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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 1st

"FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: 

JASON LIVES" released in 1986

With fan disappointment over the direction the Friday the 13th series was going with Part V: A New Beginning, Paramount Pictures demanded they bring back the series villain, Jason Voorhees, for the franchise's next outing. But since Jason was killed at the end of Part IV: The Final Chapter, producer Frank Mancuso Jr. turned to writer/director Tom McLoughlin to find a way to resurrect Camp Crystal Lake's infamous mass-murderer for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives!

Watch the Friday the 13th part VI: Jason Lives trailer below!

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Years have passed since Crystal Lake had been renamed to Forest Green, but Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) is still haunted by his past encounters with Jason Vorhees (played by both C. J. Graham and Dan Bradley). Determined to destroy Jason's remains once and for all, Tommy and his friend Allen (Ron Palillo) drive to the cemetery and dig up his grave. In a fit of rage, Tommy repeatedly drives a metal fence post into Jason's body before dousing it in petrol. Before Tommy can burn the body, lightning strikes the metal pole in his chest and resurrects Jason! Witnessing Jason kill Allen, Tommy flees to the Sheriff station to get help. Refusing to believe Jason has risen from the grave, Sheriff Mike Garris (David Kagen) tries to escort Tommy out of town, but ends up arresting him after chasing Tommy back to the cemetary to find the grave already filled in by the alcoholic gravedigger Martin (Bob Larkin). During this time Jason is making his way through the woods to return to Crystal Lake (killing a group of corporate executives participating in a paintball game as he passes) where kids have already arrived for the summer, greeted by the lead counselor - and the Sheriff's daughter - Megan (Jennifer Cooke) and her friends; Sissy (Renée Jones), Cort (Tom Fridley), Nikki (Darcy DeMoss), and Paula (Kerry Noonan). With Jason getting ever closer to Camp Forest Green, Tommy escapes from prison with the aid of Megan (who has developed a crush on him) and attempts to lure Jason into a trap where Tommy hopes he can imprison Jason at the bottom of the lake where he drowned as a child!

[driving to Jason's grave]
Allen Hawes: You just have to see that Jason's dead, right? Seeing his corpse ain't gonna stop your hallucinations!
Tommy Jarvis: Seeing it won't, but destroying it will. Jason belongs in Hell - and I'm gonna see to it that he gets there.

Top and Above:   Tommy (Thom Mathews) accidentally 

resurrects Jason!

With Friday the 13th: A New Beginning receiving some of the worst reviews of the series, to prevent further alienating the fans (and thus potentially endangering the series), the producers decided to take the series in a new direction - namely to bring Jason Vorhees back to the screen. To achieve this, producer Frank Mancuso Jr. turned to director Tom McLoughlin. McLoughlin had already directed one successful horror film, One Dark Night (1983), but was mostly known for shopping comedy sciprts round Hollywood, a dichotomy that appealed to Mancuso Jr. The director was given free rein on how he would present the story, with the only condition being that he bring back Jason and make him the film's villain. Inspired by the Universal monster movies of the 50's, McLoughlin disregarded the idea presented in Part 2 that Jason had survived his drowning and retconned the ending of the fifth film, where Tommy Jarvis was a serial killer. He  also incorporated postmodern meta-humor into the movie; when Jason is first encountered in the woods near Crystal Lake, the character of Lizbeth comments that she and Darren should flee because she knows about proper conduct to survive a horror movie. McLoughlin would further satirize the franchise itself, as Martin the gravedigger comments on Jason's exhumation, "Why'd they have to go and dig up Jason?" before breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera with the observation, "Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment."

Deputy Rick: Mike, over here!
Deputy Rick: [Garris arrives and Rick points to the ground, where they see arms and legs of a paintball player] I'll order up some body bags.
Sheriff Garris: [referring to Tommy] Our boy sure wants us to believe his story.
Deputy Rick: Well, he picked the right day to pull this shit.
Sheriff Garris: What do you mean?
Deputy Rick: Happy Friday the 13th.

Top:   Sheriff's daughter Megan (Jennifer Cooke) is only 

one who believes Tommy's story about Jason;

Above:   Jason runs into some paintball players in the woods

The decision to retcon the events of Part V resulted in many members of that film's cast—whose characters had survived—having their contracts to return for a sequel terminated, and although Mancuso Jr. retained control over the film's casting, he deferred to McLoughlin's judgment, with the only rule being that the final girl had to be a "very attractive blonde". McLoughlin immediately cast two popular television actors in Jason Lives;  Jennifer Cooke from the television series V was choosen to play Megan, and television veteran, Ron Palillo (famous for the role of Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter) plays Tommy's doomed sidekick Allen Hawes. After becoming a born again Christian, John Shepherd, who starred as Tommy in A New Beginning, did not want to reprise the role, and it went to Thom Mathews instead (though apparently McLoughlin was not aware of Mathew's work in the horror comedy Return of the Living Dead at the time). Other cast members were culled from actors whom McLoughlin had directed before, including his wife Nancy who plays the doomed counselor Lizbeth who Jason kills along with the character Darren (Tony Goldwyn acting in his first feature role).

[Rick draws for his gun and points it at Tommy's head]
Deputy Rick: Freeze it, psycho.
Sheriff Garris: Now see what you've done. You made my deputy draw his revolver. He's been dying to try out his mail-order laser scope.
Deputy Rick: Wherever the red dot goes, you bang.

Top and Above:   Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) refuses to

believe Jason has returned... until he sees him in person!

In keeping with the series' tradition, the role of Jason was given to a stuntman, in this case Dan Bradley. However, after the first day of filming, Mancuso Jr. decided that he disliked Bradley's performance onscreen as Jason and after filming the scenes in which Jason kills the paintball playing executives, replaced him with C. J. Graham. Graham, who stood 6'3 and weighed 250 lbs, was usually asked to play Jason for the finale of a magician's stage show at a local resturaunt where he was spotted by Jason Lives' special effects coordinator, Martin Becker, was in the audience for one such show Becker recommended Graham to Mancuso Jr. and  McLoughlin who were impressed with Graham's presence, and he was hired to film the remainder of Jason's scenes. Jason Lives marks a number of firsts for the series; the only time in the series, other than prologues and flashbacks, that there are actually children at the summer camp and, even though it does include a sex scene, there is no nudity int he entire film.

The scenes involving the police department and town were filmed in Covington, Georgia while the camp scenes were filmed at Camp Daniel Morgan outside the city limits of Covington. The climactic scene in which Megan kills Jason with the outboard motor was actually filmed in 3 different locations: the underwater shots were filmed in a temperature-controlled tank in Los Angeles, the above water shots were filmed in the murky Georgia lake on location, and the shots of the motor actually cutting Jason's mask/neck were filmed in Tom McLoughlin's father's swimming pool, actually ruining the pool filter in the process being jammed by gore churned into the water when Jason is hit with the boat propeller.

Tommy Jarvis: The only way to kill Jason is to send him back to his original resting place where he drowned in 1957.
Megan: Lake Forest Green?
Tommy Jarvis: Crystal Lake.

Top:   The doomed camp counselor's Paula (Kerry Noonan), 

Sissy (Renée Jones), and Cort (Tom Fridley);   Above:   Tommy tries to trap Jason in lake!

In a contrast to the series' other entries, which had to be edited for violence in order to avoid an "X" rating, the film's producers requested that McLaughlin add additional gore, violence, and murders to the film. Jason Lives already contained 13 killings as an in-joke, but, in order to appease the studio, McLaughlin had to add an additional three killings; Martin the gravedigger, and the recently engaged couple on a nighttime picnic. Additionally, McLaughlin was made to extend Sissy's death, adding the shots of Jason dragging her to the ground and twisting her head off; as originally filmed, Sissy was simply pulled out of the cabin window, and wasn't seen again until Megan finds her head in the squad car. McLaughlin also found himself in contention with the producers over how the film should end. The original script contained material that alluded to Jason's father, which, to date, remains the closest the series has ever come to shedding some light on the mysterious character. In the script, Pamela's headstone is next to Jason's, a reference to the fact that someone paid to have Jason buried, explaining why he was not cremated as the Mayor said in A New Beginning. As well as this, there is a final scene in which Jason's father visits his son's grave, seemingly aware of the fact that Jason is not inside it. These scenes were never filmed, but made it into the film's novelization. The studio did not want the responsibility of having to introduce Elias' backstory, with McLoughlin ultimately shooting three endings; In one ending, Jason's mask floats to the surface of Crystal Lake, having become detached during his struggle with Megan. In another, Deputy Cologne was seen trying to reach the jail cell keys after having been locked in by Tommy and Megan; the door to the police station opens and the film abruptly ends, indicating that Jason had managed to get free. Finally, the producers wanted to explicitly show onscreen that he was still capable of returning for a sequel, and the current ending showing a closeup of Jason's open, twitching eye was used.

TRIVIA:   McLoughlin said in an interview that he keeps the Jason Voorhees tombstone from Jason Lives in his backyard, and people have often mistaken it for an actual tombstone!

TRIVIA:   McLoughlin was actually offered the chance to direct Scream in the mid-90s, with Kevin Williamson admitting that the fantastically self-aware Part VI was an influential film for him on his path to eventually writing Scream.

Top:   Writer/Director Tom McLoughlin behind the camera;

Above:   On set filming the movie's climatic lake scene

Jason Lives was the most expensive Friday the 13th to date at $3 million, but ultimately grossed less than previous films in the series (Jason Lives grossed $19,472,057, marking the first time that a Friday the 13th installment did not gross over $20,000,000 and beginning the general decline in box office returns). It did however receive moderate reviews on its release, with Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress writing that it "may not be exactly a good movie in the strict sense, but it's easily the best in the series". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune called it the least offensive film of the most offensive film series ever, and  Variety wrote called the film predictable but "reasonably slick." But what mattered most was the favorable fan reaction, who loved that Jason was now back and the series had introduced a new supernatural element to Jason - he was always an unstoppable killing machine, but now it would seem he'd be impossible to kill now too!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   52%