Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is the greatest movie of all time

Though Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is one of the tamest of the franchise with kills that are just okay with gore that mostly happens off screen and basically no nudity, I still enjoyed the film and give it ye olde greatest film of all time tag.  Out of the six I've watched thus far, I'd put this at a solid second or third. I'll get to the rankings later on.

This installment sees the return of Tommy Jarvis with actor Thom Matthews (whom you may remember from Return of the Living Dead) taking over the role as the third actor to take on character in three films as Jason is back as supernatural killing machine with more or less complete invincibility. This is who Jason is for the rest of the franchise, it is important to note. An unkillable zombie that just loves murder. You also get a little bit more comedy in this flick than in the previous ones with Jason occasionally breaking the fourth wall like when he kills a paintballer by ripping off his arm and smashing his face into a tree which produces the "Have a Nice Day" smiley face. Here Jason looks at the camera like, "eh."

Pros: The real Jason is back and this time with a sense of humor. Cast is again pretty decent if not way over the top. Campiest of the series thus far. Pretty good pacing except for a couple of scenes where Tommy is driving around and escaping from the police (which happens multiple times).

Cons: Tamest of the series to this point. Sex and violence is mostly off screen which no one asked for. Could have probably shaved a few minutes off a couple of scenes and made it a little tighter.

What happened to the bald, tennage Corey Feldman?

Notes: Get the third Tommy who is going to kill Jason once and for all. He has a sidekick that is fucking jazzed about this when they are rolling up. This fucking guy is embarrassing. We are also supposed to ignore the fact that Jason was said to have been cremated several movies ago. They dig up Jason and he looks like shit. No surprise there. Then we see Tommy's poorly thought out plan not work. He is going to burn him but it starts raining. Get some blue lightning bringing Jason back to life. Jason walks over to the other dude and calmly punches his heart out. Tommy ghosts. Jason puts on the mask and is ready to fucking rock. Get the 007 intro thing but with Jason stabbing instead of Bond shooting. And here we fucking go.

Ballsy move. Lucky she's above the law.

Naturally, Tommy goes to the cops. Starts in with the talk. The cops are like, "uh, we don't need this shit. Also, what the fuck are you talking about?" Provoked, Tommy grabs a shotgun and waves it around. Good way to spend the night in jail or die if you are a minority. The sheriff's daughter shows up there at the jail then and wants to bone dude, which is a weird vibe to throw out there to a potentially crazy man while your dad the sheriff is standing there. Just saying. The sheriff is an aggressive asshole but come on. Then, when Tommy escapes the first time, she tells him her dad is looking for him in connection with some deaths. Dude is like, "Jason" and she is like "I will pick you up and help you evade my dad." If this were real she would be like, "uh, you are the murderer."Her abetting escalates to the point where she breaks him out of jail the second time, holding a deputy at gunpoint. That's a felony, sister.

Get a bunch of kills in this one but none were super great. The president from Scandal, one Tony Goldwyn, shows up with a lady. They make some bad decisions while driving around in a bug and get murdered. A group five or so paintballers in the woods get theirs. One is the "Have a Nice Day" kill. Jason then kills three with one machete blow. The nerd of group then pops up and shoots Jason with a paintball. Other than momentarily confuse Jason, this does nothing. See him mangled later when Jason stumbles upon a couple camping out in a graveyard. The guy is supposed to be gay or something as he is weird stereotype that 80s movies always play up. The dude is a dandy, basically, wearing a suit while camping and being uninterested in sex. They die.

From there Jason finds another couple camping out. These two are "glamping" in an RV. The dude counselor is such an idiot. He's fucking aggressively stupid. Uses the word "squaw" to refer to the chick that rides him. What a guy. They leave, thinking someone is watching them. Driving away, girl is like, "pull over, you can't drive this thing." dude is like, "no way babe, I've always wanted to drive a house, and I want to rock." It's the dumbest shit. Then he cranks the tunes and says a bunch of dumb shit. While this is happening the girl gets pulled into the bathroom by Jason. Dude is like, "what are you taking a dump?" Charming. She gets the face-plant into the side of the RV. Dude gets a knife in the ear whilst driving. Killed, thank fuck. RV loses control and flips several times. Jason is unphased by the crash. Interesting tidbit about the girl from that scene: she was fired from Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning and replaced by the lovely Deborah Voorhees under dubious circumstances. The way she tells it, during her audition she was asked to take off her top by director Danny Stienmann, she refused, she got the part, Stienmann then made a pass at her, she rebuffed him, then she was fired. She didn't sue for sexual harassment and to make it up to her the casting director ended up offering her a non-nude role in this flick... But then asked her to get nude anyway. Again, she refused, but this time they figured it would be way too fucked up to fire her a second time. Good call. She is a fucking human being and all.

A triumphant Jason surfs a flaming Winnebago

Around here Jason makes it to the camp, finally, and kills a couple of counselors. In the first one, Jason twists a girl's head off. The second one is done off screen but we see the gruesome aftermath. When the police show up there is blood everywhere in that room. Speaking of the counselors, they are actually responsible for youths as this is the only one in the series with real campers. Get some humor out of them here as one of the young girls is doing some light Sarte reading, No Exit. Existentialism, totally accessible for the kiddos. Jason doesn't kill kids though. Several police officers are killed though, making up for the lack of child death. One, the sheriff if I remember correctly, gets folded in half. This movie actually has a pretty impressive kill count. The final tally was 18.

Some spoilers below, if you give a shit about such things. So here we are at the end. Tommy has managed to dispel Jason by drowning him, tying him to a boulder with chains and throwing it in the lake, which sets up Part VII nicely, just before everyone's favorite supernatural zombie kills the sheriff's daughter, Megan. But wouldn't you know it, Jason manages to pull Tommy down with him to a watery death. Megan, however, is a camp counselor and didn't fuck around with her lifeguard training and pulls Tommy out of the water and even manages to necessitate using a little of the old CPR. I like to think the happy couple go on to live out their days together far from Crystal Lake, reminiscing about how they met while hunting a hellish killing machine that folded her dad in half as this is the last of the series in which Tommy appears. Good times. Good movie.

MonsterVision

Let's check in with good old Joe Bob Briggs one last time and see how the Friday the 13th marathon ended on Halloween back in 1998.