Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives Blu-ray Movie Review

It's Alive! Alive!!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 12, 2013

Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives is being released as part of Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection.

Writer/director Tom McLoughlin leapt at the opportunity to direct a Friday the 13th, because, among other things, he loved Hammer horror films and hoped he could bring some of that sensibility to the series. His one stipulation to former executive producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. was that he be allowed to introduce more humor into the series. Mancuso's stipulation in return was that McLoughlin couldn't make fun of Jason.

Throughout the extensive extras included with this Blu-ray disc, McLoughlin acknowledges numerous cinematic influences, including other films in the Friday the 13th series. His homages to those films can be subtle. One notable example occurred when McLoughlin proudly presented an initial cut to a preview audience with precisely thirteen fatalities, just like Sean Cunningham's original. He was crestfallen when Mancuso directed him to go back and add more.

Surprisingly, though, McLoughlin never mentions what, to any viewer of the series, is the most obvious debt to the predecessors of Jason Lives, which is that the plot was obviously inspired by the opening sequence of A New Beginning. There, a traumatized Tommy Jarvis dreamed of Jason Voorhees rising from the grave. McLoughlin simply shifted that notion into the real world. In so doing, he completed the transition to the supernatural with which director Danny Steinman had flirted in A New Beginning. McLoughlin even picked up the hints in Steinman's film that Tommy might be seduced into becoming the creature he feared, although, like Steinman, he ultimately declined to take Tommy down that path. But McLoughlin did deliver on the promised humor. Jason Lives has some of the best visual gags in the series.

Tommy Jarvis is now played by The Return of the Living Dead's Thom Mathews. (John Shepherd from A New Beginning declined to return). Perhaps inspired by his nightmares, he has decided to dig up the remains of Jason Voorhees and incinerate them. Notwithstanding the claims of the mayor in the previous film that Jason was cremated, a grave does exist in a cemetery tended by a grumpy groundskeeper named Martin (Bob Larkin), who delivers to the camera what should be the film's most famous line: "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment!"

Perhaps as a tip to the audience that the film will be comical, Tommy is accompanied by his friend, Hawes (Ron Palillo), whose face would still have been recognizable in 1986 as that of Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter. But Tommy has apparently overlooked the part of his dream where those who dig up Jason don't survive the experience. In an accidental (or is it?) recreation of Dr. Frankenstein's experiment, bolts of lightning reawaken and supercharge the homicidal maniac, who rises from the grave, just as Tommy always feared, and dispatches Hawes while Tommy flees the scene. It's not for nothing that the grocery store in this town is named "Karloff's".

A running joke in Jason Lives is that the town of Crystal Lake has tried to "rebrand" itself by changing its name to "Forest Green". For obvious reasons, including the reappearance of the town's most infamous citizen, the rebranding doesn't take, which is no doubt how screenwriters of subsequent entries explained their reversion to the town's original moniker. But if your town were the scene of multiple notorious slaughters, wouldn't you want to say you were from somewhere else?

The newly rechristened Forest Green even has a camp, but it's for little kids even younger than Tommy Jarvis when we first met him. A busload is about to be delivered into the care of the teenage counselors, who are concerned that the head counselors haven't arrived yet. They never will. Driving along a dark country road, they encounter a familiar figure in a hockey mask who won't get out of their way. The head counselors are played by Tony Goldwyn, in his first film appearance, and the director's wife, Nancy McLoughlin, whose character may be the only victim in a Friday the 13th film ever to offer Jason cash and a credit card as an incentive not to kill her. Jason doesn't accept, and the card drops from the dying victim's hand, floating into view on screen: It's American Express. (As McLoughlin notes, someone in the audience always shouts: "Don't leave home without it!")

In vain does Tommy try to alert Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) to the threat bearing down on Crystal Lake, er, Forest Green. The sheriff and his weapons-obsessed deputy, Rick Cologne (Vincent Guastaferro), assume that Tommy is crazy, and for a long time they attribute the mounting reports of disturbances and mayhem to Tommy's desire to prove that his nightmares are real. The sheriff's daughter, Megan (Jennifer Cooke), who is also one of the camp counselors, feels differently about Tommy, though whether that's a credit to Tommy or a product of teenage rebellion is impossible to say. But it's Megan who springs Tommy from jail and helps him battle the resurrected Jason.

In addition to counselors, cops and a few stray campers, Jason's victims include a troupe of weekend warriors armed with paintball guns and, in one instance, an entire arsenal of weapons that Jason appropriates. Their interactions are some of the most comical, especially when one of them tries to "tag" Jason with a paint bullet. Some of the kids at camp are unusually advanced in their understanding of life. One falls asleep reading Jean-Paul Sartre's play, No Exit. Another, after hearing Megan's desperate screams outside, turns to his companion and asks: "So, what were you gonna be when you grew up?"

Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The cinematographer for Jason Lives was Jon Kranhouse, who would go on to specialize in aerial photography for such films as Star Trek IV and Broken Arrow. Like McLoughlin, Kranhouse was at the beginning of his career. As McLoughlin says at one point in his commentary, the relative youth of everyone involved was essential to their enthusiasm for the project.

The image on Warner/Paramount's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray for Jason Lives represents an uptick in quality, compared to The Final Chapter and A New Beginning. I attribute this to the source rather than any improvement in the transfer or mastering. The basic aesthetic of the series did not change with Jason Lives, but from all appearances either the quality of lighting or the film stock (or both) improved to the point that the filmed image gained some measure of polish and fineness of grain. On Blu-ray, this translates into superior detail, slightly richer color and a look that's closer to "studio" than "exploitation". Black levels and contrast levels are well set, the source material is in pristine condition, and there are no signs of untoward digital manipulation.

Jason Lives shares a BD-50 with A New Beginning, but like its roommate it has a healthy average bitrate, in this case of 22.52 Mbps. I kept watching for compression artifacts, but none presented themselves.

Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As best as I have been able to determine, Jason Lives was the first film in the series to be released in Ultra Stereo, the generic version of Dolby Stereo. That track has been remixed as 5.1 and presented as lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, and it's the first soundtrack in the series to provide an enveloping surround environment. Supervising sound editor Dane Davis has since become a major figure in film audio, winning an Oscar for The Matrix and designing sound for such films as The Cabin in the Woods and the upcoming Enders Game. Davis' layered stereo mix has provided the remix team with worthy material for a 5.1 experience.

The wind, thunder and lighting accompanying Jason's resurrection register with solid impact, and the forest environments are alive with insects and rustling leaves. You can feel the movement of cars racing down the road, and the sound of kids at camp yelling (or screaming) reaches out to envelop the viewer. Especially impressive is the final battle between Tommy and Jason, a complex blend of fire, water, body blows and clanking chains, all of which has to be appropriately modulated as the edits shift the viewer's perspective.

Harry Manfredini's score plays with increased authority as it expands to fill the entire speaker array. Adding to the soundtrack's impact are three songs by Alice Cooper, including "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)", which plays over the closing credits. The entire track has wide dynamic range and the deepest bass extension of any entry in the series to date.

Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries
• With Writer/Director Tom McLoughlin: McLoughlin's solo commentary is an amiable and informative affair, mixing production details with entertaining trivia about the subsequent careers of the film's cast and crew and a wide range of film references. A child of Hollywood, McLoughlin grew up steeped in film culture and routinely quotes advice from Frank Capra. He met his wife (who appears in Jason Lives) working on a film for John Frankenheimer and cites influences from John Ford and David Lean to Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter.


• With Tom McLoughlin and Cast and Crew: The "cast" consists of actor Vincent Guastaferro and the "crew" of editor Bruce Green. McLoughlin sets the tone at the beginning when he asks: "Anybody have anything brilliant to say about this sequence?" He ends up doing much of the talking, with some degree of overlap with his solo commentary. Guastaferro contributes tales from the set, but Green says relatively little. He does note at the outset that working on the previous film, A New Beginning, was not a good experience, whereas he enjoyed working on Jason Lives.



• The Friday the 13th Chronicles, Part VI (480i; 1.78:1; 14:42): McLoughlin describes getting the assignment, shooting the underwater sequences, location shooting in Covington, Ga., various in-jokes and reshoots to add more deaths. C.J. Graham describes his surprise last-minute casting as Jason.



• Lost Tales from Camp Blood—Part 6 (1080p; 2.35:1; 7:17): The sixth entry in the 2009 series about an axe-wielding killer.



• The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited, Part III (1080p; 1.78:1; 9:36): The conclusion of the mock TV documentary from The Final Chapter and A New Beginning extras.



• Jason Lives: The Making of Friday the 13th, Part VI (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:57): A retrospective documentary featuring interviews with McLoughlin, actors Bob Larkin, Nancy McLoughlin and David Kagen, and makeup effects artists Gabe Bartalos and Chris Biggs.



• Meeting Mr. Voorhees (1080p; 1.78:1; 2.46): McLoughlin's original ending to the film was never shot and, after the reshoots mandated by producer Frank Mancuso, Jr., it would no longer fit with the film. But McLoughlin created a version of it for home video fans using storyboards.



• Slashed Scenes (1080p; 1.33:1; 6:06): Most of these were trims to tone down the violence, not all of which were mandated by the MPAA. For example, on the commentary, McLoughlin says that he trimmed the multiple decapitation scene, because he didn't like the effect. Though mastered at 1080p, these are from a poor quality source.



• Original Theatrical Teaser Trailer (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 1:43).

Friday the 13th: Part VI - Jason Lives Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Although it was in the very nature of the Friday the 13th franchise that Jason Voorhees would eventually become its hero, Jason Lives is arguably the film where that status was officially cemented. The very title suggests it, with its triumphant outcry, almost begging for an exclamation point, and Mancuso's instruction to McLoughlin never to make jokes at Jason's expense was an implicit acknowledgment that Jason was the headliner. McLoughlin, who could take a hint, went Mancuso one better, by turning Jason into James Bond in the opening titles (see screenshot 6). Jason Lives has been faulted for being insufficiently gory, which was partly a function of MPAA struggles but also a result of McLoughlin's approach to the film, which favored atmosphere over blood and guts. McLoughlin compensated with a wicked sense of humor that quickly disappeared from the series with his departure. The Blu-ray treatment is superior and highly recommended.