Friday the 13th 9: Jason Goes To Hell (1993)

Paramount Studios, no longer interested in the series thanks to "Jason Takes Manhatten" going bust at the box office, handed the franchise over to the folks at New Line Cinema for this entry with mixed results. As a Friday film, I personally did not like it. As a blatant knockoff of "The Hidden", I found it at times to be mildly entertaining in certain spots. But be warned, a pure "Friday the 13th" film this is not. In terms of being in sequence with the other films in the series, I'm not really sure where this one picks up. I think New Line decided to start completely fresh for this one and abandon a lot of what happened in the previous films. We get a poor attempt at explaining the reason for Jason being so unstoppable (the occult), a bounty hunter who knows Jason's secret (but it's never explained how he knows), a sister of Jason and a niece (can you say Uncle Jason?), a Voorhees House and other lame New Line ideas.

The film opens with Jason being ambushed by F.B.I. agents at Crystal Lake, where he is literally blown to pieces. Now, I really don't think anyone could sneak up on old Jason on his home turf, let alone a hundred F.B.I. agents, but nonetheless they do and are quite positive they have killed Mr. Voorhees once and for all. What's left of him is hauled off to the coroners office, where the coroner notices Jason's heart still beating, becomes hypnotized by the hearts pulsating and proceeds to wolf it right down. By ingesting Jason's evil heart, Jason thus lives through the body he possesses and continues his murderous ways.

The rest of the film is such a blatant rip off of 1987's "The Hidden" its sort of pathetic. Jason has to find new bodies to inhabit as the old ones wear down real quick, possesses new bodies by passing some slimy creature via mouth-to-mouth, etc. The filmmakers of this one said no one was aware of "The Hidden" at the time, but c'mon! Your telling me no one involved on this movie had even heard of that film? Jeez. Anyway, Jason has to track down and kill his sister and niece as he can only die by a family member stabbing him with some sacred knife, or something to that effect. A lot of occult mumbo jumbo is tried to explain Jason's reason for existence, but none of it makes any damn sense whatsoever. They blew that aspect of the story big time. On the positive side, I got ahold of the unrated director's cut and I must say it was pretty damn gory. The boys from KNB give us lots of the red stuff, and it all comes off great. Lots of vicious stabbings, including an opening kill in which a chick is ripped right in half, a nice body meltdown sequence, and a pretty good end scene in which Jason is dragged down to hell. Also, lots of nudity and sex are included, which of course, is never a bad thing. However, we get way to little of the main man Jason, a rip off of "The Hidden", and a really lame attempt at explaining Jason's reason for being. It's better than part 8, though that's not saying too much...is it?