Jason Never Dies

 He just keeps coming back! Granted, he was given a big assist from Tommy Jarvis. So I hadn't watched my blu-ray of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) from the Scream Factory set yet, and even if Monday evening wasn't ideal, my daughter so badly wanted to watch it. As much fun as I have with "Jason Lives", I do admit that you probably have to be in a certain mindset and forgive the outrageousness of the premise with how a very dead corpse of Jason Voorhees is resurrected by a badly placed graveyard fence rod buried in the chest by an enraged Tommy, wanting to get some licks in. Nothing like lightning, Frankenstein-style, to get those rotted juices flowing again. At least Tom McLoughlin was given some freedom to really ham it up with clever dialogue as listed below:

I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly.

Tommy: Don't shoot, please!

Sheriff Garris: You in show business, kid? You sure know how to make an entrance.

Hit the noise and the cherries.

That, what we call it in the books, is screwing the pooch! Iron this punk! 

I always missed the "iron this punk" line, meaning "throw Tommy in jail". Sheriff Garris always had the best lines, though, I enjoyed Megan's "hide that heap and let's book" line to Tommy.

You know, every time I watch "Jason Lives", I realize how fast paced it is. No meat on the bone: this is full speed ahead. It's over before you know it. It is hard for me to sometimes be as critical as I should be, but I can't help it: this is just so much fun. And I love Cooke so much. I think the only problem is that those early Friday the 13ths had such memorable closing female survivors, and Cooke is cast more as a romantic interest and sidekick to Tommy. But I have always felt Cooke had really mad chemistry with Thom Mathews, which always stood out to me as a big asset for the film. And Mathews as Tommy, leaving the film worse for wear after nearly drowning (revived by Megan) but alive was a choice I appreciate. I remember as a kid, this was absolutely my favorite Friday film for years. Admittedly, though, the first four Fridays really rose in my standing (Part 3 is the one that has never surpassed it) since the early 90s. But I watched "Jason Lives" countless times in my youth. The kill-pieces, I've documented in the past, are probably the most cartoonish...this might be a turnoff for some Friday and slasher fans wanting that savagery. I'd say Jason standing on the burning van is Top 5 favorite single shots of the franchise. The arm on the machete left behind by the knucklehead thrown into the tree is pure comic gold...what works to me is how quizzical Jason is while looking at his damage. And, of course, the face indention in the metal RV wall is classic...I remember that "Oh, shit" reaction as a kid that remains to this day every time I watch "Jason Lives". I look forward to writing more about this in the future. If I had a blog in the 90s, I would have wrote so much on "Jason Lives". It is just a fixture in my growth as a horror fan.

***I put my Letterboxd review together and failed to mention that a fun piece of trivia for this particular film is the actual inclusion of kids at Camp "Forest Green". We always see Jason kill camp counselors before the kids arrive, so McLoughlin actually having kids arrive and become a part of the film (little blond girl always seeing Jason and the two boys discussing how they are dead meat, wondering what they would have been growing up) sets it apart. But that cemetery sequence at the beginning, with how McLoughlin shoots the area and leads into Tommy and Hawes eventually arriving with the storm picking up and fog just hovering above ground in the woods and Crystal Lake...I can imagine McLoughlin getting to craft that homage to Universal with Jason as his Frankenstein's Monster must have been really cool. And cobwebbed, maggot-infested Jason's corpse, eventually grabbing at Tommy from his dug grave...just a kickass moment in the Friday franchise. And this entire sequence really stands on its own as very particular to this one movie.***