Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

“
Kill or be killed.

”— Tagline
***Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives*** is a 1986 slasher film, the sixth film in the *Friday the 13th* film series. The film was written and directed by Tom McLoughlin. Although the original concept called for Tommy Jarvis, the protagonist of parts *IV* and *V*, to become the new villain, the poor fan reception of *Friday the 13th: A New Beginning* prompted the producers to bring back Jason Voorhees as the series' antagonist. In resurrecting Jason, McLoughlin made Jason an explicitly supernatural force for the first time in the series, depicting him as being raised from the dead via electricity; this version of Jason, an undead serial killer and more powerful superhuman, would become the standard depiction for the rest of the franchise, until 2009's remake. The film likewise broke with many other series conventions, introducing metahumor and action film elements including shootouts and car chases.

The film was a critical success, it was the first film in the series to receive favorable reviews since the original. In the years since its release, its self-referential humor and numerous instances of breaking the fourth wall have been praised for prefiguring Wes Craven's *Scream* series and other similar 1990s horror films. As of 2003's *Freddy vs. Jason*, *Jason Lives* was a fan favorite of the series, in addition to receiving positive notice from horror film historians. It is followed by *Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood*.

## Plot

Years have passed since Crystal Lake had been renamed to Forest Green, but Tommy Jarvis, still suffering from hallucinations returns with a friend of his from the hospital; Allen Hawes, hoping to cremate Jason's body and stop his hallucinations. At the cemetery, they dig up Jason's corpse, but seeing it causes Tommy to snap and he stabs Jason's body with a metal fence post. Turning his back on Jason, two lightning bolts strike the post and revive the now-undead killer. Tommy tries to light the gasoline he soaked Jason in, but a sudden downpour prevents it. When Hawes tries to attack Jason with a shovel, his heart is punched out. Tommy runs and makes his way to the sheriff's office, where his panic and attempt to grab weapons gets him put into a jail cell. His pleas that Jason has returned goes unheeded by Sheriff Garris. On the road, two young adults, Darren and Lizbeth get lost looking for the camp and run into Jason, they fail to frighten Jason off the road and he impales them both with the metal rod that resurrected him. The next morning, Garris' daughter Megan and her friends Sissy, Cort and Lizbeth's sister Paula ask him to search for Darren and Lizbeth. Tommy warns them about Jason, but as he is now considered an urban legend they ignore the warnings, though Megan finds herself attracted to him.

In the woods, Jason happens upon a corporate paintball game, he kills four of them for their equipment and chases the helpless, clumsy Roy off into the woods. At Camp Forest Green, the kids arrive, and the teens do their best to run the camp without Darren and Lizbeth. Meanwhile, Garris decides to escort Tommy out of his jurisdiction due to his influence on his daughter, Tommy tries to make a run for Jason's grave, but finds that the caretaker had covered it up to deny responsibility for it being dug up, and Hawes' body is buried in its place. Tommy is then escorted out of town. Cort goes out to have sex with a girl named Nikki, who borrowed an RV from her step-father, when the power is pulled suddenly, they vacate the area, unaware that Jason had snuck on board. He crushes Nikki's skull then kills Cort by ramming a bowie knife into his skull. He then happens upon the caretaker and stabs his throat out with his own whiskey bottle, then kills a nearby couple who happened to witness the murder. The sheriff's men discover several dead bodies and Garris immediately implicates Tommy in the murders, meanwhile Tommy has contacted Megan and convinced her to help him exorcise Jason back into the lake he drowned as a child. Jason makes his way to the camp and frightens one of the children, Nancy. Paula and Sissy show her there's nothing to fear and send her to bed, when Paula falls asleep, Sissy is grabbed through their cabin window and her head is twisted clean off. Nancy again sees Paula and shows her a bloodied machete. Convinced Sissy and Cort are playing pranks on each other, they go out to find them.

Meanwhile, Megan and Tommy are pulled over by Garris, and despite her alibi she was with him, he does not believe Tommy to be innocent and they go out to the camp to investigate. Tommy and Megan develop a ruse to trick the deputy and they both escape the station together. At the camp, Jason slaughters Paula after she put Nancy to bed and the police arrive to investigate, discovering the carnage, Jason quickly takes out both of Garris' men. When Megan arrives, her calls to her father alert Jason who tries to go after her. Garris tries to stop him and despite taking Jason to the ground and landing blows to his face with a nearby boulder, he is bent in half backwards and is killed. Jason is about to kill Megan, but Tommy calls to him from the lake, and he goes after him instead. Tommy is attacked in the boat in the middle of the lake, and ties a boulder around Jason's neck, but he fights back, holding Tommy underwater long enough to drown him. Megan rushes out to save him and is nearly killed herself when Jason grabs her leg, she turns the boat's motor into Jason's neck and he releases her. She takes Tommy back to shore and uses CPR to revive him. Tommy laments that it's finally over, and that Jason is home.

Under the water, tied in a prison at the bottom of the lake, Jason stares patiently off into the water, glaring at the audience as the screen fades to black.

## Cast

* C. J. Graham/Dan Bradley as Jason Voorhees
* Thom Mathews as Tommy Jarvis
* Jennifer Cooke as Megan Garris
* David Kagen as Sheriff Mike Garris
* Renee Jones as Sissy Baker
* Kerry Noonan as Paula
* Darcy DeMoss as Nikki
* Tom Fridley as Cort
* Alan Blumenfeld as Larry
* Matthew Faison as Stan
* Ann Ryerson as Katie
* Tony Goldwyn as Darren
* Nancy McLoughlin as Lizbeth
* Ron Palillo as Allen Hawes
* Vincent Guastaferro as Deputy Rick Cologne
* Michael Swan as Officer Pappas
* Courtney Vickery as Nancy
* Whitney Rydbeck as Roy
* Bob Larkin as Martin
* Wallace Merck as Burt
* Justin Nowell as Billy
* Roger Rose as Steven
* Michael Nomad as Officer Thornton
* Cynthia Kania as Annette
* Temi Epstein as Little Girl
* Justin Nowell as Billy
* Taras O'Har as Little Boy
* Tommy Nowell as Tyen
* Sheri Levinsky as Bus Monitor

## Production

### Pre-production and writing

Although the previous film in the series, *Friday the 13th: A New Beginning*, had been a financial success, it had disappointed the series' fans and received some of the worst reviews of any film in the franchise. In order to prevent further alienating the fans (and thus potentially endangering the series), the producers decided to take the series in a new direction, moving it away from what producer Frank Mancuso Jr. called the "coarse" nature of *A New Beginning*.

To this end, Mancuso hired Tom McLoughlin, who had directed the successful horror film *One Dark Night* but was also known around Hollywood for shopping around various comedy scripts he had written, a dichotomy that appealed to Mancuso. McLoughlin 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.

McLoughlin decided to take the film in the direction of an old Universal Monsters movie, specifically the 1931 version of *Frankenstein*, which portrayed the monster as a lumbering killer brought to life by electricity. McLoughlin also drew from vampire lore in order to give Jason a weakness, namely being returned to his "home soil"; to achieve this, McLoughlin disregarded the idea presented in *Part 2* that Jason had survived his drowning, instead presenting the idea that Jason has always been some sort of supernatural force. He also decided to retcon the events of the fifth film in order to circumvent that film's cliffhanger ending, which implicated that protagonist Tommy Jarvis had become a serial killer.

McLoughlin further decided to expand the series' thematic scope, incorporating action film elements and postmodern metahumor; 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." In addition to *Frankenstein*, McLoughlin also cited as inspiration his love of gothic horror, particularly the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and his Catholic upbringing; *Jason Lives* features the series' only explicit references to God, and during the climax a praying girl is spared by Jason (a similar scene, in which the same girl prays for Tommy while Megan performs CPR, then mouths "Thank you" while looking skyward was deleted from the final cut of the movie, apparently against McLoughlin's wishes; he recalled in the 2009 DVD's director's commentary, "Somehow it didn't stay in... probably too much sentiment").

### Casting

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. At one point in time when *Jason Lives* was being considered as a direct sequel to *A New Beginning* rather than to *The Final Chapter*, the surviving characters Pam and Reggie from *A New Beginning* were to have died in the film's opening moments. Shavar Ross, whom played Reggie in *A New Beginning*, said he wasn't interested in coming back to be killed off and has intimated as much in interviews/commentary for *His Name Was Jason* and the 2009 DVD of *A New Beginning*.

Although Mancuso retained control over the film's casting, he deferred to McLoughlin's judgment, with the only caveat being that the final girl had to be a "very attractive blonde". To fulfill this requirement, McLoughlin chose Jennifer Cooke, based on her performance in the television series *V*. The role of Hawes, Tommy's would-be sidekick who dies within the first five minutes of the movie, was given to another television veteran, Ron Palillo, famous for the role of Horshack on *Welcome Back, Kotter*.

John Shepherd was initially asked to reprise his role as Tommy Jarvis from the previous film. Shepherd, an evangelical Christian who had reservations about returning to the series based on the atmosphere surrounding *A New Beginning*, was initially attracted to *Jason Lives* based on the scene in which a praying girl is spared by Jason. He ultimately decided to film the movie *Caught*, and shortly thereafter retired from acting to go to seminary. Thom Matthews, who would take over the mantel of Tommy Jarvis, was chosen for his work in the horror comedy *Return of the Living Dead*, although McLoughlin himself was unaware of Matthews' horror credentials until after shooting began. Other cast members were culled from actors whom McLoughlin had directed before (such as David Kagen, who was also an acting teacher for female lead Jennifer Cooke) and McLoughlin's own family—Jason's first female victim in the film, Lizbeth, was played by McLoughlin's wife, Nancy. In keeping with the series' tradition, the role of Jason was given to a stuntman, Dan Bradley. Bradley, however, was replaced shortly thereafter by C.J. Graham. Bradley's involvement during the paintball scene is kept.

### Filming

After the first day of filming, Mancuso decided that he disliked Bradley's appearance onscreen as Jason. Although the scenes that Bradley filmed—in which Jason kills the paintball playing executives—were kept in the completed picture, the rest of Jason's scenes were performed by C. J. Graham, an area restaurant manager and former soldier. As part of a stage show put on at the restaurant, a magician would hypnotize audience members and place them in a scenario during which they encountered Jason Voorhees; Graham, who stood 6'3 and weighed 250 lbs, was asked to play Jason for the scenario. *Jason Lives*' special effects coordinator, Martin Becker, was in the audience for one such show, and recommended Graham to Mancuso and McLoughlin. Both men were impressed with Graham's presence, and he was hired to film the remainder of Jason's scenes.

*Jason Lives* would become notable for being the only film in the franchise to contain no nudity; the characters in the film's sole sex scene are both fully clothed, a conscious move on McLoughlin's part to distance the series from the notion that the *Friday the 13th* films were morality tales in which premarital sex was punished by death. McLoughlin was pressured by the film's producers to have Darcy Demoss remove her shirt during the RV sex scene, but he only suggested the idea to Demoss, who refused.

*Jason Lives* was filmed in Covington, Georgia, an area close to Atlanta, GA. The scenes involving the police department and town were filmed in Covington while the camp scenes were filmed at Camp Daniel Morgan outside the city limits of Covington. In the film, Camp Crystal Lake has been renamed Lake Forest Green. Surrounding Camp Daniel Morgan are Smokey the Bear signs asking everyone to "Keep the Forests Green".

Some of the climactic moments of the film involving the primary characters in the lake were actually filmed in the swimming pool of McLoughlin's father. Although McLoughlin ruined the pool's filter in the process (it was jammed by gore churned into the water when Jason is hit with the boat propeller), McLoughlin's father was pleased that he could now boast a Hollywood film had been shot in his backyard.

### Post-production

McLoughlin's attempt to deliver a "different" kind of *Friday the 13th* film were met with skepticism from the producers. 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 McLoughlin add additional gore, violence, and murders to the film. The original cut of the film contained 13 killings as an in-joke; in order to appease the studio, McLoughlin had to add an additional three killings, bringing the total up to 16. These were the killings of Martin the gravedigger, and the recently engaged couple on a nighttime picnic. The scene of Jason killing Martin would later be cited by McLoughlin as one of his favorite parts of the movie for the shot in which the picnicing man suddenly realizes that he's been spotted by Jason, which McLoughlin felt to be the film's scariest moment.

Additionally, McLoughlin 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.

McLoughlin also found himself in contention with the producers over how the film should end. In the original script, the movie was supposed to have concluded in the graveyard, with Martin the gravedigger meeting Jason's father, Elias—a heretofore unseen character in the series—with the implication that Elias knows Jason has been resurrected and has come looking for him. The studio balked at the scene, as they did not want the responsibility of having to introduce Elias' backstory in the next installment in the franchise; additionally, the added murder of Martin made the scene an impossibility to shoot. This ending would have tied up a continuity error from *A New Beginning*, when it is mentioned that Jason was cremated; a deleted scene from *Jason Lives* had Tommy asking Sheriff Garris why Jason wasn't cremated, as had been planned, at which point Garris informs him that someone paid the city to bury Jason; Elias' handing Martin a wad of money would have indicated that he was the man who paid for Jason's burial. The scene was later storyboarded for inclusion on the film's "Deluxe Edition" DVD release, with Bob Larkin reprising his role as Martin to provide voiceover. Elias, like Jason, was scripted to be completely silent.

McLoughlin ultimately shot three endings, two of which, against his expectations, were not included on the film's DVD release. 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. The producers disliked both of these endings, as each one left Jason's survival ambiguous, and wanted it explicitly shown onscreen that he was still capable of returning for a sequel. As a result, McLoughlin shot the film's current ending, showing a closeup of Jason's open, twitching eye.

### Music

The film's music was composed by Harry Manfredini, who composed the scores to all of the series' previous installments. In addition to the original score, the soundtrack also featured:

* "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" by Alice Cooper, from his album *Constrictor*
* "I'm No Animal" by Felony, from their album *Vigilante*
* "Teenage Frankenstein" by Alice Cooper, from his album *Constrictor*
* "Hard Rock Summer" by Alice Cooper, from the box set *The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper*

"He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" had an accompanying music video, combining clips from the film with new footage featuring Cooper. It is not present on any home video release of the film, but can be viewed on YouTube.

On January 13, 2012, La-La Land Records released a limited edition 6-CD boxset containing Manfredini's scores from the first six *Friday the 13th* films. It sold out in less than 24 hours.

## Reception

### Box office

*Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives* opened on August 1, 1986 in 1,610 theaters and grossed $6.7 million its opening weekend. Ultimately, it would go on to gross a total of $19.4 million at the US box office, ranking at number 46 on the list of the year's top earners. The Numbers estimates the US gross at $17.8 million.

## Critical response

Popular with critics overall, *Jason Lives* received favorable reviews, the first time since the original *Friday the 13th* that an entry in the series received anything other than a negative review. The film was praised for having more of a plot than other films in the franchise, as well as its self-referential humor, which has been considered by some to be an inspiration for the style of Scream, as well as other horror films of the 1990s. Jeffrey M. Anderson called it "the best of the Friday the 13th series, mainly because of the winking, insider humor" and added that it was "like a precursor to Wes Craven's Scream ten years later". Gerry Shamray called it "the only good "*Friday*". James Kendrick called it "a funny, largely enjoyable near-spoof of slasher films in general and the Friday the 13th series in particular".

Fan reception was largely positive; as of the release of *Freddy vs. Jason* in 2003, it was considered a fan favorite in the franchise. This is largely attributed to the use of humor, though some were put off by this approach.

## Novelization

A novelization of *Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives* was written by Simon Hawke in 1986; notably, the novelization features an appearance by Elias Voorhees, Jason's father who was originally meant to appear in the film, but was cut. The book also includes various flashbacks to Jason's childhood and the backstories of characters such as Tommy and Sheriff Garris are also expanded.

**Films:** *Friday the 13th* • *Part 2* • *Part III* • *The Final Chapter* • *A New Beginning* • ***Jason Lives*** • *The New Blood* • *Jason Takes Manhattan* • *Jason Goes to Hell* • *Jason X* • *Freddy vs. Jason* • *Friday the 13th* (2009)
**Characters:** Jason Voorhees • Pamela Voorhees
**Comics:** *Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash* • *The Nightmare Warriors*
**Games and TV:** *Friday the 13th* (1985 game) • *Friday the 13th* (NES game) • *Mortal Kombat X* • *Friday the 13th: The Series*
**Related topics:** *A Nightmare on Elm Street* • *Mortal Kombat* • *Evil Dead*