Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Encyclopedia
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is a slasher film
released on July 28, 1989. It is the eighth film in the Friday the 13th film series, and deals with Jason Voorhees
stalking a group of high school graduates on a ship en route to (and later in) New York City
, and was the last film in the series to have been distributed by Paramount Pictures
in the United States (the 2009 reboot
of the first film was distributed by Paramount in non-US countries). The film's tagline is, "New York has a new problem."It took in just $14.3 million at the domestic box office, making it the lowest-grossing film in the series.
at the bottom of Crystal Lake, the undead serial killer Jason Voorhees
(Kane Hodder
) is resurrected once again. He immediately finds the boat's occupants, a high school couple named Jim Miller (Todd Shaffer) and Suzie Donaldson (Tiffany Paulsen), having sex. Obtaining a new hockey mask from the boat (which Jim had previously used to scare Suzie), he kills Jim with the barrel of a harpoon gun
. Suzie attempts to hide in a storage hatch, but Jason discovers her and jams the harpoon into her chest.
The next morning, the SS Lazarus, containing the senior class of Lakeview High, is bound for nearby New York City
for the school's graduation. The trip is chaperoned by Colleen Van Deusen (Barbara Bingham) and biology teacher Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman), who has also brought along his niece, Rennie (Jensen Daggett
). Before the ship sets sail, Jason grabs a hold of the ship's anchor and climbs aboard. As the night continues on, Rennie keeps having visions of Jason as a child (Timothy Burr Mirkovich) when he drowned. Jason then starts murdering the people on board, starting with a wannabe rock star named J.J. (Saffron Henderson
), whom he kills by bashing her head with her own electric guitar. He then ambushes a young boxer in a sauna and hits him with a sauna rock in his chest. Tamara Mason (Sharlene Martin) goes to take a shower. Jason breaks through the door and strips Tamara, leaving her completely naked. She begs for mercy and tries to hide her nakedness with a bathroom towel as Jason shatters the bathroom mirror and impales her with a broken glass shard. Her dead body is later discovered lying on the floor.
Jason then kills the captain of the Lazarus, Admiral Robertson (Warren Munson
) and the chief engineer Jim Carlson (Fred Henderson
), leaving the two chaperones, Rennie, and the remaining students to try to track down and kill Jason. They fail, after Jason strangles one of the female students, Eva Watanabe (Kelly Hu
), on a dance floor, then throws one boy, Miles Wolfe (Gordon Currie
), over the captain's quarters and onto the deck post. However, Wayne's death, involving being thrown into a control panel, causes a fire, burning the fuel tanks, and blowing a hole in the ship's hull. Jason then comes extremely close to killing Rennie by almost choking her to death. She then manages to stick a pen up his left eye. Then Charles, Rennie, Colleen, two other students, Julius (V. C. Dupree) and the captain's son, Sean Robertson (Scott Reeves
), and Rennie's dog, Toby (Ace), abandon the ship in a row boat.
As the group continues to row to safety, they finally arrive in New York City. However, Jason has followed them there. The group is almost immediately mugged by two gang-bangers who take Rennie ad chase off Toby. Charles suggests the group split up to find help. Meanwhile, the gang-bangers take Rennie to their hideout and forcibly inject her with heroin. Jason then shows up and stabs one with the discarded needle and bashes the other one's face into a pipe. Julius finds a phone and tries to call for help and is immediately attacked by Jason who chases him onto a rooftop. Julius then punches Jason over and over again until he is exhausted. Jason then decapitates Julius with a single punch with his head falling into a nearby dumpster. Colleen is walking around looking for help when she runs into Charles and a cop (Roger Barnes) who also run into Rennie and Sean. The cop puts them all in the back of his car and they see Julius's head in the front. Jason kills the cop and Rennie gets in the front seat and runs him over. She sees a hallucination of a young Jason and tries to run it over and smashes into a brick wall which causes the car to explode. Colleen is killed in the explosion as she was still in the car. Rennie has a flashback to an event from her early childhood where she was learning how to swim in Crystal Lake and was almost killed by a young drowned Jason, looking as he did in the original Friday the 13th. She remembers that Charles was the one who pushed her into the water in the first place trying to get her to swim. Her and Sean run from Charles leaving him alone. Jason soon attacks him and Charles is dunked in a barrel of sewage
. Rennie tells Sean that her parents were killed in a car crash when she was young leaving her in the care of Charles. Jason shows up making Sean and Rennie run for their lives.
The infuriated Jason is now on the warpath. Rennie and Sean run onto the New York Subway system but are trapped by Jason. Sean pulls the emergency brake and the two escape followed by Jason. Sean tackles Jason and Jason is electrocuted by the ground wires seemingly killing him. The two leave the subway and come up into Times Square
where Jason, still alive, follows. The two run from Jason. Jason disturbs four punks while chasing them who want to fight him, but Jason merely lifts up his mask to show them his face and they flee. Rennie and Sean run into a diner but are forced to run when Jason crashes through a wall to get to them. They run onto the sewers of Manhattan, where Jason follows and kills a sanitation worker (David Longworth). Rennie attacks Jason with toxic waste. Much of his body melts; all that is left is a young boy lying at the bottom of the sewer. Rennie and Sean reunite with Toby on the streets above.
for the film in the box set, director Rob Hedden acknowledges the faults and even agrees that more of the film should have been set in Manhattan, citing budgetary and schedule problems. The film failed to generate a substantial amount of money at the box office, which continued the decline in grosses the series had been suffering, and Paramount
sold the franchise to New Line Cinema
soon afterward, and they would later distribute the 2009 reboot together. Rotten Tomatoes
details that only 10% of the critics who reviewed the film gave it positive reviews, making it the poorest-received film of the series. It holds an average score of 3.9/10. Entertainment Weekly
labeled it the eighth-worst sequel ever made.
Part of the film's appeal was the idea of setting Jason, a psychopathic killer, loose in 1980s
New York, which was both crime-ridden and noted for its colorful method of deterioration (e.g. the garish nature of Times Square
, complete with streetwalkers
and drug dealers
openly selling their wares, and graffiti, gangs, and homeless panhandlers contributing to the anti-social nature of the city). This notion was the idea of Jason both fitting right in in Manhattan and also a bit of Paul Kersey/Death Wish
desire for a killer to cleanse New York of its crime. However, as reviews made clear, 90% of the film does not take place anywhere in Manhattan, and Jason's few interactions in Manhattan are limited to cast members from Crystal Lake and a few shots of docks and sewers.
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
released on July 28, 1989. It is the eighth film in the Friday the 13th film series, and deals with Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th , as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S...
stalking a group of high school graduates on a ship en route to (and later in) New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and was the last film in the series to have been distributed by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
in the United States (the 2009 reboot
Friday the 13th (2009 film)
Friday the 13th is a 2009 American slasher film directed by Marcus Nispel and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. It is a reboot of the Friday the 13th film series, which began in 1980 and the twelfth Friday the 13th film in total...
of the first film was distributed by Paramount in non-US countries). The film's tagline is, "New York has a new problem."It took in just $14.3 million at the domestic box office, making it the lowest-grossing film in the series.
Plot
One year after the conclusion of the last film, a boat's anchor hits an underwater power line cable, causing a short circuitShort circuit
A short circuit in an electrical circuit that allows a current to travel along an unintended path, often where essentially no electrical impedance is encountered....
at the bottom of Crystal Lake, the undead serial killer Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th , as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S...
(Kane Hodder
Kane Hodder
Kane Warren Hodder is an American actor and stuntman. Standing , he is best known for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in four films from the Friday the 13th film series . He is also known for his role as Victor Crowley in Hatchet. -Career:Hodder is the only actor to portray Jason Voorhees more...
) is resurrected once again. He immediately finds the boat's occupants, a high school couple named Jim Miller (Todd Shaffer) and Suzie Donaldson (Tiffany Paulsen), having sex. Obtaining a new hockey mask from the boat (which Jim had previously used to scare Suzie), he kills Jim with the barrel of a harpoon gun
Harpoon
A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument used in fishing to catch fish or large marine mammals such as whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the target animal, allowing the fishermen to use a rope or chain attached to the butt of the projectile to catch the animal...
. Suzie attempts to hide in a storage hatch, but Jason discovers her and jams the harpoon into her chest.
The next morning, the SS Lazarus, containing the senior class of Lakeview High, is bound for nearby New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
for the school's graduation. The trip is chaperoned by Colleen Van Deusen (Barbara Bingham) and biology teacher Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman), who has also brought along his niece, Rennie (Jensen Daggett
Jensen Daggett
Jensen Daggett is an American film and television actress. Standing 5' 6", she performed as a comedic and dramatic actress.-Biography:After studying theater at Agoura High School in in Agoura Hills, California, Daggett moved to Los Angeles after her 18th birthday to study at the Stella Adler...
). Before the ship sets sail, Jason grabs a hold of the ship's anchor and climbs aboard. As the night continues on, Rennie keeps having visions of Jason as a child (Timothy Burr Mirkovich) when he drowned. Jason then starts murdering the people on board, starting with a wannabe rock star named J.J. (Saffron Henderson
Saffron Henderson
Saffron Henderson is a Canadian voice actress and singer and the daughter of Bill Henderson of Chilliwack fame. She has voiced various characters from anime series...
), whom he kills by bashing her head with her own electric guitar. He then ambushes a young boxer in a sauna and hits him with a sauna rock in his chest. Tamara Mason (Sharlene Martin) goes to take a shower. Jason breaks through the door and strips Tamara, leaving her completely naked. She begs for mercy and tries to hide her nakedness with a bathroom towel as Jason shatters the bathroom mirror and impales her with a broken glass shard. Her dead body is later discovered lying on the floor.
Jason then kills the captain of the Lazarus, Admiral Robertson (Warren Munson
Warren Munson
Warren Munson is a film and television actor. He may be best known for his portrayal of Admiral Owen Paris in Star Trek: Voyager.-Filmography:* Las Vegas** episode The Lie Is Cast ... as Mr. Socal* Scrubs** episode My Screwup ... as Mr. Taylor...
) and the chief engineer Jim Carlson (Fred Henderson
Fred Henderson
Fred Henderson is a Canadian voice actor who works for Ocean Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has played several roles in anime, most notably Ulen Hibiki in Gundam Seed and Colonel Todaka in Gundam Seed Destiny.- Anime roles :...
), leaving the two chaperones, Rennie, and the remaining students to try to track down and kill Jason. They fail, after Jason strangles one of the female students, Eva Watanabe (Kelly Hu
Kelly Hu
Kelly Ann Hu is an American actress and former fashion model. She was Miss Teen USA 1985 and Miss Hawaii USA 1993.-Early life:Hu was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the daughter of Juanita, an engineering drafter for Honolulu, and Herbert Hu, a salesman and exotic bird breeder; the two divorced during...
), on a dance floor, then throws one boy, Miles Wolfe (Gordon Currie
Gordon Currie
Gordon Currie is a Canadian and American actor. He has also directed, written and produced several films. He works in both the U.S. and Canada in television and film roles. He is probably best known for his role as Nicolae Carpathia in Left Behind-Early life:Currie was born in Vancouver, British...
), over the captain's quarters and onto the deck post. However, Wayne's death, involving being thrown into a control panel, causes a fire, burning the fuel tanks, and blowing a hole in the ship's hull. Jason then comes extremely close to killing Rennie by almost choking her to death. She then manages to stick a pen up his left eye. Then Charles, Rennie, Colleen, two other students, Julius (V. C. Dupree) and the captain's son, Sean Robertson (Scott Reeves
Scott Reeves
Gregory Scott Reeves is an American actor and country music singer. He is known for his role as Ryan McNeil on The Young and the Restless and for his role as Dr...
), and Rennie's dog, Toby (Ace), abandon the ship in a row boat.
As the group continues to row to safety, they finally arrive in New York City. However, Jason has followed them there. The group is almost immediately mugged by two gang-bangers who take Rennie ad chase off Toby. Charles suggests the group split up to find help. Meanwhile, the gang-bangers take Rennie to their hideout and forcibly inject her with heroin. Jason then shows up and stabs one with the discarded needle and bashes the other one's face into a pipe. Julius finds a phone and tries to call for help and is immediately attacked by Jason who chases him onto a rooftop. Julius then punches Jason over and over again until he is exhausted. Jason then decapitates Julius with a single punch with his head falling into a nearby dumpster. Colleen is walking around looking for help when she runs into Charles and a cop (Roger Barnes) who also run into Rennie and Sean. The cop puts them all in the back of his car and they see Julius's head in the front. Jason kills the cop and Rennie gets in the front seat and runs him over. She sees a hallucination of a young Jason and tries to run it over and smashes into a brick wall which causes the car to explode. Colleen is killed in the explosion as she was still in the car. Rennie has a flashback to an event from her early childhood where she was learning how to swim in Crystal Lake and was almost killed by a young drowned Jason, looking as he did in the original Friday the 13th. She remembers that Charles was the one who pushed her into the water in the first place trying to get her to swim. Her and Sean run from Charles leaving him alone. Jason soon attacks him and Charles is dunked in a barrel of sewage
Sewage
Sewage is water-carried waste, in solution or suspension, that is intended to be removed from a community. Also known as wastewater, it is more than 99% water and is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition, chemical constituents and the bacteriological organisms that it contains...
. Rennie tells Sean that her parents were killed in a car crash when she was young leaving her in the care of Charles. Jason shows up making Sean and Rennie run for their lives.
The infuriated Jason is now on the warpath. Rennie and Sean run onto the New York Subway system but are trapped by Jason. Sean pulls the emergency brake and the two escape followed by Jason. Sean tackles Jason and Jason is electrocuted by the ground wires seemingly killing him. The two leave the subway and come up into Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
where Jason, still alive, follows. The two run from Jason. Jason disturbs four punks while chasing them who want to fight him, but Jason merely lifts up his mask to show them his face and they flee. Rennie and Sean run into a diner but are forced to run when Jason crashes through a wall to get to them. They run onto the sewers of Manhattan, where Jason follows and kills a sanitation worker (David Longworth). Rennie attacks Jason with toxic waste. Much of his body melts; all that is left is a young boy lying at the bottom of the sewer. Rennie and Sean reunite with Toby on the streets above.
Cast
- Jensen DaggettJensen DaggettJensen Daggett is an American film and television actress. Standing 5' 6", she performed as a comedic and dramatic actress.-Biography:After studying theater at Agoura High School in in Agoura Hills, California, Daggett moved to Los Angeles after her 18th birthday to study at the Stella Adler...
as Rennie Wickham - Scott ReevesScott ReevesGregory Scott Reeves is an American actor and country music singer. He is known for his role as Ryan McNeil on The Young and the Restless and for his role as Dr...
as Sean Robertson - Barbara Bingham as Colleen Van Deusen
- Peter Mark Richman as Charles McCulloch
- Martin CumminsMartin CumminsMartin Cummins is a Canadian actor known for his role as Ames White in Dark Angel . He attended the Vancouver Actors Studio where he trained under Mel Tuck, a highly respected pioneer of Canadian theatre...
as Wayne Webber - Gordon CurrieGordon CurrieGordon Currie is a Canadian and American actor. He has also directed, written and produced several films. He works in both the U.S. and Canada in television and film roles. He is probably best known for his role as Nicolae Carpathia in Left Behind-Early life:Currie was born in Vancouver, British...
as Miles Wolfe - V. C. Dupree as Julius Gaw
- Kelly HuKelly HuKelly Ann Hu is an American actress and former fashion model. She was Miss Teen USA 1985 and Miss Hawaii USA 1993.-Early life:Hu was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the daughter of Juanita, an engineering drafter for Honolulu, and Herbert Hu, a salesman and exotic bird breeder; the two divorced during...
as Eva Watanabe - Saffron HendersonSaffron HendersonSaffron Henderson is a Canadian voice actress and singer and the daughter of Bill Henderson of Chilliwack fame. She has voiced various characters from anime series...
as J.J. Jarrett - Sharlene Martin as Tamara Mason
- Alex Diakun as Deck hand
- Warren MunsonWarren MunsonWarren Munson is a film and television actor. He may be best known for his portrayal of Admiral Owen Paris in Star Trek: Voyager.-Filmography:* Las Vegas** episode The Lie Is Cast ... as Mr. Socal* Scrubs** episode My Screwup ... as Mr. Taylor...
as Admiral Robertson - Kane HodderKane HodderKane Warren Hodder is an American actor and stuntman. Standing , he is best known for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in four films from the Friday the 13th film series . He is also known for his role as Victor Crowley in Hatchet. -Career:Hodder is the only actor to portray Jason Voorhees more...
as Jason VoorheesJason VoorheesJason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th , as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S... - Amber Pawlick as young Rennie Wickham
- Ace as Toby
Box office
The film opened in 1,683 theaters making $6.2 million its opening weekend. Domestically, the film made only $14.3 million, making it the lowest-grossing Friday the 13th movie.Reception
On his commentary trackAudio commentary
On disc-based video formats, an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video...
for the film in the box set, director Rob Hedden acknowledges the faults and even agrees that more of the film should have been set in Manhattan, citing budgetary and schedule problems. The film failed to generate a substantial amount of money at the box office, which continued the decline in grosses the series had been suffering, and Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
sold the franchise to New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
soon afterward, and they would later distribute the 2009 reboot together. Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
details that only 10% of the critics who reviewed the film gave it positive reviews, making it the poorest-received film of the series. It holds an average score of 3.9/10. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
labeled it the eighth-worst sequel ever made.
Part of the film's appeal was the idea of setting Jason, a psychopathic killer, loose in 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
New York, which was both crime-ridden and noted for its colorful method of deterioration (e.g. the garish nature of Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
, complete with streetwalkers
Street prostitution
Street prostitution is a form of prostitution in which a sex worker solicits customers from a public place, most commonly a street, while waiting at street corners or walking alongside a street, but also other public places such as parks, beaches, etc. The street prostitute is often dressed in a...
and drug dealers
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
openly selling their wares, and graffiti, gangs, and homeless panhandlers contributing to the anti-social nature of the city). This notion was the idea of Jason both fitting right in in Manhattan and also a bit of Paul Kersey/Death Wish
Death Wish (film)
Death Wish is a 1974 crime thriller film loosely based on the novel Death Wish by Brian Garfield. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a man who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted by muggers.The film was...
desire for a killer to cleanse New York of its crime. However, as reviews made clear, 90% of the film does not take place anywhere in Manhattan, and Jason's few interactions in Manhattan are limited to cast members from Crystal Lake and a few shots of docks and sewers.