Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives


Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is a 1986 American slasher film written and directed by Tom McLoughlin, and starring Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, and C.J. Graham. It is a sequel to Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and the sixth installment in the Friday the 13th franchise. It was the final film to feature Tommy Jarvis as the protagonist and marked Tony Goldwyn's film debut. Continuing from the events of the previous film, the plot follows Tommy after he accidentally resurrects mass murderer Jason Voorhees while attempting to destroy his body to ensure that he will not return. While Jason returns to Crystal Lake for another killing spree, Tommy must overcome his fear of the masked killer that has haunted him for years and find a way to stop him once and for all.
The original storyline had Tommy become the series' new antagonist, but after the poor reception of A New Beginning, the producers instead brought Jason Voorhees back. In resurrecting Jason, McLoughlin made him an explicitly supernatural force for the first time in the series. This version of Jason, an undead and more powerful superhuman, would become the standard depiction for the rest of the series. The film also introduced metahumor, Gothic fiction, and action film elements, including shootouts and car chases, into the series.
Jason Lives was the first and only film in the series to receive generally positive reviews from critics. In the years since its release, its self-referential humor and numerous instances of breaking the fourth wall have been praised for prefiguring Kevin Williamson's Scream film series. Jason Lives is considered a fan favorite of the series, in addition to receiving positive notice from horror film historians. It grossed $19.5 million at the U.S. box office on a budget of $3 million. The film was followed by Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood in 1988.

Plot

One year after attempting to kill Pam Roberts, Tommy Jarvis is released from the local Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He still suffers from flashbacks of the mass murderer Jason Voorhees, whom he killed six years ago. Tommy returns to Crystal Lake, renamed Forest Green, to confront his fears, along with his friend Allen Hawes. The pair visit Jason's grave during a thunderstorm, intending to cremate the killer's body and finally end Tommy's nightmares. After digging up Jason's corpse, Tommy experiences another flashback of his last encounter with Jason. As he impales Jason's body with a metal fence post, two lightning bolts strike the post; this restores Jason as a revenant with superhuman strength.
After killing Hawes, Jason dons a hockey mask. Tommy flees to the sheriff's office, where he attempts to warn the police of Jason's return. Instead, Tommy is arrested and jailed by Sheriff Mike Garris, who is aware of Tommy's institutionalization. Sheriff Garris presumes that Tommy is hallucinating Jason's return. On the road, camp counselors Darren and Lizbeth get lost looking for Camp Forest Green. They discover Jason, who murders them both.
The following morning, Garris' daughter Megan arrives at his station, along with her friends Sissy, Cort, and Lizbeth's sister Paula. The four teenagers report Darren and Lizbeth missing. Tommy warns them about Jason, who is now considered an urban legend. Despite her prompt attraction to him, Megan is unsure whether to believe Tommy. In the woods, Jason happens upon a corporate paintball game; he crushes the player Burt's face into a tree, decapitates three other players, and dismembers Roy, the final player. He also commandeers a machete from the players.
As children arrive at Camp Forest Green, the teen counselors do their best to run the camp. They keep wondering what has happened to Darren and Lizbeth. Meanwhile, Garris opts to transfer Tommy out of his jurisdiction to prevent anyone else from hearing his rants about Jason's return. On the way out of town, Tommy makes a run for Jason's grave, which Martin, the caretaker, has covered up to deny responsibility for the grave being robbed. Hawes' body is buried in Jason's place. A handcuffed Tommy is escorted out of town by Garris, who threatens him if he ever returns.
That night, Jason butchers Martin, along with a nearby couple who happen to witness the murder. Meanwhile, Cort meets with a girl named Nikki. Jason stalks Cort and Nikki in their RV and lures them outside but the teen couple drives away. Jason pulls Nikki into the RV's bathroom and kills her. Jason then kills Cort which flips the RV, before Jason walks out. When Garris' men find Nikki's and Cort's bodies, Garris promptly implicates Tommy in the double murder. Garris is convinced that Tommy's "delusions" regarding Jason have driven him berserk.
Tommy contacts Megan for help luring Jason back to Crystal Lake, and she agrees. Meanwhile, Jason makes his way to the camp. He kills both Sissy and Paula but refrains from harming the children. Elsewhere, Garris pulls Tommy and Megan over. She points out that Tommy has been with her for the past few hours; therefore, he could not have killed Cort and Nikki.
Nonetheless, Garris locks Tommy up and tells Megan he will decide what to do with her later. Garris and two of his deputies Thornton and Pappas head out for the camp to arrest Tommy's "accomplice". Jason attacks all three lawmen, forcing Garris to accept that Tommy is right all along. Megan breaks Tommy out of jail, and they rush to the camp. Garris is killed by Jason while trying to protect Megan.
Jason is about to kill Megan when Tommy calls to him from a boat out on the lake; remembering his killer, Jason goes after Tommy instead. Tommy chains a boulder around Jason's neck, trapping him underwater, but Jason demolishes the boat and drags him beneath the lake's surface. When Megan dives in to rescue Tommy, Jason grabs her leg; she pushes Jason off using the boat's outboard motor, sending him to the bottom of Crystal Lake. Megan swims Tommy back to shore and revives him via CPR. Tommy says that Jason is finally home. The final shot shows Jason underwater, still alive, but powerless to free himself.

Cast

While C.J. Graham is credited as Jason Voorhees, Dan Bradley appears uncredited as Jason in the paintball scene.

Production

Pre-production and writing

Although the previous film in the series, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, had been a financial success, it had disappointed the Friday the 13th series' fans and received some of the worst reviews of any film in the series. In order to prevent further alienating the fans, the producers decided to take the series in a new direction, moving it away from what producer Frank Mancuso Jr. called the "coarse" nature of A New Beginning.
To this end, Mancuso hired Tom McLoughlin, who had directed the successful horror film One Dark Night but was also known around Hollywood for shopping around various comedy scripts he had written, a dichotomy that appealed to Mancuso. McLoughlin was given free rein on how he would present the story, with the only condition being that he bring back Jason Voorhees and make him the film's villain.
McLoughlin decided to take the film in the direction of an old Universal Monsters movie, specifically the 1931 version of Frankenstein, which portrayed Frankenstein's Monster as a lumbering killer brought to life by electricity. McLoughlin also drew from vampire lore in order to give Jason a weakness, namely being returned to his "home soil"; to achieve this, McLoughlin disregarded the idea presented in Part 2 that Jason had survived his drowning, instead presenting the idea that Jason has always been some sort of supernatural force. He also decided to retcon the ending of the fifth film, where Tommy Jarvis was a serial killer. In fact, Pam Roberts 's truck from the fifth film can be seen indicating she is alive. In the "Tommy Tapes" for Friday the 13th: The Game written by Adam Green, it's explained that the ending of the fifth film was Tommy's dream.
McLoughlin further decided to expand the series' thematic scope, incorporating action film elements and postmodern metahumor; when Jason is first encountered in the woods near Crystal Lake, the character Lizbeth Mott comments that she and Darren Robinson should flee because she knows about proper conduct to survive a horror film. McLoughlin would further satirize the series itself, as Martin the gravedigger comments on Jason's exhumation, "Why'd they have to go and dig up Jason?" before breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera with the observation, "Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment." In addition to Frankenstein, McLoughlin also cited as inspiration his love of Gothic horror, particularly the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and his Catholic upbringing; Jason Lives features the series' only explicit references to God, and during the climax Nancy Perry, a praying girl, is spared by Jason. A similar scene, in which Nancy prays for Tommy while Megan Garris performs CPR, then mouths "Thank you" while looking skyward was deleted from the final cut of the movie, apparently against McLoughlin's wishes; he recalled in the 2009 DVD's director's commentary, "Somehow it didn't stay in... probably too much sentiment".