| Friday the 13th Part 6 Released: 1986 MPAA Rating: R (Barely) Genre: Slasher Nuts and Bolts: For the past decade, the counties surrounding Crystal Lake have been peaceful. But now Jason Voorhees is back as an undead zombie and there’s only one person that can stop him; Tommy Jarvis, the man who first killed him when he was twelve years old. Summary: Tommy Jarvis is back in the game, sporting a face-lift, a southern drawl and a renewed sense of sanity. Fellow crackpot Allen Hawes and he drive out to Eternal Peace Cemetery to disinter the remains of serial killer Jason Voorhees. It’s not enough that Jason is dead, but Tommy wants to destroy his corpse just to make sure. They dig him up and Tommy chucks Jason’s old hockey mask onto the corpse. Feeling a surge of anger, Tommy tears down a rusty fence post and impales Jason’s body. He prepares to set the corpse on fire, but before he can continue a lightning bolt flashes downward bringing Jason Voorhees back to life. Jason rises from the grave and punches his fist through Hawes’ chest ripping his heart out. Tommy may be a wee bit crazy, but he ain’t stupid. After seeing his buddy’s heartfelt cries of pain, Tommy gets the fuck up out of Dodge. Jason dons his trademark hockey mask and stalks off into the night. Tommy goes to warn Sheriff Mike Garris that Jason has returned. Garris thinks Tommy is a whack-job and orders him to leave Forest Green. During this time, Garris’ daughter Megan and her friends Sissy, Paula and Cort stop by to visit. Meanwhile, two of the head counselors of Forest Green, Darren and Elizabeth come across Jason Voorhees on the roadside. Jason spears the broken fence post through the front tire stopping the car. Darren tries to shoot him, but Jason runs him through with the fence post. Elizabeth tries to escape but only succeeds in falling in the mud. Jason leaps overtop of her and impales her with the fence post as well. Megan and her friends arrive at Camp Forest Green. Forest Green is actually just Crystal Lake with a new name. They changed the name because they figured people would likely be reluctant to send their kids to a campground that is routinely stalked by a bloodthirsty serial killer. Go figure. While the councilors take in a busload of fresh campers, Jason stumbles upon a group of corporate execs playing paintball wars. He kills the first one by smashing him into a tree. Then he takes down three more by decapitating them all with one swipe of a machete. He chases down the last little camouflaged geek and tears him limb from limb. Meanwhile, Sheriff Garris escorts Tommy to the end of his jurisdiction. But just like a herpie, Tommy creeps on back where he’s not wanted and leads the Sheriff on a chase through Eternal Peace Cemetery. He tries to show Garris Jason’s disinterred body, but Martin the drunk old caretaker has reburied the casket. Garris kicks Tommy out of Forest Green again. That night Martin the caretaker leaves the cemetery. Topping off his whiskey bottle, the smelly old bastard chucks it behind his head. Jason catches the bottle in his hand and shatters it. He uses the broken end to rip Martin up good and proper. That’s what he gets for littering. Bastard. Jason then takes care of two picnicking lovebirds. The Hart-to-Hart crew tries to escape but Jason stabs them both at the same time just as they climb on board their motorcycle. Back at Camp Forest Green, little Nancy has a nightmare. She runs into the arms of councilor Paula who tells her that if she ever gets frightened of anything, then she should just say a little prayer. (Awww, ain’t dat just da cutest? Oy.) Anyway, outside of town Cort decides go knocking boots with his girlfriend Nikki. (With a name like Nikki, you KNOW she’s a ho!) They start doing the wild thing inside of Nikki’s motor home. Strange things start occurring and Cort pokes his head outside to see what’s up. During this time, Jason sneaks past him and hides inside the camper. He manages to tiptoe past Nikki and hides in the bathroom. Cort comes back inside and the two decide to take the rig for a drive. Cort cranks up some Alice Cooper and pulls the motor home onto the highway. Nikki is bouncing around back and forth as this guy switches gears. Jason pops up from the bathroom and grabs the ho pulling her into the can with him. He smashes her face into the side of the wall and her impression actually presses through to the outside of the camper. He then walks up to the front and shoves a Rambo knife into the side of Cort’s skull. The camper flips over but don’t worry. Jason’s okay. At about this time, Deputy Rick Cologne finds the body of Darren and Elizabeth (the two head councilors). He phones in to Garris who immediately suspects the murderer to be Tommy Jarvis. The Sheriff leaves to investigate the scene just as Tommy calls the Sheriff’s office. Megan answers the phone and warns Tommy that her father is after him. She goes to pick him up and the two embark upon a plan to stop Jason. Not long after, Sheriff Garris and Deputy Rick find the bodies of the paintball gamers. At about this time, Jason finally makes his way to the camp. (Y’know, Jason would be a lot more efficient at his job if he quit stopping every six feet to kill every dumb drunken prick that he finds along the side of the road.) Anyway, the next councilor he takes care of is Sissy. He pulls this dumb bitch out through the window of the cabin and twists her head off like a pop-top beer can. Megan and Tommy pick up some supplies but the Sheriff’s men soon corner them. Tommy is arrested and taken back to the Sheriff’s office. Megan is convinced that Tommy is not the killer, but her pop still thinks that Tommy is imitating Jason’s old MO. (That’s modus operandi for you rubes.) Megan conspires to get Tommy out of jail and the two head off to Camp Forest Green to warn the councilors. It’s a shame that they weren’t a few minutes quicker. Jason busts up into Paula’s cabin and pretty much repaints the room with her brains. Cool death, but it kind of sucks since we don’t get to see Jason actually kill her. To bring everything up to speed: Everyone pretty much convenes at Camp Forrest Green. Sheriff Garris rallies all the children together while Jason reduces the payroll department of the Forest Green Police Force by a few heads. Garris meets up with Jason and shoots him several times with both his shotgun and his revolver. Jason loses interest in the crotchety old fuck and goes off to kill Megan. Garris isn’t too thrilled about that prospect so he jumps on Jason’s back and begins whooping the shit out of him. Stupid man. Garris doesn’t seem to quite understand the fact that Jason is an UNDEAD WALKING FUCKING CORPSE! (You would think the fifteen rounds to the chest would have clued him in.) Poor ole Sheriff Garris then suffers the most grotesquely humorous deaths in all of cinema as Jason folds his body backwards in half. Now its time for working class hero Tommy Jarvis to strut his stuff. Tommy figures, that the only way to truly defeat Jason is to kill him again in the manner by which he originally died. This means, he would have to drown him at Crystal Lake all over again. Tommy steals a motorboat from the dock and dumps a big rock, a gasoline can and a length of chain into it. Taking it out into the center of the lake he begins to bait Jason. Jason wades into the lake and goes after Tommy. Tommy manages to secure one end of the chain around the rock and forms the other end into a noose. Jason attacks him and capsizes the boat. Tommy manages to get the noose around Jason’s neck and the rock sinks to the bottom of the lake holding Jason in place. But Jason still has a hold of Jarvis and he begins to throttle the shit out him. Believing Tommy dead, Jason lets his limp form float to the surface of the lake. At this point, Megan swims out there to try and rescue Tommy. Jason is still active though and he begins attacking her from beneath the water. Megan revs up the engine to the motorboat and the propeller spins around severing Jason’s carotid artery. Megan brings Tommy back to shore and revives him. Acting/Dialogue: The quality of the acting really comes down to individual performances. Thom Matthews does a pretty decent job as Tommy Jarvis, but its hard to imagine that this is the same quiet glasses wearing stammering geek from Friday Part 5. Jennifer Cooke plays the part of Megan Garris. She’s not only totally hot, but she brings a really likeable spark to her character. It’s fun watching the interaction between her and Jarvis. The worst performance comes from Vincent Guastaferro who plays Deputy Rick Cologne. His dialogue is so hammy and forced that it is beyond laughable. Sheriff Garris suffers from some pretty weak dialogue as well. Most of his lines consist of weird cop oriented colloquialisms. Why is it that no matter what movie you watch, truckers, cops and waitresses always have to speak in their own unique occupational lingo? Christ, I get sick of that crap! Gore: There’s some pretty good stuff in here, but you can see how this movie begins to pave the way for the later gore-free Friday films. There’s a nice triple decapitation but it happens so quickly that you have to slow the film down in order to properly appreciate it. Most of the other deaths consist of little more than simple impalings or stab wounds. The best deaths are those attributed to Allen Hawes and Mike Garris. Jason punches his fist through Hawes’ chest and holds his still-beating heart inside of his hand. I’ve already mentioned the insanely wild looking scene where Jason folds Garris over backwards. It’s kind of silly looking, but pretty cool nonetheless. Guilty Pleasures: No nudity but Tommy Jarvis gets an eye-full of Megan’s crotch. She doesn’t really seem to mind it though. Neither do I for that matter. The Good: This is probably my favorite of the zombified Jason movies. Although Jason has been killed before, this film really propels his character into the realms of the supernatural. In previous films, he was still moderately human looking. But in this, there is no mistaking the fact that he is a corpse. His skin is green and his flesh is practically pregnant with maggots and worms and grubs. By this point, the producers realize that they can no longer take the franchise too seriously and so rather than bore us with a bunch of redundant deaths and lackluster characters, they decide to just go for broke and give us a zany fun slasher flick. The characters are more over the top, the deaths are more ludicrous and the villain is more powerful than ever. The storyline is pretty basic, but I think they manage to keep the audience’s focus a lot more in this one. Typically, one could give two shits about the main characters other than speculate as to how they will die. But Tommy and Megan prove to be extremely likeable and you actually find yourself rooting for them both and hoping that they survive the film. Although Jason Lives takes the Friday series into a whole new direction with this flick, they also return to their roots in a lot of areas. We actually see Crystal Lake again! And he’s back to chopping up camp councilors. He hasn’t done that since Part 2! And for the first time ever, there are actually CAMPERS at the campground this time around! The kids in this film really make for some great scenes as well, as two adolescent boys ponder their futures after learning that there is a deranged zombie killer on the premises. As they listen to Megan’s tortured screams from a far off distance one boy turns to the other and says, “So, what WERE you going to be when you grew up?” And top of all that, we also get a sizzling soundtrack replete with at least three Alice Cooper tunes. The one that stands out the most is Man Behind the Mask, which was written specifically for this film and can be found on the Constrictor CD. If you get a chance to find the video that accompanies this, I would suggest doing so. It totally rocks. (Okay, let me stop. I’m showing my age here.) The Bad: As much as I enjoy this cheese-dick film, I have to admit that there are a lot of corny elements to it as well. Deputy Rick Cologne is without a doubt the crappiest character I have seen in one of these films to date. The fact that he actually survives this flick is enough to make one pluck out their own eyeballs with a fork. This guy must be compensating for a small pecker because he really gets a rocky when he shows off his mail-order laser scope for his gun. Now why in the name of fuck would a dipshit deputy from Mayberry need a laser scope? There are a lot of deaths in here which are really only included to up the body count. The scene with the paintball commandoes is pretty fucking dumb. I probably would have appreciated it more if they had actually taken the time to graphically show us the death scenes. As mentioned above, the decapitation scene flashes buy at breakneck speed and if you take a moment to blink, there’s a good chance that you’ll miss it. Then there are the two picnicking lovers. I thought for sure that we would at least get to see some titties here, but no. Hell, even their deaths were kind of lackluster. The only real problem with the film that I can’t seem to get past comes down to Jason’s demise. How did Tommy know how to stop Jason’s zombie? When Tommy first goes to the cemetery he has no idea that Jason is going to rise from the dead, so I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have gathered the information prior to that. And there’s no opportunity for him to learn about it after Jason rises either. Maybe they had a ‘How To Stop An Undead Zombie’ book available in the library at the mental institution he was at. That excuse seems about as credible as any I suppose. Friday the 13th Part VI is a kick-ass catsup movie with no pretense of being anything other than a dumb guilty pleasure. Very high on the rewatchability scale. Great Lines: “So, what WERE you going to be when you grew up?” --Camper talking to his friend as they realize that they will likely die. “Wherever the little red dot goes…yebang!” --Tommy mocking Deputy Dicknose in regards to his laser scope revolver. “Some folks have a strange sense of entertainment.” --Martin the caretaker after discovering Jason’s disinterred grave. “Dig him up? Do they think I’m some kind of farthead?” --Martin the caretaker reacting to Tommy’s request to dig up Jason’s coffin. Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 severed heads. |
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