“I went to go cremate Jason but I f***ed up!”

     And….that’s how Jason Voorhees comes back to life in this further installment of the Friday The 13th film series.  Tommy Jarvis, initially played by Corey Feldman in Part IV: The Final Chapter, is still having nightmares about the evil maniac Jason, so he does what any reasonable person who needs closure would do - he decides to dig up Jason’s body and cremate him, just to be sure.  At this point, that is unnecessary.  Because at this point, Jason has just been a very resilient killer who heals easily and doesn’t know that he should be dead.  But after Feldman’s maniac knife-wielding expression of fury at the end of Part IV, Jason was most assuredly dead.

     Now, the idea of digging up his corpse and burning it is a good one.  But it also leads to the resurrection of Jason, and then of course thirty-one further installments in this interminable series.  Of course Tommy and his buddy (one of the ensigns from Star Trek) are going to screw up the exhumation and cremation thing.  They somehow manage to leave a metal pole in the chest of Jason’s exhumed (and not very decomposed) body.  When Tommy was played by Feldman, he killed Jason.  And Tommy was about eight years old.  Now, Tommy is played by Thom Matthews, who looks to be about 25.  In the intervening 17 years, the worms have not done a very good job consuming this body.

     Anyway, of course they are grave-robbing during a lightning storm, and of course lightning hits the metal pole protruding from Jason’s chest, and of course that brings him shockingly, suddenly back to life.  This introduces Jason as the slasher movie equivalent of a superhero who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and suddenly gains superpowers.  From here on in, part of the fun of Friday The 13th movies is determining just how, and why, Jason the now-zombie killer will be resurrected in order to continue wreaking vengeful havoc on scantily clad and naked teens in the forest.  Thanks Tommy.  Couldn’t have just left well enough alone, huh?

     I think the reason the Tommy character has been around for three movies now is that he was initially played by Corey Feldman, one of the few recognizeable names in the series.  In Part V: A New Beginning, he was played by John Shepherd, I assumed because the Friday folks could no longer afford Feldman, who was by then something of a star.  Why John Shepherd wasn’t brought back to Part VI to reprise his role, I have no idea.  Instead, his shoes are filled by Thom Matthews, who looks nothing like Shepherd.  I think I’m on to something here - check out this hypothesis:

     Simply appearing in a Friday The 13th movie can’t make someone a star.  Those “stars” who have passed through the Friday series are there by coincidence, and no one would suggest that Kevin Bacon or Feldman or Crispin Glover owe any portion of their careers to their participation in these silly films.  However, I am guessing that even one appearance in a Friday film would give an actor a little bit of cachet, like say someone who showed up as an ensign in Star Trek just to be killed.  There are conventions for this sort of stuff, and these conventions elevate even the bit players to a level beyond the one they would otherwise attain.  So here’s my theory - just appearing in one Friday movie gives an actor just enough cachet that he or she can command a slightly bigger salary.  And that actor or actress then becomes too expensive for the next volume in the Jason saga.  So we get Thom Matthews.  Anyway, just a theory.

     Where was I?  Oh yeah - metal pole in the chest, lightning bolt, Jason Lives, he kills that Star Trek ensign buddy of Tommy’s, he chases Tommy who gets away, then Tommy goes to the cops who don’t believe him (which is understandable.  Jason has clearly been dead and buried for almost 20 years.)  But one girl might just believe Tommy.  Plus, she’s a wild child and she thinks he’s cute!  And they try to get to the killer before he slaughters a camp full of six-year-olds.  Spoiler alert!  Spolier:  Jason does not kill a camp full of six-year-olds.  In fact, although he clearly wants to do so, he kills zero six-year-olds.  Which is very disappointing.

     Somehow Tommy knows that the only way to get rid of Jason is to return him to the place from whence he came - the bottom of Crystal Lake.  How Tommy knows this, I have no idea.  Or, why he thinks this, I don’t know.  Because in the end, he loops a big old chain around Jason’s neck and sends him to the bottom of the lake.  And from what I can tell, the big chain and the big weight that keep Jason under water are merely restraining him under the surface, and he has in no way found his final resting place.  So he’s basically in a straight-jacket, underwater, just waiting for someone to come along with a canoe paddle at the right time to set him free.

     Maybe by the time Jason is set free for the seventh installment in the Friday series, those six year olds will be twenty, and Jason can finally kill some of them.  I’ll have to wait until Paramount Home Entertainment comes out with the Deluxe Edition of that one to find out.  Paramount releases Friday The 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives Deluxe Edition DVD June 16th.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 7:06 am and is filed under 1986, Garbage, Horror, Sequel, Slasher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.