Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is ridiculous. Lightning strikes already decayed Jason's body, which has been eaten by maggots for quite some time, and he rises from the grave to start a new killing spree. The premise itself has killed my will to watch this movie. Although pretty stupid, the franchise used to be somewhat realistic. What we see on the screen could really happen to anyone and that made this franchise scary. The moment already stupid story becomes also impossible to really happen, it stops being tense and frightening. In addition, there is no nudity and bunch of scenes look like they have been taken from a bad comedy, all of which makes "Jason Lives" one of the weaker parts of the "Friday the 13th" franchise. The only good things in this movie are the music of the legendary Alice Cooper and, although it mostly repeats what was already seen in the prequels, it also brings a couple of original ideas.5/10

Well, if there was any doubt to Jason being alive or dead before, this movie will put an end to that question. In this movie at least, and from then on,, Jason was definitely dead, and is now brought back to life. He's brought back by being dug up and struck by lightning, which was pretty cliche, but otherwise, I guess the movie is pretty much what you'd expect from a Friday the 13th film. Main issue I had is the literally, too dumb to even be alive police chief who seems to think someone is capable of killing another person while in jail. It as a relief at the end though. It's not a bad movie, another one full of blood and bull crap.

Tommy Jarvis decides to dig Jason up from the grave, only for him to be brought back to life by a lightning strike, Frankenstein style! And thank goodness he did because this is an excellent entry in the series. This film is notable for two things - it introduced humour & also in bringing Jason back from the dead he is virtually indestructible. In Alice Cooper it also has a great soundtrack. There's no nudity here & the gore has been toned down but it has a very high body count with many inventive kills, it's fast paced, well acted & is hugely enjoyable. Sadly the series went down hill from here...

The sixth in producer Sean S. Cunningham's humdrum horror franchise, the fifth sequel which would have seemed like a somewhat pointless venture, as it has increasingly just become an excuse to milk as much out of the Friday the 13th cash cow for all it's worth. However with Jason Lives, a title which is something of a contradiction in terms given the context of the story, the series went in something of a new direction as there was a divergence in to supernatural territory. It also adopted a more comedic tone with writer/director Tom McLoughlin taking up the reigns. With the psychotic, hockey masked mummy's boy lying peacefully in his grave after coming to a an unceremonious end at the end of The Final Chapter (a moniker that would prove to be an ironic misnomer), Tommy Jarvis, (Thom Matthews) the troubled hero of Jason Lives, and who was the young boy survivor of that film who's character was again, seen in the lacklustre A New Beginning, can't put Jason to rest in his mind. Determined to do so he breaks out of the mental institution where he has been residing with fellow patient Allen Hawed (Ron Palillo) to exhume the killers grave and burn his maggot infested corpse to cinders. Of course things don't go quite according to plan when Tommy, who upon clasping eyes on Jason's decomposing remains stabs it with a metal fence post after snapping and briefly losing his composure. What follows is a tremendously silly resurrection scene as a bolt of lightning strikes the metal fence post, still embedded in the lifeless body and reanimates the murderous behemoth. Tommy manages to evade Jason while Allen proves not to be quite so lucky. Donning his iconic hockey masked, the newly zombified killer sets off for Camp Crystal Lake, which has been renamed Forest Green with an inevitable blood bath and a showdown between Tommy and his old nemesis on the cards.From the offset, it would be quite easy to mistake Jason Lives as just another generic slasher movie in a franchise which had already ran out of steam by the time it's fifth instalment had come along. Although quite frankly, the first movie was nothing more than a poor man's Halloween and it's sequels flat out mundane. Thankfully however, while not a classic of it's genre but any stretch of the imagination, this outing manages to stand out among the rest. Silly and dumb though the film is, it's more knowing in this regard and Tom McLoughlin who directed as well as wrote the screenplay treats the material with more affectionate irreverence. It's dumb and silly but it's blatantly so that he's winking at the audience from behind the camera. I'd go so far as to say that as it stands, it could be seen as a precursor to Wes Craven's Scream Movies. The story itself is of course standard fare and the means of Jason's rising from the grave is downright ridiculous, and owes some kind of of a debt to the Frankenstein story. Jason after all is a lumbering monster in a similar vein to Mary Shelly's iconic antagonist. There's also some stupid plot twists with the actions of the movies main heroine investing too much trust in a short amount of time in the movies frantic hero. The Sheriff is also your hackneyed obstacle (who is also conveniently the father of the lead female) who typically doesn't heed the main protagonists warnings and eventually suspects him as being the killer. As for the overall standard of the acting, they're solid enough although ropy at times but then I wasn't exactly expecting Academy Award winning quality here, and it could have been worse than it actually is. Never the less, if you leave your brain behind and just go with it, it's not bad fun and there's some innovative kill scenes. Yes, the scene with the executive paint-ballers is too comedic and clownish and is out of sync with the whole tone of the rest of the movie, while the fact that none of the kids under the care of the camp counsellors miraculously go unharmed is unconvincing, but this is still watchable undemanding fodder which while not a class of it's genre makes for a passable enough way to waste an hour and a half of your time. Plus it has the added bonus of that thumping good theme tune performed by Alice Cooper