Friday the 13th Pt VI: Jason Lives (1986)

“I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly.” - Lizabeth

After a break in A New Beginning which didn’t actually feature Jason - who had stayed dead since The Final Chapter, it was time to get back to basics and bring the main man back to action in the series’ sixth instalment. Paramount weren’t about to be coy, they announced it right there on the title – Friday the 13th Pt VI: Jason Lives.

So, it’s 1986 and we’re heading for the sixth movie. Surely a time when momentum is lost, repetition is the order of the day and the whole enterprise becomes tired and threadbare as we saw in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. But for their sixth, the Fridays took an unexpected turn and indulged in some self-referential humour in one of the first “meta” films, as shown in that line of dialogue I’ve quoted above. Scream writer Kevin Williamson has quoted Jason Lives as having had a profound influence on his writing.

This was a turning point for the Jason character. This was where he stopped being, basically a retarded redneck who’d somehow survived drowning as a child and sought vengeance for the decapitation of his mother. This is where he became a supernaturally powered movie monster, back from the dead. In my opinion, this marks the transformation of the F13 series away from being serviceable slashers to something more akin to the Universal Monster series of the 30s & 40s, where the monster of the piece is resurrected, either by accident or design, to go on a rampage before being temporarily killed until the next time.

Jason Lives even opens with a classic night time graveyard scene which literally screams Universal or Hammer as Tommy Jarvis, survivor of Pts IV and V, played by a different actor each time, this time it’s Thom Mathews and his reluctant buddy are headed to the graveyard to take care of Jason once and for all. It’s unclear whether Tommy has actually been released from the halfway house, I’d guess not because he’s driving the same truck that was seen driven by the counsellors in Pt V. At the graveyard, Tommy starts to dig at Jason’s grave (despite our understanding from the last film that he was cremated, but okay – let’s just go with it) so the plan as far as his friend knows is just to see the body is still there, then leave – right? Right? Eeeerrrrrrrrr…right?

Nope – in a scene that was kind of foreshadowed by Tommy’s dream at the beginning of Pt V, Tommy opens the coffin and sees a mouldy, worm ridden Jason, and immediately begins to hack and stab at it with a metal fence post in a complete frenzy. He gets a can of gasoline ready to give Jason the cremation he has missed out on, when lightning strikes, hitting the metal post sticking out of Jason’s chest bringing him back to life in a scene eerily reminiscent of the Frankenstein monster.

Tommy’s pal comes to an unfortunate, but mercifully quick end, Tommy escapes. Jason is now at full power as the camera closes in on his eye, becoming a parody of the famous James Bond gun barrel opening.

In many ways, this film takes us right back to the series origins, we’re back at Camp Crystal Lake for the first time since the series first film, and actually for the first time there are actually kids in the camp. Not that it’s called Crystal Lake, due to the bad publicity surrounding “Camp Blood” the area has been rechristened Forest Green to attract visitors. It makes no difference to Jason, who’s heading home killing anyone he sees, including the participants of an executive paintballing game. He's not out for vengeance because of his mother, he’s purely a remorseless killing machine. You cross his path, you wander in to his line of sight, you’re dead and that’s it.

So, back to Tommy who goes straight to the Forest Hills police dept, the Sheriff locks him up immediately, thinking he’s dangerous. And this is where he meets Megan, the Sheriff’s daughter (Jennifer Cooke) who happens to be one of the new assistant counsellors at Camp Forest Green. It’s the day that they’re expecting the arrival of the head counsellors and the kids. Coincidentally, it’s also Friday the 13th. (Seriously, do they never learn?) The head counsellors don’t even make it – they’re slaughtered by Jason on their way to the camp.

The assistant counsellors are three female, one male. The male is the first of the teens to go, killed, along with his girlfriend in a Winnebago type RV by Jason who rams the girl’s head into a wall, leaving a perfect imprint. The boy gets a screwdriver through his head – in one ear, out the other. At least the last thing he heard was Teenage Frankenstein by Alice Cooper, who provided three songs to the film’s soundtrack, including He’s Back, the Man Behind the Mask.

So, it’s the night of Friday the 13th, at Crystal Lake – what could go wrong? Well, a newly engaged couple are speared in the woods, Martin the crazy alcoholic coot gravedigger finds his end at the end of a bottle, snapped in half and stabbed in his throat, one teen gets her head twisted clean off, another is simply butchered off camera but her blood decorates the walls of her cabin.

Jason won’t harm children though. So all the kids are safe. The Sheriff’s Dept aren’t so lucky, suffering many fatalities, including the Sheriff himself who is folded over backwards until his spine snaps.

The final showdown is seemingly down to Tommy, who goes out to the middle of the lake in a boat with a large boulder wrapped in a chain. He goads Jason out to the water and during the struggle, he ties the rock to Jason’s neck and pushes in overboard. But Jason doesn’t die that easily. Megan swims out to save the nearly drowned Tommy and is also attacked by a thrashing Jason – but she snaps his neck with the outboard propellor and saves the day.

Or does she?

As the film closes, we see Jason, still weighted down underwater… but one eye opens.

As I said, a refreshing change of pace, opening the series up to further, fresh possibilities. This marked the end of having a different stuntman play Jason in every film. The next one would introduce us to the ultimate Jason Voorhees – actor/stunt man Kane Hodder.