Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is a 1993 American supernatural slasher film directed by Adam Marcus from a screenplay by Dean Lorey and Jay Huguely, based on a story by Huguely and Marcus. The ninth installment in the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as the first installment in the franchise to be released by New Line Cinema, it stars John D. LeMay, Kari Keegan, Erin Gray, Allison Smith, Steven Culp, Steven Williams, and Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees, reprising his role from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. The film follows the ghost of Jason possessing people in order to continue his killings after his death. To resurrect himself, Jason must possess a member of his bloodline, but he can also be permanently killed by one of his family members using a magic dagger.
The film was conceived by co-writer and director Marcus under Sean S. Cunningham, producer and director of the first film. After the low box-office returns of Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount Pictures sold the character rights of Jason Voorhees to New Line Cinema.
Jason Goes to Hell was theatrically released on August 13, 1993, and grossed $15.9 million at the box office on a budget of $3 million, becoming the second-lowest performing film in the series, after Jason Takes Manhattan. The film was lambasted by critics and fans, criticizing the supernatural elements and lack of Jason Voorhees as a physical character.
The next installment in the series, Jason X, was released in 2001, and a crossover sequel with the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Freddy vs. Jason, was released in 2003.
Plot
At Crystal Lake, Jason Voorhees stalks a woman. The woman leads Jason into a trap where FBI SWAT agents attack and kill him with a grenade launcher. Jason's remains are sent to a morgue, where his beating heart is eaten by the coroner, allowing Jason's soul to possess him. Jason, in the coroner's body, escapes the morgue, killing another coroner and two FBI guards.Jason finds three teenagers at Crystal Lake and kills them. When two police officers are called to investigate, Jason kills one of them and possesses the other. Bounty hunter Creighton Duke discovers that only members of Jason's bloodline can permanently kill him, and he will return if he possesses a family member. The only living relatives of Jason are his half-sister Diana Kimble, her daughter Jessica, and Stephanie, the young daughter of Jessica and Steven Freeman.
Jason attempts to possess Diana but Steven stops him. Diana is killed, and Jason escapes. Steven is arrested for the murder of Diana. He meets Duke in prison, who gives Steven information about Jason and his connection with Jessica. Determined to get to Jessica before Jason, Steven escapes from prison. He goes to the Voorhees house to find evidence to convince Jessica of her link to Jason. Jessica's boyfriend, TV reporter Robert Campbell, receives a phone call in the house that Steven overhears, which reveals that Campbell is attempting to boost ratings by revealing Jason's return from death. Jason transfers his heart to him through their mouths. Now in Campbell's body, Jason leaves and attempts to possess Jessica. Steven stops him and tries to explain everything to Jessica, but she does not believe him and goes to the police station without him.
Jason arrives and kills the officers while searching for Jessica, who he nearly possesses before Steven stops him again. Duke escapes from his cell in the resulting chaos. Now believing Steven, Jessica goes with him to the diner to get Stephanie. Jason arrives and is attacked by the owners and a waitress. Jessica and Steven discover that Duke has Stephanie, and he demands that Jessica meet him at the Voorhees house alone.
Jessica abandons Steven, meets Duke, and is given a magic dagger which she can use to permanently kill Jason. An officer enters the diner and is possessed by Jason. Duke falls through the floor of the Voorhees house as Sheriff Landis and Officer Randy arrive to confront Jessica. Landis is accidentally killed with the dagger that Jessica drops. Jason, possessing Randy, attempts to be reborn through Stephanie, but Steven arrives and kills him with a machete. Jason's heart has become a demon which enters Diana, allowing Jason to be reborn in his original body as Steven and Jessica rescue Duke.
While Steven and Jessica attempt to find the dagger, Duke distracts Jason and is killed. Jason and Steven fight while Jessica retrieves the dagger and stabs Jason. As the souls Jason killed are released, demons drag Jason into hell. Jessica and Steven walk off with Stephanie into the sunrise. A glove with bladed fingers bursts from the ground, grabs Jason's mask, and drags it underground.
Cast
Production
Development
Producer Sean S. Cunningham originally conceived an action-horror film in which Jason Voorhees would battle Freddy Krueger of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Paramount Pictures, who had released the previous eight Friday the 13th films, negotiated with New Line Cinema over the rights to the series, and ultimately granted New Line Cinema rights to the Jason Voorhees character, but forgot to give them the Friday the 13th title. New Line Cinema placed Cunningham's idea for a Freddy-versus-Jason film on hold, prompting him to generate a different script to precede that plot line. Cunningham's original idea would later manifest as Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. Adam Marcus was brought in by Cunningham to direct the film under the notion that he must remove Jason's hockey mask. Cunningham has denied ever telling Marcus to "find a way to get rid of that fucking mask", however, Marcus rebukes Cunningham's claim and insists that he did not have that level of creative control. Cunningham had also demanded that the events of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan be ignored. The filmmaker's initial pitch saw Elias Voorhees, Jason's father, digging up his body at the beginning of the film, eating his heart, taking on his supernatural powers and embarking on a similar killing spree. Jay Huguely was hired to flesh out Marcus' ideas into a script. According to Marcus, he had originally written the character of Steven Freeman to be Tommy Jarvis from part 4–6, but New Line Cinema only owned the rights to Jason and not Tommy and so could not legally use that character at the time. Marcus also explains that New Line Cinema did not own the Friday the 13th title, explaining why the film titles after Jason Takes Manhattan did not include the franchise name up until the 2009 remake.Huguely's draft was reportedly " a hodgepodge of a script" and "unintelligible". Cunningham hired Dean Lorey to scrap Huguely's work and write a completely new script within four days, removing Elias Voorhees from the story as Lorey felt that Jason must be the central character. Lorey's initial idea for the film saw Jason caught in between a gang war in Los Angeles, but an impending production start immediately shot down the writer's pitch. Michael De Luca of New Line disliked Lorey's rewrite but greenlit the film regardless. Lorey moved onto another project, prompting the studio to turn to Leslie Bohem, who provided a polish to the script over a weekend. Lewis Abernathy of House IV: The Repossession was enlisted for further rewrites for the opening sequence.
The film marked Adam Marcus' debut film; having graduated from film school, Marcus was originally attached to direct My Boyfriend's Back for Touchstone Pictures, but the studio's parent company, Walt Disney Studios, did not want to hire a first-time director, and Marcus was dropped from the project. Marcus, who was a lifelong fan of the Friday the 13th series, developed a story in which Voorhees is destroyed at the beginning of the narrative, only to manifest in the bodies of other people and continue his rampage. Marcus would later acknowledge the concept's similarity to that of The Hidden, though he stated he had not seen the film at that time, and that the similarity was coincidental. Marcus decided that he wanted to create the most deliberately stereotypical and cliché-ridden opening of the film as possible to toy with the audience's expectations, only for the story to take an unprecedented turn with Jason's unexpected "death" by the hands of the SWAT team.
The special effects were provided by Al Magliochetti and effects studio KNB, the former having signed on to the film after friends of his from KNB notified him of its development. The colors of the visual effects were chosen by Marcus.
Casting
auditioned for the role of Creighton Duke, which went to Steven Williams. Laurie Holden was Adam Marcus' and Dean Lorey's choice for the role of Jessica Kimble, but Sean Cunningham overruled them and pushed for Kari Keegan instead.Filming
Production began on July 20, 1992, in Los Angeles, California. Cunningham had asked for the film to be shot at twenty two frames per second as opposed to twenty four. Marcus claims he clashed with Cunningham following a dispute over creative decision near the end of filming. A shower scene involving actress Kari Keegan resulted in Marcus being removed from set due to a dispute between the two, as the actress protested from doing nudity for the film. Cunningham would step in as director in place of Marcus for the final few days of the film. Approximately half of the film was reshot as Cunningham was unsatisfied with the initial cut of the film. Filming concluded on September 4, 1992.Retrospective insight
In November 2017, Adam Marcus stated that an overlooked plot-point of the movie is that Jason Voorhees is actually connected to the Evil Dead franchise. The filmmaker stated:In December 2017 on the podcast Cinema Toast Crunchcast, Marcus revealed Creighton Duke's intended backstory, "A teenage Creighton was out on Crystal Lake with his girlfriend. Jason capsized their small boat and pulled the girl down into the lake. Creighton tried to save her but could not. She was never seen again. Creighton vowed revenge and from that moment on he spent his life in the study and pursuit of Jason. He became a bounty hunter just to fund his work in taking down his nemesis."