45. "Friday the 13th Part VIII" (1989, Hedden)
By Eivind Langdal
11th February 2010

There were times while watching Jason Takes Manhattan, the 8th entry of the Friday the 13th series, were I just had to close my eyes. I wanted to open them, but I just couldn’t. It simply got too much for me. Seeing as this is (supposed to be) a horror movie, you’re probably thinking that I was really scared while watching it. I suggest you think again. No, the reason for the forced closing of my eyelids had nothing to do with me being scared. It did, however, have a lot to me being disinterested, bored and just plain ol’ tired with a film that is as genuinely entertaining as trying to open a hermetic box with a fork that you managed to swallow whole and are now currently trying to export through your nether regions. Oh, the horrors one must succumb to when dedicating one’s self to scary movies.

To tell the truth, I was actually looking forward to this film. Yes, I truly and honestly was. After seven films of Jason Voorhees mucking about in the forest and throating, gutting, slashing, stabbing and squeezing the life of anyone who got in his way, I thought a change of scenery might do the guy some good. Not in the same way that, say, Viagra will make an impotent man good, but good in the sense that the change could bring some well-needed freshness to the series. Unfortunately, it didn’t do Jason much good. He’s still the same boring horror villain that he was in the previous films, and he’s still starring in films that became parodies of themselves a long time ago.

Now, I wonder, when is there going to come an entry where the military tries to recruit this guy? Understandably, not the easiest task in the world, but when one considers the battlefield skills of this fellow, at least one try would be adequate, right? Think about it: despite being of a size that best could be described as a “human tank”, he’s able to sneak up on just about anyone. Literally. Quite an accomplishment when you’re a human abomination who wears a hockey mask. He also doesn’t possess a shred of sympathy. He will never hesitate with taking a life (it’s quite possible he is Dick Cheney).

His skill with the various weapons he uses (all of which he randomly finds whenever there has gone over 5 minutes in the films without anyone being killed) is extraordinary. He doesn’t need a gun. Give him a machete, a harpoon, a piece of broken glass, or, as is the cause in this entry, an electric guitar, and he’ll take care of business quicker than a Wall Street banker with ADHD. He makes John Rambo look like Stevie Wonder. He’s such a born mercenary that, when one ponders a second about, it’s actually sad his brain is so small that he can’t recognize the skills he possesses. It’s like being 7 feet tall and suck in basketball.

The title of this film is a slight misnomer. Though Jason does spend some time in the Big Apple (where he predictably kills a few people), most of the action takes place on a boat where some hormonal students have boarded to ship to get to (you guessed it) Manhattan. The purpose? One final celebration before they depart and never meet again. Little do they know that the reason for them never meeting again is Jason himself, who has snuck onboard to perform a bit of the good old-fashioned teenage disposal (he’s like the human embodiment of the dreams of those ultra-conservative senior citizens who think teenagers will be the end of the world).

None of the characters are compelling enough for the audience to remember them whenever they are off-screen. They are made up of the usual kind of people that filmmakers think go to school: the sexy tramp, her less enthusiastic friend, the nerd, the smart chick, the jock, the random guy who is like a walking prop, the unrealistically strict teacher, and the gal who stands on the top of the boat with an electric guitar while rockin’ out to 1980s heavy metal. Okay, that last one usually don’t appear in movies, probably because of the very important fact that no student cruise has ever featured a gal who stands on the top of the boat with an electric guitar while rockin’ out to 1980s heavy metal.

The film is like an experiment that’s supposed to find out if it’s possible to make a film where the amount of blood and gore thrown around on screen can be equal to the level of boredom induced in the audience. That experiment, my fellow lab rats, is a success. For some strange reason, the people who made this film has managed to turn what in real-life would be a very traumatic experience requiring years of therapy into a flat popcorn flick that is as artistic as it is romantic. Now, trust me, if there is one thing film isn’t, it’s romantic. It’s also not good. It is, in fact, a piece of trash so boring it could make you fall asleep and fatally hit your head. Tell me, is that a film you’d like to see?