Halloween 2021: October 1st

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

When “Jason Takes Manhattan” earned less than any of the previous “Friday the 13th” movies, Paramount decided they were out of the Jason business. Yet the series had still made a lot of money. This is probably why Sean S. Cunningham, who had since moved into producing full-time, decided to scoop up the rights to the series he originated. Upon acquiring the Jason character – but notably not the “Friday the 13th” name – from Paramount, he immediately went to New Line Cinema with the intention of making that “Freddy Vs. Jason” movie. When Wes Craven decided to return to the “Nightmare” franchise, it put the crossover on hold. (The first of many roadblocks that production faced.) Cunningham didn't think the lucrative “Jason” brand should stagnate during this time, so a new “Friday” movie moved into production. But Cunningham doesn't actually like horror movies, so he hired Adam Marcus – his son's best friend and a self-professed horror expert – to direct. The film industry really is all about who you know. This was the first of many odd decisions made throughout the production of “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.”

In the multiple interviews he's done on the subject, Adam Marcus makes it clear that he wanted “The Final Friday” to break with series' tradition. He didn't want to set the movie in the woods, around a camp. He didn't want the characters to be teenagers. He didn't want sex to equal death. Though he denies saying it, Sean S. Cunningham supposedly didn't want the hockey mask in the movie either. This, to me, suggests a lack of respect for what “Friday the 13th” is. You can also see this attitude in the way “Jason Goes to Hell” disregards the series' existing mythology – Marcus claims “Friday the 13th” didn't have a mythology before him – in favor of a bunch of stupid bullshit. A simple campfire story now involves demonic possession via body-swapping monster, a cursed family bloodline, a magical dagger, and the convoluted rules therein. I don't object to these ideas in-and-of themselves but I'm not sure why they're in a “Friday the 13th” movie.

Marcus obviously hoped to elevate “Friday the 13th” above its simple slasher movie roots. His movie is about grown-up characters with adult problems, like who is going to look after their baby. It shows how capitalists, diner owners and TV journalists, look to profit off Jason's legacy of murder. He wanted his movie to be bigger, which is why there are elaborate shoot-outs. Such as a gun fight in a diner, filled with slow-mo, and the hero leaping out of his handcuffs. Marcus also wanted to make a post-modern Jason movie for the self-aware nineties. So he has characters make references to smoking pot and having premarital sex. He includes cameos from famous props from “Evil Dead,” “Creepshow,” and “The Birds.” It all comes off as a slightly desperate attempt to make “The Final Friday” cooler than it actually is.

As high-minded as Adam Marcus was about “Jason Goes to Hell,” he still failed to create anyone as charming as the goofballs in parts three or four. In fact, the cast members in “The Final Friday” are pretty obnoxious. The diner selling Jason burgers is staffed by a rotund woman who vomits profanity, great character actor Leslie Jordon as her creepy boyfriend, and her equally annoying son. Marcus clearly thought Creighton Duke, the bounty hunter pursuing Jason, was bad-ass. In reality, he's needlessly sadistic – breaking someone's fingers for no reason – and forced to cough up exposition. Steven Williams, as Duke, clearly doesn't take any of this shit seriously. (Tony Todd, someone who could've made this dialogue genuinely ominous, was somehow turned down.) In theory, the movie's hero being a bespectacled nerd is interesting but the execution – which has him turning into an action hero – blows. Most of the cast, including final girl Jessica, are forgettable, no matter how much the movie attempts to build them up.

There was definitely ways to expand “Friday the 13th” outside the usual slasher boundaries. I think “Jason Lives!,” with its comedy and tinges of gothic horror, and “The New Blood,” with its telekinetic finale, did just that. “Jason Goes to Hell,” however, feels very disconnected with the series' history. Most of the movie's attempts at horror play like gross-out non-sequiturs: A coroner is compelled to eat Jason's heart. A body melts into goop. A worm-like demon squeezes out of someone's neck and then slithers up a dead woman's skirt. A naked old man is tied down and has his face shaved. There was a way to reinvent Jason for the nineties that didn't involve turning him into a weird little snake demon that swaps bodies by crawling down people's throats.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that the parts of “Jason Goes to Hell” that function more like a regular “Friday the 13th” aren't half-bad. The opening scene has a lone female driving out to Camp Crystal Lake, stripping down, and being pursued by Jason. This is all a set-up by the FBI to exterminate Jason, via machine guns and high-power explosives. You could've built a whole movie around the government hunting Jason and it probably would've been pretty cool. A sex-and-slashing scene, shot during reshoots, features softcore humping and some pretty inspired gore. When Jason is finally reborn near the end, he's beating the shit out of the hero and bursting through floorboards. I'm not a huge fan of the make-up here – Jason's flesh is weirdly orange and bubbly – but these scenes satisfy in a way that most of the movie simply does not.

Despite the subtitle, there was never any illusions about “Jason Goes to Hell” being the character's final cinematic outing. All of the movie's convoluted nonsense was, ostensibly, set-up for the then-forthcoming “Freddy Vs. Jason.” Freddy's glove dragging Jason's mask down to Hell was a cliffhanger that strung fanboys along for a decade. There's a reason that ending was, for years, the only thing about “Jason Goes to Hell” anyone talked about. Why fans seemingly never bring up the entry's weird deviations from franchise lore. The film has some nasty gore and a few stand-out moments but ultimately feels disconnected from everything we associate with the “Friday the 13th” series. [5/10]

I Saw What You Did (1965)

I'm fascinated with the gimmick movies of William Castle, probably because they seem so alien. Until the rise of the Alamo Drafthouse, I never experienced much showmanship when going to the theater. As a kid, going to the movies meant sitting in a black box inside my local mall or multiplex, watching something that I could see at any other town in America. So the idea of skeletons swinging through the theater or joy-buzzers hidden under the seat seems utterly thrilling. By the mid-sixties, Castle's backers were discouraging him from using gimmicks. He greatly resisted the idea. “I Saw What You Did,” his 1965 release, was first promoted by setting up a special phone number people could call and installing enormous plastic telephones in theaters. Supposedly, the hotline was abandoned after being swarmed by pranksters. Castle then promised to install seat belts into theaters, to prevent scared patrons from fleeing. Sources vary on whether or not this idea was followed through on.

Teenage girls Libby and Kit often spend long amounts of time chatting on the phone. When Libby has to baby-sit her younger sister, she talks Kit's dad into allowing her to spend the night. The two girls amuse themselves by prank calling people. Eventually, they touch on the idea of calling people and ominously whispering “I saw what you did and I know who you are.” One of the people they pull this cruel joke on is Steve Marak, who has just stabbed his wife to death. Eager to dispose of the body and being blackmailed by his neighbor, Marak is set on edge by the call. He plans to meet up with the teen girls, who are blissfully unaware of the danger they're in.

Despite its grim premise, “I Saw What You Did” opens with a chipper montage of the two girls talking on the phone. In fact, most of the movie is devoted to the girls being giggly together. They joke around, while hanging out and playing their irresponsible game. Being teen girls, love and sex are often on their mind. After hearing Steve's manly voice, Libby seriously hopes to meet up with the older man for a romantic rendezvous! This idea is focused on so much that it made me a little uncomfortable. Were the screenwriters being creeps or did high schoolers really get hot for married men in the sixties? Even if the teen girl antics are a bit much to handle some times, Andi Garrett and Sara Lane are charming and delightful in the roles.

Weirdly, when it's not being a cutesy coming-of-age story about two teen girls watching a mischievous younger sister, “I Saw What You Did” is a dark and violent thriller. Castle inverts “Psycho's” most famous scene by having Steve drag his wife into the shower and stab her to death. There's a surprisingly brutal ferocity to this sequence. Castle pays tribute to “Diabolique,” another movie that influenced his entire career, in a scene where Steve tries to bury his wife's body in a large suitcase. You can also see low-key Hitchcockian themes in the subplot about the neighbor blackmailing him into becoming her lover. Joan Crawford, reteaming from Castle after the superior “Strait-Jacket,” gets top-billing for this part despite it being a supporting role. Crawford does bring a real desperation to the role.

Mature themes like lust and manipulation, and bursts of violence, co-exists alongside teen girls telling jokes about a pet goat. This awkward tonal back-and-forth is best represented by “I Saw What You Did's” final scene. Steve tracks Libby down to her home and a tense confrontation follows, where the man finally realizes he's been scared by a sixteen-year-old. Finally, he attacks her in the family car and you wonder how grim this movie really is going to get. It's the most intense moment in the film... And after it's neatly, cleanly wrapped up, the movie ends with the overly upbeat and peppy theme music playing. 

Despite the inconsistent tone, “I Saw What You Did” did kind of work for me. The lead actresses are appealing and have strong chemistry. There's enough foggy atmosphere, in the last third especially, to make me feel cozy. As seen in Castle's other movies of this era, the black-and-white photography is crisp and clean. Despite being among Castle's more forgettable features, “I Saw What You Did” has a dynamite premise. This is probably why it was remade for television in the eighties, starring two of the Carradine brothers. It was nearly remade again more recently. Though I don't know how this story could work in the age of caller I.D.s and cellphones. [6/10]

The Outer Limits (1964): Demon with the Glass Hand

When I was a teenager, I casually mentioned the film “The Omega Man” to my dad. He proceeded to ask me if “that was the one with the guy who has a robot hand. And when he finds all his fingers, he can think.” I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, though I knew he was definitely not “The Omega Man.” It took me a couple of years to figure out this was not an old movie my dad remembered. Instead, he was talking about an episode of “The Outer Limits.” Entitled “Demon with the Glass Hand,” it's often regarded as one of the best episodes of the entire series. A big reason for this is probably because the episode was written by the legendary – and legendarily grouchy – Harlan Ellison. 

“Demon with the Glass Hand” concerns Trent, a man with no memory of anything before the last ten days. His left hand – which is also a high-tech computer – is missing three of its five fingers. Once all the fingers are located, the computer will have complete information about Trent's mission. He soon discovers he's been sent into the past following a war a thousand years in the future. He's being pursued by the Kybans, the alien race humanity will battle some day. The Kybans are searching for an answer as to why all of humanity, except Trent, completely vanished one day. As they chase him through an abandoned building, and he bonds with a woman he finds there, Trent hopes to recover his fingers and discover the truth about himself.

Ellison's original story for “Demon with the Glass Hand” was complex, spanning across the country. “The Outer Limits” producers informed him that a story of such scope was outside the show's limited budget. It's painfully obvious that “Demon with the Glass Hand” is an abbreviated version of a much longer plot. Exposition is heaped on us in quick burst. There's details about a plague in the future that's barely expounded on. Far-out science, like a “Time Mirror” or converting people into electricity, is abruptly dropped on us. It's all a bunch of nonsense. A lot of it is simply to justify the episode's low budget. Everyone traveled from the future to the past so this can be said in modern day L.A. The Kybans look like people, instead of aliens, because monster make-up is expensive. The villains disintegrate into nothingness if the medallions around their necks are yanked off, so they can be cheaply disposed of. 

Even if “Demon with the Glass Hand” is about fifty percent sci-fi gobbledygook, it doesn't really matter. The episode unfolds like an intense dream. The script's ridiculous sci-fi concepts feel very much like the kind of things you'd accept at face value in a dream. Yanking their necklace off making the aliens disappear, a talking robotic hand, or the “aliens” being guys in eye shadow invoke the free-association dreamscapes of the unconscious mind. And being pursued by malevolent forces, for reasons not understood, is the definition of nightmarish. The concluding twist also feels like the denouncement of an unsettling dream. The visual language of this hour is pure film noir, composed of deep shadows obscuring tense faces squinting in limited light. The harsh angles and escalating staircases of the Bradbury Building have never looked more surreal. I can see why this made an impression on my dad as a youth. “Demon with the Glass Hand” is an intense and singular hour of television. [7/10]

Godzilla Singular Point: Relaunch

Five and a half hours into “Godzilla Singular Point” and this show has finally completely lost me. “Relaunch” is an episode devoted almost entirely to gathering existing subplots together. Mei arrives at SHIVA in India, meeting a bunch of familiar faces that have been floating around the main story. She's led deep within an underground cavern, underneath an ancient temple. In Japan, Yun and Kato uncover the original Godzilla skull from the fifties being taken into a secret compound. The next day, they take Jet Jaguar towards Tokyo, which is currently being decimated by Godzilla and the Red Dust. That's when the A.I. inside the robot starts to reboot in various ways, developing a child-like personality. 

I think “Relaunch” represents “Singular Point” totally disappearing up its own singular point, if you get my meaning. The usual incomprehensibly dense scientific babbling is intact here. I think phrases like “Singular Point,” “Super Calculator,” and “Orthogonal Diagonalyzer” are now completely meaningless to me. If they ever had any meaning in the first place. On top of this bullshit, the episode piles on another distinct type of bullshit. References to William Blake, the Bible, Aladdin, Hindu mysticism, and the overwhelming power of math also occur in this half-hour. I was so completely set adrift by this one that I was wondering if I had accidentally watched an episode out-of-order. 

What makes “Relaunch” a truly useless half-hour is that it features almost no kaiju action, even by the meager standards of this program. Godzilla briefly fights a Manda in the opening scene. Jet Jaguar springs out of its stupor to impale a Rodan closer to the end. That's about it. Otherwise, this is a half-hour of “Singular Point” circling around its own needlessly convoluted plot and masturbating to its own bullshit science. You know things are bad when you're actually relieved that an episode doesn't feature any close up of text messages. I officially hate this now. The only reason I'm still watching this program is because I made a commitment to review all of it. [3/10]