Friday the 13th 6: Jason Lives (1986)

Well, of course Jason Lives. With the series hitting an all time low with A New Beginning (but still raking in the $) and audiences left feeling more than a little ripped off over the whole "phony Jason" bit, Paramount brings back the real deal and delivers one of the better sequels in the series. Director Tom McLoughlin is actually able to inject a little life into the proceedings, and, while things are as cliche as ever, Jason Lives contains a little humor and self references to the slasher film way before Scream came along. That's not saying, of course, that we're necessarily dealing with an intelligent film here....

Conveniently ignoring the events of part five, Jason Lives opens up with a returning Tommy Jarvis who's racing off to Crystal Lake cemetery to, of all things, dig up Jason's corpse and prove to himself that the guy is actually dead. Real fucking smart, huh? After Jason's (rather shallow) grave is dug up, Tommy instantly flips out in typical Jarvis fashion and starts stabbing the corpse with a cemetery bar he hoisted off a fence. Since Tommy seems to have the shittiest luck ever, the bar attracts lightning from an incoming thunderstorm and faster than you can say "ki ki ki ma ma ma" three times fast, Jason is charged up and back to life/undead/whatever. Ready to kick some ass, he hits the warpath back home to Crystal Lake, now renamed "Forest Green" and Tommy rushes off to tell the cops that Jason, well, "lives". Elsewhere over at Camp Crystal Lake, excuse me, "Camp Forest Green" a new batch of counselors are setting up camp, and well, you can figure out the rest, right? The entire film essentially surrounds Jason offing various people on his way back to Crystal Lake and Tommy trying to convince the sheriff that Jason is indeed back. Tommy gets some help via the sheriff's daughter Meghan (the foxy Jennifer Cooke), who coincidentally is a counselor at the camp. She apparently has a thing for former mental patients who run around screaming that a dead killer has come back to life. Yeah...ok. Eventually people start dying and the calls start coming in to the sheriff, who has now become convinced Tommy is doing all the killings to make people believe that Jason is alive and well.

I've always enjoyed this sequel, and find it kind of interesting how many fans really dislike this one for the very same reason I enjoy it. What makes Jason Lives unique to me is that it's not just a direct slasher in the strict sense of the word. While the first five films were all straight ahead, kill by the number kind of flicks, director McLoughlin actually switches it up by using some dark humor and poking fun at the typical slasher cliche's it's trapped in. For example, as a young couple drives down a lone, dirt road, they encounter a roadblock via Mr. Voorhees. When the boyfriend asks why she stopped driving, she replies, "because I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly". Yeah, it's nothing groundbreaking, but for the series as a whole it's different, and something "different" needed to be done at this point. Hey, you want different? How about characters that actually call the cops, cops that actually show up, no one wandering ten miles away to pee or fuck in the woods, etc. All of this was refreshing to me and hell, even the camp counselors were not all that annoying this time around. Wow. They still deserved to die though, I mean fuck, they are trespassing on Jason's turf, right?

Though many fans slagged this one for being one of the most bloodless entries in the series, we all know the MPAA had it out for the series. I've seen various uncut clips on the internet of the killings and it's a shame the stuff wasn't left intact. The infamous "decapitation" sequence, as Jason beheads via machete three weekend warrior types playing paintball would have benefited if left alone, and some of the other cuts on the gore/violence just did not need to be made. There are a couple nifty kills in this one, including a cool "face shoved through the mirror", various stabbings, Jason's favorite wrestling move which he employ's at least once in every movie, the infamous "head crusher" and a poor schmuck getting bent over backwards. Ouch. Still, it would have been nice to see the scenes as they were intended, you know?

Speaking of Jason, he's a marked improvement over part five's by far. Actor C.J. Graham has all the moves down, and while he's a bit smaller in stature than previous incarnations, he did a good job. Old Mr. Voorhees actually shows some character in this one, as he does the Micheal Myers head tilt a time or two, and just seems a tad more animated in general. The scenes of Jason strutting his stuff through the woods as he hoofs it back home are pretty cool, and I love how he "gears" up on weapons he picks up along the way. I also love the scene of him standing atop the burning trailer as if proclaiming, "that's right motherfucker's, I'm back". Cool stuff. On a last note concerning Jason, and this is for those that want to get real nerdy about the series, would Jason kill a little kid? This is the only film in the series that features actual little kids for the counselors to look after, and in one sequence Jason walks into a cabin and sorta leans over a sleeping little girl. Seeing the "monster" she closes her eyes, says a prayer and, since Jason heard the approaching police, he's gone when she opens them. Now, my question is this. Would he have killed all the rug rats if left alone? Does he sympathize with them since he too was once an "innocent"? Hmmm.

With the addition of some dark humor, a decent cast and just some overall "changes", this one is a fun watch. It gets sorta slagged for the low gore and zero nudity (seriously!) but c'mon, after part five they had to come up with something moderately decent, and they did. Everything moves along at a nice pace, it features Alice Cooper on the soundtrack, and did I say actress Jennifer Cooke has a nice ass? Alice, Jennifer's ass, and Jason...sounds good to me. Good fun and it's in my top three of the series.