Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday The 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan!!?

What is there to say about Jason Takes Manhattan that has not already been said? If you're a fan of Friday the 13th, you already know two thirds of it take place on a boat, the New York scenes are mostly Vancouver, and it's the one where Jason punches a guy's head clean off.

The physics of this are mind bending to consider.

So much of this flick concerns water that you would think some deep thematic significance could be inferred from it, and so would the writer, but you'd both be wrong. Apparently inspired by Tina's psychic trauma and douchey psychiatrist from 7, this one features as its Final Girl one Rennie, whose professor uncle once pushed her into Crystal Lake to try to teach her to swim, using fear of the little boy Jason who drowned there to motivate her.

I learned from this movie not to do this.

Once in the lake, she either sees or hallucinates little boy Jason trying to drag her down with him. As with pretty much everything in these flicks, noone knows if this is meant to actually be happening or not, and even more noone cares. If this were the opening scene, it would probably be creepy, but it's jammed in at random as a third act flashback, so instead it's just confusing and laughably silly.

I like how the makeup artist decided Jason's hydrocephalus and Down's syndrome weren't piling on enough so they gave him a cleft palate scar too.

Despite being hilariously ineptly handled, this scene is quite creative and at least the idea behind giving the heroine a profound personal trauma showed evidence of rudimentary effort, so let's call it a high point. Normally though when you do something like that in narrative terms, the heroine would overcome her trauma by confronting a similar situation later, using the personal strength she's accrued through a dynamic arc. Instead the payoff is that Jason gets deluged in toxic waste in the Vancouver sewers and turns into a normal boy, which isn't a payoff so much as it is a non-sequitur.

Only showing his face while melting was a smart way to avoid having to recreate the look from 7 exactly. I respect innovation in cutting corners.

Rennie looks unsure whether she's just had an arc or not.

So much for the deep lore, plot, and subtext (if any). Manhattan is more or less a succession of gags, a couple of which land, if your standards are low enough. Memorable-ish minor characters include a hair rocker with a hot pink guitar, and Kelly Hu (let's face it, The Scorpion King).

Not sure if cute, or a Ramone.

Most definitely cute, holy shit. Azns win this film.

Manhattan even tries to win your affection subliminally by reminding you of more popular entry Jason Lives. Sneaky!

Is Quayton the black Jason? Quayton spinoff when?

The most celebrated gag, however, must be the one from the Times Square scene, in which Jason kicks over a punk gang's 80s casette player and they menace him, only for him to scare them off by simply lifting his mask to reveal, presumably, his part 7 face.

ebin :DD

The Poughkeepsie Tapes!!!

Thought you ran out of good horror movies years ago? Never seen a good found footage movie after The Blair Witch Project? Under 6 feet tall? Then you might just be a disgusting manlet that should be exterminated from the gene pool.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was never released, lending credence to the conspiracy theory that Hollywood is this bad intentionally and scuppers anything good on purpose because Hollywood hates you. This theory is true, but fortunately you can probably find a copy on line. The first version I saw I immediately realised this was the horror movie I had been missing all these years, but the uploader CUT THE GOD DAMN ENDING OFF. Anyway, it was really good. WATCH IT.

For those of you PEASANTS who don't know, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is about a serial killer in New York State who seems to be loosely based on Ted Bundy (who even gets a shoutout in the movie), the Zodiac Killer and the fictionalised Henry Lee Lucas from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (like whom he switches up his MO to confuse everyone). He videotapes all his kills (for he is in the 90s, I think), and wears this beaky mask thing just for jolly wouldn't you?

But perhaps the most interesting part of the movie concerns what I'll call his favourite victim. I won't give away what happens to her, but it's quite unlike what happens to most characters in horror movies, and confers a note of poignancy which makes the whole experience more interesting. Watch The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and sort out your life, in either order.

Bastard role models: Lee Ving

Lee Ving was the lead singer in Fear. Fear is a band about beer and hating people. Fear is awesome. They have such varied and interesting material as "Let's Have a War", "Fuck Christmas", and my personal favourite, "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones".

Fear probably laid the groundwork for such sonic pioneers as Anal Cunt, and such intrepid bloggists as Pat Bastard and the Spurious 5. Everyone likes Fear.

Go away.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: 13 facts about Jason

Hello campers! Let me tell you a story of a young boy who overcame deformity and retardation to become one of history's most beloved mass murderers. His name was Jason, and today is his birthday the day after which his biopics are named. This contains spoilers for all the Friday the 13th movies, if such a thing is even possible.

1. Jason wore six masks over the course of the original series. In Part 2 he wore a bag on his head, which led to him falling off a stool and getting kicked in the nuts because he couldn't see properly. In Part 3, he took his first hockey mask from a guy named Shelley, whom he whacked. This mask lasted until Part 7, weathering an axe blow and a boat propeller before getting pulled apart by Discount Carrie. They even buried this one with him, just in case he needed it when he rose from the grave in Part 6, which was very considerate of them. Knowing how attached he was to his mask, it's fortunate that in Part 8 the very first boat to come along and wake him from the bottom of the lake had one on it. That one was lost in the sewers of New York when he dissolved in toxic sludge and turned into a child (yes), but then in Part 9 he was just back with a new mask. In Part 10 he got upgraded into a cyborg for some fucking reason, giving him a new and shiny mask, and in Freddy Vs Jason he just woke up with a mask on because fuck it.

   

   Axe sold separately.

2. Jason can only be killed by whatever plot bullshit comes into play, but can consistently be revived by electricity, as shown in Parts 6 and 8. This is handy, as it means you can jump start your Jason just by shoving his pinky in a wall socket.
3. Jason suffered from hydrocephalus as a child. That is why his head is swollen and weirdly shaped. All the kids at Camp Crystal Lake bullied Jason for his appearance.

   

   Strangely, the camp counsellors sing Kum Ba Yah even when there are no kids around.

4. In Part 9 Jason is revealed to be activated by a Mini Boglin that lives in his heart and possesses people. This was discovered after he was blowed up by the FBI (yes). Like the sludge turning him into a child in the previous movie, this was deemed so stupid it was never mentioned again. Freddy Vs Jason took the same approach to Jason going to space in Jason X, making an unbroken trilogy of movies that were too embarrassed to acknowledge the one before them.
5. In Part 2, Jason lives in a shack in the middle of the woods. This shack has an indoor toilet, which suggests Jason is an adept plumber, like Mario. If the douchebag kids had not let Jason drown as a child, this indicates that he would now be fixing your pipes, and probably making more money than them.

   

   Jason's toilet. There's probably a toy of this.

6. Also in his shack is a shrine to his dead mother, in which her head is the centrepiece. This means Jason took the head after Alice cut it off in Part 1, and nobody thought it was strange that they found a decapitated body with no head at the murder scene.
7. Kane Hodder declared that Jason would not kill a child or a dog. While this is consistent with his portrayal in the four films in which Hodder starred, it makes the scenes in 4 where Jason chases after Tommy kind of strange. Rewatching them, we can only conclude that Jason wanted to tickle him.

   

   Warning: a noogie from Jason can cause skull fractures.

8. Parts 1, 2 and 4 are actually good movies.
9. Jason's ability to regenerate makes no sense and was clearly just made up as the series dragged on and got lazier and lazier. However, it allows for the hilarious scene in Jason X where they try to explain why he was frozen: they literally couldn't execute him.
10. Jason is the only horror icon to make a Final Girl visibly pee herself (Part 2).

    

    Don't lie, you would have too.

11. Jason can kill people with everything from a weed whacker to a party horn. He is also strong enough to punch a guy's head clean off. What this means is that he uses weapons only for the lulz, a fact which is supported by his swapping out weapons constantly for no reason.
12. Jason has been missing an eye since Cory Feldman impaled him through it with his own machete. After having both his eye sockets gouged out by Freddy in Freddy Vs Jason, he is later seen closing an intact eye, meaning that he can totally regenerate eyes, he just doesn't.
13. Jason's personal theme song is "He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)" by Alice Cooper. This song is so 80s it will literally spray your hair.

Did I miss anything??? 8 years of school??? What am I doing with my life?????

Travel broadens the mind (Warrington kills it).

Ever since the womb, I've hated flying. Flying is when you wait twelve hours to get shoved into less space than a bus, between a great big fat person and the one window seat that doesn't have a window, only after getting molested by jackbooted throwbacks who used to beat you up in school. I'd rather travel by Cuban refugee boat: seventeen twigs held together with rubber bands and prayer and a crew of wild-eyed desperadoes paddling with their dicks. The good news is, flying can take you to places in other countries, specifically that aren't Warrington.

Vans around the world: New York and Barcelona. Note that in Spain, Garfield bears the eight-pointed Star of Chaos.

Everywhere I've been around the world has had something interesting to show, except Warrington. Some have thought-provoking art and history, others beautiful scenery, or unique culture, or wildlife, or even inexplicable craziness like this:

Berlin statues, left to right: Boy staring melancholically at armadillo; holy shit!

Dicks on sale in Barcelona.

Even cool things can be found in unexpected places: Green River, Utah, which is basically a truck stop, five houses and two joggers (source) has a sweet cool museum about John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Confederate Civil War veteran who mapped the Colorado River, losing nearly all his crew in the process. This is exactly the kind of thing you could drive past and never know.

Pictured: Green River + entire population.

The great mad bastard himself.

Warrington is the worst place on Planet Earth. In a survey of over 100 squirrels, not one person recommended Warrington as a tourist destination. The only recognisable picture of Warrington you'll ever see is of these big gates:

Looks impressive...until you go there, and there's nothing to either side of them. Spread the word: Warrington crops.

Warrington's top attraction.