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Post by CT on Jun 16, 2006 3:14:37 GMT -5
Rate this movie one a scale of 0 - 5 stars. ( 5 being the 'best'!)
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Post by GL on Jun 16, 2006 13:51:53 GMT -5
“Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan” is far from the useless entry that so many claim.
**SPOILERS**
A couple (Todd Shaffer) (Tiffany Paulsen) from the senior class at Crystal Lake High School are murdered before a class trip to New York. The next day, the class sets sail. Little do they know that Jason has stowed aboard. On board, Rennie Williams, (Jensen Daggett) has conflicted opinions with her uncle, Charles McCulloch (Peter Richman) about her being on the trip. Jason starts to slaughter through all the other classmates on the ship in secret. As a storm catches up to the ship, everyone begins holding out for better weather. Rennie stumbles upon the dead bodies of the Captain (Warren Munson) and his second-in-command (Fred Henderson) and alarms the rest of the class. With the dead captain's son (Scott Reeves) on her side, Rennie learns the truth about Jason and their common experience. Forced to abandon ship, the remainder of the class escapes to shore, landing in New York. There, Jason chases them through the streets of New York until he is killed in the sewers below the city.
The Good News: This film is not nearly as terrible as everyone makes this one out to be. I really enjoyed the wide range of deaths in the film. One is smashed in the head with a guitar, another is shocked by the power unit, one is impaled with a steaming hot piece of rock, one is thrown onto a radar unit, and several others are stabbed with very sharp instruments. The best death, and another one of my favorites, is the decapitation. It is as close to a fist pumping scene as there possibly could be in this movie. At one point, you're laughing because it does parody a very famous boxing maneuver, and two you also feel a tad bit sad because the guy does die. A tad bit sad isn't exactly true, but yet you get what I mean. The goriest thing in the movie isn't actually a death, but Jason's face after being exposed to a certain chemical. That was a scary thing to see. The New York scenes, even though they do come at the end of the movie, are very exciting and are some of the most action-packed scenes in the entire series. It is simply non-stop excitement from the beginning all the way. It is a series of chases and close calls that was very well scripted and for once, seemed natural and completely believable. What was easily the highlight was the landing, where Jason looks up and sees himself on a billboard. I had been waited for so long for the series to make a hockey joke about Jason, and was so glad that it came in a film. It was even a pretty funny gag, and was a bit of humor that the film had. The funniest gag also occurred in the New York scenes. Jason is chasing the survivors down a street in Times Square and kicks over a boom box playing rap music. The gang listening to it pulls out knives and threaten Jason. He simply pulls up his mask, exposing his zombie face and sending them scrambling. That was absolutely hysterical and was the single best gag in the entire series. I really hate to admit this, but there were a few jumps in the film. On the boat, Jason traps one person in a bathroom. Locked inside, it becomes dead quiet. A while later, Jason punches through the door and grabs the person inside. Another good scene is in New York, where the two survivors are talking on a bench, sorting out the lies that have been told to each other. They kiss in close-up, and then they back off and Jason knocks over a trash can loudly, alerting them to his presence. What makes that a great jump is that it's a tender moment, and then a loud bang startles us. A classic jump.
The Bad News: You can tell the censors hammered this one, as the deaths aren't exactly as graphic as what they should be. All of the deaths were almost censored for TV already, with only a few of them being shown as is. That was what really ticked me off, watching perfectly gory murders, only to see them spoiled by the censorship board. It was also a shame that Jason hardly ever used his machete in the film. There was only one machete kill in the whole movie, which was only a throat slash, and a painfully obvious fake one at that.
The Final Verdict: For some odd reason, this wasn't the total disaster of a movie that the fans of the series think. I really liked it, and if it weren't for non-gory kills, this would be in my top five of the series. Be careful with this one, fans. Completest, take a look. Gorehounds, you will be slightly annoyed by the lack of gore in the kills.
Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity, a mild sex scene and mild drug use
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Conan
DWI/Evil Dead Moderator
Pennywise
Posts: 6,432
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Post by Conan on Jun 18, 2006 21:43:49 GMT -5
I hate the story in this one. The effects are great and some of the kills are great too, but Jason in New York only gets it a 3.
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Post by wolfspirit on Jun 19, 2006 8:54:47 GMT -5
5/5 the telaporting can be over looked and I love everything else.
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Post by GL on Jun 19, 2006 11:43:51 GMT -5
Yes, it can. Vastly underrated, just like 5, but it does loose some points for the hour wait until we get to NY.
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Post by CK on Jun 20, 2006 7:17:24 GMT -5
I thought in part 7 that the series jumped the shark, but then this came along and the series jumped JAWS LOL. But I still like it 3/5
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Post by GL on Jun 20, 2006 10:42:25 GMT -5
LOL, that's classic, CK. One of the best lines ever.
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HNT
Grizzled HMaM Vet
Horror in General & Everything Else Moderator[/i]
Kiss my tuchis
Posts: 6,296
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Post by HNT on Jun 21, 2006 22:10:49 GMT -5
I give it a 2. Part 7 was so good. They should have quit while they were ahead
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Post by GL on Jun 22, 2006 11:44:16 GMT -5
Yeah, but you have to go ahead and capitalize on that when it happens. You know they have to do that.
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Post by speeddemon on Aug 29, 2006 7:49:37 GMT -5
i think i would have enjoyed this one more if jason had actually taken manhatten early on and went on a random killing spree (the kind he is famous for) surely when he was chasing those two for so long alot more people would have got in his way and he could have quite easily found a weapon of some sorts to kill them with . the subway for example , pushing one person out of the way and not killing anyone with all those people around ....thats not jason , jason in my opinion would have ripped off one of the upright metal poles on the train and made a kebab of victims , i was expecting more from this movie and didn't get it. overall though , not a bad film.
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Post by GL on Aug 29, 2006 17:15:37 GMT -5
I mentioned in the other thread at HM&M 1 about the difficulties associated with the "taking of Manhatten" aspect of the script. Budget cuts dictated that most of the NY scenes would be cut and replaced with the scenes on the boat.
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Post by CK on Aug 29, 2006 18:42:44 GMT -5
What does that have to do with making subway kabobs?
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Post by GL on Aug 29, 2006 19:45:53 GMT -5
No room in the budget for garish set-pieces.
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Post by CK on Aug 30, 2006 6:49:22 GMT -5
Well I think what we were trying to get at is there could have been more gratuitous killing in the New York scenes! I dont think Jason would just walk past people without taking off a head or 2, I am sure in Manhatten the producers could have found some crackhead to clean up the blood for a piece of rock, LOL.
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Post by GL on Aug 30, 2006 11:08:37 GMT -5
That was the studio's interference on Hedden's original script. He did have more NY scenes (in his first draft, they landed at the around the fourty minute mark of the movie, allowing for an hour of time in NY rather than in the finished version, where he gets out at about an hour, leaving about fourty minutes of time there) which got cut because it was too costly to film that version. An extra twenty minutes of rampage would feature a lot more kills. He does agree that there isn't enough time there, considereing the title, but they were taken from him before it even started by being too much money.
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