Tommy Jarvis is now sane, but Jason still bothers him. Tommy comes up with a plan to go to Jason’s grave so he can cremate the body and know that Jason is dead for good. Tommy digs up Jason’s grave and a bolt of lightning hits Jason’s corpse. Jason then comes alive and tries to kill Tommy. Tommy makes a run for it and tries to warn the police that Jason is alive, but they don’y believe him. Camp Crystal Lake has been reopened as a new camp called Camp Forest Green, but little do the counselors and children know is that Jason is on his way.
Blaine: I was happy with the sixth “Friday the 13th” movie because it showed all the stuff I wanted to see that the fifth one, “A New Beginning”, didn’t show. For one the killer is 100% Jason. Another thing is that it shows how Jason gets resurrected from the dead because in “A New Beginning” everyone assumed that Jason was the murderer even though they never knew how he came back to life. But then at the end it was revealed that it wasn’t really Jason, it was an imposter. Paramount Pictures had informed the producers to get “Friday the 13th” back on track after “A New Beginning” became a failure with a lot of fans. They were disappointed that their favorite character, Jason, wasn’t in “A New Beginning". Tom McLoughlin was hired to write and direct the sixth installment to the “Friday the 13th” franchise after the producers saw his movie “One Dark Night”. Tom wasn’t interested in making a “Friday the 13th” movie because he knew that the franchise was sinking down after the fifth movie. The producers felt that Tom could figure out a way to make audiences fall in love with ‘Friday the 13th” again. So Tom went to Paramount Pictures Studios and watched the first five “Friday the 13th” movies back to back in order to find a way to do something new and different that hadn’t been shown before in the previous movies. Tom McLoughlin was a huge fan of the old gothic horror films, like “Frankenstein” for, and so he thought about bringing Jason back to life the same way Frankenstein was brought to life and that was having a lightning bolt hit him.
Originally both John Shepherd and Melanie Kinnaman were supposed to return as Tommy Jarvis and Pam after “A New Beginning”, but John didn’t want to do the sixth movie because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pursue a career in acting. Tom McLoughlin had wrote Tommy in the script he had developed, but left out Pam. I think it would have been very interesting to bring Pam back for “Jason Lives” after believing Tommy had killed her at the end of “A New Beginning”. Tommy was re-cast by actor Thom Mathews. I was very surprised and excited to see Thom Mathews as Tommy at the begging of “Jason Lives” because I loved him in “Return of the Living Dead”. I think it was cool that they have Thom Mathews portray Tommy Jarvis, one of the great characters of the “Friday the 13th” franchise.
Tom McLoughlin would name the locations in “Jason Lives” after his role models. The town of Carpenter was named after John Carpenter, one of the creators of “Halloween” and there’s a grocery story called Karloff Market, named after Frankenstein himself, Boris Karloff. And then the sheriff character, Garris, was named after Mick Garris, a horror director. It was important for Tom to give Jason this power after having a bolt of lighting hit his corpse. One of his powers is that he is indestructible. You can shoot at Jason several times, but the bullets go through him. The other power is super strength. He can punch through someone’s chest. That’s one of the best deaths Jason has ever done in the franchise. Another thing that I love about “Jason Lives” is the James Bond walk Jason does at the beginning of the movie. It does a close up shot of his eye, then the pupil widens out, shows Jason walking to the right and he takes a big swing with his machete.
Tom chose Jennifer Cooke to play Megan Garris, the sheriff’s daughter, and one of the reasons why he had chosen her for the role was because a lot of the final girls in the “Friday the 13th” movies were blonde and that was like an Alfred Hitchcock tradition to Tom because Hitchcock’s films always had a blonde as the lead female. It was interesting to see Tommy Jarvis have a love interest in “Jason Lives”. In “The Final Chapter” it showed twelve year old Tommy eye googling the women who were staying at the house next door a couple times. In “A New Beginning” he wasn’t interested in girls or anything because he was too busy being haunted by Jason. Now as an adult Tommy finds a girl who is interested in him.
One of the things I find ridiculous is that one of Jason’s victims tries to bribe him into not killing her, but you can’t bribe someone like Jason because all he wants is for people to die. Jason uses a metal spear to kill that victim and her friend. He puts the spear through the guys chest and then goes after the female. Nancy McLoughlin, the actress who played that victim, almost got hurt shooting that scene. After Jason kills Nancy’s friend he puts the spear through the windshield of her car while she tries to get out of there. The spear almost got Nancy when it goes through the windshield and she was very scared because of that. They only did one take of that shot. After Nancy gets out of the car she falls into a muddy puddle, tries to bribe Jason and he just slams the spear down her face. I like all the kill scenes in “Jason Lives”. He uses his super strength to twist one of the camp counselor’s head, crush an officer’s head and slams a woman's face against the side of an RV.
Jason has crushed a guy’s head before. In “Part III” he crushed the head of Chris’ boyfriend and his eye ball popped out. In “Jason Lives” he crushes the head of one the officers. According to Michael Swan, the actor who played that officer, the makeup effects department did a great job of making a fake head of him that could squeeze out fake brains. Jason’s last kill of “Jason Lives” is back cracking Sheriff Garris. Garris tries to fight Jason, but Jason is stronger than him and so he bends his back all the way. David Kagen (Sheriff Garris) would have his legs hidden in a box bellow the ground and the legs you see in that scene were someone else’s. There was a hole dug next to the box and this guy would go head down there while the legs would be shown in that scene along with the top half of David.
In the end, Tommy lures Jason into the lake so he can drown him by putting a chain around Jason’s neck that is wrapped around a big rock. Jason ends up taking Tommy down with him and Megan goes in to help Tommy. Megan uses the motor from the boat on Jason’s head and blood comes out. That scene was shot in two different places. All the stuff that shows what’s happening underwater was shot in a huge tank in Los Angeles. C.J. Graham, the actor who played Jason in “Jason Lives”, would actually have a chain around his neck while shooting that scene. Whenever he needed air the safety divers would provide him with oxygen. The things that happened above the water were shot at a real lake in the middle of no where.
After Megan kills Jason and saves Tommy all is well…..except for Jason’s eye moving at the end. It cuts to black after that. There was an ending in Tom’s script that was never shot and it shows Jason’s father. A lot of people who are fans of the “Friday the 13th” franchise know how messed up Jason’s mother is after believing her son had drowned to his death. Mrs. Voorhees' background story is that she had made love to someone she didn’t know that well, but the reason why she did it with him was because he was a real charmer. After that she became pregnant with Jason and her father was very upset with her because she was young and an unwed mother. So the father kicks her out of the house and she goes to the man who got her knocked up, but he’s no help to her. She manages to do well on her own after giving birth to Jason. Years pass and she gets a job at Camp Crystal Lake so that Jason can be with other kids, but because he is different and weird looking he gets picked on. Mrs. Voorhees has the camp counselors look after Jason while she is working, but they end up disobeying her and fool around with each other and Jason drowns. Tom McLoughlin thought it would have been interesting for Jason’s father to show up at the very end of “Jason Lives”. There is a caretaker that Jason kills in the movie, but Tom originally had him stay alive at the very end. At the end of the script, the caretaker would be at the cemetery and this mysterious stranger would walk in. You can’t see who he is or what he looks like. The only part of his body you see is his eyes. The producers didn’t want that ending to be added to the movie because that would be leading the franchise in another direction about a 60 year old man. It sounded like a cool idea to them, but they thought the “Friday the 13th” movies should be focussed on Jason. There are a few things that could have been added to these “Friday the 13th” movies that would have made things more interesting than they look.
Fans weren’t so sure about “Jason Lives” after “A New Beginning” had fooled them with a fake Jason and it didn’t do so well at the box office. Thom Matthews was and is really happy with the way “Jason Lives” looks. I can’t say “Jason Lives” scares me like the first “Friday the 13th”, but that doesn’t matter because it’s more about seeing Jason kill people. What scares me about the first “Friday the 13th” is the silent background it has from time to time while being murdered by someone mysterious who hides in the shadows and gets you when you least suspect it. “Jason Lives” was the last “Friday the 13th” to have Tommy Jarvis. I like to think that Tommy and Megan have a life together after taking care of Jason and move out of the state.
My rating on “Friday the 13th Jason Lives” is five out of five stars.
