Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

After seven movies featuring teenagers getting slaughtered at Camp Crystal Lake, it seems the filmmakers finally decided to change locales with 1989’s Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  However, the title is misleading, as Jason doesn’t arrive in Manhattan until more than an hour through the film, and even then, it’s Vancouver doing a poor job of standing in for New York.

The film begins with a brief prologue in New York, but quickly moves to Crystal Lake, where Jason offs two teens, then commandeers their boat and heads up the river to the ocean.  Yes, Crystal Lake somehow leads to the ocean.  Once there, Jason climbs on board a cruise ship that’s carrying a high school class to New York for their senior trip.  Rennie (Jensen Daggett) is our obvious Final Girl, a writer who has visions/hallucinations of Jason as a child.  Also along for the ride are Rennie’s boyfriend Sean (Scott Reeves), who feels pressured to live up to his captain father’s expectations; rocker chick JJ (Saffron Henderson), who has apparently not mastered the art of actual guitar-playing or air guitar-playing; b!tchy blonde Tamara (Sharlene Martin), who tries to blackmail her teacher with a biology project which consists of her getting half-naked; and Rennie’s uncle Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman), who’s also the biology teacher Tamara attempts to seduce. 

Interestingly enough, the crew consists only of two people, both of whom are killed early on, leaving Sean to take over as captain.  McCulloch doesn’t give him time to grieve for his dead father before criticizing his lack of nautical knowledge.  McCulloch also accuses the deckhand, who’s been popping up to warn the travelers that “this voyage is doomed,” of committing the murders.  Richman really makes you hate this asshole.  At least he inspires some emotion; words cannot describe just how dull Rennie is.

When the survivors finally make it to Manhattan (side note: one is positively jubilant, singing a song, completely unperturbed by the bloodbath that claimed nearly all of his classmates), it is revealed to be a cesspool.  Rennie is almost immediately kidnapped, drugged, and nearly raped by some gangbangers; a hulking zombie killer doesn’t turn heads on the street; rats swim in barrels of toxic waste; and said toxic waste empties into the sewers every night at midnight.  Bafflingly, Jason has a smorgasbord of potential New York victims, but ignores them all, only interested in the survivors from the ship.  He even turns down the chance to take down a group of street punks, opting instead to simply lift his mask to frighten them away.  At least he destroys their awesome boom box.

As usual, Jason Takes Manhattan was censored by the MPAA, but there are still some memorable death scenes, such as a rooftop boxing match between Jason and a tough guy which ends in a decapitation, a dirty syringe through the chest, and a hot sauna rock to the torso.  Kane Hodder returns as Jason, and he succeeds at standing and looking menacing.  The role no longer requires much walking, as the character seems to have become an expert at teleportation.  Unfortunately, the climactic final battle is pitiable, and it’s best to chalk it up as another of Rennie’s hallucinations.

For all its flaws, this movie doesn’t really get boring, and it is refreshing to see Jason away from Crystal Lake.  His reaction to the billboard which he spots upon arriving in New York is priceless.  Of course, I wish the title weren’t so misleading, but I suppose no one would have turned out for Jason Takes a Cruise or Jason Takes Vancouver.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Despite its title, there's nothing particularly new about Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.  The film gets off to a bad start with a cheesy voice-over narration accompanying flashbacks to the previous movies.  (The flashback montages were mercifully absent from parts V and VI.)  Jason remains in his underwater prison, and all is well at Camp Crystal Lake.  That is, until telekinetic psychic Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) accidentally revives him while attempting to use her powers to dredge up her dead father from the bottom of the lake.  Tina blames herself for her father's death, and she's at Crystal Lake with her mother and doctor to get better.  But her doctor doesn't seem like he has Tina's best interests in mind.  Oh yes, and there's a group of teenagers next door waiting to throw a surprise birthday party.

At least The New Blood gets rid of the Tommy Jarvis character (after three films, there wasn't much else to do with his story).  Unfortunately, the teenagers are the very definition of interchangeable.  I was thoroughly bored watching their antics, and, for the most part, I didn't know who was who or why I should care.  Lincoln has to be one of the worst Friday girls; she's either whining incessantly or looking completely confused (sometimes both).  The climactic final battle between Tina and Jason, during which Tina keeps throwing stuff at Jason using only her mind, is a joke.  Equally uninteresting is her romance with Nick (Kevin Blair), who's known her for, what, a few hours, and knows nothing about her except that she thinks she killed her father, she has telekinetic powers, and she's spent a good part of her life in a mental institute.  Yeah, I can see how he'd be won over.

Direction by John Carl Buechler is similarly uninteresting, with bland visuals, uneven pacing, and a climax no one really wanted to see.  The death scenes were heavily edited to obtain an R rating (not Buechler's fault), and as a result they're among the most neutered, bloodless kills in the franchise.  The excised footage can be found on the deluxe edition DVD, and it's an improvement, but certainly not enough to make the film worthwhile.  Jason gets a couple new weapons this time around, including a sleeping bag and a party horn.  Joy.

The New Blood is notable because it marks the first appearance of Kane Hodder as Jason.  Hodder would go on to reprise the role until Jason X, making him the only actor to don the hockey mask for more than one installment.  Hodder is masterful in the role, proving he can... stand and walk with the best of them.  I must say I don't understand why his Jason receives so much praise from fans.  Not that he doesn't do a good job, but it's not exactly the most demanding of roles.  The Jason makeup is impressive at least, showing evidence of his numerous "deaths" over the years.  Aside from that, there's nothing else to recommend here.  Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is among the most dull and uninteresting entries in an unimpressive franchise.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

1985's Friday the 13th Part V took the franchise in a new direction by having someone other than Jason don the hockey mask. However, Paramount decided to bring Jason back for the next installment, which necessitated ignoring the previous entry.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives begins with Jason's resurrection at the hands of Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), the boy who killed Jason in Part IV. Never mind the fact that Jason's body was cremated, or that Part V ended with Tommy going completely insane and preparing to follow in Jason's footsteps. Here, Tommy has gotten out of a mental institution and made his way to Jason's grave to make sure that his enemy is still lying dormant. Upon seeing the maggot-infested corpse, Tommy rams a metal pole through it for good measure, but lightning strikes, reanimating Sir Voorhees, who immediately punches clean through Tommy's friend. Now Tommy must try to convince people that he's not crazy and stop Jason once again.

Writer/director Tom McLoughlin seems to have given up on trying to scare people, instead relying on heaping doses of humor to entertain. One character comments, "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly." A drunken groundskeeper rants about the sh!theads who've dug up Jason's body, looking directly at the camera as he comments, "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment." He later asks, "Do I look like a farthead?" The camera cuts to a group of children screaming, "Yeah!" There's an interminable sequence involving a group of businessmen (and woman) playing a game of paintball in the woods. One is very hungry, one is upset that a woman gets to play the game, and one engages in Charlie Chaplin-esque shenanigans with a tree branch. Eventually, the men wear bandannas around their heads that say, "Dead." I almost expected one of them to break the fourth wall to say, "Ha! We're so clever! Do you get it?"

This entry deviates slightly from the previous films by actually having children at the camp, but of course, we know that none of the children will actually be killed. However, their presence does lead to a nice moment where one of the kids asks, as Jason rampages through the camp, "So, what were you going to be when you grew up?" The small children are actually much smarter than the teenagers. When one of the children tells the counselors she saw someone outside her window, a counselor tries to reassure her that it was just a dream. "No," she insists, "it was real, just like on TV." Later, she presents one of them with Jason's blood-stained machete as evidence, but is told that the other counselors must have been playing a joke.

Usually, in these types of movies, the kids are either completely oblivious or running around like idiots, never thinking to get the police involved. Refreshingly, Tommy goes straight to the cops here, but they don't believe him; in fact, Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) locks him up, enabling Tommy to meet the sheriff's cute daughter Megan (Jennifer Cooke), who bafflingly is attracted to this jailed mental patient. These are the only three noteworthy characters; everyone else is there to die (usually relatively bloodlessly, due to MPAA cuts). There's also a surprisingly effective moment where we don't see the actual kill, only blood spatter hitting the window, with the bloody aftermath revealed later. The best death scene involves a body being broken in half, but the rest of the kills are pretty forgettable. The RV kill itself isn't particularly memorable, but the character's reaction is; as a woman is screaming and kicking, trying to fight off Jason, her boyfriend comments, "Sounds like you're having fun back there! Mind if I join you?" As the struggle continues, he again asks, "Mind if I join you?"

The over-the-top humor might work for some, but I felt that it was too obvious and really not very funny. The characters weren't memorable or likeable, the death scenes were tame, and even the conclusion was unsatisfying. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives really makes me wish he hadn't.

Food Porn

I realize that my blog has been severely lacking in pictures of delicious food, so this post is dedicated to showcasing some of the things I experienced at Blackbird Pizzeria, one of my favorite vegan spots in the city.

Slice of Hawaiian pizza with seitan bacon and pineapples and a chocolate peanut butter cupcake! Yum!


Slice of Red Dawn pizza with roasted red potato, roasted red pepper, smoked shallots, and kalamata olive tapenade, and a peanut butter brownie! The pizza was okay, but I'm not a fan of olives, so I'm not the target audience.


Habanero citrus seitan wings with cucumber dip! Spicy, but delicious!


Chocolate peanut butter brownie and cookies and cream brownie! Party in my mouth!

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

In 1984, Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter seemingly killed off machete-wielding hockey-masked murderer Jason Voorhees for good.  However, the flick made millions, and Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning hit movie theatres just one year later, in 1985.

Corey Feldman returns as Tommy Jarvis, the boy who killed Jason, but then, because Corey was busy appearing in The Goonies, we skip ahead a few years to find an older Tommy (now played by John Shepherd) on his way to the Pinehurst Institute, a halfway house for troubled teens.  Tommy is still being haunted by visions of Jason, but hopefully life at the halfway house will stabilize him and prepare him to re-enter society.  Unfortunately, just after Tommy's arrival, one of the residents is brutally murdered by one of the more mentally unstable youth (who was, for some reason, permitted to chop wood with an axe despite being clearly psychopathic).  For some reason, the institute is not shut down, and more bodies start piling up.  Has Jason returned from the dead?  Is Tommy in fact behind the murders?  Or is it the shifty, bug-eyed bit player whom the camera lingers on just a bit too long during his few scenes?

(spoilers ahead!)
That's right, the killer in part five is not Jason, which is a major reason franchise fans hate this one.  Honestly, I didn't think it was that big a deal.  The guy's motive really doesn't make sense once you think about it, but we still get to see a guy in a hockey mask running around hacking up teenagers, and it's easier to believe that there's a copycat killer than to buy the resurrection of Jason in every damn movie in the franchise (which didn't die, even after another "Final" Friday).  Part five also reveals that Jason was cremated, making his resurrection in part six even more questionable.
(/spoilers)

There is a lot of nudity on display here, but only one oddly tame sex scene, which was apparently heavily cut by the MPAA, along with many of the death scenes.  There are the usual stabbings and decapitations, along with some nasty stuff like hedge clippers to the eyes.  It's a shame we'll probably never see an uncut version, but with around twenty kills, the body count is probably the highest in the series.  There aren't that many kids at the halfway house, so the film starts introducing characters for the sole purpose of killing them off, leading to some truly bizarre scenes.  One involves a pair of foul-mouthed greasers who seem to have wandered in from a '50s movie; another involves a couple singing to each other through the walls of an outhouse in which the male is taking a dump.

As our hero/possible killer, Shepherd says maybe 25 words during the entire film, but he does a good job of appearing twitchy and uncomfortable, understandable given the events his character has experienced.  No one else is particularly memorable, except for Tiffany Helm as the goth/punk rock chick who enjoys doing the robot to new wave music alone in her room.

Ridiculous moments like this are fun, and, while it's never really scary, there's definitely a mean streak running through the film.  With its high body count, abundant nudity, and delightful musical interludes, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning isn't entirely deserving of its poor reputation.

Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter

In 1984, Paramount Pictures released Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, which, as the title suggests, was intended to close the book on hockey-masked serial killer Jason Voorhees.  Of course, that was not the case, as this film's box office success led to another six sequels (eight if we're including the mashup Freddy vs. Jason and the Friday the 13th remake).

As much as I love horror movies, I'm really not a fan of the Friday the 13th flicks, but if I had to pick a favorite of the sequels, this would be it.  This time around, in addition to the cabin full of horny young adults, there's a family next door - Mrs. Jarvis, daughter Trish, and son Tommy (Corey Feldman).  Trish is our obvious final girl, while Tommy... is something special.  He takes pride in his carefully crafted collection of monster masks, inviting a strange man up to his bedroom to "show him something" - a brown monster head on a stick which Tommy controls by moving its eyes and mouth whilst making little growling sounds.  Aside from that, he's just your average preteen boy, reacting to the sight of a naked woman by squealing, wiggling his fingers, and twirling around in his bed as if in the midst of a seizure.

If this were any other Friday the 13th, Tommy would easily be the most entertaining character of the bunch, but this installment boasts Crispin Glover as Jimmy, one of the vacationing horny young adults.  In his first appearance, Jimmy questions why he continually strikes out with women.  His buddy Ted taps his knees, running it through his imaginary computer, and replies, "Computer says you're a dead fuck."  I didn't count, but I can safely guess that the words "dead fuck" are repeated at least ten more times during the course of the film.  Fortunately, when a woman shows some interest in Jimmy, he gets to tell Ted, "Run that through your computer."  And then of course there's the most glorious minute in the entire Friday the 13th franchise, in which Jimmy wins a chick over by performing his mating dance, a full-out arms flailing body spasm set to an obscure '80s metal/new wave track.

The body count is high, and gore is in good supply, with makeup and effects work courtesy of Tom Savini.  Some of the more memorable moments involve a speargun to the groin, a corkscrew to the hand (followed by a machete to the face!), an axe to the chest, a throw from a window, and (spoiler) Jason's demise at the hands of bald Corey Feldman.  It seems we are to believe that the dude who's hunting Jason to avenge the death of his sister will face off against Jason in the climax, but instead, dude gets jumped by Jason and screams, "He's killing me!  He's killing me!" before taking a breath, then adding, "He's killing me!"  (On the downside, the death scenes are obviously cut, but the extended versions can be found on the Deluxe Edition DVD.)

Dead fucks.  Imaginary computers.  Banana drool.  Old school peep shows.  Pot smoking.  Premarital sex.  Dog through window.  "He's killing me!"  Bald Corey Feldman.  The Crispin.  Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is clearly the must-see hit of 1984.

Friday the 13th Part 3

A year after Friday the 13th Part 2, Steve Miner returned to helm the inventively-titled Friday the 13th Part 3, becoming the only person to direct more than one entry in the franchise.

The action picks up where the second film ended, as the ending of Part 2 is the beginning of Part 3.  After a few minutes, a disco version of Harry Manfredini's score rears its ugly head, and the opening credits appear, plunging us into the third dimension.  Oh yes, this sucker's in 3D, and the Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu Ray come equipped with two pairs of 3D glasses, so the home audience can experience the thrill of seeing joints, yo-yos, popcorn, TV antennas, and baseball bats shoved towards them in glorious shades of red and blue.   Far too much time is spent on this ridiculousness, including an extended scene in which two guys juggle, and the scariest effects are a rubber snake on a cord and an eyeball popping out at the screen.   When objects aren't being shoved at the camera, the glasses make the already drab picture even more murky and blurry, and if the glasses aren't worn, it negates the purpose of having said objects shoved at the camera.

This time, the setting is a farmhouse instead of a camp.   Jason's potential victims include a chick who experienced something terrible years earlier, a guy who walks around on his hands, some middle-aged stoners, and a chubby prankster.  There's also a biker gang made up of two guys and a girl, who decide to cause some mischief in the barn, where two of them run afoul of Jason.   Inexplicably, the other one apparently decides to hang out there until the climax.  By that point, Jason has a machete, so perhaps he was just waiting to ensure he'd get a cool death scene, as opposed to being ambushed while taking a dump.  Oh, and in addition to the machete, Jason dons his soon-to-be-trademark hockey mask for the first time.

Part 3 doesn't deviate from the formula established by the first two films: "teenagers" go to the woods, ignore the loony guy who warns them of their impending doom, have sex, do drugs, and are horribly killed.   Even the ending is a blatant rip-off of the first film's.  The film is also surprisingly light on the gore and nudity (most likely due to MPAA censorship), so unfortunately, unless you're a huge fan of 3D, Friday the 13th Part 3 really isn't all that exciting.

Friday the 13th Part 2

The success of the first Friday the 13th ensured that a sequel would be rushed out, and Friday the 13th Part 2 is basically a remake of that film, only this time, there's a different killer.  Following her decapitation of insane murderess Pamela Voorhees, sole survivor Alice (Adrienne King) is stalked and slain within the film's first five minutes.  The action then jumps to a new camp, located unsettlingly close to Camp Crystal Lake, where a bunch of teenagers get together to have sex, do drugs, and tell scary campfire tales of Mrs. Voorhees' son Jason, who may still be lurking in the nearby woods.

The plot is pretty much the same as the first film's, and the death scenes are imitations of what was done before; they're also heavily edited, with lots of trimming and cutaways.  Even Crazy Ralph is back, still trying to warn the kids of impending doom by wandering around the camp alone.  With the exception of Tom McBride and Lauren-Marie Taylor as, respectively, a wheelchair-bound guy and the girl who harbors a crush on him, who have some cute scenes together, the teens are paper-thin and forgettable, existing only to be gruesomely murdered by Jason, who's not yet sporting his trademark hockey mask; instead, he is wearing a burlap sack over his head.  He's also a bit different from the average horror villain; he has the chance to kill a dog and doesn't.  So for what it's worth, F13 Part 2 holds a special place in my heart as an animal-loving horror film.

That's about the only thing this has going for it.  Director Steve Miner alternates between countless shots from the killer's point of view and simply pointing the camera at stuff and filming it as blandly and straightforwardly as possible.  There's not a shred of suspense or atmosphere to be found here, which, combined with the lack of blood, proves quite problematic in a slasher flick. 

Plot holes and logic mistakes are plentiful.  How does a deformed backwoods maniac successfully track down Alice, stalking and making threatening phone calls?  Why does the heroine toss a working chainsaw aside in favor of hitting Jason with a chair?  If Jason was alive all this time, why didn't he step in to help his mama before she got beheaded?  However, this is a slasher, and these kinds of issues can be overlooked as long as I'm getting some decent kills, scares, and entertainment out of it.  Unfortunately, Friday the 13th Part 2 offers none of this.  Skip it.

Friday the 13th

Originally conceived as a Halloween rip-off for the purpose of making some quick cash, director Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th would inspire ten sequels, a TV series, a remake, and an army of imitators.  The original holds up well enough all these years later.

After a brutal double murder in 1958, Camp Crystal Lake was shut down.  Attempts to reopen the camp were met with strange happenings, including fires and poisoned water, leading the locals to term the place "Camp Blood."  For some reason, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), the son of the original owners, thinks it's a great idea to reopen the camp, and recruits a group of teenagers to assist him in this endeavor.  Steve takes off to run some errands in the nearest town, leaving the teens to brave snakes, the rainy night, and a murderer who's determined to dispose of every one of them.

There's not really any character development, but the teens are, for the most part, believable and likable, if totally oblivious; it isn't until the very end of the film, when there is only one survivor, that she realizes everyone else is dead.  The actors are adequate; I particularly liked Robbi Morgan as the cheery Annie, who at first appears to be the Final Girl, until she gets her throat slit before even making it to the camp.  Jeannine Taylor and Kevin Bacon display the film's only nudity, which is nice because Taylor is easily the most attractive of the ladies.  Walt Gorney is fun as Crazy Ralph, who tries to warn the kids of the impending danger.  His approach - lying in wait in a cupboard until Alice happens to open it, emerging, and raving, "I'm a messenger of God.  You're doomed if you stay here!  Doooomed!" - is probably not the best, but it's an admirable effort.

The music rips off Psycho in a big way, but adds its own distinctive touch with the "ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma" sounds signaling the killer's arrival.  Makeup master Tom Savini does the effects work, and the teens die in inventive ways, including an axe to the head and an arrow through the neck.  The uncut DVD restores some excised gore, amounting to a few seconds of footage.  The identity of the killer is kept secret, leading to a nice surprise revelation and twist ending.

Friday is not without its mistakes - supposedly dead bodies move, and Annie mentions that she'll "be cooking for 50 kids," then, in her very next scene, complains, "I've always wanted to work with children.  I hate when people call them kids.  Sounds like little goats" - but, overall, it does quite well for a low-budget production.  Friday the 13th isn't as good as those other genre classics, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it is one of the more entertaining, definitive slashers.

Slumber Party Massacre II

Slumber Party Massacre II picks up a few years after the events in the original.  Valerie, one of the survivors, is now in a mental hospital, while her sister Courtney Bates (now played by Crystal Bernard) is plagued by nightmares involving a supernatural leather-clad rockabilly killer (Atanas Ilitch) who wields a spiky red guitar that doubles as a drill.  Courtney plans to celebrate her seventeenth birthday by heading to a condo with her all-girl rock band for the ultimate slumber party weekend.  The festivities begin with a feast of corn dogs and champagne, followed by a synchronized dance routine which eventually results in one girl taking off her bra and slapping her friends with it, before the inevitable slow motion pillow fight, witnessed, of course, by two guys who've shown up to crash the party (one comments, "I didn't know girls really did this").  However, Courtney's nightmares are starting to encroach on reality and may mean real danger for her and her friends.

Slumber Party Massacre II has to be one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen.  The driller killer shakes his hips, breakdances, flails his arms, and engages in full-blown musical numbers while stalking his victims.  The nightmares include flashbacks to events from the first movie which Courtney wasn't present for, but they also incorporate footage from later in this very movie, so at least they're consistently inconsistent.  Eventually, in addition to the nightmares, Courtney begins having waking hallucinations of exploding zits (kinda gross) and flying frozen chickens (freaking hilarious). 

If none of this sounds delightfully off-the-wall to you, you're not going to like Slumber Party Massacre II.  This was writer/director/producer Deborah Brock's first feature film, and it shows, to put it mildly.  There are numerous out-of-focus shots, along with some really odd camera angles (Courtney's crush Matt is shot in extreme closeup so that his dialogue looks like it's directed not at the characters, but the audience).  The script makes absolutely no sense; in fact, if you don't shut your brain off while watching, your head may explode.  The ending is a triple-twist copout.  The film is barely over an hour, yet it's poorly paced, with the killer appearing in the real world (suddenly and without explanation) around the 50 minute mark.

I'm able to overlook the film's many flaws because it's just so darn weird.  The sheer insanity of the proceedings is enough to hold my attention.  And of course there's the best/worst killer in the history of cinema.  Atanas Ilitch hams it up, cackling madly, speaking directly to the camera, and busting out some truly epic dance routines.  An explanation for such things would be insufficient and unnecessary.  This is mindless entertainment at its best, and as such, Slumber Party Massacre II is recommended for the most devout fans of cheesy slashers and bad, bad movies.

The Mutilator

The Mutilator is quite good for a 1980s slasher.  It suffers from poor acting and laughably bad moments, but it also has some surprisingly graphic gore.

The plot is the standard teens go to the beach and get slaughtered deal, with a few variations.  When he was a young boy, Ed decided to surprise his father by meticulously cleaning all of his pa's rifles.  Somehow, this brilliant plan took a tragic turn, resulting in Ed accidentally shooting and killing his mother.  At that moment, Ed looks out the window and sees his father's car pulling up.  Daddy is understandably pissed, and Ed flees, leaving his father to crack open a bottle of alcohol and have a drink, but not before pouring some down his dead wife's throat.  It sounds morbid and disturbing, but it plays out differently, as the entire sequence takes place without any dialogue, save for Ed's cries of "Mama, mama," which sound overdubbed anyway.  Watching Ed's father slowly move in towards his son, then shove him without a single word, comes across as goofy rather than menacing.

No matter, though, for the film jumps to a few years later, when Ed and his friends are trying to figure out how to enliven their boring fall break.  Ed gets a call from his father asking him to come clean out the old beach house, but he's reluctant to do so since he and his father have never gotten along since the unfortunate incident.  Caving to peer pressure, Ed relents, and the group head to the beach for some fun and sun.  When they get there, they discover daddy's battleaxe is missing, then some of the kids start disappearing.  Is Ed's father finally having his bloody revenge?  Has Ed snapped and decided to murder his friends?  Or is someone else the mutilator?

The identity of the killer is painfully obvious from the get-go; just from reading this review, it should be easy to guess.  But The Mutilator's strength was never intended to be in its mystery.  Where it does succeed is in its death scenes.  There are a couple of really nasty ones here, including an oversized fish hook going into a sensitive body part and a truly hilarious death by chainsaw that has to be seen to be believed.  Each kill is unlike the others, employing a different weapon and method of attack, but all are original and twisted.

As is typical in movies of this type, the acting is terrible.  Morey Lampley as Mike is the worst offender, contributing one of the most ludicrously overacted performances I've seen in a good while.  The script is full of plot holes and inconsistencies, and there are many laugh-out-loud moments:  Ed's friend picks up a framed picture of a mutilated body; Ed explains, "My dad ran over him when he was jet-skiing," this explanation is accepted, and no more questions are asked.  Also adding to the movie's charm is the cheesy, upbeat theme song.

In its uncut version The Mutilator is a fun, forgotten '80s slasher, which is unfortunately not yet available on DVD.  Those who are willing to content themselves with old VHS copies or ripped-to-DVD transfers will find much to love about The Mutilator.