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

Rate: 3
Viewed: 6/06, 11/14

Fri13p8
6/06: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan sucks so violently hard that it hardly qualifies as a horror picture.

Rob Hedden, the writer/director, had this to say about the film: "Okay, we'll make Vancouver look like New York and we'll do it that way. But they came back again with, 'You can't do the Brooklyn Bridge in Vancouver. You can't do Madison Square Garden in Vancouver. You can't do the Statue of Liberty in Vancouver.' Pretty soon, it was half New York, half on the boat. Then, it was the last third in New York. It just kept getting whittled down and down."

The best part is Jason's priceless WTF reaction when he looked up to see the billboard advertisement of the Eastern Hockey League.

All in all, the laughingstock of the franchise, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan never takes place in New York City.

11/14: Believe it or not, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is somewhat of an improvement over the last three sequels.

However, the title is misleading. Jason does not take Manhattan but only to show up there to keep chasing the same characters from the nearly crewless cruise boat which is the Panamanian version of the Titanic that came out of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

What makes me sick is Jason didn't even bother killing any of the New Yorkers as he walked through them. I mean, what exactly excludes them from getting the same treatment as the rest of the characters from the past seven films that have been invariably receiving? I can't believe Jason's response to the gang members, after kicking over their stereo, is to show his real face and then walk on. Like the real Jason would do that.

No matter how hard the characters try to run away from Jason, he's always magically transported to the end point before doing what he always does. The scene when the blonde-haired guy climbed up the mast only to see Jason, all of a sudden, appearing right behind him in the next shot sums up the entire franchise to this: there's no logic at all because it has no value.

The people just get killed, and the reasons why aren't important. It's been kill, kill, kill. And Jason keeps coming back from the dead so many times that it's a one goddamn joke. Somewhere along the way, Jason takes the time to cover up his eyes by placing a black mesh cover behind the holes of his mask. Anyway, Peter Richman, who plays Charles McCulloch, bears an uncanny resemblance to Skip Bayless, formerly of the Dallas Times Herald and is a regular on ESPN.

All in all, the fans had finally spoken by making Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan the least profitable picture, causing Paramount Pictures to cease churning out the sequels almost annually; eventually, the franchise got sold to New Line Cinema.