I hope everyone is enjoying their Tuesday. This is part two of my Article, "Why Jason is The Scariest Horror Icon Today." I want to thank everyone for taking their time to comment on my article. I do appreciate people taking a moment out of their busy schedule to read my articles and to participate on my polls. I got a chance to read everyone's comments and they were awesome. I didn't think I was going to have time to work on this article until later on the week because with work and debating on whether or not to register for college summer school classes. So without further a do, lets begin.
On my first Article, "Why Jason is the Scariest Horror Icon Today part 1," I stated that Jason was better than Michael Myers. Jason and Michael both have many similarties but by far have many differences. I want to take the time to apologize to the Halloween fans out there. I wanted to hash that out before I begin. I am thinking about later on down the road about doing an article to compare and contrast Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. This article I am doing is simply my opinion and nothing more. You can either agree or disagree but keep posting your comments. I would love to have a constructive debate over it or I am open-minded to everyone's opinions because I might agree with you on why your favorite horror icon might be better than Jason Voorhees. I am stating my reasons why Jason is scarier based on my bad dreams I had as a child. As I reached my teenage years I re watched the Friday the 13th movies and enjoyed them much more than I did. By going back and watching them I thought I was looking for closure per say, but I realized much more. Jason is legend, wait for it...... ary. Jason is Legendary. (Thank you Barney Stinson off "How I met your Mother" a.k.a. Neil Patrick Harris).
Last time I was discussing the fact that most of Jason's body counts were in the woods of Camp Crystal Lake and why that was the reason I didn't go camping. Til this day I still haven't went on a camping trip. It's not the fact I think that Jason Voorhees is somewhere out there in the woods (I am 28 years old right now). I haven't went camping because it wasn't on the "Mike New's" family to do list. I hope to go before I reach the age of thirty. Other places that Jason did his murders in the Friday films, I would like to discuss, is in space (Jason X), On Elm St. (Freddy) vs. Jason, and New York (Jason takes Manhattan). I want to start these in chronological order. In this article we will discuss Jason Takes Manhattan.
I am sure everyone can agree with me on this after part four of the Jason franchise it started to go down hill. I will say that Jason takes Manhattan was my favorite out of Jason eight, nine, and ten. I felt Jason was truly a bad ass in this movie, and that's what made him scary. About a year or so After Jason was owned by Tina's deceased father, he rises out of Camp Crystal Lake to take a trip to New York. In this film the way he comes back to life is epic. It's almost kind of like a Frankenstein type thing. An anchor hits a power line causing some type of electrical reaction which goes into Jason's Body. It's alive! Jason is ready to kill @$$ and take names. Some of the weapons of choice Jason uses in this film is a harpoon gun. He uses it on a high school kid having sex with his girlfriend. What a scary but horrible way to die. Of course, Jason kills the girl with a harpoon gun to the chest. Another weapon that Jason uses is an electric guitar which he bashes the head in on some rock star chick trying to make a name for themselves. Now I know why I didn't want to take up guitar lessons. I didn't want to get an acoustic guitar shoved in my chest. Let me think..... oh yea! Jason does take a sauna rock and puts it through some guy's chest who was boxing with Julius. I did enjoy the Julius character. I was hoping he would of been one of the people to survive on this movie. His death was insane. We saw the strength of Jason when he knocked Julius' head off with one punch. Maybe I am sick for saying this but I found it kind of amusing when Julius told Jason to give his best shot. Well you got Jason's best shot buddy! Weapon of choice, fist! Other weapons he uses throughout the movie is his hands while he is choking someone to death, A piece of mirror on a chick who he strips naked. After watching some of these victims getting killed while they are having sex or naked, I started to think Jason was just mad that he couldn't feel a woman's touch. Anyways, I will continue. Other weapons Jason uses to kill his victims in this films where a machete to the throat, electrical panel which he throws a victim into, and an Axe to the back. Now these are all the deaths Jason caused when he was on the ship. (I think it was called SS Lazarus. Please correct me if I'm wrong). Now let me talk about the types of weapons he used in New York. The SS Lazarus reminds me of the Titanic in a way except the Titanic was destroyed by an iceberg. Lazarus was destroyed by Jason Voorhees.
I think it's funny when Jason is in the city of New York only because people didn't think it's a big deal that they see some guy with a mask walking around. I guess it's second nature to them. I would love to see a video on you tube of a tribute to Jason Voorhees in Jason takes Manhattan. The video would have to contain the death scenes of his victims in New York City while the background music is Jay-Z's song "New York" featuring Alicea Keys (if anyone does this please mention my name in the credits. lol!). My favorite scene in this movie is when Jason walks by a group of punks or gang bangers and just kicks their radio. The little, punk kid with the knife says "your dead meat slime bag. Jason lifts up his mask than he says "yo man, it's cool." All of them run away. That was epic. What makes Jason scary in this film is the fact that gang bangers and rapist are afraid of him. These are the same people we are afraid of today. Speaking of gang bangers, Jason does kill two of them in one scene. The first one, he kills with a syringe (drug deal going bad). and the second, he kills with a pipe. This is probably the only good deed I saw Jason do in his movies. The main character, Rennie, almost gets raped by these two gang bangers but super Voorhees is there to save the day. Jason also drags a cop into the alley and kills him. How scary is that? Jason is killing the long arm of the law. Other death scenes Jason uses for weapons in New york is a car. A car? Yes, A car. When Colleen is left in the car alone and it explodes. Colleen's death doesn't really indicate if this was Jason's doing but I'm pretty sure he had something to do with it. Did Jason Voorhees go on FBI's government watch list? I dare someone to check it out. Last and not least, Charles drowns in a barrel of sewage, and a sanitation worker gets bashed in the head with his own wrench. There is one death scene that I didn't mention. I have to mention Jason's death scene.
I didn't quite understand the ending of Jason in this movie. When you watch Jason goes to hell he is back in his old body, but at the end of this movie he is a little boy? I guess this movie was suppose to be the ending of the franchise before Jason Goes to Hell. Maybe someone will explain it to me. Anyways, I don't want to get off topic. I thought the ending to this was very creative. We know that Jason doesn't like water too much since he drowned when he was a child. They use toxic waste as a substitute for water, which he drowns to death after his masks falls off and his face is melting away. After the toxic finally leaves the sewers, we see Jason in human form as a child laying their dead. The best death scene in the movie. We have a happy ending.
I found this movie very interesting because most of the characters had awesome occupations. We had a captain, we had a police officer, we had a restaurant worker or chef (Ken Kirzinger), professor, just to name a few. Most of them were killed by Jason. These are what companies are doing now days to save paperwork. Instead of doing the "lay offs" they call up Jason to do the "kill offs" (Sorry it was a lame joke).
This film reminded me of what makes Jason the scariest horror icon today. They took a cult classic that was so corny but gave me a visualization of what would happen if Jason Voorhees would set foot on New York. It's like he stepped outside his comfort zone of Camp Crystal Lake and became a dangerous, brutal, foreign stranger in another land. The whole concept worked for his character. In previous films, he is bashing bodies against a sleeping bag in the woods to beating the hell out of a gang banger with a pipe in the mean streets of NYC. He is throwing a woman out of a second story window to uppercutting the head off of one of his victims on a skyscraper. This was a trophy that Jason puton his bookshelf. This was a film that opened up other scenarios; Jason in Space and Jason on Elm street/Freddy's nightmare (which I will discuss these two films on later articles).
The reason why they rebooted the Friday the 13th franchise is because Hollywood wanted to introduce the younger generation to this character so they could experience the bad, bed wetting dreams, I had as a child. It will definitely be an honor when I can introduce Friday the 13th movies to my daughter and she is coming next to my bedside waking me up because she had a bad dream.
I just had to do it!