Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Review by HTQ4
Films:
DVDs:

Part VII
Written by Manuel Fidello & Daryl Haney, based on characters created by Victor Miller
Directed by John Carl Buechler
Starring Kane Hodder, Lar Park-Lincoln, Kevin Blair, Terry Kiser, Susan Blu

Part VIII
Written by Rob Hedden, based on characters created by Victor Miller
Directed by Rob Hedden
Starring Kane Hodder, Jensen Daggett, Todd Shaffer, Tiffany Paulsen, Timothy Burr Mirkovich

Released by: Paramount
Rating: R
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes
My Advice: Skip 'em

Jason Voorhees (Hodder) just can't quite take a hint. He just doesn't seem to get it that people don't like psychopathic zombie murderers out on the loose and when he does finally manage to get killed off, he just keeps coming back again and again. In Part VII, for example, he's back to his old tricks at Crystal Lake where he has been mysteriously brought back from his watery grave by a young woman named Tina (Park-Lincoln). She does this with her ability to levitate objects (she can also see into the future, but we'll get to that in a minute). In Part VIII, Jason makes his way to the Big Apple to wreak a little havoc on the island of Manhattan. Anyway, Tina--or whoever it is that's being chased at the moment--must put an end to Jason's reign of terror once and for all...or at least until the next film comes out.

Well, I think we all know that this franchise was intellectually bankrupt with the first movie, but these sequels just kept getting made and people just kept going to see them for some reason. At some point, the films just stopped trying to be more gross and bloody than the last and we just kept getting the same movie over and over again with minor little twists to make people think that something new was going to happen. The plots are all the same. At the end of the movie, Jason has to be stopped somehow so that people will quit dying (or so that the audience can get up and go to the bathroom and get something to eat--by that time, the next sequel should be in theatres...). The acting is always horrible and the Jump-Out-And-Get-You scenes always come at just the right moment to make you jump out of your seat and throw popcorn all down the dress of your date.

But, in reality, if we really expected to go see these movies because we thought we were going to have our lives changed or our perception altered by the intense and powerful character development, we were more deluded than the filmmaker's have given us credit for, right? I mean, really what more can be said about this entire franchise? Except for the fact that, comically, the twists they have by this point just get more and more ludicrous. Part VII is just basically "Jason vs. Carrie" while Part VIII is just moving Jason to a new locale. At least we haven't gotten to the part where he's shot into future...oh no, we have to wait for two more chapters down the line for that one.

This is one time that I'm actually thankful that Paramount didn't try to put any special features on their DVDs. I don't think I could stand sitting through a director's commentary for these films. It would be more horrible than the stuff Jason does in the films. Not only is there not a commentary track, there are no special features of any kind, which is quite a relief. Can you imagine being forced to sit through interviews with the cast and crew where they were doing their best "intellectual actor" impression and trying to justify their character's existence with nauseating pop culture psychobabble? Oh! The Humanity!

So, I'm going to recommend a skip-out on these DVDs. I know I have probably offended some fans of this franchise, but I just can't justify spending hard-earned money on DVDs for bad movies with no special features.