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.