Post by No Personality on Mar 3, 2010 13:33:01 GMT -5
First thing's first - nobody can talk about this movie without addressing the enormous amount of bullshit hate and insults this movie receives constantly. Even at fan conventions I hear, where some of the cast of Jason Takes Manhattan have gathered- stupid assholes have to tell the people there that they didn't like the movie. Okay, then why the fuck did you go to that film's panel, you idiot? Yeah, a lot of people really don't like the movie. So what? I still really can't tell why either. It can't be expectations of something more than the movie actually delivered. And if it is, they only have themselves to blame. One of my major movie-watching rules: if you watch any movie with an attitude that it had better give you what you expect - you're a fool. Also, nobody seems the least bit grateful that ticket prices back when this was released theatrically were about half what they are now. So, what right does anyone have to complain? You don't see most people who paid theater admission prices to see the movie bitching. And if people are whining because they feel anyone got hurt on spending a dime on the 2004 boxset that they felt went to this movie, they need to shut up.
Now on the whole, we all know Friday the 13th is not a series of films that got anywhere based on strong plots and great stories. Before Part VII: The New Blood, the writers pretty much just wrote anything that amused them and then it was turned over to the actors- most of whom must have been a little surprised to see there wasn't any real characterization, nothing meaty to grab onto. Nothing to worry about making believable. So, it was a real treat and especially rare when this series could give us a classic performance - or even to cast a great performer. Someone who could supress any disdain they might have felt for the material's lack of drama or intelligence in order to give a good performance. In the original film, Betsy Palmer came in late in the game and set the bar impossibly high for her younger co-stars to be able to match. Her conviction and depth (which does come off campy today) rivals even that of genre pros Donald Pleasence in Halloween and John Saxon in Black Christmas.
But that instance was truly a one-off for this series. Since that benchmark, the best acting was usually done by actresses who understood what being relaxed brought to their presence onscreen- Lauren Marie Taylor as Vicki (Part II), Rachel Howard as Chili (Part III), Barbara Howard as Sara (The Final Chapter), Jennifer Cooke as Megan (Jason Lives). Few and far between. If this franchise was especially pure, original, and strong in its' first three offerings, then it nosedived bigtime with The Final Chapter and didn't pick up very much until the new writers and director of Part VI: Jason Lives understood that it was time to shake up the old formula. And he did. True, he didn't do much to it. He just restarted the idea with something brand new. It's not like he really had to worry about things like continuity. That's one of this franchise's greatest weaknesses. One of its' strengths, however, is that it truly never lost its' essence. Because it was always about reinvention at any cost.
And the costs were never devastating, considering that each movie has its' basic elements- Camp Counselors (just a kind of symbol for teenagers / 20-somethings who are all grown up physically and who we watch as they make a series of choices) cavorting all about a camp / forest area where cabins are located and where the "death curse" of the town of Crystal Lake is always hanging in the air and above everyone's heads like the Sword of Damocles. Sometimes taking place on the day of Friday the 13th (any given year). Sometimes not. Then, each screenwriter goes to town based on that. Some of them had a preoccupation with sleazy sex and gratuitous nudity for the sake of personal perversion or to pander to the lowest common denominator. All of them dealt with sex, though I'm told sometimes the act of sex was just used as a distraction for the characters. Somehow- I can believe that.
Some of the movies took a very light approach to the subject matter. Others were very dark or oppressive. Sometimes, it was silly and obnoxious. Sometimes, it was stark. The greatest constant throughout the Paramount movies however is a basic standard of one-by-one character isolation achieved through the use of atmospheric elements generated by the North Eastern American forest setting. In some movies- people have to trudge through the rain. In others- there's a whipping wind. In a precious few, there's fog through the trees. Sometimes the trees are lush with green leaves. Sometimes the trees are dead, naked, and stick-like. The sounds of crickets and the occasional hooting owl. Pitch black darkness paints the sky dark blue. A full moon melts overhead. The lake is very calm and the water is placid. Jason Takes Manhattan is the first and only sequel to merely start out at Crystal Lake - giving us a taste of the reliable old familiar - and then quickly move away from it.
Jason Takes Manhattan may not exactly be a masterpiece in terms of writing, but it's the closest any Friday the 13th film comes to not only caring about the characters- but really taking them seriously. Rennie, the lead heroine, has an actual backstory that connects to her present state of panic and fear, which involves Jason in an unlikely traumatic childhood event where they first met, to her past, involving being nervous around water. Her experiences in this film change her and force her to deal with her fear. Yeah, I know- any soap opera can come up with that. It's a not at-all unique way of setting up an obvious happy or triumphant survivor ending. You've seen 'em before. Some people (like myself) aren't bothered by them and can enjoy them as pure fantasy (since this cliche is more true to reality-TV and Disney movies than real life). Others feel it's a real cheat. But we all know there's more than one way to do something. So, no good comes from shooting something harmless down based on the ethics of certain movie fans. Perhaps even a vast minority.
The whole film revolves around Rennie's fear of water. And in terms of the fantasy-horror template, it's more than believable - it's crucial to the viewing experience and adds a lot to it. Everything that is written for the character, and the background confrontations of her two protectors. Undoubtedly, it's probably the first actual character that a Friday the 13th film itself couldn't dispatch. Any previous film in this series could have killed their lead heroines and gotten away with it. Except for maybe The New Blood. I could credit that to Jensen Dagget's performance and/or Rob Hedden's sensitive, compassionate, empathetic screenplay. But how hard they both worked to give this film dignity was bound to be lost on the legions of fans who pretty much just wanted gore and memorable death scenes. Don't get me wrong- I love that too. Those things are nice. But I don't hold it against this movie that it tried to focus less on making people cheer the deaths as they might cheer the long and surprisingly epic battle for survival that the last few remaining characters are forced to embark on.
I know I've complained about survival horror films in the past. With good reason- they are very hard to pull off. And take much of the art out of a film (whether it's meant to be for the sake of imaginative horror or psychological thrills) for the sake of action. When you get too much of that in your diet, you become numb to it. It becomes boring. And I fear - in the case of some viewers - that you delude yourself into thinking that action is the only way to create tension and suggest horror. That art, atmosphere, and the like have nothing to do with horror. Most every survival-horror film reinforces this. That is why only a small handful can truly make it work. This film qualifies as a survival horror film mainly because of the very lengthy New York finale. If you're actually able to tune in to this movie, you'll find that it only starts to drag when they get to the back alleys and have to deal with the hoodlum drug addicts. Though they also could have tightened up the sequence of getting into the lifeboat.
But for a survival-horror movie, this film is of the ultra-rarest breed. The fantasy-survival horror movie. After awhile, you get the impression that Rennie's periodic hallucinations are actually the work of an ability Jason has to force himself into her reality. That he remembers her, even though she doesn't know who he is or where he came from. That it's not her psyche that is responsible for her frailed psychical and mental state of partial dislocation. This of course, is giving Jason a secondary consciousness he never had before. And betrays him as a character. Though as I've indicated above and in my previous Spotlights- Jason has no character. He's always been a mindless killing machine. Which means there was room for improvement. Here, it's a simple device and not much is done with it. But not only do I give it points for trying, it also works well enough to keep the movie going on its' initial steam.
The backbone of the film is the sensitivity with which Rob Hedden's treats its' subject matter and characters. But the legs that carry it along and the arms that hold it up are two very important things this movie never gets any credit for. And they're both connected of course. One is a more dark and calculated sense of pacing. This film keeps the high bodycount of the last 3 entries but goes back to the longer running time (plus 5 minutes) of the Parts I and III. The typical format of Friday the 13th is stretched out here to incorporate the heavier dialogue and additional character development. But also, the stalking scenes have a lot more creep to them. The film feels darker and spookier. There are abundant shadows that hang over every porthole, in every corridor, and they all seem to have a life of their own. The look of the ship is fantastic and even the biggest rooms feel tight and a tad claustrophobic. This thing is decked out to the nines with fun cheesy 80's stuff but is significantly less elegant and spacious than Titanic.
Fred Mollin's score feels more drawn out as well and is peppered throughout with 80's pop/rock tunes, very much in the spirit of mid-80's Duran Duran or A Flock of Seagulls, or Taylor Dayne. Which means they probably missed the boat on the more harder rock of Guns n' Roses, Motley Crue, and Aerosmith which would completely dominate the late 80's to early 90's. The time period in which this film was relevant. Still it's much improved over The New Blood's silly bluesy light-beer bar rock, commercial jingle stock of forgettable tunes. Though here there is a nod to the kind of Glenn Frey "You Belong the City" kinda thing that was relevant to television at the time. Easily fitting among the ranks of incidental music you'd likely hear on 21 Jump Street or Doogie Howser. And the parade of Miami Vice rip-off shows. Credit again goes to Rob Hedden, who I understand is a guitar owner and enthusiast, and clearly knew his rock bands. Because he picked some good tracks out of the sea of Canadian music. Since most of this movie was filmed in Canada (which has always looked great on film), it's possible the deal included picking music from Canada. It certainly would have been cheaper.
The other thing that really sets this movie apart from the previous sequels is how Hedden treats the death scenes. None of them just come and go by quickly. Almost all the victims are aware that Jason is there and are given time to run away or hide first before he slowly descends upon them. This makes the deaths a great deal more intense than they've ever been before. Or since. There is a slight air of either tragedy or humility to every person's death. We don't see them as simple objects for the killer to dispatch. They die like real human beings. They don't just scream- they beg for their lives. They cry. They lose it emotionally. And the music doesn't just wimper either like in the other films. The stinger cues last a while. Mechanical sound effects thunder and boom, like they're stuck in a bottle- desperate to be let out. The jingling bells in Mollin's score echo almost sadly into the next set-piece or sequence. In fact, the death scenes are more than just "kills," they are full-on set-pieces. At least, as close to being set-pieces as any other movie in this entire franchise came. There are a lot of details to every one of them, too.
The characters may still have bullseyes on their backs and numbers on their fronts (like the competitors in a race), but any change from the bodies just falling down or rolling over quickly is welcomed. It's not even a problem that the "kills" are still censored. The less speedy the pacing of the movie and the less sporatic the pieces of scenes are organzied (especially in The Final Chapter and The New Blood- the longest a character stayed in one place in the latter was 40 seconds), the more you feel the impact of each. And this is not essential to this movie either, but it's a large perk. Some of the supporting characters are cut from the stereotypes of previous entries. Tamara the bitch, Wayne the nerd, Julius the jock. And regardless of how sympathetic any of them are, all their deaths are treated the same way. And deliberately so. At any rate, it's an attempt to take what the movie could be more seriously. To give the formula some sophistication. And for that, they couldn't have picked a better director. If that's what the studio wanted. Rob Hedden remains very down to Earth and has a good sense of humor.
This sequel was kind of born from the Friday the 13th tv series. Though it was a show that never got any mainstream exposure. And I never watched it. I remember one episode, that's it. Point is; Hedden directed several episodes, it was shot in Canada, and it had almost nothing to do with the movie series. Hedden didn't feel any particular pressure to be faithful to the films that came before it. And I'm glad for that. Because right from the getgo, with yet another character acting as a campfire tale-teller who rehashes the story of Jason Voorhees from stories he overheard from others- we realize none of the characters in this movie really know Jason. Rennie hallucinated him as a child. He lives through the stories of him. Urban legends. And in the visuals of the flashbacks during this opening scene, Jason is a normal child with no physical deformities. This is a detail that probably strikes most Friday the 13th fans as the most unforgivable thing this movie does. But it illustrates a pattern. One I find very fascinating.
The story here features, again- no one who knows Jason Voorhees. So, he pretty much stumbles onto this group of potential victims by accident. The screenplay covers its' own tracks very well in hindsight. It starts as though none of the previous movies in this series are related to the Jason Voorhees or Crystal Lake in this sequel. And that each sort of generation of "Camp Counselors" (see above) is more the victim of something vague from the past that was set in motion by other people (a horror visited upon each new generation by something in the destiny of the Friday the 13th universe) than something they are doing in the present. Some potential crime they're committing (as other previous movies may have suggested - sex, drugs, and/or rock-n-roll). The idea of an urban legend that is resurrected to wreak havoc in a more modern time than the last time it was free is something very creepy. When it's given a real burial place that you can see before it's unearthed.
As you can probably tell- I really respect this movie. It's become one of my absolute favorites to revisit. Each time, it holds up as well as the last and the first time I saw it. Mostly it's because of the acting. The fantasy of this insanely unrealistic, unstoppable killer wouldn't be digestible were it not for empathetic characters or decent acting. The best thing I can say about the acting here is the cast perform without a single hint of that unbearably screeching-loud monotone so trademark to this series (Larry Zerner's off-kilter "bitch" from Part III, Bill Randolph's "this is my truck!!" from Part II, Bruce Mahler and Lisa Freeman's entire cold room scene from The Final Chapter, and every single word uttered in Jason Lives by David Kagen), anywhere in sight. As for the look of this movie which is doomed to be forever 80's - how can we judge former filmmaking styles by a contemporary set of standards? It's tricky. For the most part, the main cast's fashion choices are not the least bit dated. If that's something you take note of when dropped in your cup of tea.
The fact that the film mostly takes place on a cruise ship is not in any way a flaw. And you can take that as my prerogative, but I make it a rule to never claim any film owes me. While of course all the previous films operated in grounded locations miles from any powerful aid like police- they were also set in endless stretches of woods where people could run for hours. This ship is the ultimate floating coffin, there are narrow / cluttered bedrooms, low ceilings, and tiny hallways that 2 people can barely pass through shoulder-to-shoulder. Which makes sense when you think about it; coffins aren't designed for 2. Then add over 100 people, set off the fire alarm, and a disastrous flood that will sink the ship... surely I'm not the only person who can appreciate that! What more is needed? The answer: nothing that this film doesn't provide. So if people get uptight over something so trivial as a change of scenery- they need to point the finger at themselves before trying to take anything out on this movie.
