Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) — So Jason doesn’t actually “take” Manhattan until just over an hour into the movie. Once there does he wreaks havoc on terrified New Yorkers? For the most part, no. Instead of his usual “kill anyone, kill everyone” philosophy he ignores the hundreds of New Yorkers he crosses paths with and mostly just chases the few people who managed to survive the boat ride to NYC. Most of this movie is on a boat. You can pretty much tell who’s going to die… or rather you can tell the two people who won’t die and can be pretty safe in the knowledge that everyone else will. Then again most of this movies telephone who’s going to die from their first scene. A young Kelly Hu (14 years pre-Deathstrike) appears for a little bit. At several points the makers of this film seemed to cheap out on the gore effects and there’s only one scene of partial nudity so this film doesn’t really even meet the fairly low standards of the series. Also it seems to think there are barrels of toxic waste on the street corners in New York City and that the sewer floods every night with the stuff. Not really the greatest postcard for NYC. Also really, the whole Jason set-up doesn’t really work in an urban setting so the whole premise of this stupid movie dooms it from the start. It’s mildly fun the way most of these stupid trashy movies are fun but overall this is one of the weaker entries in the series. My review of the entire Friday the 13th series is available at http://12ftdwende.com/family/?p=5364
Persistence of Vision 