Halloween 2021: September 30th

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1988)

The end of the eighties was fast approaching. While the “Friday the 13th” films were still making enough to justify continuing the series, each new sequel was grossing less than its predecessor. Paramount went in search of more gimmicks to keep the same-old, same-old slaughter semi-fresh. Rob Hedden, who had previously written and directed several episodes of the Jason-less "Friday the 13th" television series, had a pitch that caught the studio's attention. He wanted to take Jason out of the woods and drop him into the big city, namely Manhattan. Hedden's original vision was ambitious, with sequences set around the Brooklyn Bridge, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, and even Broadway. The final film, "Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan," would fall far short of this original plan.

Yes, before you talk about anything else concerning "Jason Takes Manhattan," you have to acknowledge one notorious fact: Most of the movie does not take place in Manhattan. "Jason Takes a Boat" would be a more accurate title, as the first hour is set on the cruise ship taking the teens of Crystal Lake from New Jersey to the Big Apple. Hedden's original script were deemed too expensive, his ideas chipped away at until a single sequence in Times Square remained. The rest of the movie was filmed in Vancouver-posing-as-Manhattan, with the majority of the story now taking place on that fucking boat. There's just no way around the sequel's title making a promise its actual contents can't live up to. Jason on a cruise ship could've been a fun premise in its own right but, by giving NYC top billing, the entire movie feel like a bloated first act with an underwhelming pay-off.

Even if Rob Hedden had been allowed to bring his original screenplay to life, I'm not sure it would've been any good. "Jason Takes Manhattan" has a baffling interpretation of its titular maniac. Throughout the film, final girl Rennie has psychic visions of Jason as a child. He reaches out from a bathroom mirror, peers through a porthole, and appears in a bedroom. This idea climaxes with the film's odd ending, where Jason speaks with a child's voice and has his flesh melted off, until the little boy remains. If Hedden was getting at anything with these scenes, about how Jason is just a scared little boy on the inside or whatever, it's not expanded on in any meaningful way. It's a half-formed idea executed in a dopey manner. 

And this is not the only baffling change to Jason the film makes. The sequel emphasizes the idea that Jason can "teleport" around his location to a ridiculous degree. This is a dumb pop culture meme. Jason knows his way around the woods, his victims don't, and that's why he can always surprise them. But the sequel seemingly makes it canon. Jason chases a guy up a ladder and then appears at the top of the ladder. Someone runs from him, into an abandoned building, and then Jason throws the guy out of the building, before appearing back on the ground. At one point, the killer spontaneously bamfs around a disco whenever his victim moves her head. I can't tell if the filmmakers thought this was funny or scary but it annoys the hell out of me. 

Really, the inconsistent treatment of Jason is just one symptom of "Takes Manhattan's" lackluster screenplay. Hedden's characters range from bland-as-hell to genuinely obnoxious. The film's human villain is Mr. McCulloch, the school's principal and Rennie's legal guardian. He's constantly hateful to the people around him, dismisses the teen's concerns, seems a little too into it when a student tries to seduce him, and is eventually revealed to have almost drowned Rennie as a child. He's a character you just hate looking at, which Patrick Mark Richman's cartoonish performance doesn't help. Another shitty person in the movie is Tamara, the resident mean girl. The way she uses sex appeal to manipulate the men around her, like the principal and videography nerd Wayne, plays like a gross sexist stereotype. There's a difference between cheering when Jason pulls off a cool kill and characters being so utterly despicable, you want them to die immediately. 

Most of the characters who aren't annoying are indistinct. In the deleted scenes, we learn that Miles is a champion high-diver but in the movie, he's just some dude with a dumb haircut. Other than her quickly overcome reluctance to snort coke with Tamara, what quirks does Eva (played by Kelly Hu) have? Some of the teens are such non-entities that the credits simply lists them as "Boxer" or "Crew member." This shallow writing extends to our heroes. Sean is the son of the ship's captain and has some daddy issues. The film tries to give Rennie a proper back story, as she has a phobia of water, two dead parents, and some interest in writing. Yet these ideas never go anywhere. Jensen Daggett and Scott Reeves' stiff performances make this final couple totally bland. The only characters in the movie that stick out are cool black guy Julius and rocker chick J.J. I really like the latter, because she has a fun energy and tries to help Wayne realize Tamara is a bitch. Naturally, she's among the first cast members to die. 

Truthfully, most everything about "Jason Takes Manhattan" is underwhelming. By hiring a television director to make their movie, Paramount got a sequel that looks like a late eighties syndicated TV show: The colors are washed-out, the lighting is overly bright, and the direction is flat. Fred Mollen's score is chintzy. The gore effects are a franchise low-point. The blood is watery. The guts are rubbery. The MPAA's grip on the film was so strong that a slashed throat produces no blood at all. Jason's rotten flesh looks spongey. His face reveal is also among the franchise's worst. His head is gray, lumpy, undefined, and has weirdly block-like mouth. It's awful. 

There are few bright spots here. The movie's languid, going-through-the-motions pacing perks up a little once we finally get to New York. If only because there's some novelty to scenes of Jason on the subway, in an all-night diner, or killing gang members. The film attempts some "Jason Lives!" style humor and it's mostly miscalculated. Jason's deadpan reaction to a hockey billboard or stopping to scare some punks feels totally out-of-character. But the scene where he knocks Julius' head off with a single swing is kind of funny. Hedden's direction does Kane Hodder no favors, making him look short and stocky, but the actor still brings some ferocity to Jason. I like the way he smashes a mirror or slams his head through a porthole. 

Truthfully, "Jason Takes Manhattan" is probably my least favorite film in the series. For all its obnoxious excess, "A New Beginning" was weird and fitfully funny. This film feels exhausted and artless in comparison. Audiences agreed – or were properly disappointed  that so little of the movie was actually set in Manhattan – and "Part VII" had the weakest box office of the series up to this point. The eighties were over and "Friday the 13th" had finally run out of steam with it. [5/10]

The Penalty (1920)

I guess I'm just in the mood for silent films recently. Yesterday, I watched a 102 old movie and, today, I watched a 101 year old movie. “The Penalty” was one of the films that established Lon Chaney as the master of make-up of the silent screen. To play the role of a double amputee crime boss, he tied his own legs up and hobbled around on his knees. The excruciatingly painful process showed the commitment Chaney was willing to go to create a realistic character. Upon learning this information in a documentary, years ago, I had to seek out the film. The only copy I could find at the time was a public domain disc with a horrendously bad electronic soundtrack. That made it tricky to enjoy the film. Luckily, I recently came into possession of the Kino-Lobor Blu-Ray release of the film, which is much nicer and prompted this re-watch.

A boy has his legs unnecessarily amputated by a novice doctor. Though the doctor insists the procedure had to be done, the boy knows the truth. He grows up to be Blizzard, the vicious crime lord who rules over San Francisco's underworld. The police send a female detective named Rose undercover into Blizzard's criminal empire. She gains his trust and plays the piano peddles while he works the keys. At the same time, Blizzard uncovers the daughter of the doctor who perform the surgery on him. He forces himself into her life, by posing for her latest artistic project: A bust of Satan. It's all a ruse for Blizzard to finally enact his grisly revenge on the man who took away his legs.

Blizzard the legless mobster easily fits the character types Lon Chaney would become most famous for throughout his career. Like the Phantom of the Opera, he's a cruel and brilliant villain. Yet, like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, there's also something pathetic about him. When his romantic advances towards the doctor's daughter are rejected, he's initially enraged. This only results in him falling to the ground and hobbling around as he attempts to regain his balance. Humbled by this humiliation, he quietly admits that no woman has ever loved him and apologizes for his rashness. Blizzard is another Gothic grotesque, who endears both fear and sympathy in the viewer. Chaney is, of course, magnificent in the part. His hyper-expressive face is especially well used when posing for the bust of Satan. With just a wicked grin, you totally believe that he's the perfect model for the job. (Blizzard, of course, relates to Milton's Satan, what with the choosing to reign in Hell and all that.)

After reading the above plot synopsis, you might be thinking “That doesn't sound much like a horror movie.” And you're right. “The Penalty” is mostly a crime drama. However, the film has just enough macabre elements to push it towards the marginal side of the horror genre. Blizzard's base of operations is outfitted with secret passageways and trap doors, a bit like Erik the Phantom's lair. Mostly, the horror elements emerge from Blizzard's endgame: He wants the doctor to chop the legs off the movie's boring hero and graft them to his stumps. If this movie was made in the next decade, this touch of mad science and disturbing horror definitely would've been the main focus of the film.

However, this movie was made in 1920 and that's very obvious at times. An extensive subplot involves Blizzard stirring up unrest among the Reds. As in, the left-wing workers of the area. Most of whom are explicitly stated to be immigrants! The movie never once suggests that this underrepresented and overworked class is, perhaps, totally justified in being angry. It's instead depicted totally as part of the scheme of the unhinged villain. Obviously, Blizzard's physical deformity represents his twisted mind. That's the kind of subtext that was common in all sorts of stories for decades but is now, obviously, grossly insensitive. Yet this is resolved with the kind of last minute plot twist you really only see in 1920s melodramas: It turns out Blizzard isn't evil, he has brain damage! Which the doctor then fixes, turning Blizzard into a practical living saint. I'm not sure, exactly, how this reveal is offensive but it definitely is. If nothing else, it's very awkward from a writing perspective.

Of course, the film's status as a silent melodrama means it also has a love triangle and an almost hilariously sappy finale, which restores a moral balance to this universe. On the plus side, “The Penalty” is also a Pre-Code movie, so its violence is surprisingly frank and there's even some brief nudity. “The Penalty” resembles “West of Zanzibar” a little but director Wallace Worsley - who would also make “Ace of Hearts” and “Hunchback” with Chaney – is no Todd Browning. I don't know how good “The Penalty” is when taken on its own merits, especially to horror fans. Lon Chaney's performance is so fantastic though that it really makes the entire movie work seeing. Chaney elevates everything around him and turns “The Penalty” into a minor classic. [7/10]

'Way Out: False Face

“The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” would both prove to be successful shows, so in 1961, someone at CBS had the idea to combine the two premises. What if we had a droll Englishman famous for his work in another medium – in this case, Roald Dahl – presenting different stories of horror and science fiction every week? The resulting show, “'Way Out,” was canceled after one thirteen episode season. The program quickly slipped into obscurity but ten episodes survive, surfacing on YouTube in recent years. Episode seven, “False Face,” is especially notable as an early writing credit for Larry Cohen.

“False Face” follows Michael Drake, a celebrated actor of the stage. His latest starring role is Quasimodo. In hopes of adding realism to his performance, he finds a real deformed man. A drunken vagrant who has lived a miserable life, largely because of his hideously deformed face, he agrees to Drake's idea only because he's paid. Drake models his own make-up after the man's face and gives a lauded performance... But notices afterwards that he can't remove the make-up. That his face has seemingly changed permanently. He attempts to find the man, facing the same sort of discrimination he did.

“False Face” is an easily understood moral tale. Drake is a rich man who considers the homeless as non-entities, not much more than objects whose services he can buy just as easily. When the deformed man is telling his tale of woe, Drake barely even listens. Cohen's script makes this point without getting too preachy about it. There's a certain grim inevitability to the easily predicted twist, the viewer's sympathy even lying with Drake before it's over. This is furthered by the tight, intimate visual style of the show. The acting is pretty hammy but the make-up is effectively grotesque. Dahl's wraparounds are amusingly sardonic, clearly aping the black humor of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents'” host segments. Even though its place in genre history is minor and obscure, I might check out more of “'Way Out,” based on the quality of this one. [7/10]

Godzilla Singular Point: Encipher

Here's the good news about episode ten of "Godzilla Singular Point:" It actually features Godzilla. Not a pupa stage that looks like some other kaiju and not a thirty second clip of him. The episode concludes with a sequence of Godzilla, in his final form, rampaging through Tokyo. There's even a pretty cool sequence of him charging up his Atomic Breath and blasting through several buildings, reducing them to molten slag in the process. The Ifukube theme blares, with a neat tribal chant added to it. It's really cool and I can't help but wonder why this cartoon show, that doesn't have to worry about realism or actors in rubber suits on physical sets, didn't do something like this at the beginning, instead of the end, of the season.

This isn't the only kaiju action in the episode. It begins with Godzilla, in his Gorosaurus-inspired stage, fighting a giant-sized Rodan. But that fight is over in about a minute, after Godzilla uses his ring-shaped breath attack to knock Rodan out of the air. There's also a sequence where an enormous Salunga escapes from captivity and wrecks a city in India. That scene concludes with the Diagonalyzer turning the Red Dust around the monster into giant spikes, an admittedly cool image. But it doesn't change the impression that Salunga is this show's Poochie: A much-hyped new character, that the show runners definitely thought was more interesting than the viewers, that ended up not doing much. 

Otherwise, it's business as usual. That means lots of rambling and dissecting of the incomprehensible science behind the show's fantastical events. Yun and Kato return to the house from the first episode, which they now realize is Aisihara's old home. They uncover more of the scientist's notes, which contains a number string that can be decoded into specific conversations Yun and Mei had, fifty years before they happened. It's already been established by now that Aisihara figured out how to use math to predict the future, so I don't know why this is treated like a big reveal. 

The one interesting bit of backstory we get in this episode is that Aisihara's home was attacked by a Godzilla during the war, which began his obsession with weird science. That's were the skeleton in the first episode came from. But because "Singular Point" is so incredibly obtuse, this encounter is recounted only in dialogue. Gee, it sure would've been cool to actually see these things happen! Did the people making this show not realize animation is a visual medium? Anyway, the Godzilla stuff was cool and that's the sole reason I'm still watching this nerdy bullshit. [6/10]