Here’s a thing that happened: in late 1985 my mother left me in the care of my aunt for the evening. This particular aunt, whom we’ll refer to as Lorie as that is her name, is only about 10 years older than me. And also--WAY into heavy metal and horror flicks. The first time she babysat for me she dressed me up like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister...which did not go over amazingly with anyone...particularly my bible-thumping grandparents. She was always trying to get me to watch Faces of Death or Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I was always like “dude, I am FIVE years old!” Anyway, on this particular evening we walked down to my local video store to rent some flicks. Lorie pulled a tape off the shelf and said “hey! you’re 7 now...I think you are ready for this!” The tape in question: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. On the cover: a hockey mask lying in a puddle of blood with a dagger sticking out of its left eyehole. I told my aunt that I was in no way, shape, or form ready for whatever unholy ghoulish shit she had in her hand. I decided to rent the comedy Moving Violations...starring Bill Murray’sssssss 4th most talented brother Johnny Murray....which was decent-ish. After said flick I went straight to bed...‘cuz I was 7 and 7 year-olds gotta go to bed. The layout of our apartment at the time was such that if you left my bedroom door open I had a direct view of our 20-inch Zenith in the living room. Before I could even get my sheep counted my aunt put Friday the 13th on...and I stayed up and watched the whole goddamn thing...wide-eyed and terrified. I saw so many things that no seven year-old should ever have to see: murder and mayhem...boobies….Crispin Glover dancing! From that night forward I was obsessed with all things Jason Voorhees. When a new Friday flick would hit the video store I would save up my dough so I could rent every movie in the series and watch them in order and scare myself legless. By the time I was in junior high my bedroom contained the following items: a stack of Friday-related Fangoria magazines, a collection of fake machetes and Jason hockey masks (including one that glowed in the dark!), a homemade poster with a timeline tracing the events of the Friday films, and a shoebox full of ears that I severed from random neighborhood cats and dogs (relax...that last thing is not true). When I was in my early 20’s I even wrote a novella about two 10 year-old boys trying to sneak into a screening of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan that my girlfriend at the time hated so much she suggested I move back in with my folks because “some people just don’t have “it.” Oof...yeah....so...anyway...today I’m here to talk about Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This was always one of my favorite films in the series because it isn’t terribly scary...and as much as I love being scared...I also really, really fucking hate being scared! What happens is this: If you have made it this far in this review this review you are probably already familiar with the events of the first few Friday films...so I won’t rehash them here. The character of Tommy Jarvis is the fulcrum that Friday’s 4-6 rests on. He’s 12 years-old in Part 4 and he’s played by Goonies star and Michael Jackson slumber party pal Corey Feldman. In part 5...which was released just one year after 4..Tommy is a teenaged resident of a mental hospital. Totally jacks up the timeline of the entire series, Part 5 does! I get it; Corey Feldman was too busy powdering his nose and shooting The Lost Boys up in Santa Carla. Also: Jason isn’t really Jason in 5...but some bereaved ambulance driver. Total bullshit. So when Part 6 opens we meet Tommy Jarvis again...but this time he’s played by some Canadian tuxedo-wearing, Bryan Adams lookin’ cat by the name of Thom Matthews. He’s the third actor to portray Tommy Jarvis in as many years, for those of y’all keep score at home. He’s out of the mental hospital, which is great. He’s also speeding to the town of Crystal Lake (re-named Forrest Green here for tourism reasons and whatnot) to dig up Jason’s body and set it on fire...which is less great. Tommy heads to the cemetery with his buddy Allen...who is totally Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter! Tells Allen that he needs to see Jason’s corpse and destroy it and then he’ll finally be right as rain up in the cabeza. Tommy starts digging up the grave and Horshack is all “meh meh meh meh Mista Kottah...I don’t like this! I’m gonna have a heart attack!” 28 years later the actor who plays Horshack will die of a heart attack. These two events appear to be unrelated. So Tommy cracks open the coffin...and there’s Jason...and dude is MUSH! Tommy goes bananas and screams and cries and tears a giant metal rod from a nearby fence and starts stabbing the corpse. Whatever mental hospital this kid went to did a piss poor job, amirite? Tommy finally chills out and then tosses Jason’s signature hockey mask into the grave. Oh...yeah...he brought it with him! You know...in case lightning strikes Jason and he inexplicably comes back to life and needs the mask to cover up his gnarly face. And wouldn’t you friggin’ know it: that's exactly what happens!! So Jason’s alive again and he’s still a murderous psychopath. We know this because the very first thing he does post-resurrection is rip Horshack’s heart out (literally...not figuratively). He’s also...like...an actual zombie monster now. There was always a sense in the earlier films that, you know, sure that dude was chopped up and hung from the rafters or whatever....but his injuries might be survivable. Actually, didn’t he live at the bottom of the lake for 20 years? OK, totally disregard what I just said. Tommy manages to escape to the local police station to warn them about Jason but the sheriff is an asshole jerk who pulls his gun on Tommy and threatens to repaint the station with his brains. They clearly didn’t have body cams back in ’86. Meanwhile out in the sticks, a couple get lost on their way to Camp Crystal Lake and run smack into Jason. They offer him their Amex cards but Jason impales them anyway...‘cuz he’s ice cold like that. The male victim is none other than Tony Goldwyn, the man responsible for Patrick Swayze’s ghostlike state in Ghost...so...serves him right, I say! The next morning, the sheriff’s daughter Megan shows up at the station with the rest of the cast slash meat for the slaughter. There’s innocent girl (Paula)...token black (Sissy), and the poor man’s Patrick Dempsey (Cort). They’re all present and accounted for. Megan mentions that she and her friends are supposed to be headed to camp to do some camp counseling but that the camp directors have yet to show. Tommy hears this and starts wailing about Jason and whatnot...because in this movie the jail is conveniently located in the middle of the police station. Tommy’s all “sorry but your friends have most likely been dismembered”. Even though Tommy is in prison Megan immediately has eyes for him because of course she does. The sheriff is all “enough of this happy horseshit” and decides to escort Tommy to the edge of town...‘cuz that’ll show him. Tommy leads them to the graveyard where he hopes that the sight of Jason’s empty coffin will convince them they have a murderous maggot slush puppy on the loose. Unfortunately the whisky-slugging gravedigger has already closed the grave back up with Horshack’s body...so that plan goes shithouse. The gravedigger also looks into the camera at one point and says “some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment” and then says “fart head.” Best character in this flick by a country mile, that gravedigger. Megan and her friends arrive at the summer camp with a few shopping bags full of lunchables and orange Gatorade and Deep Woods Off and try to figure out how they are gonna operate the summer camp without Tony Goldwyn. The four of them!? Look y’all...I spent about a dozen summers at summer camp. We had like 40 counsellors...a program director...a camp nurse, and a full kitchen staff. Hell, I even taught the camp drama course for a summer...which is what kids were forced to take when the archery classes were full. No way these four chumps gonna run an entire summer camp! But sure enough a buttload of children come rolling up on a school bus. While all of this is going on Jason is out in the woods killing a bunch of non-characters all willy nilly. It’s like the filmmakers realized they only had 60 minutes worth of movie and had to stage some kill scenes that have nothing to do with anything to pad things out. There’s a group of middle aged people on a corporate paintball retreat. They all get killed. There’s two random yuppies laying on a blanket sipping champagne. Deadsville. He also kills the gravedigger...which is a total prick move. Finally night has fallen and Jason goes to camp...just like Ernest...but mute and full of malice. He’s there to kill all of the counsellors who were too busy fornicating to save him from drowning as a child. Only problem is he already did that like 4 movies ago. Why you gotta keep messing with that camp, brah? Speaking of fornicating...there are now only 3 counsellors as Cort is offsite balling some random gal in the back of an RV. She’s like “I’m really enjoying this here balling...please try to hold out until the song is over.” Cort is all “umm...well...how much longer is the song?” Her answer: ten minutes. Note: I did some research and said song, “I’m No Animal” by the band Felony, is only 3:38. So there’s that. Luckily (or unluckily) Jason cuts the power to the RV and the dude does his thing. Selfish prick. Fortunately the RV has a generator so they hit the road with the quickness. Cort drives like a total asshole while blasting an Alice Cooper tune called “Teenage Frankenstein”...which is not to be confused with his song “Feed My Frankenstein” from Wayne’s World...even though it is totally confusing. Unfortunately their night ends shittily when Jason sneaks aboard and murders them both horribly and gruesomely. Sorry doodz. The cops find the crashed up RV with the slashed up bodies and immediately conclude that it’s Tommy Jarvis that done did the killing. Back at the camp Jason is creepin’ while the kiddos are sleepin’. He goes to Sissy’s cabin and twists her head around so it’s facing the wrong way. She dies (I mean...right?). Then he pays a visit to Paula and just kills the absolute living shit out of her. So now there’s just ONE camp counsellor left. And unfortunately that counsellor is Megan...and she has driven her bitchin’ Camaro into town to find Tommy Jarvis and flirt his face off. Our boy Tommy has spent the majority of the movie hanging out in the local independent bookstore...sipping lattes and reading a book called “The Dead are Alive”. Now he’s a man with a plan; he’s gotta return Jason to his original resting place at the bottom of the lake. Easy peasy, right? But remember the cops think Tommy’s a murderer so there’s a big car chase and they lock him up and blah blah blah don’t bore up get to the chorus! Megan breaks Tommy out of jail and they rush to the camp where Jason is killing his way through the police force...walking around with headless corpses....contemplating killing
himself some children...just to change things up. You know...for a goof! While Tommy prepares to lure Jason out into the lake in a janky motor boat full of heavy duty chains and cans of gasoline (that he got where??) Megan rounds up the children...telling them that they should not be afraid. Umm...all but one of the camp counsellors along with the entire police force have been slaughtered...I think it’s reasonable to be VERY fucking afraid! Jason catches up to Megan and tries to squeeze her head until it pops like a zit...but he’s distracted by Tommy shouting “C’mon chickenshit! Come and get me, maggot head!” from his boat. NO ONE like being called maggot head...particularly Jason Voorhees...whose head is made of actual maggots. Tommy lights the lake on fire (where do bad folks go when they dieee) and Jason swims out and capsizes the boat. Tommy manages to slip the chains around Jason but Jason holds Tommy underwater for, like, a long ass time. Like...dude has drowned for sure. Megan swims out to the boat and fires up the engine. The engine propellor just happens to be next to Jason’s face. It mashes his already mashed-up grill up something awful! So Jason is dead*. Megan drags Tommy to shore and does some half-assed CPR for like ten seconds and Tommy comes back to life and is fine and shows no signs of having been drowned and dead for the last ten minutes. Everyone is all “phew, Jason is most definitely finally really for sure totally dead.” The camera moves back underwater...where we see that Jason’s eyes are OPEN and dude is thinking he has at least five more sequels and one reboot left in him. The end....ish...