Jason Goes To Hell -- 1993 -- UR

Ah, part 9 of the illustrious Friday the 13th series. Will it ever, ever end? Will it ever get better? Who knows? Probably not. Friday the 13th has one single purpose: to kill off the most people in the least amount of time possible. Some relate it to the basic construction of a porn film. The plot only exists for people to find reasons to have sex. Well, in most Friday films, the plot only exists to find reasons to kill people in random and creative ways. Unfortunately for the makers of the Friday films, these creative ways are usually cut in favor of getting an R rating.

This latest installment leaves behind the pathetic attempt at creativity that was Jason Takes Manhattan and tries to move in the direction of Halloween 5 and Nightmare 6 by throwing in a family member as a method to take out the bad guy. This one throws in another twist by allowing Jason to move from body to body in search of a legitimate family member as a permanent host. It's exceptionally clever, and for that, I gotta give it some credit. But...

The cleverness ends there. From this point, we have hosts of cliches, dumb moves, and stuff that flat doesn't make sense to make it all work. The way this story kicks off and the way Jason gets his first host is his heart enticing the mortician to eat it. Yup, remember when I said "eat your heart out, Friday the 13th"? Well, here's when that happens. He chows down on that black heart and becomes Jason. It's disgusting.

So toss in hosts of dumb characters, an obligatory camp crystal lake scene that serves zero purpose but to get some kids killed and throw in some T&A, lots of exposition and secrecy to keep us hanging, and a big old house that is the Voorhees mansion complete with holes in the floor that lead straight to the basement. It's crazy some of the things they expect us to swallow in this narrative. We even get the heroine who, after defeating the bad guy only inches away, kneels next to her friend to weep over her body for a really, really long time (incidentally, this friend is the only person she wept over during the entire film, and the person was such a minor death fodder character that we barely knew her).

Without nitpicking the heck out of the film, I'll end off by saying that the premise was pretty decent, and the opening was shocking. The idea made sense though the execution faltered considerably. It was ripe with the same old stuff that hurts all the prior installments, and it doesn't even follow the same continuity. If you watched all the other ones, you might as well view this one too, but if you haven't, it's nothing too special.