By Frank Pittarese
The One with All the Easter Eggs
When last we saw our snappy slasher, Jason was apparently transformed into a completely normal-looking human child, wearing his best underpants and shivering in the sewers of Manhattan. Remember that? Well, forget it, because it’s never addressed again. This sequel opens at Crystal Lake, where Jason is home, masked, and in killing mode. How did he return to Crystal Lake? Well, I’ve had an idea about that since 1989 which I might write down someday. What really matters is that our boy is back in the woods, fully grown, and Chapter 8.5 is a story that’s yet to be told.
This entry starts with a pre-credit sequence: Jason is hunting a lone female camper — but just as he goes in for the kill, we discover the whole thing is a set-up. The camper is a Federal agent, and Jason is ambushed by a swarm of agents who shoot him full of lead before blowing him to pieces with a grenade. His legs go one way, his arms go another, and bounce-bounce goes his head. Jason is officially dead. Again. Until next time.
Then things get nutty. The coroner finds himself compelled to eat Jason’s still-beating heart. Then he becomes possessed by Jason, whose spirit proceeds to body-jump from one person to the next: Coroner to cop to sleazy TV journalist, etc. It’s a funky choice. Jason is much less intimating when he’s a chubby 55-year-old dude in a lab coat and tie, but off they go. Jason is on a mission. He needs a new body, and the only way that can happen is by…creating mythology!!
So here’s the deal: A bounty hunter named Creighton Duke — who knows a lot of stuff because he read the script ahead of time — says that the only way to kill Jason is to destroy his heart, and that deed must be done by a Voorhees. If not, Jason will use that Voorhees as a vessel through which he can be reborn. But where the hell is there another Voorhees? Isn’t Jason an only child? Not anymore…
Waitress Diana Kimble has a secret. She’s Jason’s sister. Diana has a daughter named Jessica. And Jessica has an infant daughter named Stephanie. That a whopping THREE Voorheeses! It’s never clear if Diana is a full or half-sister, but I find it hard to believe that wacko Pamela had more than one kid. Diana is more likely the offspring of Elias Voorhees, who finally gets an official mention here and becomes canon.
Meanwhile, Steven — Final Boy and hero of our little rule-breaking film — is pulled into this complicated (for a Friday movie) plot when he’s blamed and jailed for Diana’s murder. Steven, played by John D. LeMay, is best (and only) known as Ryan on Friday the 13th: The Series. The scuttlebutt is that the character was supposed to be a returning Tommy Jarvis — but when Paramount sold the rights, Tommy wasn’t part of the deal. Bye, Tommy!
All these moving parts are swirling around: A bounty hunter, next-gen Voorhees relatives, this hapless Tommy replacement getting thrown into the chaos, an abundance of body-jumping weirdness, and Jason (but not Jason) killing everyone he sees. And what’s crazy is that it all (sort of) works! People hate on this sequel, but I’m not mad at it. It’s cheesy sometimes and it totally breaks the formula, which at this point is refreshing.
The kills are wonderfully gory on occasion — but only in the unrated cut — and the script isn’t that bad. The main characters are interesting and well-performed, the “colorful” characters (one of whom is played by gay scamp Leslie Jordan) are fun, and the whole thing is pretty lively. The movie is always in motion and there are few, if any, dull moments. It has a sense of humor and a bit of self-awareness. Rewatching it, I was completely engaged — and it’s a ray of sunshine after the awful eighth entry.
It’s true that, except for the opening moments, it doesn’t feel like a Friday the 13th movie at all, but at this point, I’m happy to see an attempt at something new/different.
Some quick bits…
The opening scene relocates Crystal Lake to Connecticut. A road sign puts it not far from Westport, but closer to Fairfield. Then Jason’s still-smoking remains are flown to the Federal Morgue in Ohio, and he (in the body of Coroner Phil) walks all the way home, to what should be New Jersey…oof.
The diner in Crystal Lake is decorated with hockey masks, weapons, and they serve “Jason burgers” shaped like hockey masks. Remember when I said Jason was a brand? There ya go. Tourists love him…until he kills them.
When Jason is reborn, he emerges fully clothed and with his hockey mask in place. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s better than boxer shorts, so I’ll allow it.
There are some fun Easter eggs tucked away in the Voorhees House (the enormity of which again has me convinced that it’s the home of wealthy Elias, rather than Pamela, who took a job at a janky-ass summer camp to feed her ugly kid). Look for the crate from Creepshow, the Necronomicon from Evil Dead (literally the prop, lent to the director by Sam Raimi) and…a very big, prominent one at the end (spoiler alert: it’s Freddy Krueger).
The presence of the Necronomicon (and the shameless embrace of Jason’s ties to the supernatural) provides answers or raises questions, depending on my mood. Was Elias so steeped in this stuff that, decades ago, he unleashed supernatural forces on Crystal Lake? The apparitions we’ve seen over the years, Jason’s near-invulnerability as a human, his literal resurrection as a zombie…could all of it be the result of Elias casting some dark spell? Or is Pamela to blame? When she thought Jason drowned, did she go to grim, magical lengths to bring her son back to life? Those Easter eggs, just nifty little props, open up some doors, story-wise. They might even explain a few things.
Favorite moment: The final shot of this movie is EVERYTHING.
The One with the Crossover
Freddy vs. Jason isn’t the tenth movie in the series — it’s the 11th. But continuity-wise, it slides in right after Jason Goes to Hell, so that’s how I watch it. It took ten years and a bazillion drafts to get this thing made (they even wrote a book about it: Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs. Jason by Dustin McNeill). Ultimately, while not a fantastic piece of work, it’s fun and it delivers. But of course, somebody had to screw up something! I’ll get to that in a minute.
The deal here is that Freddy is (more or less) dead — or at least rendered inert — because nobody remembers him. “I can’t come back if nobody is afraid!” So his big plan is to send Jason back to Earth (specifically to Springwood) from Hell to “make them remember what fear tastes like!” If the kids remember Freddy, Freddy can kill the kids. The circle of life, y’all. So Freddy impersonates Mrs. Voorhees (recast with a rather intense actress) and gives Jason his marching orders.
Meanwhile our main girl, Lori, is living in Nancy Thompson’s house from A Nightmare on Elm Street (that’s 1428 Elm Street — now go win a trivia game). She and her batch of doomed friends are in the soup almost immediately, when Jason makes his first kill in an upstairs bedroom. Before you know it, they’re running around town, teamed up with two teens who escaped the Westin Hills psychiatric hospital (see A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), and trying to stay alive.
Initially, Jason acts as muscle while a weak Freddy taunts his victims, but as Freddy gains power, Jason’s usefulness comes to end. Unfortunately, Jason crosses the line when he kills a dreaming victim (in the real world), stealing Freddy’s teenage prey. The love affair is over.
The Springwood kids are just now finding out that Freddy even existed. The whole town covered up his murders (from before and after he died) and the teens who got too close to the truth were committed to the asylum and given Hypnocil (again, see Dream Warriors — you won’t regret it) to prevent them from dreaming. Once it’s clear that Jason is on the loose, the kids learn his story, too, so the franchises are clashing in almost every scene.
A short dream sequence flashes back to Crystal Lake 1957, where we see Little Jason being mocked and thrown into the water by a bunch of jerky kids. Is this how it really happened? There’s no way to know for sure, but there’s likely some truth to it. In one of the earlier drafts of this movie, Freddy was supposed to be a Crystal Lake camp counselor, but that idea was kiboshed, probably because it tainted Jason’s origin story.
Anyway, the two monster dudes have a couple of big, set-piece fights — and they’re awesome, over-the-top, comic book battles. They’re stylish, with great use of bold color, and each guy gets in some gory hit points.
The first of those battles is in the dream world, and that’s where…sigh…somebody drops the ball. Somebody always drops the ball…
See, someone decided that Jason needs a weakness. As Jason and Freddy fight in what looks like a large factory, Freddy breaks an overhead pipe. Then, as water comes rushing down, he “discovers” that Jason is…afraid of water?! Inspired, Freddy bursts even more pipes and Jason stands there frozen in terror. It’s incredibly dumb. We’ve seen Jason in the water SO many times. He was lurking under a raft in The Final Chapter. He popped out from under Tommy’s canoe in Jason Lives. He fucking swam to New York in Jason Takes Manhattan! So, no, dear filmmakers…Jason is NOT afraid of water, and certainly not terrified of a light shower coming from a bunch of pipes. But hang on — I’ve got it covered!
I’ve decided that it’s not the water that Jason’s afraid of — it’s the environment. The pipes, the rushing water…there’s only one thing that he can be remembering, and that’s his hellish experience in the sewers of New York City. See? That crappy Jason Takes Manhattan is finally good for something! My theory is confirmed when, at the end of dream sequence (which is happening in Jason’s mind), Jason turns into a wet, shivering little boy (deformed, because at least they’re on top of THAT). It syncs up with what we saw in Jason Takes Manhattan. Whatever happened to him at the end of that movie, real or imaginary, did some mental damage.
The second FvJ fight takes place in the real world, after Lori physically pulls Freddy out of a dream. This one is a fight-to-the-death bloodfest. And Jason bleeds a LOT, which means that in being freed from Hell, his body is (more or less) human. He’s no longer a rotten zombie. They were drifting away from that with the last movie, anyway, but at least now, being “reborn,” there’s some continuity coverage.
Who wins? Whoever you like! They did a good job of not disappointing fans of either slasher. (But it’s Jason because Jason is awesome). And while it does feel like more of an Elm Street film than a Friday, Jason is central to the plot so Voorhees fans won’t be disappointed.
In other news, we learn that Crystal Lake is about a 15-30 minute drive from Springwood. But Springwood is in Ohio. In the last movie, Crystal Lake was in Connecticut, and, historically, it’s been in New Jersey. I have no patch for this, though. Geography, like math, ain’t my friend.
Next week: I wrap up this series with a trip to the future, and cover the “reboot” that’s really a sequel. Really.