Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is the film responsible for getting me interested in the Friday franchise. I never got to see it in the theater, but fortunately, video cassette rentals were all the rage at the time. I didn't watch this installment first, I started at the beginning with the original classic. Jason Lives, however, is what made me decide to start watching the film series. Alice Cooper being on the soundtrack probably had a lot to do with it, I was a teenager who had recently gotten into hard rock and heavy metal music, and I was familiar with Alice Cooper from The Muppet Show and ads for his comic book that appeared in basically every Marvel comic in the late 1970s. The "He's Back" music video got fairly regular play on the local music video station and it was pretty much an advertisement for the movie.
So like a good fanboy, I started with the first Friday the 13th and quickly watched my way up to Jason Lives. I was not disappointed. This film had everything I needed: killing, reanimated maniacs, Alice Cooper songs. It was more or less my favorite at the time. It was different than the previous installments though. It's rather difficult to explain exactly what was different about it. I mean, apart from the fact that Jason is now one of the undead; I'm talking more about the look and feel of the film.
This installment also broke several traditions established by the previous films. Jason Lives would be the chapter that launched the series into new places — eventually space, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here we pick up, more or less, from the end of the previous film. We were left on a cliffhanger of sorts that never got resolved, or even acknowledged. Where previous films began with a reprise or a flashback of the previous film's ending, here we start with the action already happening.
When we last saw Tommy, he was wearing a goalie mask and about to attack Pam. Jason Lives begins with Pam's truck speeding down the road. Pam's fate is unclear, though in other media published later, it is stated that the cliffhanger was just a dream. Regardless, Pam is no longer a factor for whatever reason, and Tommy has picked up his friend Arnold Horshack, err... I mean Allen Hawes, and they are on the way to dig up Jason's grave to make sure he is really dead. Now in the previous installment, it is stated that Jason was cremated, but that can be dismissed as rumor, or the "official story" put out by the authorities.
Originally, it was planned to have Jason's father, Elias Voorhees, introduced as the person who arranged to have Jason buried instead of cremated. This would have been quite an interesting direction to take this series. It implies that Elias knew there was something supernatural about Jason and opens a whole new backstory, similar to how the Thorn storyline changed Michael's backstory in the Halloween franchise. I have not read the novelization for this film, but apparently the intended scene is included in the book.
So Tommy and Hawes dig up Jason's grave and find a rotting corpse. The effects get a little inconsistent here. When Tommy starts stabbing Jason's body with an iron bar, it looks like he is stabbing a bag of dry leaves. Moments later, after lightning hits the iron bar, we see a close-up of a fully moisturized eyeball looking around. Of course, when Jason emerges from the hole in the ground, he is no bag of dry leaves, he is a reanimated corpse intent on killing, a revenant, if you will.
A big tradition broken by this film was the unmasking. We never see Jason's face until the very end. Here, however, we see Jason's face right away, sort of. It's not a very clear shot with the lighting in this scene, but you can make out a few features. It's kind of a shame, as if you look at some of the behind the scenes photos, it's probably the closest to what he really would have looked like. Once Jason puts his mask back on, it stays on for the rest of the film.
While previously, we didn't need a supernatural explanation for Jason being alive (see my article for Friday the 13th Part 2), this film goes with the premise that Jason did die as a child in Crystal Lake. Now that he has been resurrected, Tommy decides that Jason must be returned to Crystal Lake where he originally died so that he can finally rest. So what exactly does this make Jason? How did he come back to life after drowning as a child? When did he come back to life? When we first see Jason in the second film, he is a fully grown man, suggesting that he was resurrected shortly after his death. Was Elias responsible somehow?
If I may go off on a tangent about Elias Voorhees for a moment, I feel this is a character worth exploring, full of possibilities. In some spinoff media he is portrayed as a violent, abusive man, and while that could be a part of his character, I think there is more to him than that. I see him as something along the lines of Doctor Wynn in Halloween 6: someone who knows what Jason is and protects him from behind the scenes. He is someone with occult connections who perhaps even caused the evil in Jason to take root and deform him. Perhaps the telepathic link to his mother wasn't something she just imagined upon his death, but one of his supernatural powers he had as a child that continued to manifest after he was resurrected the first time after drowning in the lake. There was such a missed opportunity here, all because the studio didn't want to have to explain Elias' backstory. To the men in the suits, Jason was always a one-trick pony. End tangent.
Regardless of the reason, this film establishes that Jason died once as a child, and again as an adult. If you can accept one, you can accept the other. This time is different, though. Previously, Jason could be temporarily stopped; he appeared to be dead at least twice. He does appear to have been put down again after getting chained to the bottom of the lake and getting mangled with a boat propeller, but the final scene shows that he is still alive. If there was any question before, it is clear now that Jason is a supernatural force. Later installments will play with this idea with generally poor results.
Some other traditions that are broken by this film are the lack of nudity and the lack of super-graphic kills. This was from a time when more attention was being given to horror movies marketed toward teenagers. Sex and graphic violence started getting dialed back in nearly every horror franchise. Honestly, this film didn't need any nudity; there was only once scene where it would have been called for and it did just fine without it. The kills could have been more graphic though, after all, this was Jason's big return, it would have fit the context of the story.
As I stated earlier, this film looks and feels different than the previous installments. It may have something to do with the film processing method used, or maybe the lighting, I don't know the technical side of cinema so it's really difficult for me to say. Maybe it's the way the film starts with a sense of urgency that doesn't ever completely let up until the end. It could even be the introduction of the children, causing that extra sense of chaos and vulnerability that the other films did not have.
Jason Lives may very well still be my favorite in the series. It does suffer from over-watching, as this was the first video cassette of the series that I owned. As I view each installment again with a critical eye as I write each of these articles, I notice that my opinions do change. I am less favorable to some and more favorable to others than I was in the past. I am only about halfway through the series at this point. I have not watched the rest in quite a long time. Some I have only had the desire to watch once and then not again. I may be surprised and see one of the later films in a new light, but Jason Lives will always exist in a special place for me. This was where I was drawn into Jason's world. This is my Friday the 13th.