Few things represent the 1980s like Friday the 13th. By the 80s, hippies who once lived in communes and preached about a revolution now had slick corporate jobs. As more people only cared about profit, Friday the 13th jumped on the bandwagon when it made almost $60 million on a $550,000 budget. Paramount Pictures, while embarrassed to participate in horror, had no issue collecting millions at the box office yearly.
By 1989 the thrill was gone. Jason Takes Manhattan made $15 million against a $5 million budget. This’d be a great profit for most but for Paramount, it was pocket change compared to what they were collecting a few years prior. After this one they temporarily put Jason down before resurrecting him for Jason Goes To Hell in 1993.
Until now, I’ve never seen Jason Takes Manhattan. I’ve seen the 8 minutes that Jason actually spends in New York City, but I’ve never watched the whole movie. Overall I’d say the reputation this film has is accurate. Jason Takes Manhattan is a weak entry that promises more than it’s willing to give. Nothing about Jason Takes Manhattan makes it an awful movie, it’s aggressively fine. This was made to put on at a Halloween party for background material nobody can hear over that night’s playlist.
You can feel the franchise’s eagerness to be put down in Part VIII. The film opens on a slow montage of the New York City sights Jason quickly stomps through later on. This is also the 2nd Friday the 13th film in three years where Jason’s resurrected by electricity.
My favorite entry.
Nothing makes you say “fuck this movie”, but you wish they got more insane with the creative process after the last installment had something as awesome as a teen with telekinesis fucking Jason up.
Similar to how Halloween II’s Michael Myers is influenced by the creative bloodshed of the then new Friday the 13th franchise, Jason Takes Manhattan is influenced by the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, something that replaced Friday the 13th as the trendy thing in horror. It helped that New Line Cinemas seemed to be proud of Elm Street while Friday the 13th was kept in a bastard child attic on the Paramount lot.
Like the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, some detail about a character will be briefly mentioned and their death will be influenced by that one moment that defines their personality. Julius’ moment of character development occurs when he’s shown boxing. He ends up getting his head punched off like a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot.
One girl is shown playing a fucking gorgeous purple Flying V guitar before Jason bludgeons her with it.
Like most Friday the 13th movies, I watch this and wonder if this franchise’s main occupation was to distract the MPAA so gorier horror films could slip by. While the kills in Friday the 13th are creative, there’s a lack of blood and gore I always find weird. While every other horror film from this era got detailed with their gore, Friday the 13th (minus the ones Tom Savini worked on) show people being stabbed and their head slacking forward while the smallest trickle of blood pours. In a decade with something like The Thing and all these years later when something like Hannibal got on NBC, movies where we see Jason swing a guitar and a corner of the screen turns red is TV movie tame.
None of the kills in later installments are as detailed as the first film’s.
There’s some creative kills to be found but some real stinkers as well. Towards the beginning Jason finds a girl screaming for her life and as he stands over her, he gently brings down something to stab her with. The only purpose for this kill has to be that feminists were accusing Friday the 13th of being sexist with the way Jason uses all his rage to punish sexually liberated women, so I guess the answer to that was showing Jason killing a woman with as much tenderness as Bob Ross shows with a paintbrush?
As mentioned previously, this is a movie whose advertising screams “JASON VOORHEES IN NEW YORK” and a majority of the experience is on a cruise ship approaching New York.
This is a movie where you just sit and imagine the possibilities of a better film capitalizing on the advertising. You also sit there and wonder why this film spends so much time on a fucking cruise ship. Did the people making this think we needed a logical explanation for how Jason Voorhees goes from Camp Crystal Lake to New York City? I don’t think anybody would’ve watched this movie if it opened on Jason in New York and said, “THEY DIDN’T EXPLAIN HOW HE GOT THERE, NOW THE GOOD NAME OF FRIDAY THE 13TH IS TARNISHED!”
Instead of Jason carving up the big apple, this film focuses on one of the most generic final girls who’s terrified of water and having bizarre hallucinations of young Jason Voorhees. Spoilers, it’s later revealed this girl was pushed into Crystal Lake by her mean uncle who looks like a school teacher in a Twisted Sister video. When that happened, I guess young Jason Voorhees almost pulled her down to make her his Mera?
This is the dumb shit we’re supposed to care about over Jason in the middle of New York when the city was a post-apocalyptic wasteland surrounded by garbage can fires.
One of my favorite things about Jason Take Manhattan is when Jason Voorhees prevents a rape. This was also when I realized a better version of this movie would’ve been Jason Voorhees let loose in New York City stacking bodies but every time he murders somebody, he’s unintentionally preventing a horrible crime from happening cause it’s 1980s New York. The fact that Jason Voorhees doesn’t toss Donald Trump out of an 80 story window at Trump Tower makes me shrug my shoulders and wonder what was the point of advertising this installment like Jason is coming to New York to make the Son of Sam look weak.
Overall Jason Takes Manhattan isn’t good, it isn’t bad, it’s fine. While previous installments in this franchise are like getting deep dish pizza at Giordano’s, Jason Takes Manhattan is pepperoni pizza from Little Caesar’s.
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