"Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan"(1989)d/Rob Hedden

One time, back in 1982, my old man, overcome by anxiety and frustration, attempted a U-turn on the lower level of the George Washington bridge while driving us to a Tigers-Yankees game and somehow managed to get the car trapped on the shuddering concrete divider as bumper-to-bumper traffic pinned us there for almost two hours.My buddies giggled from the back seat as a steady deluge of racial epithets and vulgarities flowed out of my dad's mouth as the flash of non-courteous headlights shot past the '79 Impala windows, cracked open just wide enough to fill the Chevy with the stench of the Harlem River outside.Me, I just sat up front, pushing all of his buttons and whipping him into a snarling frenzy like some cornered Mediterranean wolverine facing the electric flash of an impending cattle prod until he finally managed to scrape down on the right side of the bridge.Adding insult to injury, we missed Detroit ace Jack Morris' start by one day in the rotation, leaving me to scream insults and abuse down at Howard Johnson from behind third base as the Tigers got whooped.It wouldn't be until eight years or so later that something New York-related left an even worse taste in my mouth, with the inevitable vhs rental(I'd stopped wasting money seeing them in the movies three sequels back) of tonight's legendarily lousy mess.
Let's give director Rob Hedden an iota of credit here, it's no easy task to craft a logic-oblivious, discontinuous, unintentionally hilarious cakehole as lame as this, the least successful(and least popular) of the series, is.Horror websites have been teeing off on this joke for years about its misleading title, which, for all intents and purposes should probably be called "Friday the 13th Pt. VIII:Jason Takes Manhattan, if by 'Manhattan' you mean 'Vancouver, Canada', and the word 'Takes' signifies 'spending twenty or so uninspired minutes in'", and then Hedden could at least boast of a film title that rivals the length of earlier cult pioneer Ray Dennis Steckler's "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies"(1968), which, for the record, is a whole lot more fucking fun to watch than this movie, if you're keeping score at home.From Manhattan's apparent nightly release of toxic waste in it's sewer systems(that doesn't explain the giant, mutated albino alligators worth a lick) to getting the side of Jason's face that's deformed wrong, Manhattan's an altogether stale piece of fruit that even the Manson girls couldn't rescue from the grocery dumpster.Forwards!

Townsend did it first, Big J(Kane Hodder).Just sayin'.
When last we left Jason Voorhees(Kane Hodder), he lay dormant at the bottom of Crystal Lake, chained to a massive boulder by a psychokinetic broad's dead father(!).When two sex-minded teens on a boat drop anchor in the lake, it snags an underwater powerline, shocking the big lug back into his usual routine.He scores himself a new hockey mask and dispatches the hormonal couple with a spear gun.The senior class of Lakeview High twenty-somethings just so happens to have their luxury cruise to the Big Apple aboard the SS Lazarus scheduled(are they departing out of Crystal Lake?If that's the case, said lake isn't one by definition, no?), unaware of their homicidal stowaway that's hitched a ride on the anchor below.On deck is a smörgåsbord of unlikable cardboard standees masquerading as human beings; the tight-assed biology teacher, Charles(Peter Mark Richman) and his niece Rennie(Jensen Daggett), who's prone to flashbacks of a sloppily made-up boy drowning from her childhood(Timeline?We don't recognize no stinking timelines!).J.J.(Saffron Henderson) is an embarrassing Joan Jett/Lita Ford reject that gets her domepiece caved in with a flying V axe.Next to eat it, a young boxer relaxing in the ship's sauna room gets a hot sauna rock punched into his chest(liked that).On a roll, Jason de-towels a floozy in the showers then shanks her ass with a piece of broken glass.The captain and his chief engineer soon join the victim ranks, as well as an oriental chick that gets C.T.F.O. on a disco floor and a boy that gets chucked onto a deck post.When he tosses another lad into a control panel, causing a fire that ignites the fuel tanks and blows a sinkhole in the hull of the boat, it's soon to be women and children first, Andrea Doria lifeboat-style.Hey, what about Manhattan, fellas?

"If you're just gonna lay around and get stoned the whole cruise, I'm gonna leave you to it."
Still on the fucking boat, Jason effs with Rennie's throat, involving his murderous mitts, and takes a pen in his eye for the thought.Then, she, the two adult chaperones, the captain's Luke Perry-lite-esque son(Scott Reeves), Julius(V. C. Dupree) the token brothah, two other students and a dog abandon ship(the way I oughta have done, during the opening credits) for a rowboat.Missing his new playthings, Voorhees walks across the ocean-bottom and emerges in the New York harbor just downstream from them, as they arrive themselves, shagged and fagged from half-heartedly selling the row to safety.Two skeevy street rats immediately mug the survivors, kidnapping Rennie and fixing her up with some tar in a back alley, as if her weekend wasn't bad enough already.Jason shows up on the scene and dispatches the gangbangers with a discarded works and a well-placed faceplant into a pipe.After chasing Julius onto a rooftop, our gruesome goalie allows the aspiring boxer to wear himself out, repeatedly jabbing and uppercutting the killer until he returns a single blow, knocking his head off his shoulders.The unlikely high schoolers are reunited, flagging down a cop who Jason gets rid of, off-camera, while the group discovers Julius' head in the police cruiser.Rennie, all banged out on junk, takes the wheel and drives over Voorhees and directly into a brick wall, killing Colleen, the other chaperone, when the wreck explodes.The opiates cause Rennie to recall why she's been having visions of Jason in the first place:Uncle Charlie threw her into Crystal Lake as a little girl in a lugheaded attempt to teach her to swim, where she first encountered the drowned tard, somehow.Jason flips the teacher ass-side up and dunks him in an open barrel of toxic waste.Goalie-puss pursues Rennie and Sean(the captain's son)onto the subway, where the young man manages to electrocute the brute on the third rail.They emerge in Times Square, where Jason smashes some punks n' skins' ghettoblaster, lifting his mask and scaring them off with his fucked up grill when they get the notion to ratpack him.The teens(ahem) eventually end up in the sewer system, where they're informed that toxic waste is flushed through nightly at midnight(!!) by a worker that Jason does away with, moments later.The corrosive fluid rapidly eats through the cheap latex comprising Jason's costume, leaving the drowned sped in his swimtrunks in its wake, inexplicably.The teens emerge from the sewers into a new day, and join back up with their dog.I'm not even kidding.

Obviously, these young scenesters never saw Joey without his Ramone wig before.
Leonard Maltin once called this one the "highlight" of the series, proving once again that mainstream Hollywood propagandists like Maltie should probably steer clear of genres they don't understand, like horror, and stick to snooze-worthy drama instead.The potential was definitely present to create an original and entertaining sequel here: a hulking, deformed, serial killing zombie in a goalie mask terrorizing a bustling, metropolitan hub that's almost too self-absorbed to notice him in the first place.Jason interacting with Wall St. investors, gangbangers, homeless bums, arabic cab drivers?Endless possibilities presented themselves, and instead we get a brief, unrealistic visit to a make-believe Big Apple where industrial barrels of toxic waste are stored(open, mind you) in alleyways.On top of that, you've got a bad script, embarrassing makeup effects(in the climax, Jason kinda looks like a Yuckmouth muppet), uninventive kills(for the most part, I dug the sauna rock and the guitar, for what that's worth), and a cast of characters I didn't give a Wednesday night three-pump suzie about.An insult to fans of the series and horror proponents everywhere, Manhattan manages to whiff at the plate, securing not one single blessed Wop to call it's own.Garbage like this should be avoided, at all costs.Almost worse than Waterworld.

Jason is surprised by a billboard that isn't defaced by illegible graffiti tags.