Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 164 - The History of Friday the 13th: Part Two
Abby and Alan talk about the middle films in the Friday the 13th franchise: Part 5 through Part 8.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. I'm Abby Brinker, sitting here with Alan Kudan.
SPEAKER_00:Hello.
SPEAKER_02:And today we are continuing our discussion of the Friday the 13th horror franchise.
SPEAKER_00:We like this franchise.
SPEAKER_02:We do. I'm having a lot of fun watching it.
SPEAKER_00:It's great.
SPEAKER_02:It is great. It's it's a lot more fun than I thought it was gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:A lot more fun. It's it's it's honestly very different. Like, yeah, I was really expecting this to be like Halloween. It's a pretty heavy duty slasher franchise, and like Friday 13th is like a pinnacle slasher franchise. However, I feel like Friday the 13th perfectly bridges the gap between mm the seriousness of Michael Myers and the goofy, silly bitchness of Freddie Kruger. Yeah. Apparently, I actually I saw I saw this as a meme. He only says bitch a surprisingly few amount of times in the entire series. And the vast majority of these times are in the movie Freddie versus Jason.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I'm so excited to watch that.
SPEAKER_00:But that's that's part three. So we're actually only going to talk about the middle four movies of five, six, seven, eight. Yep. So this is gonna be like a little mini episode or a bridge episode.
SPEAKER_02:Because there's gonna be so much to talk about when we get to nine and beyond. And and there's a lot to talk about with these, but those ones are just so iconic, and there's a lot of really crazy jump in the shark moments to get into.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and yeah, we'll we'll we'll certainly get through it, but a quick recap is like one through four. They're trying hard to like build mythos and a very scary franchise. Yeah, and it gets kind of silly towards the end, but it's nothing on five through eight, which is straight up bust to silly town.
SPEAKER_02:I don't I don't want to undersell these middle movies though, because I'm gonna say this right now, and and we we're almost through watching all of them, so this could change. But right now, in this moment, my favorite Friday the 13th movie exists in this middle pack, which I'll get to as we talk about it.
SPEAKER_00:Very exciting. I don't know if I agree with that. That's also your own opinion. But that's because I know what's coming. Of one through eight, however, I do think that the second batch of movies is much, much more fun. All right, well, let's just let's get into it.
SPEAKER_02:All right, let's get into it. Yeah, I agree. These they just I feel like each movie gets more and more fun to me. So far. To me. All right, so let's talk about Friday the 13th, 5, a new beginning.
SPEAKER_00:It's part five.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Which is kind of important because they make it seem like it's one solid story. Right. And it's not. It's not.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But it hits theaters in 1985. Here's a fun fact: the MPAA actually forced the filmmakers to cut out a very significant portion of the movie. 16 scenes.
SPEAKER_00:What?
SPEAKER_02:Because they they said that those scenes were too gory.
SPEAKER_00:Whoa, that's cool.
SPEAKER_02:It made it one of the most censored films of the 80s.
SPEAKER_00:Is it has it since been released, re-released?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know, but it actually comes up again in another one of the films we're gonna talk about today.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's such a bummer. I I don't know. Well, I I really hope that the the un that the unrated version is issues.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, totally. So we pick up the movie, so we pick up the story with Tommy. Again, as a reminder, Tommy is the child in the fourth movie that we thought finally killed Jason, but also might become the next version of Jason, right? Because he gives the camera that knowing look at the end.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and he also like rips out all his hair and looks just like kid Jason.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. And that in that in the fourth film, it's play and then the fourth film, Tommy is played by Corey Feldman. In the fifth film, we pick him up as an adult. So Tommy, now being much older, is being brought to a halfway house for troubled youth. This movie is really interesting because, as you might expect, you know, brutal murders start to plague the area around the halfway house and the other people living and working there, right? You know, a tale as old as time. But we also experience Tommy's hallucinations of Jason from his childhood trauma, right? So he's trying to work through and he's in this halfway house because of his trauma from Dra from Jason as these murders are starting to pop up around him. So in this movie, Tommy is withdrawn, he's clearly unstable, he's an unreliable narrator. Like at first, when we see Jason, we think it's Jason, and then we realize it's a hallucination. I'll just a side note here, which I love the series for. He's totally different before and after this. Not only is he played by a different actor, even as an adult Tommy, but he's every movie.
SPEAKER_00:Tommy is a different actor.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, which is like the kind of quirk that I'm here for. But also like James Bond. Yeah, his personality is different.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yes. He's like an outlier. Differ different writers is the easy solution. But also, they're just like, you know, but there's also no reason to even have Tommy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:None whatsoever. They just push it through.
SPEAKER_02:They want they want some kind of thread.
SPEAKER_00:Also, what year uh are we 1985. 1985. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so we're led to believe that Jason is the murderer. But at the end of the movie, we find out that it's actually Roy Burns, a character whose son is killed at the beginning of the movie. The fifth film is fascinating to me because A of its setting, which again is in this group home for like troubled youth dealing with mental health issues. It's like this dark kind of subtext, but then it still remains quite campy. It totally, it it's like this weird tonal shift for me. It's like a weird, strange outlier of the series.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, probably because of the institution, but it felt very much, and you said this while we were watching it, felt very much like Halloween H2O.
SPEAKER_02:Right, where it's like a contained environment, and yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And she's older, yeah, right. And Lori's all paranoid. Right. And like she's seeing things, but maybe she's not actually seeing things, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, totally. Another outlier here, which makes this movie so special, is that the main killer in this movie isn't Jason.
SPEAKER_00:Which, what a callback to number one.
SPEAKER_02:Right. This installment feels like equal parts Twin Peaks, Roadhouse, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I would even say Halloween 3 because it just feels like a side quest in the way that Halloween 3 is like a side quest. Like the Michael Myers isn't a thing, Jason isn't a thing, like Jason's a thing, but he's not the main antagonist. Director Danny Steinman came from the adult film world actually. And he later in an interview said that he felt like the set, the shoot for the Fifth, Friday, the 13th movie felt out of control.
SPEAKER_00:Out out of control. Is there more context to that?
SPEAKER_02:I think just that he struggled with managing a film of this size.
SPEAKER_00:Well, right. He was trying to make Citizen Kane.
SPEAKER_02:He was trying to make, you know, a porn movie.
SPEAKER_00:And they had to cut out all his favorite scenes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:What what if all the scenes that got cut out were not for violence, but for pornography?
SPEAKER_02:Here's the thing about Friday the 13th, and and slasher films in general. I don't know. Like I i I this is like a broad, huge statement that I'm about to make, so bear with me. But I think sex is much better than violence. Like it seems less dangerous, I suppose, to make a movie about sex than to make a movie about hyperviolence.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but this country was raised on a different set of puritanical values.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Where sex is the absolute devil.
SPEAKER_02:Which is very hypocritical. This movie, and we talked about this a little bit at the end of the last episode, but it was initially meant to launch the Corey Feldman character of Tommy into, you know, the new killer. But essentially there was some backlash, and so they decided to pivot the plot.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so that was actually. That was the intention.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Great. Yeah. So we weren't crazy. They weren't crazy, but they just decided to not do that.
SPEAKER_00:They decided to make him crazy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. They they gaslit all of us, including Tommy.
SPEAKER_00:That's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. The other interesting thing here is that Corey Feldman, who plays the kid, actually does not appear in the opening dream sequence where he's it's like an age-appropriate moment for him to appear because it like filmed in his backyard, because it was when he was shooting the Goonies.
SPEAKER_00:Oh. Yeah. Well, I mean, good for him.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. The film has a very low rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 16%. What? But even still, with a budget of 2.2 million, the film grossed 21.9 million in the US box office.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah. This is not cinematic gold. No. However, it is so much fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Which I mean, we're gonna keep saying this about the entire series. Like, this is what makes campy horror amazing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:They look at it with just the right amount of seriousness where you're invested in it, but also like it's goofy, it's silly, and that's okay. It's a good time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is a good time. It also makes the point, right, that these films, even though it has 16% on rotten tomatoes, continue to turn a massive profit. They continue to be money-making machines for Paramount.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, good luck having your independent rom-com with 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, turn a profit.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. And again, I just I really love the campiness and the silliness of this. It doesn't take itself too seriously as a franchise. And I really wasn't expecting these movies to shift in tone so drastically between, but they do, especially with the movies that we're going to get into now, like the later, mid to mid to later of the franchise films. The next year in 1986, Friday the 13th, Jason Lives, so part six was released. Here's the thing: this is my favorite movie so far in the franchise.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, why?
SPEAKER_02:This movie rocks.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, moving on.
SPEAKER_02:It's unhinged in a delightful way. Like the opening feels like hocus pocus. It's like this pure 80s, like Disney. There's something about it, there's like also this meta-ness to this movie where it feels like uh similar to Scream, but well before Scream. Even the caretaker of the cemetery like gives the audience a wink. Like there's just this fun playfulness. It feels more polished, it feels like it's set in again, it's like a 90s dream Disney World, but with violence. Like, I don't know. There's something about that that's really delightful to me.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna be honest with you. Five, six, and seven, I'm gonna need reminders because we watch them back to back and they feel like a fever dream.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this is the one where another reason why I love it so much is because we become supernatural in this movie. This is the film where Jason is like a reanimated zombie corpse.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so this is the one that establishes the precedent that he is a this walking juggernaut zombie thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so the film opens with Tommy, again played by a totally different actor, Marlon Brando, as an adult in a graveyard on a stormy night. And we can kind of assume that he's there, he's trying to cremate Jason. He opens up the grave, he digs to his grave, opens it up, he's got gasoline. I think he's trying to make sure Jason's body is really destroyed because he's so suspicious that he's gonna come back and he just can't move on mentally, right? He's dealing with that. So, through a series of unfortunate events, he actually conducts lightning into his corpse after stabbing him with a metal pole from the fence, which reanimates him. So essentially, when he opens the coffin, he's spooked and he's like, ah, so he puts this uh like metal spear into Jason, lightning hits it, Frankenstein scene, he's reanimated, and now he's supernatural.
SPEAKER_00:You shouldn't ever Frankenstein somebody. It's a bad idea. Sorry, you should never Frankenstein a serial killer. It's a bad idea.
SPEAKER_02:It's a you know what? I sh I'll go as far as to say you should never Frankenstein anybody. Having just watched Frankenshooker for the first time, don't Frankenstein anybody.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I feel like Frankenstein has its time and place.
SPEAKER_02:You haven't watched Frankenshooker yet. I also just have to mention, and this is like a thing, this, you know, the the James Bond introduction, which was done as part of this like self-aware meta-campiness, was done on purpose. There's like this, you know, that like iconic circular James Bond. They do that at the beginning of this movie as a title sequence, and they did it on purpose.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, I imagine they do it on purpose.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but it's just so silly. It's so silly. Okay, so Jason, as he does, makes his way back to Camp Crystal Lake, which is now called Camp Forest Green.
SPEAKER_00:Why?
SPEAKER_02:Because the town's trying to move on, they're trying to like dissociate from what happened. And as he tends to do, he starts to kill everyone and anyone that he comes across. Throughout a lot of this movie, Tommy, who again is totally different, like new Tommy, is trying to convince the local sheriff that Jason is back, but no one believes him, except for the sheriff's hot daughter. Like, literally, it's like so much of the movie is him being like, help, help, there's a killer. Jason's back, Jason's back, and everyone's like, Tommy, you're just fucked up, right? You're just, you were traumatized as a kid, and now nobody believes you. It's like gaslighting up the wazoo. The end, the end of this one is wild. So essentially, Tommy lures Jason out into the lake with this idea of chaining him to an anchor, setting him on fire. It's like this whole crazy thing. And after some struggle and like back and forth and blah blah blah, Jason does end up chained at the bottom of the lake.
SPEAKER_00:Which smart move.
SPEAKER_02:It's like sort of, but it feels like it defies gravity and science that he he like stands upright on this like neck chain and doesn't just flip up out of it. Like it's well, Jason is buoyant. Just in his head? Well, his whole body's buoyant. Yeah, but well, he anybody else would flip up. Why? No what? No. Because your legs are buoyant.
SPEAKER_00:But he's tied by his legs in his head.
SPEAKER_02:No, just by his his th neck.
SPEAKER_00:Really?
SPEAKER_02:I think. That's why I'm like so.
SPEAKER_00:Well, he's wearing heavy boots. Oh, okay, sure. And he's like he's a blo he's a bloated corpse.
SPEAKER_02:He also gets like fucked up by the rudder of the boat, right?
SPEAKER_00:So that's really Yeah, he gets whacked by the old boat.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, this establishes like the if you when you have like, you know, the the the unstoppable monster, you just gotta contain it. You can't kill him, so you gotta trap him.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, which, great. It's it's it's a wonderful trope. And so now you have the thing of like Jason's weakness is being imprisoned in the blake that he died. Right. Cool, that's a cool mythos. We like that.
SPEAKER_02:It is cool. I immediately recognized that six was gonna be my favorite one. And again, there's still two more for us to watch, so we'll see. But there's even like this bizarre social commentary in the movie that's not bizarre on its own, but bizarre in a Friday the 13th movie. One of the characters uses a credit card that's called American Excess instead of American Express, which again, like, yeah, I'm aligned. But why in a Friday the 13th movie are we making this point about American spending?
SPEAKER_00:Isn't it just like a Greek credit card?
SPEAKER_02:It is, but it's I don't know, it just feels like a feels like a point. Yeah. So Jason lives had a budget of three million, the biggest so far in the franchise. And it generated 19.5 million in the US. So as you're gonna start to notice, the ROIs are going down slightly. Still a great ROI, but it's going down a bit.
SPEAKER_00:Well, right, but you know, dude with these movies, you want bigger and better every time. That's a surefire way to like at least get people to see it the first time. Yeah. If you can make an incredible movie, great. But that's what gets butts and seats. And I just again, I thought it was such a smart move to establish all the supernatural stuff. Yeah. It's a good pivot in the series. The same thing happened in Halloween, but way, way too late in the series. Well, they've already cemented all the rules of Michael Myers, or like kind of kept it a bit ambiguous of like, you know, just like maybe what the plot requires. Yeah. Until all of a sudden someone's like, nope, he runs on evil.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It gives us like the motivation to keep making the movies. So part of the reason why some people think that the ROI is starting to slip a little bit here is that there's some competition in the market. Notably, Nightmare on Elm Street was released the year before, and its sequels were starting to roll out. So there's not just Halloween and Friday the 13th. Now there's also Nightmare on Elm Street.
SPEAKER_00:Which is so good.
SPEAKER_02:It is good, yeah. It's time for a rewatch. Maybe I'll watch the first one this October.
SPEAKER_00:First one, first one's fine, but again, it's like the first Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's like it hasn't found its charm yet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_00:It's a good movie. It just hasn't found its charm.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And like that, that is a weird thing about these movies. There's like this cozy charm to them.
SPEAKER_02:There is.
SPEAKER_00:It's which is weird to say about watching people get like s stabbed in lacerated.
SPEAKER_02:In the worst, brute, most brutal way possible.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and also just like we as Friday 13th keeps going on in the franchise, the kills are getting more unique.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Which is great. You you want to see cool, elaborate things. You know, we're not like saw level deaths, nor should we, because like which we would break the character. He's like a he's he's he's this like mindless juggernaut zombie.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:He just kills you fast. Right. Cool. You know, Freddie Krueger toys with people. He needs you afraid. So there's like all these. No, Jason just shows up and he stabs you. Um, but how do you make that interesting?
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I do think it's funny though, that I don't know, I don't know if it was this movie or a different one, but it's something that happens in multiple Friday the 13th. He does exactly what Michael Myers does. Uh, there's a where there's a part in the movie where there's the final girl running around, finding all of the bodies one by one, and then there's just like the killer just like kind of popping out, yeah, just to watch her reaction and be like, hey, look at this picture I made.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that too when we get there. There's so much that borrows from these other films that come out around it for sure. And it's also one of those things where there's only so many ways to to set up a slasher movie that follows this specific format, right? Where it's in, you know, I would say again, like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nairobi and Elm Street follow like a pretty similar specific format. And even though there's some deviation and tonal differences and all this stuff, in this world where there's teenagers being hunted by a male killer with a weapon, right? It's it's a pretty like limited scope. And so we're gonna have some moments that feel similar.
SPEAKER_00:But also we're only we're you know, we're already up to movie number six, and we're only up to 1985. Yeah, they really sound them out. Yeah, but also it's it's important to keep the context of like they're still writing the precedent. Right. Yes, there's been other movies made already, but it's not like this has been done for decades so far.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Halloween came out in 78. It's been six years, seven years. Yeah. Jason Lives was directed by Tom McLachlan. McLachlan was faced with the task of bringing Jason back to the series, especially after fans missed him in five, right? He wasn't in five, he wasn't a part of it. Now McLachlan had to figure out how to bring him back with a in a in a way that was exciting, and I think he does that with the opening and the Frankenstein scene for sure. McLachlan was a longtime horror fan, especially of the classic monster films, which again I think you can see in the Frankenstein reanimation sequence from the beginning. He also wanted to add humor to the franchise. He, which, okay, I might argue that there was already humor in the franchise, but he wanted to purposefully add intentional humor, and I think he did a good job. Like I again, I think the tone of six felt scary and had like funny moments for sure. Agreed. The movie also features three songs from this band. Do you know which band it is, Alan? Nope. Alice Cooper. Wow. Including a song called He's Back, The Man Behind the Mask. I think about uh Dream Warriors a little bit with you know, just like having one band sort of represent your sequel.
SPEAKER_00:Who did Dream Warriors?
SPEAKER_02:Doken, that metal band. Remember that we watched the music video? Oh yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I forgot about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think it's kind of like a fun thing when you have these like hardcore bands making these like 80s music videos to go with these slasher movies.
SPEAKER_00:I mean 80s and metal went hand in hand.
SPEAKER_02:Ugh, yeah. The good old days.
SPEAKER_00:What's your favorite uh 80s metal band?
SPEAKER_02:Dawkins.
SPEAKER_00:Really?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I'm a fan. Too bad they didn't work out. Alright, just when you think, things can't get any better, right? We've had this like hocus pocus Frankenstein reanimation. Where can the series possibly go from here that's any better?
SPEAKER_00:Hard to say. But we have to. Dare I say Friday the 13th, part seven?
SPEAKER_02:Folks, we have telekinesis.
SPEAKER_00:What was this one called?
SPEAKER_02:It is called Friday the 13th, part seven, A New Blood from 1988.
SPEAKER_00:An excellent year.
SPEAKER_02:The concept was literally Jason versus Carrie. That was like the concept of the movie. It was cool.
SPEAKER_00:It works really, really well.
SPEAKER_02:I wish it was Carrie because she would have fucked him up. But it ended up being this girl named Tina who battles Jason until the very end. Tina! We pick up this movie right where the last one ended, with Jason still being chained, still being chained, not floating up to the bottom of Crystal Lake, still vertically floating in the same exact position.
SPEAKER_00:He floats like um a naval mine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but he's a man.
SPEAKER_00:But he's a man.
SPEAKER_02:Then we jump ahead in time a bit and we meet Tina. So Tina's dealing with some childhood trauma.
SPEAKER_00:She's dealing with some stuff, okay?
SPEAKER_02:Of when her dad died on this very lake.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, dare I say, when she killed him.
SPEAKER_02:But she returns to the lake with her mom and a doctor who's studying her because she has telekinetic powers. We realize pretty quickly that her therapist is horrible, manipulative, and abusive, and he's trying to exploit her. But her powers start to get out of hand, and so she accidentally brings Jason back to life.
SPEAKER_00:An honest mistake.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, I'm I'm not mad at her about it.
SPEAKER_00:And, you know, then we get to see a cool Jason versus telekinesis battle. Yeah. Which is really freaking cool.
SPEAKER_02:It is. Jason starts on his typical murder spree, and Tina starts to use her mind powers to fight back. Tina manages to actually trap Jason back in the lake. I mean, there's just so many similarities here to Carrie, and it's very purposefully done that way, right? Carrie came out in 1976. So it was certainly a pre-established fan favorite by this time. This is about a decade later, a little over 12 years later. Okay, so this is the movie where, similar to Halloween, Tina starts to find all of her dead friends as the movie gets on, and all of that sort of acts as fuel, right, to piss her off. New Blood was directed by John Carl Bulcher, a prolific filmmaker who's worked on as many special effects teams as films he's directed. So his IMGB is sort of split. No, it's more, but it's like he's directed a hand uh, you know, 10 or 12 or whatever, but he's also been like head special effects guy on that many. It reminds me of Stan Winston, who directed Pumpkin Head and again was a special effects person, and you can see that influence both in Pumpkin Head and in the seventh installment of Friday the 13th. There's really like a shift, I would say, in the movie towards special and practical effects, uh, which is really fun. But similar to Five, A New Blood, a lot of this movie was censored. And so some of his really cool special effects work, including this like fully exposed rib cage of Jason, is censored and cut out.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, this is the one where he walks around looking. Okay, so this version of Jason, I think, is probably one of the most iconic Jason looks, and people don't realize it. Uh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's interesting you say that actually.
SPEAKER_00:I don't I don't know exactly why.
SPEAKER_02:I do.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but I'm gonna I'm gonna guess uh that this is the this is the version that all the Halloween stores latched onto as the the official Jason costume.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's also because stunt man Kane Hotter plays Jason for the first time, and then he really becomes the the like actor. He goes on to play him for in four films. And he kind of I think there's something missing maybe up until this point, even though we're so deep in the series, like this uh stability of of who Jason is in every film it's different. And in this movie, Kane Hotter, I think, helps to identify and define Jason, you know, for the rest of the series.
SPEAKER_00:Well, beyond just like the actor, just like the the actual look of the makeup with the exposed parts, the chain around the neck.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't realize how familiar this look was until I saw it again in the movie.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I bet also for you, like I wonder if video games use this, right? Because you play video games more than I do.
SPEAKER_00:What would that have to do with my fam with Jason?
SPEAKER_02:Isn't he a character in some of them?
SPEAKER_00:In what games?
SPEAKER_02:Isn't there like a game where there's like you could play like Mike Myers, like a villain's game?
SPEAKER_00:You're talking about Dead by Daylight.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Like I wonder if they use this look in those things.
SPEAKER_00:Uh well, there's a bunch of skins. I don't know. Yeah. He's like he's definitely in that game, but you can there's like every horror villain that's popular is in that game.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just saying there's moments Maybe, but I mean I feel like I associate this look with like early 2000s. Sure. Oh, I wonder if this is the same look that they use in Freddie versus Jason. Maybe. We'll find out when we get there very soon. Maybe I wonder if that's where it's from. Because that was my first intro to Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think it might have been mine too. My sister made me go see I think it was Freddie versus Jason.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we'll get we'll we'll jump in ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Okay, so fascinating. There's a full body burn in this movie where Kane Hodder, the stunt man who plays Jason, you know, has a full body burn. It lasted 40 seconds, which at the time was the longest in Hollywood history.
SPEAKER_00:That's kind of terrifying.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. 40 seconds. And similar to part five, this film's gore was cut in a huge way by the MPAA. The uncut version of this one is mostly lost.
SPEAKER_00:That's a shame.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, new blood was made for 2.8 million, and it brought in 19.2 million. So the ROI is standing strong.
SPEAKER_00:Still going, still going well.
SPEAKER_02:Still going well, yeah. All right, everybody, here is the moment we've been waiting for. Again, you think, okay, we have telekinesis, we have a reanimated Jason, Frankenstein Jason. Where could the series go from here? Well, we can go to Manhattan. In 1989, the masterpiece, Friday the 13th, part eight, Jason Takes Manhattan, was released.
SPEAKER_00:And this was when the series officially jumps the shark.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:In the best possible way. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then it's only up from here, baby. So first we have to address the elephant in the room. How did Jason get to Manhattan?
SPEAKER_00:Excellent question. And we finally, after years of wondering, we finally learn where Crystal Lake is. Hoboken. In it's in Hoboken.
SPEAKER_02:It's gotta be. Because it's somehow connected by river system to Manhattan.
SPEAKER_00:Which means, I mean, I guess it could be anywhere along the Atlantic, but No, Jason kind of like walks along the swims, walk treads water behind the boat and then gets to Manhattan. It cannot be far.
SPEAKER_02:No, he gets on the boat. He's on the boat.
SPEAKER_00:He's he's on the boat, yeah. But then he's off the boat.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean he's supernatural, he's powerful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but there's a good chunk of time where he's trailing the boat in the water.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it can't be far.
SPEAKER_02:So here's my thing. For how the lake is portrayed, think about the first movie when she's on her little canoe. It's like a pond, really, right? And then okay, it becomes like a full-blown like lake you'd have a camp on, like Lake Winnipegasaki, something like that. But for how this lake is portrayed, the scale of the cruise boat that they end up taking. It's impressive. Is crazy because it's not only this like little boat that's gonna go on these little like inlet rivers that again somehow connect to Manhattan, it's it's like a full steamship with like cabin suites and bedrooms, and the professor is the steamer. The professor has his whole like you know, whatever. It's Titanic leaves in ten minutes. It's wild. So Jason is again reanimated, this time by an electric cable that kind of sparks him back to life as he's trapped in the lake.
SPEAKER_00:They gotta stop Frankenstein, this guy.
SPEAKER_02:He's I know. You'd think they'd have a better handle on him. Jason decides to board the cruise boat that's filled with high schoolers, and it's kind of like a Congrats graduation trip for them. By the time the boat arrives in Manhattan, which is quite Quite far into the movie.
SPEAKER_00:Hang on. It's not just quite far into the movie. We are 80% through the movie by the time we get to Manhattan.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You could tell they just wanted the goofy title of Jason Takes Manhattan. Yeah. But why spend 80% of the movie working your way there and trying to justify why he's in Manhattan?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But why? But they don't even they don't do a good job of justifying it. Like to me, it's such a weak plot that he trailed this boat. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:It is. So it's like rip rip off the band-aid. Oh, he's in Manhattan now. Right.
SPEAKER_02:We don't even need to know. Yeah. It's a logistical nightmare.
SPEAKER_00:Do what so many other horror movies have done of researchers put him in a box.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-oh, he gets out. Right. Just like Jason X, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-oh, right, though. That's Jason X.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so Jason has killed most people on the boat by the time he gets to Manhattan. In the city, Jason continues stalking a few teens that had survived on the cruise ship that he wasn't able to kill. What takes him down, you might ask? Toxic City Waste. Despite its name, the majority of the movie takes place on said ship and was actually filmed in Vancouver. Only a small portion was filmed in Manhattan. I think it was actually filmed like in Times Square like at 3 a.m. And I just like it ended up with like a huge crowd of people watching them on the side.
SPEAKER_00:That was a Ninja Turtles reference.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I I wouldn't have gotten that.
SPEAKER_00:Get your shit together.
SPEAKER_02:This is the last Paramount Jason movie after this New Line Cinema takes over the rights.
SPEAKER_00:After this, it's just Criterion Collection.
SPEAKER_02:So Jason Takes Manhattan had the highest budget to date at 5 million, and it brought in 14.3 million in the US. And though the ROI continues to shrink, there will be four more Jason movies in the franchise.
SPEAKER_00:And I hope f four more after that.
SPEAKER_02:I hope so too. And this is just a fun fact. The stunt man who ended up playing Jason Wright for the next four movies, Kane Hotter, he said that when this crowd was assembled and he was in Times Square, that it was the proudest moment of his life. Like he felt so much pride doing that and having all these people care to watch. Fans often call this movie one of the worst unmaskings of Jason.
SPEAKER_00:He does look kind of silly.
SPEAKER_02:His face looks like a weird, sort of melty puppet-like face. It's not as spooky as it was in other movies. There's also a fun moment in this movie where there's a boxer named Julius who gets his head punched off, which is um like a fan favorite, and it also was like extraordinarily complicated to choreograph.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, they gotta punch someone's fucking head off. That's not easy.
SPEAKER_02:It's not easy.
SPEAKER_00:But the it's that sequence is so long.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So long. Him just like bashing Jason again and again every time he takes the tiniest step back, and then he just gets too tired.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but it's kind of like I don't know. There's something about that kill that's kind of satisfying.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, just but wax wax him.
SPEAKER_02:Wax him, yeah. So this was the first movie that really takes Jason out of Camp Crystal Lake.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it begs a lot of questions about how he's gonna get back.
SPEAKER_00:Well, he just he takes the ferry.
SPEAKER_02:And I you know it's probably off the subway. It's so close. Sure, he just takes the light, the light rail to Hoboken. The light rail? Yeah. What's the light rail? Well, ones you could take the path to Hoboken, then there's a light rail which goes like deeper into New Jersey.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, MJ Transit.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. And then there's NJ Transit, which is trains. Yeah. There's three ways. Three ways to get around. At least. And buses, of course. I guess he has a lot of options. Ferries, buses. The Jitney. That's in Long Island. It's not New Jersey. Nice try though. I mean, here's the thing. I'm all for Boat Jason. I'm all for Manhattan. Jason. I just wish this movie, like what I feel like happens now a little bit, my bigger critique is that these premise, the premise for some of these movies that we're gonna get into next episode, but especially Jason takes Manhattan, they're so wild to your point. Like they wanted that to be the the tagline. And it doesn't go hard enough for me. I just wish it went harder. I wish it totally threw caution to the wind. And you know, Jason was just on some kind of Manhattan rampage, it just doesn't go there.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. No, it the the the New York portion of this film is so small. Yeah. Such I mean, I get it, it's probably very expensive comparatively to shoot in New York. Yeah. But there's what there's there's ways. We did not have to spend so long on the boat.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And like we love boat movies. I love boats. And this is a pretty dumb boat movie.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Because the boat also like it doesn't give us that much. Like I think if you okay, if we're on the boat, there could be more nautical, nautically inclined kills or something. And there's a little bit of that, but it's it's pretty, it's all pretty like standard. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Why aren't we seeing Jason impale people with anchors?
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:That's cool. We like that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, break somebody over the the break someone's back over the a steam pipe.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's cool.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, the one of the greatest subplots of this movie is really the the relationship between the captain and his son.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And his yeah, his poor, disapproving father. Yeah. And he just wants to be a little little junior captain.
SPEAKER_02:He just wants his father to be proud of him, and he's not quite figured it out yet.
SPEAKER_00:I know. He's like, all right, son, what's the first thing you do? Oh, we do this.
SPEAKER_02:No! Then he like runs away crying. It's so sad. It's so sad. Oh my gosh. We are having so much fun with this series. I hope you guys are too. It's been really lovely to return again to this format and to just deep dive into an iconic franchise that I hadn't seen. So I feel like I'm long overdue to watch through all of these. Right now, for me, six is the film to be. Alan, what's your favorite so far?
SPEAKER_00:Um, the telekinesis carry.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, seven. Yeah. That's a really good one, too.
SPEAKER_00:It's so fun.
SPEAKER_02:It's so fun.
SPEAKER_00:I really thought Jason Takes Manhattan was gonna be for me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's just it's a weak showing. It's fun and it's goofy, but the the bar was set really high by seven.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, very true. I also want to mention that we have a horror book club that we meet a few times a year with some horror fans, and we pick a book and we collectively get on a Zoom call, so it doesn't matter where you're located, and we talk about it. On October 27th, we are going to meet to talk about Victorian Psycho. Victorian Psycho came out this year, so it's really fun to be reading a novel that is so current. It was written by Virginia Fietto, and so far I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's also pretty quick. I'm a really slow reader, and I've read it a few times before bed, and I'm at like 50%. So I would say if you're looking to get into a horror novel, something spooky, set the scene for the days leading up to Halloween, come join us. All you have to do is join our Discord for information about how to join, or just DM us on social media and I will make sure that you get the link.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm very excited to wrap up this series with the final four uh Jason movies because they're the silliest. Because I I don't I feel like they're gonna at least be the most unique.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. I'm really excited as well. We have a few more to go, so I'll I won't say anything, but we're gonna come back next week. We're gonna talk about the the remaining four, and then of course, as a follow-up to all of this, we are going to have a really cool packed episode featuring Friday the 13th adjacent horror stories.
SPEAKER_00:Adjacent?
SPEAKER_02:Ah, nice, yes.
SPEAKER_00:We're pointing at each other.
SPEAKER_02:You can't see because it's a podcast, but we are pointing. So, anyway, thank you guys so much for listening. Stay spooky. I hope you're enjoying your October and opening up your mind as the veil continues to thin. We'll talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_01:Bye bye.
