#like the digging into the core from the weird rock is an amazing reveal

[sweet-potato-42]

astroneer is so good its become one of my favourite things to watch

when he reached the core i was like :O its so cool

the game has so many small moments where it just makes you feel so much wonder and joy in amazement

[amplesalty]

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

If I can make it there, I’ll make it anyhwere...

We’ve just had another Friday the 13th so it’s time to dust off the old slasher franchise for my ongoing attempts to make it all the way through the series. Let’s see where we left off last time, 6? Well, that’s not strictly true. I did watch 7 last November but never bothered posting about it. Which, I probably should have done because for once it actually bucked the trend with these movies and I actually kinda liked it? Just try to imagine ‘Jason vs Carrie’ and that’s basically it. Kinda takes the whole thing in a slightly different direction which is a welcome change after so many chapters of ‘Jason stabs camp councilors...again’. Maybe I’ll revisit it in more detail some time.

This movie isn’t quite that far out with it’s gimmickry there’s definitely an element of that with swapping the shoes of Crystal Lake for the neon lights of Manhattan. At least, that’s what the title of the movie would have you believe.  It doesn’t exactly play out that way though.

The opening of the movie seems to be going that way as it takes you on a guided tour around the dark city streets, with steaming sewer vents, shady alleyways complete with muggings, subway rides, diner coffee orders and a shot of Times Square.  It’s all set to the stylings of Metropolis and ‘The Darkest Side of the Night’. I dig the song, has a very 80’s rock vibe to it, like something by Survivor that you’d get in a Rocky movie but it just seems a little out of place here.

Wait a minute, is that the Batman symbol?! Forget Jason vs Carrie, give us Jason vs Batman. Don’t tell me DC wouldn’t go for that, they seem more than happy to license out the Caped Crusader. I mean, we did just have crossover movies with Scooby Doo and the Ninja Turtles in recent years.

The requisite awakening of Jason takes place, this time jolted into life by the 1.2 gigawatts of electricity running through an underwater cable next to his watery grave. From there, we bumps off a couple of kids making whoopee in a house boat before stowing away on board as the boat slowly drifts into port where a high school pleasure cruise is about to set sail.

And it’s here that the bulk of the movie takes place which...isn’t the worst idea in the world? Would have that same sort of idea behind Alien where you’re trapped on board with this killer, not quite as extreme since there are some ways off a ship if need be. The movie touches on it to a degree, there’s a sense of paranoia and claustrophobia that develops but it doesn’t feel fleshed out.

You could throw in a sort of moral element to it, like the characters coming to terms with there being no escape and no way to eliminate Jason so they ponder whether to destroy the ship and sacrifice themselves so Jason doesn’t make it to land. Then you have the obvious sequel bait of him actually surviving and finding himself a whole host of new victims.

It just feels like a bait and switch. Just look at the poster, how awesome is that? You’ve got one of the most iconic skylines in the world and home to some of the tallest and most famous buildings but yet Jason looms over each and every one of them. And the subtitle ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ conjures up all these images in your head of Jason rampaging through the streets like when the T-Rex gets loose in San Diego in The Lost World. I guess ‘Jason Goes Boating’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Jason being in the big city is a novel concept which hasn’t really been explored in the series up to now. Sure it starts to move away from just being confined to the camp grounds but it’s still a pretty rural area so to go to this level of widespread panic would be interesting.

At first I thought the movie might be trying to be a ‘best of both’ worlds and the ship section was just to explain how he gets to the big city. It kinda gives that impression the way it starts rattling off all the people on board and starts killing them off quicker than it can introduce them. This one rock chick is in all of two scenes and the second one is her death. They’re characters done with very broad strokes so it feels they’re doing the bare minimum to give you some context before Jason kills them off, just to keep the pace up before we get to the real meat and potatoes of the action in the big city. It’s almost like The Breakfast Club with all the stereotypes we have on show; the jock, the nerd, the beauty queen...

We even get elements of the controlling father of EMILIOOOOOO’s character with young Sean Robertson who’s own father is the ships captain and seems quite keen on Sean taking up the family business. Are you not taking things a little too seriously to be in full naval uniform and ribbons for the sake of some exaggerated high school graduation party?

And don’t forget basket case Rennie who has visions of a young Jason drowning. Except, her dog spends this scene looking at the port hole in a very worried manner as well before getting freaked out and running away so apparently he has these visions too?!

Rennie clearly isn’t too popular amongst her peers as the bitchy, popular girl promptly hip checks her off the deck, sending her flying through the air and into the icy waters below. Have the people who made this ship not heard of a guard rail?

I’m not sure what the deal is with Rennie and all these weird visions she has, like blood coming out of a tap or young Jason bursting through the mirror and gooziling her. The movie never really explains what the link is between the two of them, at most it seems to be this mutated childhood trauma where she nearly drowned, mixed with warnings she had back then that she needed to learn to swim lest she end up drowning like that Jason Vorhees boy. It’s just like the puritan origins of those urban legends, clearly all along Jason Vorhees was just a means of scaring kids into taking water safety seriously.

Still, as unexplained as it is, it still adds some enjoyable moments to the movie and I’ll gladly take the writers throwing a bunch of weird shit at the wall to see what sticks over some of the earlier movies.

I love the moment when the core group of survivors eventually make it off the ship, taking refuge in the life boat, rowing day and night to try and find some sort of sanctuary before eventually seeing a torch on the horizon; that of Lady Liberty. One of the most iconic images in human history, a great symbol of hope to the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free that made their way to her shores. Like those that came before them across the seas, finally their nightmare is over.

Or, at least it is for all of about five minutes before they get promptly mugged by two street urchins.  Not just muggers mind you, given that they usher Rennie away with disturbing plans in mind for her.

Which, say what you will about Jason, he does stop an attempted rape in this movie. Probably not going to tip the karmic scales in his favour after the hundreds of grizzly murders at his hands over the years but still, it’s a start. Plus, this is doubly puritan as this guy injected Rennie with heroin or something so Jason is taking a stand against drugs as well.

We also get one of the characters standing up to Jason on a rooftop and trying to use his boxing skills to good use by giving him a series of right hooks and body blows. Only, Jason has been following the Homer Simpson school of boxing as he just stands there and takes it before the other guy gets too fatigued to carry on. At which point Jason literally knocks his block off like a Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em robot and the guys head rolls away into a nearby dumpster which then slams shut in a very satisfying manner.

Rennie and Sean end up in the sewers but need to get out again as the sewer system is about to flood with toxic waste. Lucky that they just have buckets of that lying around that Rennie can just throw in Jason’s face. He then removes his mask in what I can only assume is a loving tribute to The Phantom of the Opera to reveal the mutated freak beneath. Maybe this is another Toxic Avenger origin movie?

Then lightning strikes The Statue of Liberty because...symbolism, I guess?

And Jason succumbs to his one weakness; drowning. Only this time in the aforementioned toxic waste so it’s nice to have a bit of variety. At which point he turns back into child Jason because...I have no idea. Maybe it’s another one of their visions, or they’ve somehow exorcised the demons of zombie ghost Jason and now the spirit of child Jason can rest in peace?

You know what the most amazing thing about this movie is? Other than the fact that Rennie’s dog shows up again at the end because it seems to have the homing skills of one of those animals you read about in the papers who travel across country to their old house, these characters have been through the innards of a manky old ship, been lost at sea for however long, trudged through the shift encrusted sewers and tussled with a decaying monster and still manage to come out without a speck of dirt on them.

Maybe I’ve just been going into these last couple with super low expectations but I’m actually beginning to enjoy them now? Like I said before, I found the old ones really boring so changing up the formula is refreshing and they’re tickling my ‘so bad it’s good’ senses with all the weird shit going on.

Like, amongst all those images in my head of what a Jason in New York movie would be, funny wasn’t one of them but it just seems to really ramp up in this finale. You have individual moments like when a bunch of thugs are listening to music from their boombox which Jason storms past and punts in the air. They don’t too kindly to this, pulling out chains and switchblades to threaten him, to which he calmly lifts up his mask and causes them to flee with their tails between their legs.

But there’s also this broader idea which serves as this sort of amazing anti climax that having Jason turn up in New York is not the cataclysmic event you think it would be. It’s like no one outside of Crystal Lake has even heard of him so no one bats an eyelid when some 7ft behemoth goes by in the street or on the subway at 1am. I mean, who’s going to notice another freak around here? When Sean and Rennie storm into a diner looking for help, their cries of a maniac being on the loose and trying to kill them is met with a rather quizzical look by the waitress who simply replies ‘Welcome to New York...’.

Then Jason bursts through the wall like the Kool Aid man and the cook just shakes his head and walks out to confront him. He does it so nonchalantly as if he’s had to deal with his a hundred times already, like it happens so often that it’s lost all meaning. This whole movie has a pretty damning outlook on this city, maybe the true horror in our lives isn’t playing out on TV or on the big screens of our local cinemas. It’s a call to arms that the true horror is the violence and crime taking place on our city streets every day and the systemic issues going unchecked that give rise to it.