Jason X

31 Days of Horror, post 11

Saturday the 13th isn't quite as good as Friday the 13th, but this was the most appropriate day I could fit in a Friday the 13th movie review (P.S.: it's my final one!  I've got a complete set now!).  On the surface, the notion of Jason Voorhies in space sounds like a desperate gambit, destined for failure.  And it is.  The only reason this movie ever happened was because Freddy vs. Jason was stuck in development hell, and the production company didn't want to risk their property falling out of the public's awareness.  It was set in the future --- and space --- so as to not interfere with the franchise continuity, just in case FvJ opted to make use of that history (SPOILER: it didn't).  Still...this is the tenth Friday the 13th film, and it is one of the few, the proud, the incredibly stupid --- the horror sequel set in space.  Maybe the sheer audacity of doing something this dumb will redeem Jason X.

Jason X is an important film, not only because it is the tenth entry in a film series --- how many films can boast that claim? (four, actually) --- but also because it teaches us important lessons.  The film opens in the Crystal Lake Research Facility, because research facilities are typically built in the same area as remote Summer camps.  There, we meet Rowan (Lexa Doig), a scientist heading a team that is researching Jason Voorhies (Kane Hodder).  Everyone knows about how Jason was captured by the government; they "executed him for the first time" in 2008, remember?  He just won't stay dead, though.  In 2010, Rowan plans to freeze Jason for further study, but David Cronenberg wants to do something stupid that inevitably leads to Jason getting free and having himself a blood orgy.

"Blood Orgy" would make a pretty solid Cronenberg title

The details don't matter.  The important thing is that Rowan and Jason wind up being cryogenically frozen.  In the year 2455, a group of students is on...um...a class trip?  An archaeology expedition?  A weak excuse to move the plot forward?  Whatever.  They find the two Popsicles and bring them on board their spaceship.  Rowan is thawed out first, and her immediate thoughts returned to keeping Jason dead-ish.  Her worries are immediately dismissed because she's only the person they found with their unknown subject.  Some unknown stimulus does the impossible and brings Jason back from the dead.

The "unknown stimulus" is cadaver table romance?

Being a ruthless zombie murderer that has feels no pain still makes for a fairly efficient killer, even in the distant future.  However, it's only a matter of time until future technology outclasses this machete-wielding maniac.  Of course, that's assuming that Jason can't keep up with the times.

Goalie masks: still fashionable, even in 450 years

The acting in Jason X is better off not being mentioned.  Let's just say that it's campy at best and amateurish at worst and leave it at that.

It's possible this guy doesn't even list this movie on his resume

James Issacs directed Jason X.  He didn't try to make the characters too likable, or make the spaceship look good.  His focus was on violence and campy humor.  How successful was he?

Well, one fantastic kill can't carry an entire horror movie (...Or can it?  Let me know if you have a good example), but that is easily one of my all-time favorite death scenes in this franchise.  The rest of the violence isn't as creative or graphic, but Jason was certainly prolific; I counted twenty-four kills, with several more implied off-screen.  That's a pretty high body count, but that doesn't guarantee entertainment.  To increase the likelihood of Jason X being fun to watch, the writer (Todd Farmer) and director teamed up to make this the campiest and silliest Friday the 13th yet.  Was it actually funny?  Well...here and there.

"We love premarital sex!"

There are a few gags that worked quite well.  My personal favorite was the premarital sex girls/sleeping bag death scene.  It was predictable, but still great.  I also liked some of the more knowing dialogue; I don't usually like it when a movie has characters that comment on the action, but the potentially annoying observations were surprisingly solid in Jason X.  James Isaacs and Todd Farmer deserve some credit for making this as watchable as it is.  Even with all the parts that made me chuckle, there were a lot more moments that were just eye-rollingly lame.  Take this scene, for example:

It's humorously violent, it has characters making commentary, and is filled with over-the-top ridiculousness.  When done correctly, that should make for an awesome scene.  This one...it's not bad.  I might even go so far as to call it "pretty good."  But it doesn't quite work.  There's some absolutely silly moves from the lady, some mediocre one-liner comments, and Jason looking confused while he gets blown to hell.  It's fun, but it feels a bit forced.

There is a problem with the way I approached Jason X.  Since this is the tenth freakin' Friday, and it is set in space, I instinctively treated it with kid gloves; since I went in with such gloriously low expectations, minor accomplishments like occasionally competent dialogue seem far more valuable than they really are.  It's like applauding a toddler for pooping in a toilet --- we expect that of most people, but the bar is set pretty low for these kids because we know they're crapped themselves so many times before. 

Look!  Jason's distracted by my amazing simile!

If you go into Jason X with absolutely no preconceptions, this will be a pretty bad movie.  If you walk into it knowing that it's going to be truly idiotic and violent, though, it's shining moments will seem like pure gold.  Is it any good?  Surprisingly, it's only slightly more than half-bad.

If you're looking to laugh, though, there is enough Lefty Gold to power several drinking games.

Of course, some of the best moments in Jason X are not related directly to the story at all.  Here's a handy list to help you pick out some of the choicer moments of conceptual humor:
- Jason still has his gross old clothes and mask.  Think about that for a moment.  Jason had been captured by the government for several years and they tried every way they could imagine to kill him.  And yet, the scientists never replaced his shitty clothes or hockey mask.  For that matter, the fact that Jason is able to easily get his hands on a giant-ass machete just goes to show that the Crystal Lake Research Facility is probably not the high-end, respectable place that the name implies.

- Students in space are always ready for sexy time.  I have no problem with characters in horror movies acting sex-crazed, since that's one of the characteristics of slasher movies.  I was surprised by how much skin was showing while these students were working on corpses.

Midriff- and shoulder-baring sweaters are actually part of the dissection uniform

- Hockey is on its last legs.  According to Jason X, which we can all agree is a historical document, hockey will be outlawed in 2024.  Sorry, Canada, you only have twelve more years to live for.
- Machetes are medical tools in the future.  'Nuff said.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Movie poster designed by Cash Money Records

Happy Friday the 13th!  What better way to celebrate the day than by spending a little time with my favorite inhuman kinda-zombie-thing mass murderer, Jason Voorhees?  If you answered "with copycat murders," please turn yourself in now.  Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is the ninth entry in the series and the second to include "The Final" in the subtitle.  Take a moment to enjoy that bit of irony, because that's the most highbrow entertainment that you're going to get from this movie.

In a bold change of pace for the series, Jason Goes to Hell opens without a recap and doesn't even attempt to justify or explain how Jason survived the final moments of Jason Takes Vancouver.  After all, is there anybody out there who really cares about the continuity of this series?  If so, Jason's resurrection in Part VI should have been a deal breaker for them; at this point in the series, I like the screenwriter's "who gives a fuck" attitude toward setting up this chapter's premise.  Anyway, the film opens with a busty woman trying to take a shower in what appears to be a campsite, or at least a derelict vacation home.  Once she has disrobed and started the shower, she hears a noise, grabs a towel and comes face to face with Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder).  Instead of dying immediately, this lady runs.  I'm not talking about your typical slasher movie "victim running away" scene --- she books it.  She might be wearing only a towel (a very well-wrapped towel that never unravels) and no shoes (except in a shot where you can see her wearing shoes), but she is sprinting, diving, doing flips and all sorts of other things that undoubtedly caught JV off-guard.  When Jason arrives in an open field to finish shower girl off, he is met by gunfire; this whole thing, apparently including the whole get-naked-and-run-through-the-woods part, was an FBI setup to ambush Jason and blow him to Hell.

Mission accomplished, roll credits

We follow Jason's charred remains to the coroner's office, where the coroner is overcome by the burning desire to devour Jason's black heart.  You may justly ask at this point what the Hell is going on?  Jason has possessed the coroner and now occupies his body.  Well, that's an interesting/out of left field plot twist, isn't it?  

Also note: orange lights = evil possession

From this point forward, it's better to not think too much about the plot, because it's migrane-inducing.  I'll just cut to the chase.  Since his body has been destroyed, Jason must track down a family member to be reborn.  How do we know this?  Because this guy says so.

Who?

You might recognize Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) as having absolutely nothing to do with any of the other Friday the 13th movies; of course he's an expert.  According to Duke, "In a Voorhees was he born, through a Voorhees may he be reborn, and only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die."  Of course, people want to know his source for that obvious quote take his word for it and accept his crazy talk at face value.  Jason's niece (Kari Keegan) and her baby daddy, Steven (John D. LeMay) take an apparently mystical knife --- specifically designed, of course, to kill Jason --- and set out to make this film's title happen.  Oh, and did I mention that Jason Voorhees is a demonic worm? 

Or, possibly, a sexually transmitted mouth-slug?

And that when he was "reborn through a Voorhees," he magically regenerated his lumpy face, used mask and tattered jumpsuit?  No?  That's probably for the best.

Does his face look puffy?  Maybe he has allergies

What sets Jason Goes to Hell apart from the other Fridays is its complete disregard for the history of this series.  "Only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die"?!?  Since when?!?  And, even if that was true, why hasn't Jason hunted down and murdered his family members before now?  We know he's capable of stalking his prey (Part II) and tracking down individuals wherever they go (Part VIII), so that should have been a lazy Sunday for JV.  Honestly, I like the complete disregard for the earlier entries in the series, but I wish they had come up with something a little better than this.  An unstoppable killer hunting down his family?  That sounds suspiciously like another mute serial killer, doesn't it?  And I liked the homages to other films (was that Antarctic crate referencing The Thing or Creepshow?), but I would have liked some effort at explaining why The Evil Dead's Necronomicon was in Pam Voorhees' old house.  I assume this was meant to imply that the book is partly responsible for Jason's undying nature, but if you're going to clutter up a slasher film with mystical mumbo-jumbo and cross-references to other movies, you should go all out and actually explain it.

And look...!  There's a receipt from S-Mart!

 
But I think we can all agree that plot has never really been the strong point of the Friday the 13th series.  This is a franchise that is built on solid acting interesting direction violence.  Surprisingly, Jason Goes to Hell is lacking in that department.  Sure, Jason Voorhees explodes, and yes, a dude's jaw melts off.

Above: a lumpy, oozing body.  Below: his jawbone

Those were really the coolest special effects moments in the film.  While twenty-three kills is an impressive number for a horror movie, many of them were off-camera.  Almost as bad as those were the dozen or so weak kills; Jason would walk up to somebody, hit them once, and they would be dead.  The unrated version is a little better, if only because it actually shows this kill in all its glory:

Moral: there is no such thing as "safe" premarital sex

The teasing final moment was also kind of fun, especially the first time I saw the film as a pre-teen.

It took ten years to follow up on this tease, but it was worth it

Still, there is a lot of lameness in areas that should be this film's strengths.  Jason Voorhees isn't the sort of movie monster that can be stopped by brute force; you beat him by tricking him or luring him into a vulnerable position, where you can stick a machete in his noggin/leave him at the bottom of a lake/melt him with toxic waste.  In Jason Goes to Hell, though, JV spends almost two solid minutes near the climax fighting the nerdiest guy in the film.  It's not that Jason never hits the guy or grabs him by the neck or head --- he just doesn't kill the poor sap.  At one point, Jason even throws his victim into a jungle gym.

Not pictured: Jason patiently waiting his turn for the slide

You'd think the guy would have been impaled or that Jason was going to use the bars to tear his body apart at unusual angles, but no.  That's okay, though, because this happens only moments before JV's niece appears to run up a step-stool (that she must have supplied herself, since it is missing in the establishing shot) to attack Jason.

Look at her boot and note that she hasn't even jumped yet

Jason Goes to Hell is a pretty awful excuse for filmmaking, especially in regards to the basics.  If you've seen the movie once or twice, it's easy to notice inconsistencies in the continuity editing, like bloodstains vanishing or moving within scenes.  My favorite example of this is Duke's note to Jason's niece.  When she finds the note and realizes her baby is missing, the note clearly reads "I have what you want," but when her baby's daddy reads the note moments later, it has been changed to "I have your baby."  Of course, the baby may have been kidnapped and replaced several times over during the film, because there are at least two clearly different infants in this movie (hint: one is bald and the other has hair).  Also, why was the Voorhies place once referred to as the "Myers" place?  And the name on the (abandoned for 30 years) mailbox even misspelled the name.  And why is Jason's mask in the promo posters and the opening credit sequence made of metal?

Aside from "for awesomeness," I mean

None of that matters, of course.  Those are just things that you can nitpick on because they are "blatantly terrible" and "unbelievably amateurish for a professionally-made and -distributed film."  The quality of a Jason movie is not how "good" or "bad" it is; it isn't even measured by how "scary" it is.  I measure the Friday the 13ths (especially the later sequels) by how much they entertained me.  Jason Goes to Hell isn't a good movie by any means, but it is noticeably different from the other Fridays and that is even more important when you are the ninth and (maybe note really) final film in a series.  I will give it credit for boldness and not boring me with clips from other movies.  The sheer lunacy of the plot was enough to keep me interested in the story, even though the violence wasn't too impressive.  On a standard scale of quality, this film deserves

The ridiculous plot and technical mistakes also make this movie a blast to ridicule and/or watch while intoxicated.  It's not gory enough to wow you if you're too smashed; most of the humor comes from a conceptual level as you ponder aloud the implications of what you're seeing.  Still, that makes for one of the more entertaining entries in the series.  In Lefty Gold terms, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is a pleasurable

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!  To celebrate, I decided to review one of my favorite bad movies of all time, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  It doesn't take a bold person to claim that the seventh sequel of a low-budget horror movie is bad, but Jason Takes Manhattan is uniquely bad in a film series that is not particularly renowned for its high quality.  Needless to say, I have watched this movie at least thirty times, and am damned proud of it.

With a subtitle like Jason Takes Manhattan, you should know what's in store for you, as an audience: Jason Voorhies tearing it up in NYC spending a lot of time on a boat.  After the events of The New Blood, Jason Voorhies (Kane Hodder) was punished for killing the Weekend at Bernie's guy by having a rotting corpse psychically revived to drag him down to the bottom of Crystal Lake.  Really.  I'm guessing that a year goes by (which sets this 1989 film in 2003 by my math) before Jason is awakened by a boat anchor tearing open a hole in a power line (left conveniently uncovered at the bottom of the lake), after the anchor has dragged the power line into contact with Jason, of course.  Jason wakes up and is understandably cranky, so he kills a few naughty teens.

He then sails the boat (he can drive a boat?!?) back to the Crystal Lake marina (it has a marina?!?).  After that, he presumably jumps into the water and climbs up the anchor chain to sneak onto the Crystal Lake senior class's senior cruise ship.  Now, you may wonder why Jason bothered to sneak on board, since nobody could have stopped him walking up the gangplank.  My short answer is that Jason is quite a joker, but more on that later.  You may also wonder how a location that is known as a vacation/murder destination could get its own high school, but I have an answer for that, too: shh...!  The senior cruise sets sail to New York City.  Now you may wonder how Crystal Lake suddenly got a river attached to it, much less one that would connect it to New York; to you critics, I answer "the same way Crystal Lake suddenly became surrounded by mountains for the first time ever."  Now, Jason's only on the cruise for two reasons, to murder some asses and chew bubble gum --- but he's all out of gum!  The amazingly diverse class of Crystal Lake High (which includes a nerd, a rocker, some jocks, and a smart Asian(Kelly Hu))

Who happens to also be a mutant

is easy pickings for Mr. Voorhies, but Jason is just a little too efficient at ruining the ship.  He starts to flood the vessel, and five survivors and a dog make it to a life raft.  After a few minutes (or hours...or days...the movie doesn't really give any hints), the survivors manage to pass the Statue of Liberty into New York Harbor.  That's right, kids --- these survivors sailed into NYC from the East, which gives Crystal Lake the approximate location of here:

So then what happens?  Well, children, you'll have to watch to find out.  Spoiler Alert!  You get to see Jason's face, or at least what it would look like if it was sculpted in outdated yogurt.

What makes Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan bad enough to stand out from the crowd of bad Friday the 13th sequels?  For starters --- but just for starters --- the movie spends only a few scenes in New York City.  With a subtitle like this, you might expect to see Jason scaling the Empire State Building or dropping bodies in Yankee Stadium, but all you see of the Big Apple is the Statue of Liberty and a brief shot of Times Square.  That's it.  The rest is on the stupid cruise ship or filmed in Vancouver, which looks a lot more like Detroit than it does Manhattan.

Perhaps the stupidest (and thus, my most favorite) thing about this film is the fact that Jason reaches New York City and hunts down the Crystal Lake survivors.  Imagine that...a city full of sinners, especially with all the gang and drug activity in the late 80s, and Jason decides to spare the sewers of humanity in an effort to track down five people --- who have split up, mind you --- in the biggest city on the planet.

He doesn't even take a swing at these punks!

It is also worth noting that in Jason Takes Vancouver, we are given some of the least likable heroes in a series known for making you hate the heroes enough to root for the killer.  For starters, there is the charisma-free Suzi (Tiffany Paulsen), who is afraid of water, wears a "stylish" vest, and takes her dog with her on her senior cruise.

Above: Nancy Grace's inspiration

And she's the heroine!  There is a total bitch popular girl, some inoffensive middling students, and the two teachers chaperoning the trip.  The teachers are interesting; the lady (Barbara Bingham, who you might recognize from Cop Target...or more likely, not) is suspiciously close to the heroine --- she hugs and buys the girl presents --- and the other is the heroine's uncle/guardian Charles (Peter Mark Richman), who is as evil and wrong as often as he can possibly fit into this film's 100 minute running time.  So, we have a sexual predator and an asshole.  Great.  Charles not only refuses to believe in Jason (strike one), he repeatedly blames the creepy longshoreman for the murders with little to no proof (strike two), and he acts like a complete dick to the people who are rowing his sorry ass to safety (yer out!).  I expect to dislike most of the characters in a Friday the 13th movie, but this was ridiculous.  Never have I wished so hard for Jason to amuse me with his deadly talent than in this movie.

Luckily, Jason provides.  There are an impressive nineteen kills in this film.  My favorite kill in Jason Takes Vancouver has to be the boxing scene.  Not only does it have the unprecedented choice of a character trying to out-punch Jason without a weapon, even though he knew damn well that Jason is an unkillable zombie, but Jason takes the Rocky approach to boxing; he simply blocks his opponent's punches with his face until his enemy gets tired.  Then, Jason punches his head clean off. 

It's like Rocky vs. Apollo Creed, but prettier

There are some other sweet moments, like when Jason kills the rocker chick with her guitar or when he punches a sauna stone into a dude's chest, despite having just about every other way to kill that particular victim available.  There are a lot of kills, but many are pretty basic, unfortunately.

The movie isn't all bad, though.  For instance, this is the film where Kane Hodder famously (and I use that term loosely) refused to kick a dog, because Jason wouldn't do something like that.  Except for the time when he maybe did.

The true hero of Jason Takes Manhattan

This film also shows off some of Jason's talents.  Manhattan is the first film in which Jason can obviously and indisputably teleport.  Granted, nobody says anything along the lines of "Whoa, that goalie sure can teleport," but it's pretty obvious.  Take his murder of the rocker chick.

As hilarious as this kill is, it gets better when you slow it down and examine it.  Rocker chick is hanging out in a secluded area, rocking out with her guitar and a tape deck that is either A) letting her play guitar over a track that is (karaoke-like) free of guitar chords or B) playing the guitar for her, so she is simply performing an elaborate air guitar.  Jason being Jason, he shows up, looking for blood, at the top of the stairs above her.  Rocker chick freaks out, carefully sets her guitar down and turns off the tape deck.  She then runs downstairs, where she is met by Jason, who swings her guitar into her face, making sure she dies before she gets old.  That means that Jason teleported to grab the guitar and teleported again to get in front of her in time to swing the guitar like a baseball bat into her cranium.  There is no other explanation that doesn't involve circus-like acrobatics that are not shown on-screen.  Of course, there is also the kill where the victim starts climbing a ladder, the camera looks down at Jason on the ground, then back at the kid quickly ascending the ladder, and back at Jason on the ground, and then back to the kid quickly ascending the ladder and HOLY CRAP JASON JUST THREW HIM OFF THE LADDER!

Like this, but effective

It is also worth pointing out that this movie came out the same year as the truly awful Friday the 13th video game.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooou dot dot

I can honestly say that I have stronger feelings about that game than about most international crises.  Which is sad, I'll admit, but still....it's a wretched game.

I would also like to point out that the inept screenwriting, editing and direction of Rob Hedden kept him from directing another feature film for eighteen years.  I'm sure this film suffered some drastic budget cuts, since the Fridays had been losing steam for a while now, but this is a classic example of how not to make a movie look like it is a big budget film.  The acting is pitiable, the direction is nonexistent (if you want to be kind) and the editing makes little to no sense.  Is the heroine hallucinating, or does she have an unexplained psychic link to Jason?  Um...yes.  Do the Crystal Lakians manage to find the only police officer in New York who has a Canadian accent?  Of course.  Does Jason explode through every door he encounters?  Why not?  Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination and is, in many ways, the low point in a series that never set the bar very high.  And yet I love all that this film does wrong.  Objectively, this movie definitely deserves a

 But how can you grade a movie like this objectively?  It brings me so much joy!  And it's kind of like grading the handicapped kid on the same scale that you would an astronaut.  This is one of my absolute favorite Lefty Gold movies, and it deserves my completely irrational rating of

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

With my month-long focus on horror movies, I was faced with an important decision.  Should I finish up my coverage of my favorite slasher series, Friday the 13th, or should I focus on classics and films unknown to me?   Last year, I reviewed the first four Fridays for my month of horror and then randomly reviewed the fifth, saving Part VI for this year's actual Friday the 13th.  There was something poetic about that last review that warmed the cockles of my heart.  Since 2012 has three (!) Friday the 13ths on the way, I figure that if I review Part VII this month, I will be able to warm those same cockles three times next year and finish up my coverage of the series.  With a solid plan in mind, I rented Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood --- the Friday I have watched the least.

The New Blood starts out, like so many other Fridays, with a recap.  In case you are tuning in without having seen and taken scrupulous notes on the previous six films, here's the gist: Jason Voorhies either drowned in Crystal Lake or he didn't as a child; his mom went crazy years later and killed some camp councilors; but then Jason turned out to be alive, just a super-strong killer hobo; he was eventually killed by Corey Feldman; then there was a movie where he actually stayed dead; he was later brought back to life by lightning; and he was left chained to a rock at the bottom of Crystal Lake at the end of Part VI.  Now you're probably more caught up on the series than the screenwriter for The New Blood.  This chapter begins with a family that happens to live on Crystal Lake.  Why would you live in an area notorious for its mass murdering?  Well, it is a nice lake.  The dad is drunk and abusive to his wife and kid, so his daughter, Tina, decides to run away...in the middle of the night...on a boat.  Tina's not the brightest bulb.  Luckily, she has abilities that make up for her deficiency in the brains department; Tina has psychokinetic powers.  When her dad comes down to the pier to coax her back home, Tina "accidentally" crushes the pier with her mind, killing her father.

Which is why all children should have choke collars

Fast-forward ten years, and Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) still feels shitty about using her mind bullets (that's telekinesis, Kyle) to murder her father.  Since psychokinetic abilities are not an ordinary fact, it is assumed by Tina's mother, Amanda (prolific voice actress Susan Blu), that she is just a little crazy.  Enter Doctor Crews (Terry Kiser, better known as the Bernie you spend your weekends with).  The doc is fascinated by Tina's abilities and desperately wants to document them and profit from exploiting her; he decides that the best way to tap into her powers is to bring her back to the home where she killed her father, on Crystal Lake.

Pictured above: Bernie, sans mustache, and a blonde helmet

I wonder what happens next?  Actually...yeah, you should wonder.  Jason Voorhies has apparently been dead and under water for about a decade (which means that this 1988 movie is supposed to happen in 2002, by my math): what could possibly bring him back?  Well, Tina gets stressed out in one of her sessions with the doctor and runs out to the pier where it all happened.  She reaches out with her mind, where she finds...something...and does...something...with her mind --- and promptly passes out.  Tina thought she was resurrecting her father (more on that later), but she accidentally reanimated Jason and somehow broke the chains that bound him.  What will this soggy Super Zombie Jason do with his new lease on life?

Hint, hint

Oh, yeah...I forgot to mention the dozen teens next door participating in drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex.  It's time for Jason to make his right-wing political views known!  JV in 2012!

It shouldn't be a surprise that the actors in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood are not of the highest caliber.  Aside from the adults in the cast, the only teens that would go on to star in anything noteworthy are Larry Cox (who had bit parts in a couple of real movies) and Jeff Bennett (the voice of Johnny Bravo).  That's not exactly a stellar cast, especially when you consider that Terry Kiser is most famous for playing a dead man.  On the bright side, this is the first time Kane Hodder, the only man to play Jason multiple times, donned the mask.  Does Hodder make a big difference?  That's debatable.  Still, as the actor who embodied Super Zombie Jason for more than a decade, I think his debut is worth noting.

Is this really what they thought the 2000s would look like?

On the subject of Jason, I must admit that this might be the film with the best-looking Jason.  The goalie mask had been around for a while, and Jason's basic ensemble (a dirty jumpsuit) had been in place for a few movies, but The New Blood's costume and makeup team really did a great job with the character this time.  In no other film does Jason look quite so menacing.  That may be due to the fact that you his mask is damaged and you can catch glimpses of his lip-less teeth, or it may be because his body looks gross and water-logged, with his ribs and knuckles poking past the skin, visible through his tattered clothing.  Whatever the specifics, this is the first time Jason really looks like an unstoppable killing machine.  Either that, or he's bulimic.

"Thin is pretty!"

As for the rest of the movie, it's all pretty silly. As much as I like looking at this Jason, this is definitely one of the worst entries in the series.  While there are a pretty good number of kills (fourteen), most of them are heavily edited; apparently, the filmmakers had to do some creative editing to avoid an "X" rating.  That means that there are many shots of Jason striking and then there is a cut to the dead body after the attack.  The most infamous example of this is with the sleeping bag kill; in theaters, Jason slammed a sleeping bag (with a person in it, of course) into a tree six times, but the VHS and subsequent DVD releases only feature one hit.

Lame

Aside from that scene, the editing prevents there from being any other interesting kills.  The New Blood also features the welcome return of Friday the 13th nudity, where nubile young women get naked because they want to be murdered.

If you moon Jason, kiss your ass goodbye

Director John Carl Buechler is better known for his work as a premier special effects and makeup man than for his direction, and it shows.  As I mentioned earlier, Jason Voorhies looks fantastic and scary.  This movie also features the best facemask-less Jason-face.

Although it's not pretty

Tina's psychokinetic abilities require moving things without the audience seeing how.  Buechler delivers in those areas.  Unfortunately, working with actors appears to be a mystery to him.  There are a lot of characters in this film, and all of them are underdeveloped.  Most of the characters are thoroughly unlikable and all of them make idiotic choices.  I'm fine with that, since it's a given that Jason will murder them in turn.  What bugs me is that the editing in this film made the story stupider than it needed to be:

• A guy and a girl are having sex in a van outside the cabin.  The guy wonders aloud why they are doing it in the van, instead of in the cabin.  It is his uncle's cabin, after all.  No answer is provided.  No answer is implied --- the cabin sure doesn't look crowded.  And the next time we see the van, a different couple is sexing it up in the same sleeping bag.  Eww.
• Tina tells her love interest that she's crazy, and she acts like it.  The guy, who is merely an acquaintance, keeps pursuing her, even though another girl is constantly hitting on him.  I'm going to make a generalization about men: if a woman says she's crazy, the guy generally says "Good luck with that" and moves on.
• A bitchy girl tells her love interest --- who keeps rejecting her --- that all is fair in love and war.  He responds that he doesn't even like her.  Her reply: "'Like' has nothing to do with it."  So...all is fair in the quest for physical pleasure, then?
• The requisite nerd girl has a crush on the druggie rebel.  Her friend decides to start drinking and doing drugs to make him like her; it works and they start screwing.  Nerd girl decides to fight fire with fire by giving herself an 80s makeover and then leaves her room --- in the cabin, mind you, clearly just upstairs from the party below --- and the next thing you know, she is outside, looking for druggie rebel in the woods.  Huh?  Shouldn't she be calling out druggie boy's name and entering his bedroom, where Jason will kill her?  Did she take the fire exit or something?  And why would he be in the woods?  But wait!  In the woods, she loses an earring.  Oh, no!  Jason's going to kill her while she tries to find it, right?  Actually, no.  Nerd girl finds her earring A) without her glasses B) in the dark C) in the woods.  What the hell kind of scene is this supposed to be?  I'm so confused.
• A couple in having sexy time in the van, when someone (hint: it rhymes with "Mason") bumps into the vehicle.  The pair assumes that it is one of their friends, arriving late to the party.  The guy decides to stop having sex, gets dressed, and leaves the van to greet his buddy.  After waiting a few moments, the girl does the same thing.  That just boggles my mind.  First off, who decides to interrupt their sex for some idle chitchat?  Secondly, isn't it a little awkward to greet a friend when you have an erection?   I just love that both the guy and girl were so bored with their sexual progress that they quit with such a weak excuse.
• Why does Tina's mother look like Bruce McCulloch in drag?  It has nothing to do with the direction or editing, but it is still weird.

Mommy Dearest

And you'll notice that my list of stupid doesn't even mention the fact that the heroine has psychic abilities.  Or the fact that SPOILER ALERT: she somehow resurrects her dead father to kill Jason.  Because her father was still in the lake.  Because the police wouldn't drag a lake to find a drowning victim.  Whatever, it's so stupid.  He doesn't even look like he died that day, much less been at the bottom of a lake for a decade!  Okay, I'm done now.  These scenes would be stupid enough normally, but many of them seemed like they were going in one direction, only to completely change, mid-scene, and ignore what came before.  That's just inept.  Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood isn't very good.  It has all the stupidity of Part V, but without the humor and without the cool gore of the better entries in the series.  While I want to cut the filmmakers some slack, since this movie was obviously butchered in post-production, they didn't do a good enough job of making this entertaining.  I will argue that, despite the cool makeup for Jason, that this is one of the worst entries in a series that isn't very demanding.