I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking about the sub-head, and how miraculously arrogant it is to broadcast that a film shouldn’t have been made. Especially a film like Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, with a thirty year legacy and a built-in audience of die hard fans. But hear me out, because I love this movie, and it could have really been something special – but something was happening in 1988 and 1989 that the relentless advocacy of another Jason movie couldn’t overcome. In what seems to be an ultimate communication failure, Part VIII was doomed from the moment Part VII wrapped.
When Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood was released, it made a sort-of psychic promise to the F13 audience that Jason had met his match, and that match was ready for a second round. Only Alice and Tommy Jarvis had ever faced off in more than one Friday film, and many working on The New Blood wanted to fulfill the Jason vs Carrie Part 2-style premise they set up in the underperforming seventh film. Director John Carl Buechler, Lar Park Lincoln (who played Tina), and Kevin Spirtas (co-star Nick) each set off to write their own version of events for the next Voorhees film. Nobody told Buechler, Lincoln, and Spirtas that their scripts were never even in the running – Paramount had already backed the cheapest horse: a writer/documentarian turned first-time director on Friday the 13th: The Series, Rob Hedden.
Hedden had insisted on directing an episode of the series, an episode he wrote to get his seat in the directors chair. It’s unclear if he strong-armed his way into a meeting or if he was just the most enthusiastic novice on the production floor, but he was signed on by Paramount to write/direct the next installment of the film franchise. He received little direction in what he could do with their gatepost monster, and made a decision that the only thing left was to get Jason out of Crystal Lake.
The script was a workshop in reverse engineering, and the first big question was where does Jason Voorhees go on vacation? It could have been anywhere – Aruba, Jamaica, Key Largo, Montego – but producer Frank Mancuso Jr. jumped at the idea of putting Jason in a big city, and what city is bigger than New York? Frank always had a sincere desire to make F13 a Paramount tent pole, something he had done with immense success to legions of fans, always searching for the new angle to keep Jason alive and killing. Apparently no one told Mancuso Jr. (whose dad was the head of the studio) that the Big Apple is a big expense for filmmakers, so the idea went ahead as scheduled. Hedden already had a rough outline of Jason on a cruise ship, so the ideas were melded together starting with Jason in Manhattan, working backwards to how exactly he got there.
Originally hoping for 75% of the film to take place in Manhattan, Hedden excitedly wrote site gags to satirize the city and, in a way, level Jason up to his wickedly-quippy box office rival Freddy Kreuger. He wanted moments of levity drafted in the blueprints of New York, but what he got was a $5,000,000 budget and a “no way jose” on filming a majority of the movie in the city limits. Hedden cut back to 50% Manhattan, then 30%, finally landing on shooting mostly in Vancouver and only getting one week of New York filming (the ever-indulgent Time Square sequence). Hedden would not be deterred, however, and was determined to make the most imaginative, suspenseful Friday ever released.
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Meanwhile, back at Paramount, they had spent the last four years rebuilding a brand. In 1985, the parent company of Gulf & Western sold off its industrial, mining, and sugar-growing subsidiaries and focused solely on creating an entertainment and publishing company. Paramount Pictures was Gulf & Western’s shining star in the years of its transition, and in 1989, they became Paramount Communications Inc. Between 1985 and 1989, Paramount Pictures’ sole purpose was make as much money as possible to help harbour goodwill amongst Gulf & Western’s investors. All this to say – Paramount didn’t care much about Friday the 13th between 1985 and 1989. They cared about two things: (1) was it cheap, and (2) will it make money?
No one at the studio seemed to show much interest in what was happening on the set of Jason Takes Manhattan (or Ashes to Ashes, the super-secret filming title). Even Mancuso Jr. was fairly flippant about how the film was being handled (despite his usual Jason gusto), giving Hedden free reign to kill off Jason, if he felt so inclined. Of course, Mancuso Jr. would know better than most that no matter if Jason dies, he could always come back in the next one. Neither Mancuso Jr nor Hedden could have known that there would not be a next one – with Paramount, anyway.
On one of the first days of filming, F13 VIII would fire one of its stars. Lee Coleman, cast as romantic lead Sean Robertson, shot one day of scenes and was subsequently let go from the project for “lacking chemistry” with lead actress Jensen Daggett. The Crystal Lake Memories segment on the film shows a cut scene with Coleman and it’s enough to know the film would have suffered more were he kept in the role. While this is, most of the time, a kiss of death for production, Scott Reeves was brought in and shooting continued on schedule. He had been the original choice for the role, anyway, so things seemed to be working in the production’s favor. In fact, over two hours of usable film was shot for Jason Takes Manhattan. It seems nobody told Hedden that Jason films aren’t two hours long.
Hedden took special care in the MPAA horror stories from previous productions on which he worked. He would often shoot multiple passes at death scenes, some with blood and guts, and some tamer shots and quick cuts to mask possible violations. He figured in a 20+ body count, shooting the mangled corpses of most of the graduating class without actually seeing them killed. Most of these scenes were cut. Part VIII gets a lot of notice for being one of the least gory films in the franchise, and it seems that Hedden’s fan service to the cutting board played a major role in its lack of plasma.
Hyper-aware of the woes the MPAA had levied on previous slashers, Hedden offered up a pallet of options for easy replacement. He, instead, worked to maximize story potential. Hedden told Fangoria magazine in 1988, “My loyalty lies with the story over everything else… you can have the most fantastic effects in the world, and if the story doesn’t track or make sense, nobody’s gonna care.” I guess nobody told Hedden he was directing a Friday the 13th film, or that getting a houseboat from a lake to the Atlantic was going to be one of the most talked about plot holes of any Friday film ever.
The film was set for release August 4th, 1989, and was pushed up a week, setting a two week distance from arch-box office-nemesis Freddy and A Nightmare on Elm Street V: The Dream Child. Leading up to the premiere, Paramount put together what would be perhaps the most innovative marketing campaign of any Friday the 13th film. This film needed to make beaucoup bucks, but nobody told the studio they were setting themselves up for failure.
First, the inspired, Frank Sinatra-soundtracked trailer featuring a stoic Jason admiring the Manhattan skyline blew fans off their feet, ready to see Jason on a large scale and registering that hint of humor (see, Jason can be funny, too). I guess they didn’t remember that only about 25% of the film is actually in NYC. Next, they drafted a promo poster featuring Jason slashing right through the heart of the “I heart NY” logo – a move that proved unamusing to the citizens of New York and, more importantly, the New York Tourism Committee, and was pulled by Paramount soon after the backlash. Paramount also booked Jason for his first live interview, the now infamous sit down with Arsenio Hall on The Arsenio Hall Show, a property Paramount owned. It seemed as though the studio was pulling out all the stops to make sure Jason Takes Manhattan wouldn’t have the same fate as The New Blood. This was a money-project, as most slasher sequels are, and the eighth Jason better deliver.
But Jason Takes Manhattan was released at the worst blockbuster season it could have been. Which is to say, it was one of the best and most anticipated release seasons the ’80s had to offer. The first was Ghostbusters II, released on June 15th, 1989. It was the biggest three-day gross opening weekend in history ($29.5 million). A week later, that box office record was smashed with the release of Tim Burton’s Batman ($40.5 million). July 7th saw the release of the highly anticipated sequel to Lethal Weapon and the latest installment of the James Bond franchise (my personal favorite Bond film ever) License to Kill. Releasing a month after this wave of mammoth productions is like trying to do a comedy set after Richard Pryor – you’re just going to flop. And with Dream Child looming two weeks away, Jason Takes Manhattan released with a weekend box office of $6.2 million – just one mill over budget. Jason was dead in the water.
Rewatching Jason Takes Manhattan now, it’s easy to see the missteps and plot logic Hedden was desperately trying to avoid. It’s easy to rank it low on the kill counts, and low on the blood flow, but there is something miraculously stylish and thoughtful about Jason Takes Manhattan that not many of the other F13’s have. It’s funny and self-aware. It took a bold step outside the boundaries of Crystal Lake to attempt a movie that, on a larger scale with a larger budget, could have been a leap forward in an already dulling franchise.
Kane Hodder’s favorite death in the film sees our victim on a disco floor, the camera spinning wildly while Jason appears in menacing moments, getting closer and closer to the victim and ends with a smash – and no blood at all. The absolutely best death in the film plays itself up to payoff in a boxing match on a rooftop. Despite the lack of gore, it is fair to say that Hedden’s direction toward suspenseful build-up was spot on. Seeing Hedden’s vision through the eyes of an aspiring director, and not a studio trying to build a new identity, F13 VIII had the potential of knocking our heads off with one punch.
But the unsatisfactory truth is, it just should never have been made. Not on that budget, not at that time. To say nothing of the fact that Jason’s proclivity for killing sexually active and drugged-out campers had earned him the reputation of being the “Reagan-era slasher,” a moniker no slasher should ever have to endure, the Reagan years were over, and it seemed the Friday the 13th franchise was going with them. No one except Hedden and the cast and crew cared enough about the film to understand what it really could have been.
Further, Mancuso Jr. had every opportunity to stop Hedden early on and say “Manhattan is too big, let’s go to Pittsburgh, Jason is kind of a zombie anyway, right?” Or Hedden’s original concept, Jason on a cruise ship, invited a level of claustrophobia to the hulking menace that would maximize suspense and take Jason out of camp. You could say that’s what we ended up with, but with marketing that mused Jason taking a bite out of the Big Apple – it was always going to belly flop off the Empire State Building.
Lucky for us, horror fans, it’s been thirty years. And when we look back fondly at one of the Kings of Slash, Jason Takes Manhattan is an entertaining joint, and I don’t care how fantastical the idea of Jason swimming to Manhattan is. If Jason can make it there, he can sure as hell make it anywhere.
Jason Takes Manhattan grossed $14.3 mil domestic, making Paramount $9 million (not counting worldwide sales). After Part VIII, they sold Jason back to Sean S. Cunningham who brought Jason over to New Line Cinema – the house that Freddy built – and the rest is horror history.
Related Article: Jason Takes Manhattan – 10 Things You May Not Know
[…] sold it to New Line Cinema after Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan tanked both financially and critically. Now, Warner Brothers co-owns the series with New Line, and while they may have […]
Just wanted to say – I love the subtle Beach Boys reference.