Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Blu-ray Movie Review

Better to Rule in Hell than Serve in this Sequel

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 13, 2013

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is being released as part of Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection.

The biggest problem with what is effectively the ninth film in the Friday the 13th series is that it isn't a Friday the 13th film. An obvious clue is the title, the first in the series to omit the signature phrase "Friday the 13th". In the four years since The New Blood, New Line Cinema, which was still an independent operation at the time, had acquired the rights to the Jason Voorhees character and was developing the film that would eventually be released in 2003 as Freddy vs. Jason, pitting New Line's signature villain from A Nightmare on Elm Street against the unstoppable monster in the hockey mask. At the time, New Line intended Jason Goes to Hell to be the final film in the newly acquired franchise, which no doubt accounts for their total disregard for everything that fans had come to expect from a Friday the 13th film. The film may have been produced by original part 1 director Sean Cunningham, but you'd never know it from the results.

That Jason Goes to Hell is probably the least respected by fans among the films in The Complete Collection may account for its lackluster treatment. The commentary from New Line's 2004 DVD has been eliminated, and so has the unrated cut included as an alternative. I have never seen the unrated cut, but it runs 3-4 minutes longer, and my understanding is that it mostly ups the gore quotient. I doubt, however, that these additional minutes of violence are sufficient to make this problematic entry a member of the Friday the 13th family. It remains a foundling left on the doorstep.

The story and script by first-time director Adam Marcus and TV writer Jay Huguely (later rewritten by another TV writer, Dean Lorey) make no attempt to establish continuity with previous films. Who needs to explain such details as how Jason was resurrected and returned to his old stomping ground after being dissolved in toxic waste in the tunnels below Manhattan? Exposition is so retro! Jason Goes to Hell simply assumes that Jason is still a boogeyman menacing Crystal Lake. A heavily armed commando team has been deployed to destroy him. When they corner him, they blow him to smithereens.

Watching from a distance is a supercilious bounty hunter, Creighton Duke (Steven Williams). "I don't think so", he mutters to himself. Sure enough, the coroner performing the autopsy (Richard Gant) in a secure government facility notices a black fluid (not blood) infusing Jason's heart, which is twice the size of a normal person's. Shortly after, the coroner is possessed by the supposedly dead remains, and his body becomes the latest vessel of the spirit of Jason Voorhees. In this new body, Jason exits the facility, killing several heavily armed guards in the process. (It's an inside joke that one of the guards is played by Kane Hodder, who also plays Jason during the character's limited screen time.)

Jason Goes to Hell dispenses with the familiar backstory of neglectful camp counselors and immoral teens that have provided Jason's underlying motivation throughout the series. In its place, the writers substitute a family mythology involving a heretofore unmentioned Voorhees sister, Diana Kimble (Erin Gray), her daughter, Jessica (Kari Keegan), and Jessica's infant daughter, Stephanie, by her former boyfriend, Steven (John D. LeMay). Jason, in a succession of new bodies, is no longer bent on revenge against teenagers (though one of his hosts dispatches a few along the way). His targets are the Voorhees women, who, according to lore uncovered by Creighton Duke—just where he's uncovered this lore is never explained—are the only ones with the power to kill Jason permanently. (Yeah, like that's ever worked.) Voorhees women are also the only ones who can give him some sort of rebirth, which I suppose is meant to suggest that our old friend from part 1, Pamela Voorhees, may have been in league with the devil. I always knew there was something odd about that woman.

Complicating matters for Steven, who just wants to win back the mother of his child, is the presence of her new boyfriend, a smooth operator named Robert Campbell (Steven Culp), host of a tabloid TV news program that is doing a continuing story on Jason's murders and the mystery of his recent "escape" from federal custody. Campbell enjoys Stephanie's physical charms, but his real interest is in using her to get material for his program. When he ends up possessed by Jason, it's a well-deserved fate but a serious threat to Stephanie.

As Jason jumps from body to body, his spirit transferring in the form of a reptilian creature that slithers from the mouth of one host to the next, we see the familiar hockey-masked Jason only as an occasional reflection in a mirror. Otherwise, it's the various hosts who are punched, stabbed, riddled with bullets—and keep on coming. They sustain grievous injury without pausing and display superhuman strength, but they're not the Jason that loyal Friday the 13th fans have come to see.

Indeed, these killers are from another movie altogether. Jason Goes to Hell is effectively a remake of the 1987 sci-fi classic The Hidden, in which an extraterrestrial criminal hid inside human bodies, just as Jason's spirit does, and an extraterrestrial cop also took on human form to pursue the outlaw. The film even borrows The Hidden's image of a disgusting heap of slime that crawls between the mouths of its hosts and needs to change bodies when the current one has sustained too much damage. In The Hidden, it was an inventive twist on the old "body snatcher" premise of people you know turning into someone alien and dangerous, but that's not a notion well-suited to the basic mythology of Friday the 13th, which revolves around an implacable, single-minded killer. Body-snatching, concealment and disguise are better suited to a villain with imagination and a larger purpose, like the biblical demon who jumped among bodies in director Gregory Hoblit's 1998 supernatural thriller Fallen or the alien invaders in multiple versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The most familiar element from earlier Friday the 13th films is the return of broad redneck humor courtesy of Crystal Lake diner owner Rusty B. (Joey Schwimmer) and her family. After the military has supposedly killed Jason, the entrepreneurial Rusty offers a 2-for-1 special on Jason Burgers, where both the patty and the tomato have cutouts making them resemble hockey masks. The meat saved by the cutouts is enough to make up the second burger. Rusty yells at everyone, especially her family, in an exaggerated drawl liberally sprinkled with profanity. This is what passes for comic relief in Jason Goes to Hell.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Whatever the shortcomings of Jason Goes to Hell as a film, the image on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is excellent. The passage of four years and the move to New Line Cinema upgraded the series' technical quality. Jason Goes to Hell was shot by William Dill, an experienced DP for TV and independent film, who now teaches cinematography full time. Dill photographed the film in a largely realistic manner that has since become commonplace in major TV productions, but in 1993 was ahead of its time. Except for sequences requiring stylized lighting (e.g., the all-out assault on Jason early in the film, the autopsy sequence and the spooky visits to the long-abandoned Voorhees mansion—wait, there was a mansion?), the lighting is gentle and the color palette isn't overstated. It's an ordinary world into which extraordinary events suddenly erupt.

Warner's Blu-ray image is finely detailed, with solid blacks, good contrast and colors that are distinct without becoming overassertive. The sole exception is Campbell's TV broadcasts, where colors have been exaggerated into NTSC-style primaries; these portions of the film have been windowboxed at 1.33:1. The film's grain texture is fine and undisturbed by digital tampering. Jason Goes to Hell shares a BD-50 with Jason X, but the absence of major extras has allowed enough room for an average bitrate of 22.92 Mbps, which is sufficient to avoid any compression-related issues.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jason Goes to Hell was released in Dolby Surround, but by 1993 studios and sound designers knew that multichannel formats were the future and most of them were saving their tracks and stems for future remixes. The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track begins quietly enough with echoes of Harry Manfredini's original score announcing the possibility of Jason's presence, but it kicks in with authority and presence when the man in the hockey mask reveals himself to his intended victim. The military assault on Jason is classic movie overkill, with rifles, small arms and grenades exploding around the room. Until the film's fiery conclusion, no scene quite matches this one in sonic intensity, but there's plenty of loud gunfire, bone-cracking (not all of it by Jason's "carriers") and various roars, screams and wails to fill out the track. Ambiant noises from distinct environments appear in the surrounds, and Manfredini has taken the opportunity of composing for a different kind of film to write a more expansive score. If nothing else, the film sounds great.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Additional Scenes: TV Version Alternate Scenes (480i; 1.33:1): Note that no "Play All" option is included.
• Diner Scene (3:32)
• Prank Phone Call (2:34)
• Cuffing Steven (0:15)
• Introduction Scene (0:33)
• Giving Vicki the Baby (0:52)
• Vicki and David (1:04)
• Vicki Gets to Work (0:33)
• Alone in Jessica's House (1:45)
• Steve and Randy's Fight (1:23)



• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 1.85:1; 1:13).

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you make it all the way to the incongruous closing shot of Jason Goes to Hell, you're left with the sense that the entire film is simply a detour designed to set up Freddy vs. Jason, which, at the time, New Line expected to put into production shortly. Instead, that film became stalled in development, and the studio created Jason X to fill the void. Either way, it's hard to defend Jason Goes to Hell as either a Friday the 13th film or even a decent prequel to the "smackdown" film it was designed to introduce. The Blu-ray is technically presentable, but missing enough features (including the unrated cut) to call into question the accuracy of the title The Complete Collection. I'm not recommending it, but obviously one can't acquire The Complete Collection without it.