Friday the 13th Part IX: The Final Friday

Well the continuity may have a problem here. Hi folks. Friday the 13^th is upon us. Well there's a Friday I hadn't covered. I have put it off long enough. Bleh. After melting him with toxic waste in the 8^th film (somehow transmogrified into a small boy) and before he was sent into space. There was to be another "Final Friday". This is Friday the 13^th Part IX: Jason Goes to Hell a.k.a. Friday the 13^th Anniversary of Jason a.k.a. Friday the 13^th Part IX: The Dark Heart of Jason Voorhees a.k.a. Friday the 13^th: Heart of Darkness and Jason Goes to Hell

Um, my head's oozing out of my mask.

With no real explanation other than the writers forgetting about part 8, Jason is not a small lad but the size of Kane Hodder and already back to his wicked ways of butchery around Crystal Lake as he stalks after smoking hotty (Julie Michaels of Roadhouse, Jason Goes to Hell, Married...with Children, Batman & Robin, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and SEAL Team) when it appears to be a sting by the FBI and holy jeebus they open up on him with assault weapons and even a grenade launcher blasting Voorhees to charcoaled chunky bits. 

The End!

Okay no...not really but Hodder isn't going to be running around in his jumpsuit for some time because...we have exposition back story, establishing the Voorhees bloodline continued beyond Jason and Pamela. Yup an sister. Because? Oh why the hell not. Rather than the traditional undead mongoloid slasher, director Adam Marcus (Jason Goes to Hell: Final Friday, Let It Snow, Conspiracy, Fitz and Slade and Secret Santa)decided the body of Jason has been dead for ages and only a dark force or entity that resided in the body, waiting to be released again.

Woohoo! Jason found him a Regular Saturday Night Thang.

The morgue and surrounding guards and cops are all slaughtered in tried and true Voorhees style, leaving bits and body parts everywhere. Do we have a copycat or did Jason rise from the grave?..again?

Local anchor reporter Robert Campbell (Steven Culp of ER, JAG, Star Trek: Enterprise, The West Wing, Saving Grace, Desperate Housewives and Arrow) is doing an in-depth story of the mass murderer himself, showing the folks back home ALL THE DEAD PEOPLE on a local broadcast and even contracts a manhunter to kill Jason for the sum total of a quarter of a million dollars. Two things. 1) You just announced on the air you hired a contract killer. 2) that contract regardless if it is aimed at an undead mongoloid hillbilly, IS A FELONY!

Our manhunter himself, Creighton Duke (Steven Williams of 21 Jump Street, L.A.Law, L.A.Heat, The X-Files, DarkWolf, Stargate SG-1 and Supernatural) is poised to hunt Jason down even as that interview has been made. Yeah it will be tough to follow his trail of broken, bloody and gouged bodies laying strewn like so many rag dolls. It should be a cinch to find Voorhees except one minor detail...his body is lumped in the ravaged morgue. So who is doing all the killing?

Get off me, Gil Gerrard!!

Subplot adds a striving descendants of Voorhees, the Kimbles Diana (Erin Gray of Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, Magnum, P.I., Code of Vengeance, Silver Spoons, Starman, Breaking Home Ties, The Princess and the Dwarf, Almost Home, Burke's Law,Baywatch, Port Charles, The Guild and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return) and Jessica (Kari Keegan of The Prince of Pennsylvania, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Jerry Maguire, Maggie and Mind Games) trying to eek out a proper life in spite of the looming terror that is their family curse.

Yup, now we got lore. Supernatural lore. Like undead mongoloid hillbilly zombie isn't supernatural enough. Now we got a bloodline story. The darkness that makes up Jason can be reborn through one of his bloodline. While that is nutty enough; we have an alumni of Friday the 13^th: The Series, John D. LeMay (Friday the 13^th: The Series, Tour of Duty, Eddie Dodd, Sisters, Without a Map, Totally Blonde, and E-Ring) so sort of a universal crossover perhaps?

Now the nitpicks. The MPAA neutered the crap out of this flick. All of KNB Group gore effects are almost completely diminished, the nudity is mild and Kane Hodder third time at bat as Jason.  Also there are 3 versions of this movie, I'm having Highlander 2: The Quickening flashbacks!!!

So we have the theatrical release which was 87 minutes of garbled mess, the 91 minutes that added a bit more gore in it and finally a whopping 130 minutes of it being completely uncut (insert penis joke) and all cells used from what I understand.

Dukey Pukey is bestowing his knowledge of Jason and his new mystical aspect to Steven (John D. LeMay) because game knows game. Or something.  Don't worry fellas, there's titty as you so often demand. Yes we do get the vital element to Friday the 13^th films: horny teens, booze, nudity and elaborate death scenes.

While this is one of the more creative take away from the sequels similar creating a twist like Part V: A New Beginning; trying to break away from the stagnate of Crystal Lake inhabitants and horny teens getting gacked by unconventional means and over the top murders.

That being said, changing Jason as some malefic force of damnation, hopping from body to body creating mayhem and chaos. Creative yes but a tad late into the series to introduce a new story element like such, let alone additional unmentioned family members.

As for the burning question of Freddy's glove reaching up snatching up Voorhees' mask was a hint to New Line Cinema and Paramount scheduled to make the crossover movie; Freddy Vs Jason...a film stuck in development hell for 10 years!  Not to stir up old feelings but the director of that movie didn't want Kane Hodder vs Robert Englund. Because...6'3" wasn't tall enough for that director's take.

Many of the fans had issues with the dark soul of Jason body hopping and felt it did an injustice to the franchise. I mean if you can stay tried and true to a mother avenging the death of her son, who didn't die, later replaced by a pissed off EMT and soon a crazy Tommy Jarvis; only to have that story line thrown out to resurrect Jason as a zombie then later melt him in the sewers of New York with a nightly toxic waste dump that leaves him as a dead child; well I guess you just don't care about continuity.

Is this a vital watch? Not really. You could skip it as it holds next to nothing for the franchise. Is it a fan favorite? I have heard of these "people" existing but I attribute them as believable as R.O.U.S. (Rodents of Unusual Sizes) and thus call out utter poppycock. Absurd! Risible!

 Happy Spring Forward Zombie Jason Day!!!

Mhm, that is a tasty burger!

NES Friday the 13th

Uh Happy Friday the 13^th. I guess. Not really a holiday per-say but plenty of superstitious folk and fans of Voorhees are all excited. Yup Brandon I am still doing this almost every Friday the 13^th.

Well, I was going to review the 2017 survival horror, time-trial multi-player game buuuut, funds weren't available. Yeah I know, a two year old game out of reach. So with that in mind I thought I could slough through the LJN (The Karate Kid, Jaws, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, Alien 3, Wolverine) faux pas and see how easy it was to beat.  This is Friday the 13^th NES.

Lord Humongous! RUN GEORGE!

Released in 1989, a year after at the height of Friday the 13^th Part VII: The New Blood and a few months before Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan the cover resembles Jason from Part 7 in his rotted zombie hillbilly mongoloid self and we have seven camp counselors watching over the kids, enjoy the lake and all the wildlife and lush forest.

Of course we can't have the counselors getting some nookie, beer or weed because...Nintendo is a family friendly console. So why do a Horror game? Got me. So Jason is on a rampage and you must protect the kids and look out for your fellow counselors. Let's talk weapons! Yeah!

Rocks! Yeah fricking rocks! With a half-assed 30 degree lobbing arc, you have ROCKS! Against a near 7 foot tall murder machine with terrifying strength, a big machete and whatever other melee weapons he could have and you have rocks. But wait! There's also an infinite supply of what appears to be LL Bean hunting knife that you can chuck at Jason. Of course one hit and you lose that weapon so, NO TOUCHY!!! As you go the madcap maze of the woods, you can also get a hurling axe and you can use fire on Jason as well. After all, fire bad.

Eat...rock.  Yeah it still sounds pathetic.

Well now it gets nutty. Yeah in addition to Jason being a serious massacre waiting to happen, Crystal Lake is overflowing with scourge of zombies, killer crows that look like Heckel & Jeckel, bats, wolves and Jason's mother's severed head. Yeah she flies right at you and bonks you like the damn Medusa heads from Castlevania.

If I had to guess, Crystal Lake resident pilgrims slaughtered the naive and innocent Native Americans and dumps the bodies in the lake rendering them to soap. How cursed could this chunk of land be??

Hot side scrolling action, the main goal is to defeat Jason three times. Not too different with LJN's Jaws. Little interesting how Jason looks to be almost 9 feet tall, wearing a glow in the dark hockey mask and a purple jumpsuit. Swinging massive fists like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and yeah you guessed it; me stuck with ROCKS!!!

Aside from having the option of swapping out to different counselors who have different speeds and strengths, ultimately if all the counselors are dead, it's game over. Now a strange addition (LJN never cared about source material), Jason can end up threatening and murdering kids. Teens and 20 somethings, even 30 somethings playing teens will die by Voorhees' hands but he doesn't gack kids. Could have something to do with his tragic drowning forever changing his life and undead status.

Zombie depth charge!

This two repetitive soundtracks and sound effects were developed by composer Hirohiko Takayama (The Karate Kid, King of Kings, Ghostbusters II, Time Zone, Trax and Bonk's Adventure) and yeah that continuous looping of music you can't shut it off, change it so it was just turn down the sound. Similar to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, there is transition from day to night and vice versa.

This single-player survival horror game is...well kinda dull. I beat it in 25 minutes. I am told that is still not that fastest it has be bested at.

Nostalgia wise, this game has a place in pop culture, in 2013 NECA (National Entertainment Collectibles Association Inc.) released an exclusive action figure based on this game's appearance with his purple jumpsuit, an axe, machete and his glow in the dark hockey mask. If you think that looks silly, Freddy Krueger has orange sweater, pants and blades coming out of his fingers and a brown hat.

Naturally the critics took in the name and immediately crapped on it. Complaining about the repetition of the music and the game play was too frustrating. Aside from not giving a damn about the source material, it's just a survival horror game. The first real horror franchise for NES era.

Much better. Eat knife ya zombastich!