. And he says, "Where the red dot goes, ya bang!" No no no, it's "Bang, you dead!" Do you even X-Men??
Later that night, Martin the caretaker is stumbling drunk through the woods, drinking some more, and saying liquor is gonna be the death of him. And in a strike of mighty irony, Jason appears, takes his bottle, breaks it, and kills him with the shattered neck.
Some nearby kids hear the screams, and when they investigate, they become Jason's next victims, in another one shot multiple kill.
Back at the camp, the kids are sleeping...hey wait, is this the first time we've actually seen the camp OPEN and with KIDS, not just counselors? Ahem. Anyways, the counselors hear a scream and come running to Nancy's side, who is talking about a bad dream she had, with a monster that was chasing her...sorry kid, wrong franchise!
With that taken care of, the plot jumps to Cort and Nikki in a camper somewhere having sex, and that sets off Jason's naughty sense, who comes a knockin' because the RV is a rockin'.
Jason pulls the plug, causing the camper to lose power, and Nikki tells Cort to go outside and plug it back in. She thinks a bear might have pulled it out. Uhhh...FUCK no? An undead serial killer is bad enough, but "Hey go plug the cord in, and watch out for bears?" Pffff, plug it in yourself.
Needless to say, Jason kills them both as they try and drive away.
Later, the sheriff is yelling at his daughter for flirting with Tommy, and she is giving him back some great sass. I think I love her charater. But deputy Rick calls, having found some of the dead counselors, and Garris goes to check it out.
Megan is messing around in the sheriff's office when Tommy calls trying to get the cops again, willing to risk his own incarceration. She comes looking for him though, and he says he's at Karloff's General something, and I see what you did there movie.
Back at the camp, Jason has finally arrived home. Now the real fun can begin, as a counselor goes to investigate and loses her head.
Anyways, Megan picks up Tommy and they drive off to get some supplies for the Final Battle, but they run into a police roadblock. Megan distracts the cops and zooms away, but when they call it in, naturally the sheriff recognises his kid's car. He eventually corners them and hey, back to the sheriff's station!
I totally respect the sheriff's position here. His daughter is hanging around with a guy who, quite honestly, DOES have a history of mental illness, and every move he's made makes him look guilty as hell with blood on his hands.
Nancy wakes up and finds Jason's machete, her and one of the counselors looks around but can't find anything though. So she tells Nancy that she just needs to say a little prayer to calm herself, and everything will be okay. Something like, One two, Freddy's coming for you...WHAT??
Back at the sheriff station, Tommy and Megan engineer a prison break, by drawing over Rick. Megan gets a hold of his gun and forces him to release Tommy, then lock himself in the cell.
As the two rush off to the camp, because Jason can only be stopped by returning him to his original resting place (??), Jason sneaks into one of the cabins, leaves blowing in around his feet and DAMNIT Jason! Were you raised in a...oh wait, you kinda were.
Garris and friends arrive at the camp to warn the girls, and find more carnage. Too late, copper! But at least the gang is all here.
The cops look around the place, and we get some more random murders as Jason thins the herd. More padding, more silly deaths, but it's entertaining so it's not a total wash.
One of them hilariously fires several bullets at Jason, before getting his skull crushed, and they have just as much effect as the paintballs.
Garris finds Jason, and the two face off. The sheriff blasts him with the shotgun and he goes DOWN. But Jason gets right back up again, because horror movie.
So he gets shot AGAIN, and it bounces back and forth from being blasted and getting back up. And let me tell ya, there is something so squawking satisfying about a horror baddie getting shot, and down for the count, and when he sits back up? Getting shot AGAIN. And doing it repeatedly. Very, very cathartic.
Jason and the sheriff play cat and mouse in the woods, Megan checks on the kids, and Tommy heads down to the docks to prepare to sink Jason back into the lake where he belongs.
While Tommy motors out into the lake, Jason busts into the kid's cabin, and this is a violation. The whole thing of Jason is he's supposed to punish people who screw with his moral code. The kids are innocents, and have done nothing wrong. This bugs me.
Megan runs towards the screaming, and Jason grabs her. Before she can get a matching crushed skull, Tommy draws the attention of his old nemesis.
Jason starts shambling into the lake and...okay, there is an idea in later movies, where they try and establish that Jason is seriously hydrophobic, and it is his weakness. That gets a LOT of mockery, but I always liked it, and fits in well with the events of his life.
...But uh, it's kinda ruined here, when he shuffles into the water with no hesitation. Oh well.
As Jason walks along the bottom of the lake, Tommy pours some gas on the surface of the lake out for fallen friends, and lights it on fire around the boat.
Jason pounces, they struggle, and after a bit he is finally caught in a chain tied to a rock, and sunk down into the lake.
Tommy is in rough shape though, floating in the water, so Megan swims out to get him...and Jason grabs her leg.
She grabs the boat, turns on the motor, and motorboats Jason good, right in the face. He lets go, everyone swims to safety, and hilariously Tommy says, "It's over, it's finally over."
Aaaaahahahahaha. Until next time!
TRISK ASSESSMENT
Video: As always with these major releases, the video is in good shape, with a lot of depth to the blacks.
Audio: A nice mix
Sound Bite: “So, what WERE you gonna be when you grow up?” said by a kid as Jason stalks the camp.
Body Count: WOW this one is not messing around with the corpses.
1 - Horshack loses his guts eight minutes in
2 - Darren gets run through with a pike by jason
3 - Elizabeth gets stabbed in the face.
4-6 - Jason hacks up three paintballers at once
7 - And another
8 - Gravedigger gets slashed by the ironic punishments division.
9-10 - Steven and girlfriend get knifed in a twofer.
11 - Nikki gets killed in the camper
12 - Cort gets knifed in the ear.
13 - Counselor gets her head snapped and removed
14 - Jason redecorates the cabin with a girl.
15 - Cop gets darted in the face
16 - Jason crushes another cop's face
17 - Sheriff gets killed
18 - Jason gets drowned and hacked up by an outboard motor, so probably dies....Aaaahahahaha
Best Corpse: I absolutely love that we got in a stunning triple kill. The only downside is that it’s largely off screen.
Blood Type - B: There’s quite a bit of blood here, although most of the deaths seem to be pretty bloodless. But I give major points to any movie that drenches a room in blood.
Sex Appeal: It’s very tame for a Friday movie.
Movie Review: I really enjoyed this one. It’s well made, it’s got some great memorable characters, Megan is one of my favourites in any of these movies so far, and like I said, Garris is a jerk, but he’s a dad and a cop. My biggest complaint is the movie trying to insert too much horror. I think this was because Elm Street was inserting more humour, fans were becoming more aware, so this movie tried to be a bit tongue in cheek. It’s a LITTLE too much, and there’s a little too much padding with a few long scenes. However, the payoffs work, and it’s a fun ride. Also, this has one of the best soundtracks of any of the movies so far. Four out of five giant rocks
Entertainment Value: The humour does give me a few chuckles, so that’s good. Some of it makes me roll my eyes too. It’s about 50/50 on that front. But Tommy and Megan’s wild adventure is a blast to watch, Megan is a great balance of a character, and the interactions between the major characters are fun. There’s nothing so bad it’s good, or too campy, but a solid movie makes up for that. Four out of five laser sights.