In the long-running series that is Friday The 13th, there are a few that stand above the rest. Come along with me as we find out where Jason Lives falls in the pecking order.
Jason Voorhees is dead, again, or so the viewer is lead to believe. Tommy Jarvis is not a believer. He and his friend Allen (played by Ron “Horshack” Palillo), from the insane halfway house (only mentioned extremely briefly) have made the trek to visit Jason’s grave and be sure that he won’t be back. When they arrive, they find that Jason, in fact, is dead in his grave. Tommy, not satisfied to see the body, snaps (again) and begins to stab Jason’s body with a broken piece of a metal fence. As Tommy turns to get some gas to burn Jason’s corpse in the grave, lightning strikes the metal still lodged in Jason, and literally brings him back to life. Just as Tommy is about to light Jason up like a 4th of July Bar B Que, a rainstorm begins. Allen cracks Jason over the head with a shovel and Jason quickly rewards him for his trouble by punching Allen’s heart through his back. Tommy, realizing he is horribly outmatched (no pun intended) hauls ass outta there.
That was the first 15mins of the movie. I describe it in detail only because it shows exactly how the movie is going to play out in a very small amount of time. Jason can perform feats of impossibility, the hero is always on his heels, and the deaths are more than ludicrous. In summation, the perfect horror movie.
Full disclosure, in case you haven’t picked up on it, this is my all-time favorite horror film. I realized that my love of this movie stems from a time when I wasn’t allowed to watch such movies and managed to sneak into a slumber party that my older sister was having, and watched in secret as terrible things happened on the screen in front of me. I was scared because I shouldn’t have been allowed to see the film, and thrilled because I was doing so. This has probably caused me to remember this movie more fondly than most. However, I have watched this part every year, and it never ceases to be great.
Given my love of Jason Lives, I have never thought to review it in a written format before. I will now attempt to sway every reader to my side.
Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives succeeds as a horror movie by accomplishing, in my opinion, one thing; balance. It’s the perfect mix of fear of the unknown/unseen, gory deaths, campy humor, and overcoming the odds. There are times when I find myself rooting for Jason to slay these idiotic camp counselors and times when I’m upset because that one didn’t deserve to die. There are times when the movie makes a full-on homage to an American Express commercial, and times when I felt genuinely scared for one of the characters. Granted this movie was made in the late 80s when pretty much EVERYTHING was different in movie making, but these movies were on the cutting edge of what is now considered cliche in horror films.
Part VI sits in the middle of two WILDLY different versions of the series. Part V takes itself far too seriously as a movie and manages to be hot garbage, as a result. Part VIII puts Jason in a totally different location and basically becomes the Jaws Revenge of the series. For this reason, Jason Lives is really the sweet spot of the series. Balancing itself between being far to serious for the subject matter and falling over the cliff of ridiculousness. All in all… it’s a great movie that really shouldn’t be missed, even if you have to skip the rest.
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