Both Kane and I knew how big of a deal my death scene was, because no one has ever boxed Jason before. And what's so cool about working with Kane on the action scenes was that he just said, "Let's go for it." As an actor, he was very giving. It turned out awesome. I thought we nailed that scene. I've never counted the actual punches, but Steve Mirkovich told me after the film's premiere that it was like 72 punches or something like that! I still hear from fans that that's not just one of their favorite kills in the series, but one of the most memorable in the horror genre.
For the scene, they made three fake heads of me: one for close-ups that has the membranes hanging out, a lighter one that is not as detailed that they could toss in the air, and then a heavy one that could be thrown off the building and go "Thud!" when it landed in the garbage can. I wore my hair differently on my own than I did in the movie—it's kind of wavy and parted to the side—and the only time Jamie Brown had seen me was a few times passing in the hotel. So the hair on the head of the dummy looked like how he saw me in the hotel. You can't really tell in the movie too much but it is kind of funny.
But the best part is that I got to keep one of the fake heads they cast of me. Still, to this day, when my friends' kids come over, the first thing they say is, "Show me the head!"
SCOTT REEVES:
It became a running joke on the set. I think that head made it to various places on the set at random times. You'd open something, and there would be V.C.'s decapitated head. We all had a really good time with that.
"By the time Part VIII came along, Jason at a camp in the woods was no longer enough," says producer Randolph Cheveldave. "It was either move him to New York or someplace else, or lose him altogether."
ROB HEDDEN:
Part of my background was writing for shows like the revival of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," which were all about having twists and surprises and things that are unexpected. And you don't want to be too predictable with the creative murders in the Friday movies—you don't want somebody to die when you think they are going to die. So when Julius gets thrown overboard early on, I wanted the audience to forget about him, then he shoots back up when the survivors are trying to escape by lifeboat and it turns out he's not dead. For anybody who is watching these movies, that's always the question: "Who's gonna get it next, and how?" You've got to come up with ways to knock off these characters in a way that is fresh and unexpected. Which is hard when you're talking about a death toll in a single movie that hits the teens.
I think the death of Julius is a great one. The core idea being that Jason can get clobbered and clobbered but then just needs to throw one punch, because of course he's this mythic character that you can't kill. My original intention was to have Julius and Jason duke it out in Madison Square Garden. But then when I couldn't do that, I still couldn't give up the scene, that there had to be that boxing match between Julius and Jason. And that it hadn't been done before in a slasher movie, at least that I knew of. So despite not being able to shoot in Madison Square Garden, I still wanted that big open feel, and decided upon a rooftop where we could see the city in the background and we could still do these big wide shots.
KELLY HU:
I remember being very concerned at first about my death scene. It was always planned to throw my character across the floor but I couldn't visualize how it was going to be done so I really had to trust Rob. It was really hard for me to figure out where, physically, Jason was going to be positioned and how it was going to be blocked and how he was going to appear. I remember it felt like hours shooting it, because I was nervous and scared about doing the whole thing to begin with, seeing as it was my first film.
Some fans have asked me if there was originally more to my death scene because there was no blood in it. But we really made a conscious effort to do something different with it. And I did not want to scream, because I didn't want to be the girl in the Friday the 13th movie who screams the whole way through. So instead, I made a lot of grunting noises and panicked sounds. But, of course, after the film wrapped, they brought in another girl during the looping sessions to dub me. I don't think they ever noticed that I wasn't screaming until they were putting the movie together. So none of the screams in the movie are really me.
KANE HODDER:
That was a rather brutal killing, where I pick up Eva by her throat and strangled her against the ceiling. What I have always told an actor even before we ever start shooting is that they need to know it is going to be a little rough. I'm not going to hurt them bad, but they'll have to take a little abuse or it is just not going to look right. And for the most part, just about all of the actors I've worked with have been pretty game. And particularly with this scene, because it has always been a pet peeve where you see someone choking somebody onscreen, and it doesn't look real you've got to press your hands into the neck to make it look right. So, while the actor might get bruised a little bit, they always like it when they see it on film.
PETER MARK RICHMAN:
The thing that I am most thankful for on Part VIII is that my double did my death scene in the barrel. He had to have his face stuffed down in it! They even had a dead rat floating in there. Horrifying!
ROB HEDDEN:
I ended up almost always shooting two versions of a death scene. For example, in the scene where the ship's captain gets his throat slit, I did one version where he leans back, and then you see the slit open up in his throat and blood starts dribbling out. That's the "A" version. In the "B" version, the slit appears in his throat but there's no blood. We cut away before the blood flows. So we were always covered.
STEVE MIRKOVICH:
I remember specifically one of the cuts, where there was a shadow of a wrench coming down and smacking somebody in the head. On set, somebody was standing offstage and throwing blood on the wall. Well, in the original cut, it was like a bucket of blood. But we had to tone it down to like a cup. Only then would the MPAA forgive us.
"Jason is not nearly as scary when the mask comes off," opines Kane Hodder. "Even if his face is hideously deformed, the ominous presence of that mask is what really makes the character."
SHARLENE MARTIN:
There was more to my death scene that you didn't get to see. I do believe it was a lot bloodier than what you saw. They ended up having to cut away at the moment of impact, and it all ended up taking a very long time. I remember they worked very hard to make up for the fact that they would have to cut it, so they were doing things like trying to frame shots with my reflection off the mirror—to do it very Hitchcock-like. Very dark and scary. So if the scene had continued, you would have saw a lot more. But even that would have been, by today's standards, nothing.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
I think part of the issue with the reaction to these movies is, it's easier for the audience to take a death if the individual being killed has some moral or psychological flaw. Like the gang members in the movie who take drugs—they die. Or Tamara, who likes sex and coke. Well, the minute she does that onscreen you know she's got to go. At the time, too, I think maybe the MPAA was more lenient with the Freddy movies because they were more fantastical and because of his quick wit. With Jason, it was all always only about that he was a guarantee of death if you enjoyed teen sex or drinking or drugs. It was just Jason killing a bunch of kids.
ROB HEDDEN:
I had no illusions. It's like if you marry a woman who is really overweight and you go into the marriage saying, "In two months, I'm going to get her skinny," you're kidding yourself. You marry somebody for who they are, love them for who they are. When I went into Jason Takes Manhattan, it was like, "This is the genre. I'm not going to reinvent what people love. I'm going to try to enhance what people love. And what these fans want is to see people get murdered in creative ways."
That is one of the factors of why I put a little more humor into my Friday. Because I am not a fan of slashers, per se. And this is not a documentary. Nobody's really going to get their head knocked off their shoulders, and it's not goi
ng to roll into a dumpster. That doesn't happen in real life. So if I'm going to glorify it a little bit, I still want there to be a little bit of a wink, too.
Some people like the humor and some people don't. The hardcore fans found fault with the fact that it was a little over the top. But I think good horror movies use humor to release the tension. For example, when Jason arrives at the pier in New York, I just thought, "Let's put a joke here. Let's put a billboard of a hockey player that Jason sees, right when he lands in New York harbor. Then he looks at it and kind of cocks his head." We also did the same thing with the gangbanger guys in Times Square where Jason kicks the boom box. I wanted things like that to get a laugh in the theater.
KANE HODDER:
Those things seemed funny at the time, but I thought they were just too much. Jason shouldn't be played for laughs.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
I know there was a huge temptation at the time, particularly on Frank Jr.'s part, to take Jason more into the realm of Freddy Krueger. Not necessarily to make Jason talk, but to bring in that element of ironic comedy that Freddy had. But Freddy can enjoy that because Freddy can talk. Freddy's an intellectual, at least compared to Jason. So the only way you can get people to laugh in a Friday the 13th movie, in relation to Jason, is to have them laugh at Jason. I don't see how you could ever get a crowd to laugh with him, as you can with Freddy.
I think the closest anyone was ever able to come to being able to do that was one brief moment in Part VIII in Times Square, when Jason walks by the kids listening to rap music and just kicks the shit out of their boom box. That's as much irony as you can get away with. And that's good for one joke in a movie, maybe. Because if you turn Jason into a fool, he loses all of his menace and you're not scaring people anymore.
ROB HEDDEN:
We did some bizarre things. Right before Rennie smashes the car into the wall, when she's trying to kill her delusion or whatever, the editing goes—dunk-dunk-dunk. The whole theater goes silent and we just put in these little sound effect stingers—boom-boom-boom! And when my kids first watched it, years later, they laughed. And I asked them, "Did you laugh because it was stupid?" And they said, "No, no, no. We liked it." But they couldn't even tell me exactly why. It was just outrageous and odd to them. We just tried to make it different.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
One of the decisions we all agreed upon was that Jason is now, to some extent, a supernatural character. Whether he is just extremely fast, or can actually cease to exist in one place then exist in another, really didn't matter. So long as the movie consistently obeyed that rule and didn't deviate from it, we'd be OK. And I, for one, thought it was effective.
Jason Takes Manhattan effects crew hang out with with what affectionately became known as the "jack o' lantern." From left: William Terezakis, Jamie Brown and the late Tibor Farkas.
STEVE MIRKOVICH:
When I was editing Jason Takes Manhattan, I was not aware at the time that we were trying to do anything to bend logic. We simply said, "What will work? What is going to keep people on the edge of their seat? What is going to make this fun?" Fun for us, as filmmakers, was to scare the shit out of people and give them what they asked for, which was more blood, more guts, and just do not stall. I don't think anyone crucified us for that.
You had to take yourself out of what is real. The whole idea of Jason drowning and coming back to life in the first place is preposterous. So, yes, he should be able to have some bigger-than-life strengths. Jason can just be there. Because the forgiving part of the audience is, "Alright, this might not be logical, but you scared me, so it's okay." If the payoff works, sometimes we don't care how we get there.
Among it's many firsts, Jason Takes Manhattan would also be the only Friday the 13th up until the release of Freddy vs. Jason to make it to screens entirely without the contributions of composer Harry Manfredini. The conspicuous lack of Manfredini's trademark score, along with a unique opening credit sequence and the use of moody, rock-inspired songs on the soundtrack, ensured that at the very least, Jason Takes Manhattan would sound like no other Friday the 13th that had come before.
ROB HEDDEN:
Fred Mollin was chosen as composer because he had scored the entire Friday the 13th television series. He was completely dialed in. Frank Mancuso, Jr. loved him, and I loved him. We knew he could deliver anything we wanted. And he was highly enthusiastic.
It was not that Harry Manfredini was old news—he is still the best. Fred just had a really fresh sound, different from what had been done in the other movies. It was like, "We're making a new Friday here. We're making one that's not going to be at Crystal Lake. We're making one that's going to have supernatural overtones. We're making one that has some humor. So if it is going to be different, let's tweak the music, too."
FRED MOLLIN, Composer:
It was a thrill and a challenge. At the time I hadn't toiled much in features, so I was excited. And unlike with Part VII, I talked at length conceptually with Rob. We had long discussions about what should be done—not musically, but emotionally. I am really more of an instinctual composer, anyway. I definitely wanted it to be percussive, aggressive and dynamic. I think it was.
It was different than the previous Fridays. I'm not saying it was better—I love Harry. But I remember being extremely proud that Part VIII came together as well as it did. I certainly am far happier with it than Part VII, which was a different experience. I think Rob happens to be such a gifted guy. I love his sensibilities. Yeah, Part VIII has got a campy flair—obviously even more campy now. But that is what gives it its charm. It brings you back to that era.
Although, to be honest, I can't really listen to my Friday the 13th stuff today because the technology is so much more advanced. The sounds are so much better now—I hear certain things in my scores back then and they sound obvious. Again, it's all a matter of era. Compared to the 1970s, what I was doing in the '80s was wildly inventive and technologically brilliant. But compared to today—I could slaughter it now.
ROB HEDDEN:
I really wanted to open the movie in a very unusual way for a Friday the 13th film. I wanted fans to know immediately, from the first frame, that this was going to be surprising and fresh. It wasn't going to be just more of the same.
I wrote an opening credit sequence that was totally different from any Friday film. The kids on the boat that we will soon meet are supposed to be listening to a late night radio station out of New York, and we're seeing a montage of the city. And it's a dark, mysterious New York, which, of course, is also foreshadowing what is to come. And then one of those bizarre-o late night DJs comes on, doing a riff. That was the intention—what we're hearing isn't narration, but instead a disc jockey's voiceover.
I also wanted to put some kind of a song at the beginning of the movie as opposed to just score. My original request was to use this song off of Robert Plant's Now and Zen CD. It was great, and when Frank heard it, even he said, "This is so perfect." It was dark and mysterious and sexy, and had an unmistakable Led Zeppelin feel. Just a really great piece of music. We weren't even thinking MTV—I just figured it would be cross-promotion by default, and would help him and us. Unfortunately, we never got to Robert Plant. Instead we got his publishing company and they wanted a trillion dollars for it.
Fortunately, Fred has a great pop sensibility. Frank said, "Come up with something that has the same feel, and we'll use that." And Fred came up with this great song called "Darkest Side of the Night." Everybody listened to it and we said, "It's not Robert Plant. We all know that. But it's really good. And no one will know that Robert Plant was originally supposed to be singing the opening of the movie, anyway." Although now they will.
Writer/Director Rob Hedden's Original Jason Concept Art
FRED MOLLIN:
I had never even heard the Alice Cooper song from Part VI, which had a sort of campy quality. And Rob didn't want to go campy. They wanted to evoke a little more mood. It's always a challenge to write
lyrics for something like this, because you never want to write things that are on the money, on the nose—you're not going to write a song in what I call the Gilligan's Island school of songwriting. "Here comes Jason down the street/He's the guy you want to meet." We couldn't do that.
I ended up writing the song with Stan Mizer. All I had was some footage from the movie for the opening titles, a montage of New York. I just said, "Fuck—let's talk about the dark side, the seamy side of the city," and the lyrics just came from that. I just made sure there was nothing that was very literal and that it just set up the mystery, but within a pop vibe as opposed to a score. I remember being very proud of that cut. I think it added to the uniqueness of the movie.
BRYAN ENGLAND:
I'm very proud of that opening sequence. Because we DPs, we are a quirky bunch. We hate stock footage and we like every shot to be our own personal thing. So I insisted that we go to New York and get all those shots for the credit sequence. I didn't want anything in the title sequence that wasn't mine. Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset, that is all stuff we shot ourselves. And in fact, we almost got killed doing it, because we shot illegally. I just put my tripod down and went for it. But it was so much fun.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
I think the rock song feel in general that's in the movie also came largely because of Saffron Henderson, who we cast as JJ. She plays the funky guitar chick, and was, in fact, a real rocker. As was her dad, who, at one time, was in one of the biggest rock bands in Vancouver, called Chilliwack. They had a bunch of great '60s hits. So Saffron was a real lead guitarist, and even had a band of her own at the time.
ROB HEDDEN:
I wanted to have a guitar player in the movie, 'cuz in the late '80s every high school had someone who was an aspiring rock star. That comes back to, again, the whole character thing where you want everybody in the movie to be somebody you could know. But I put a little spin on it because JJ is a girl—usually it is a guy. And I had her playing a "Flying V," that V-shaped pink guitar she has in the movie. Of course, now there's plenty of female rockers, starting with Pat Benatar back then and now people like Courtney Love and Liz Phair. So that's what really inspired JJ in the movie.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 64