Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Summary

I will be reviewing films from the Friday the 13th Collection: Deluxe Edition box set released by Shout! Factory until the entire box set has been covered. Stay tuned!

“Good shooting Mahoney! Now clean up all this shit.”

Jason Takes Manhattan had essentially proven to Paramount that the studio had done everything that they could with the character of Jason Voorhees that would attract an audience. It had been one of the least profitable entries in the series, and it seemed like a good time to switch gears. The original director of Friday the 13th, Sean S. Cunningham, was able to convince New Line Cinema to strike a deal to gain the rights to use the character of  Jason Voorhees without gaining the rights to the name Friday the 13th (this is still a point of contention legally and still a mess all these years later.) Cunningham’s goal from the beginning was to get a film produced that would pit Jason against New Line Cinema’s beloved Freddy Krueger. New Line Cinema agreed in principal and achieved the goal of gaining the rights to Jason. That is when Cunningham hit his first stumbling block. Just as they had received the rights to Jason, Wes Craven decided to return to the Nightmare on Elm Street universe and direct New Nightmare. This meant that Freddy would not be available for some time. Switching gears, Sean S. Cunningham enlisted apprentice filmmaker and Friday the 13th super fan Adam Marcus to direct a new entry in the series. The film that Marcus envisioned would be a radical departure from all prior Friday the 13th films. Marcus enlisted writers Jay Huguely and Dean Lorey to turn his idea for a story into a screenplay. The resulting film is certainly one of the most divisive films in the series. The fans were divided on the film because it is very different from prior entries. The film has gained nearly as many devoted fans as it has gained naysayers. The film was a modest financial success at the time with about a $15.9 million box office number against a roughly $3 million budget.  It wasn’t the great success they had envisioned with Freddy vs. Jason, but it still kept everyone’s mortgages paid for eight years.

As the film begins, a woman arrives at a cabin and prepares to take a shower. She is interrupted by masked killer Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder.) She narrowly escapes in a towel and runs out into the middle of a baseball field nearby. Jason pursues her. Suddenly, the lights of the field come on. A S.W.A.T. team begins their assault on Jason that concludes when they literally explode Jason with a well placed grenade. Jason’s body parts are gathered together and sent to the coroner’s office under the eyes of a security detail. The coroner (Richard Gant) begins his inspection of Jason’s remains, when the heart begins to beat. Some strange spell comes over the coroner and he begins to eat the heart. The soul of Jason is transferred into his body. Jason begins a killing spree with the hope of tracking down his sister in order to achieve reincarnation. In an interview in the news, supernatural expert Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) claims he knows how to kill Jason. He explains that Jason wears bodies like a suit. Of course nobody believes him, but soon Steven Freeman (John D. Lemay) and Jason’s niece, Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan,) will need to pair up with Creighton to try to send Jason back to Hell.

If you read the plot synopsis above, it should become apparent why this film has become a point of contention amongst fans of Friday the 13th. The film starts off incredibly promising with a great opening five minutes. That first five minutes pays homage to all of the tropes from the prior films and injects some humor into the proceedings. Unfortunately, that first five minutes is the best part of the film in my opinion. Adam Marcus and Sean S. Cunningham were devoted to giving the fans of the series something new and different, but it unfortunately is not a satisfying transition. Fans of the character and series for the most part left the theater confused as to why a film in the series would barely feature Jason Voorhees. Jason is essentially the only thread connected to the prior series which brought them to the theater in the first place. Instead of Jason, the killings onscreen are largely done by possessed townspeople performing actions by Jason’s disembodied spirit. As an audience, we don’t see much of Jason but we are treated to mouth demons because that is how Jason transfers from person to person. If all of this sounds like a fever dream mush-mash of ideas from other movies, that is sort of how it feels onscreen. I can’t help but think of the film as a sort of noble failure. A few years prior to this film there was a science fiction thriller named The Hidden that explored a similar idea but made it work. Jason Goes to Hell just cant quite pull off its lofty ambitions despite best intentions. It gives the fans something different, but it begs the consideration of the idea that maybe fans of the prior films would not have wanted something vastly different.

That said, there are some aspects of the film I like. Notably – I really like the performance by Steven Williams. Williams is perfectly cast as the eccentric Creighton Duke. I also enjoyed Richard Gant’s inclusion in the film. Kane Hodder is also back for this film, but he is so under utilized it is almost criminal. The film is capably directed by Adam Marcus who honestly did a lot within the confines of the budget and obviously looked at this film as his dream job (watch the special features and you will see what I mean.) Unfortunately, his film is just not capable of making me enthusiastic. 

At the end of the day, Jason Goes to Hell is a deeply divisive film in the series. While it does not really appeal to me, I can still give the film props for trying to be so radically different. Unfortunately, those differences to me feel like a series of bad decisions that isolate the film from what made earlier entries in the series great. Despite the modest financial success of the film, it would be eight years before Jason Voorhees would return for one last stand-alone adventure in Jason X.

Video

Shout! Factory presents Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday in their Deluxe Box Set with a solid looking transfer utilizing an MPEG-4 AVC codec in the film’s original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. For this set, Shout! has provided transfers for both the Unrated and Theatrical cuts of the film. Both have received new 2K scans from the interpositive. The resulting transfers are definitely appealing and should please the die hard fans of the film. The film’s cinematography was done by Bill Dill. Visually, the film is not super compelling, but it does its job. Some softness occasionally crops in, but that is pretty common for the film stock that was used in the early Nineties. Shout! Factory have gone above and beyond to provide fans of the film good transfers for both cuts.

Audio

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday features a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround track alongside a DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo track that is new to this release. Like the other films, I watched the film utilizing the surround track. After sitting out the prior two films, composer Harry Manfredini makes his return. As can be expected, the score is influenced by the time in which it was made, but Manfredini does solid work on the film. Like the prior tracks in the box set, I thought the audio was of high quality. There were no notable issues.

Supplements:

(These are just the supplements included on the two discs provided for Jason Goes to Hell. This does not include the supplements on the bonus discs.)

Theatrical Cut 

• Director Introduction
• Theatrical Trailer
• TV Spots 
• Still Gallery 
• Posters and Behind-the-Scenes Gallery
• Friday the 13th Props

Unrated Cut – The Unrated Cut of the film runs roughly three minutes longer than the Theatrical Cut

• Director Introduction 
• Audio Commentary: Director Adam Marcus and Author Peter M. Bracke.
• Audio Commentary: Director Adam Marcus and Screenwriter Dean Lorey.
• The Gates of Hell – An Interview with Director Adam Marcus – this new interview with director Adam Marcus is well worth your time. Adam Marcus discusses his affinity for the series and how he wanted to give fans of the series the film that he would want to see. While his vision for the Jason character is certainly divisive, it would be impossible to watch this interview and think that he made this film without every intention of making something he cared about deeply. 
• Über-Jason – An Interview with Kane Hodder on Playing Jason: this is a lengthy and enjoyable interview with the definitive Jason actor. Hodder walks through his roles in the series and tells some great stories. Fans will love this interview.
• Jason vs. Terminator – Adam Marcus on Growing up with the Cunninghams: Marcus returns with another great interview. This interview focuses on how he grew up with the Cunninghams and also discusses how Sean S. Cunningham viewed this project as a direct competitor with the blockbusters that were in the theaters at the time.
• Additional TV Footage

Overall Scores:

Video – 4/5

Audio – 4.5/5

Supplements – 5/5

Overall – 4/5

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday may actually be the most divisive film in the series, because there is a legion of fans of the film that like the direction the series went here which offsets the legion of naysayers that dislike the direction the series went here. I personally thought that the film was a step in the wrong direction. While I admire director Adam Marcus for trying to make a film radically different from the prior entries, the film feels like it loses a lot of the appeal of those prior films. A Friday the 13th film needs to have Jason Voorhees onscreen killing people, and this film does not really deliver that. Instead, it delivers a body-jumping storyline that felt pretty flat to me. Fans of the film are going to be extremely happy with this two-disc set which features both the Theatrical Cut and the Unrated Cut which runs roughly three minutes longer. The supplements on the two discs are some of the best in the entire box set and deliver extensive new interviews with Kane Hodder and director Adam Marcus. The technical specs are solid, delivering new 2K scans of both cuts from an interpositive. I appreciate the amount of care that Shout! Factory obviously put into this release.