Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan-1989
Director Rob Hedden
Starring Jensen Daggett, Scott Reeves
Scott’s Review #1,163
Reviewed July 21, 2021
Grade: D+
After eight installments in only nine years of the iconic horror Friday the 13th series, fans by this time know what they are in store for.
The title of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), and its accompanying cover art, offer a glimmer of originality and intrigue.
If this were 1989, I would be excited about the prospects of what this film could deliver.
Hell, the city of New York was dour and dirty in the late 1980s, filled with grit, grime, and seediness. What a perfect setup for our crazed killer, Jason, to mix and mingle with the dregs of society.
I conjured up images of Jason chasing frightened teenagers through graffiti-laced subways and X-rated peep show theaters in the Times Square district.
We get a few location shots of Times Square, but not much more.
Unfortunately for fans, only the final thirty minutes or so of the film are set in the Big Apple, and for eagle-eyed viewers, even less is filmed there.
Years later, director Rob Hedden would blame Paramount Studios for severely limiting the budget allowed for on-location filming.
The result is that Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan feels like a sham.
Okay, the film is a terrible, cheesy, poorly acted, jaggedly paced film, but on a late Saturday night, it provides some fun and comfort, along with the right mood and spirits.
A few years following the events of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), multiple mass murderer Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is resurrected from the bottom of Crystal Lake after an underwater electrical fire.
After he kills a passing boat’s occupants, he stows away on a cruise ship filled with a high-school graduating class excitedly bound for New York City.
Strict Biology teacher Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman) is on board with his niece, Rennie (Jensen Daggett), who has visions of Jason drowning as a child.
They temporarily escape his bloody rampage, but when Rennie and Charles reach Manhattan, Jason is hot in pursuit.
The ten million other Manhattanites are uninteresting, and Jason must kill Rennie and his cohorts.
There is an unnecessary side story about Uncle Charles pushing Rennie into Camp Crystal Lake in a sink-or-swim moment, when she first saw glimpses of Jason.
This has nothing to do with the main story, nor is it needed.
The rest of the film is exactly as one might suspect, with very few surprises. The character development, limited in slasher films like this, is extremely pitiful and uneven.
One female character is a rocker chick who clutches her electric guitar and plays it nonstop, practically during her death scene.
Other unintentionally laughable characters include a young black man who is an aspiring boxer and attempts to spar with Jason on a building’s rooftop. This proves to be a big mistake when Jason takes one punch at him and decapitates him.
The popular blonde prom queen/mean girl, Tamara (Sharlene Martin), decides to throw Rennie overboard after she catches Tamara doing drugs.
Murdering a fellow student is a better option than being caught.
Finally, the deckhand played by Alex Diakund is a carbon copy of the Crazy Ralph character from Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th: Part II (1981), even uttering the famous “You’re all doomed” line.
The stereotypes are rampant.
However, unusual for the slasher genre in 1989, diversity is evident, with African-American, Hispanic, and Asian characters. While all are supporting characters and know their purpose is to be bludgeoned, the inclusiveness is at least a slight win.
Other positives are the familiar Camp Crystal Lake setting not being completely scrapped, as the title might indicate. There is something nice and familiar with Jason: a lake, darkness, and murder.
Rob Hedden’s idea to take much of the action to an unfamiliar setting, like a metropolis, is a good one; a city is the opposite of a lake, but the studio screwed the director over royally with its limitations.
Still, a wonderful shot of Times Square can easily transport a viewer watching the film in the present back to 1989 and, if only for a minute, let them experience what life was like.
That’s worth a small something.