Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
In his insightful and fascinating study Educational Institutions in Horror Film, Andrew L. Grunzke observes that three trends in the latter half of the twentieth century produced horror films that were “centered around various aspects of school life.”[i] Those trends are: the dominance of teenagers in horror audiences; the development of monstrous children narratives; and a horror cinema increasingly focused on locating horror in the familiar rather than the exotic. “The confluence of these trends,” writes Grunzke, “made the high school a favorite site of for staging shocking physical, mental, and emotional trauma.”[ii] Enter the slasher film.
Slasher films are, more often than not, set at high schools. Halloween (1978), Prom Night (1980), Graduation Day (1981), The Prowler (1981), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), Slaughter High (1985), Return to Horror High (1987), and Scream (1996), to name but a handful of the best known-examples, are all set in high school. Indeed, secondary school lends itself to fear, serving as a hotbed of bullying, social acceptance, sexual awakening, parent/child relationships, academic performance, and graduation anxiety.[iii] Although college slashers also pop up during the period–Black Christmas (1974), Hell Night (1981), House on Sorority Row (1982), and Scream 2 (1997)–high school horror dominates. Whether based on school-centered events (Prom Night, Graduation Day), reunions (Slaughter High), or simply the day-to-day life of students upended by a killer (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream), high school is the slasher killer’s natural home.
The original Friday the 13th (1980) offered a different educational institution as the site of horror—the summer camp, which has equally inspired imitations: The Burning (1981), Sleepaway Camp (1983) and its sequels, Madman (1982), and Cheerleader Camp (1988). The camp doubles as a “survival training” center, according to Grunzke, teaching urban children how to swim, canoe, tie knots, and subsist away from the city.[iv] This training holds particular importance in the Friday the 13th series, as the young counselors must survive first Mrs. Vorhees and then her son Jason. Let us remember the primary cast (and thus the victims of the killer) in the first Friday films are not the campers but the counselors; Mrs. Vorhees and her son do not threaten children but teenagers.
Indeed, the cast of the Friday the 13th franchise is consistently of high school age, with most installments set at summer camp, except Part V, which takes place at the Pinehurst Youth Development Center, a camp for troubled youth (basically Breakfast Club does slasher), and Jason X, which is in space, still with young people (college-age), creating a holodeck-style summer camp. Even when the film is set somewhere other than Crystal Lake, Jason finds a camp. Summer camp is Jason’s natural home.
The ill-fated Lazarus
Despite the franchise’s consistent focus on the high-school population, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) is the only Friday actually set within the context of high school: a senior class cruise/trip on the SS Lazarus. The ship is named after a man who came back from the dead, not unlike Mr. Vorhees, and perhaps a premonition of what will happen to all but a select few of the high-school students who board for this particular trip. As Crystal Lake High School senior class cruises down a river to Manhattan, the film throws up all the tropes of high school cinema—the despotic principal, the understanding teacher, the mean girls, the clueless guys, the nerds, the rockers, the jocks, the hooking up, and the hijinks. Into this mix comes Jason Vorhees (Kane Hodder), stowing away on the ship and killing students first on board the ship and then pursuing them through the city.
Written and directed by Rob Hedden, Part VIII marked an attempt to take the tired series in yet another new direction after Parts V and VI. By 1988, the teens who had seen the first film in cinemas were in their mid to late 20s. Part VIII was aimed at a new generation of fans.[v] The film has much more humor than previous entries in the series and far less gore and violence. Indeed, the violence is almost comic at times. Hedden’s instinct from the beginning was to get Jason out of Crystal Lake. When he pitched it to series producer Frank Mancuso, Mancuso responded, “Jason takes Manhattan!” which Hedden took and ran with. The budget was too small to film in Manhattan for more than a week, though, so most of the film was actually shot in Vancouver.[vi]
While the novelty of the film was supposed to be Jason in an urban setting, the other novelty of the film is that Jason finally joined his fellow slashers within a specifically high school setting. Hedden complained, “This is the one thing that everybody says, that it is not ‘Jason Takes Manhattan,’ it’s ‘Jason takes a Cruise Ship.’”[vii] That cruise ship had been hired for a senior cruise to the big city, though. Given that so little of the film actually takes place in Manhattan, that means the majority of it takes place in what is essentially a substitute for a high school.
The opening credits show New York City to be a place of crime, vandalism, trash, drug use and filth. As the theme song begins to play, the deejay states unironically that he loves the city and gives a shout-out to the senior class at Lakeview High, who are coming to Manhattan for their graduation trip. The song was a request, as “They’ll be graduating on the 13th of this month and we wish them the best of luck and success when they come to visit our seductive city.” Crystal Lake is somewhere in New Jersey, which would indicate that it was created as part of a larger trend in the earlier twentieth century to take students out of urban areas (particularly New York City) and send them to camps in rural New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.[viii] The film then cuts to graduating seniors Jim Miller and Suzi Donaldson enjoying an intimate evening on a boat in Crystal Lake. They appear to be the ones who requested the song—and they are in short order murdered by Jason.
High school on a ship
The next scene gives us stereotypical high school students and staff. Were it not for Jason Vorhees, Jason Takes Manhattan would and could play out as a high school sex comedy such as Porky’s (1981) or American Pie (1999). Colleen van Dusen (Barbara Bingham) is the sensitive and supportive teacher, while Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman) is the insufferable principal, a school administrator directly descended from The Breakfast Club’s Mr. Vernon. He does not seem to care for students, nor does he have a high opinion of anyone except himself. He demands respect even as he heaps scorn on all under him. On the cruise with these two teachers is a veritable Breakfast Club of students: less than a dozen seniors seem to be on the ship. Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett) is the sensitive heroine who suffers from a traumatic past. Sean Anderson (Scott Reeves) is her erstwhile boyfriend who lives in his ship captain father’s shadow. J. J. Jarrett (Saffron Henderson) is the rock goddess who prefers her guitar to boys. Wayne Webber (Martin Cummins) is the AV geek and J. J.’s best friend, who is crushing on the beautiful mean girl, Tamara Mason (Sharlene Martin). Tamara’s best friend and sidekick is Eve Watanabe (Kelly Hu), who downplays her intelligence in order to be popular. Lastly, we meet athlete (Boxing? In high school?) Julius Gaw (Vincent Craig Dupree), who is revealed to have a heart of gold, despite his high-school Adonis body and personality. Were this not a slasher film, things would get complicated but then work out for Rennie and Sean; Wayne would realize he had been in love with J. J. the whole time; Eve would learn to be herself and end up with Julius; and Tamara would get her comeuppance in front of the entire school, as would Mr. McCulloch.
But this is a slasher film. Interestingly, as a result of taking place in a high school setting, one of the major themes present only in Part VIII is the challenge of parent/child relationships. Rennie’s parents are dead, and Mr. McCullough is her uncle and legal guardian, but there is no love between them. Colleen van Dusen, however, serves as a surrogate parent for Rennie, giving her a graduation present in the form of a pen Stephen King supposedly used in high school. With such an unlikely and perhaps even ridiculous gift, the film establishes that it is Ms. Van Dusen and not Mr. McCullough who truly understands and parents Rennie.
Similarly, Sean Robertson is given a gift by his father, Admiral Robertson (Warren Munson), although why an admiral is in command of a small river cruise ship, the film never explains. Sean’s present is a sexton, a symbol that the father wants the son to follow in his footsteps. With great pride Admiral Robertson relinquishes command of the Lazarus to Sean to take the ship out of port and takes control back just as quickly when Sean orders the incorrect procedure and then abandons the bridge in frustration and shame.
Within the first ten minutes of the film, the models for parenting are established through these gifts (and the absence of one from Mr. McCulloch). The good parent understands their teen’s hopes and dreams and supports them rather than asserting their own authority to decide everything in the teen’s life (Mr. McCulloch), or, with the best of intentions, placing burdensome expectations on a child to follow in one’s own footsteps (Admiral Robertson). The film sets up a tension between parents and children not present in any other Friday but frequently present in teen comedies (see: any John Hughes film).
Jason (Kane Hodder) takes a cruise
As the ship leaves port, Jason climbs on board. The theme of parent/child relationships continues as we meet J. J., who plays very hot licks on an excellent guitar, despite its neither being plugged in nor having any amplification. “Your parents really came through,” Wayne tells her, and she agrees. J. J.’s parents understand her dreams and goals and gave her a gift that suits her and her talents. These parents are, however, absent from the cruise and, by extension, seemingly absent from her rock-n-roll life. The bad news is that she seeks out the engine room in order to make a “killer rock video,” and, being all alone, becomes Jason’s first victim. Her parents “came through” with the gift of a great guitar, but the absence of any parenting on their parts contributes indirectly to J.J.’s death, as she wanders away from the group to play the guitar, seemingly unaware of stranger danger.
The film continues to unfold as a high school comedy, even as Jason begins killing students and crew. Caught snorting cocaine, Tamara is informed by Mr. McCullough that he will meet her in her stateroom in fifteen minutes and she better have her final biology project ready for him (despite his not being her biology teacher). When he arrives, she greets him with champagne and opens a silk robe to reveal she is in bra and panties and has drawn her organs on her body. She pulls him down onto the bed and when he extracts himself and tells her she is in trouble, she reveals Wayne in the closet with a camera and tells Mr. McCullough that if she does not graduate, she will give the tape to the authorities and he will lose his job. He exits, uncertain what to do.
This trick is a classic teen comedy move, almost always preceded by the line, “It’s kind of crazy, but it just might work.” The audience gets to see some skin and an authority figure outwitted and humiliated (see: Fast Times at Ridgemont High [1982], Ferris Bueller’s Day Off [1986]). One might note that the slasher film and the teen comedy simultaneously come of age and flourish because of some of the same factors—not least because teens dominate audience share and because the same fears that propel high school horror are those taken up and dispelled in high school comedy.
Jason Takes Manhattan, in the end, is not a teen comedy, even if it is structured as such. Jason kills Tamara as soon as Mr. McCulloch and Wayne leave. Jason then makes his way to the bridge and kills Chief Engineer Jim Carlson (Fred Henderson) with a harpoon before slitting Admiral Robertson’s throat with a machete. As the high school students begin to find the bodies of their classmates, they gather together for protection. Julius gathers weapons and organizes the other athletes to hunt and kill Jason. Mr. McCullough insists he is in charge, that Jason is not real, and he forbids them to leave the room. “School’s out, McCullough,” Julius insists before leaving with his friends. The lack of “Mr.” before the principal’s name and the puckish exit line is designed to show how little respect the students have for the man, as well as, more broadly, how they have achieved a sense of adulthood and are ready to leave high school behind. They do so, however, by being killed.
Julius is thrown overboard. Wayne is killed in the engine room, resulting in a fire. Eve is killed in the ship’s disco/dance club, strangled by Jason. He grabs Rennie through a porthole, but she stabs him in the eye with the Stephen King pen. Following Julius, Sean also stands up to McCullough: “It’s time you listen to me if you want off this ship alive.” The lone survivors, Sean, Rennie, Ms. Van Dusen, and Mr. McCullough, flee in a lifeboat, discovering Julius still alive in the water. Jason sees them and follows them.
Jason (Kane Hodder) in Manhattan
The last third of the film actually does (finally) take place in Manhattan. Upon arrival in the Big Apple, the survivors are mugged, and Rennie is drugged and almost raped, only to be rescued by Jason. The film ceases to be a high school comedy and becomes a proper slasher film, albeit one in which Manhattan is as dangerous, if not more so, than Jason. When Rennie runs into an all-night diner and cries out, “A maniac is trying to kill us,” the waitress deadpans, “Welcome to New York.” Indeed, Grunzke finds the film to be a failure precisely because of the threats that perpetually lurk in Manhattan: “Ultimately, this is part of the downfall of the picture. At Crystal Lake, Jason Vorhees is a lone maniac…In New York City, Jason is hardly the most colorful, or even dangerous character.”[ix] While this is true, it ignores the first two thirds of the film where Jason proves to be very effective at dispatching high school students and teachers alike.
It is interesting that Grunzke thinks Part VIII is a failure because Jason left the summer camp for the big city, an inversion of the expectation that his victims are supposed to leave the big city and come to camp. The film successfully blends the summer camp slasher and the high school slasher within the structure of a high school comedy. We could see Jason as another despotic parent/authority figure, killing a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. I would, however, suggest seeing Jason as the hero of the high school comedy, not a parent or authority figure. After all, at the end, when the water in the sewer washes him away, all that is left is the body of Jason as a little boy. Like the heroes of high school comedies, Jason is able to outwit (and kill) the principal, defeat the mean kids, and (in Part IX) graduate (from Crystal Lake to hell). Congratulations to the Class of 1989.
[i] Grunzke, 2.
[ii] Ibid., 90.
[iii] Ibid., 3.
[iv] Ibid., 135.
[v] Bracke, 194.
[vi] Ibid., 194-95.
[vii] Ibid., 195
[viii] Grunzke, 157-58.
[ix] Ibid., 158.
Works Cited:
Bracke, Peter M. Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. Titan, 2005.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Directed by Rob Hedden, Paramount Pictures, 1989.
Grunzke, Andrew L. Educational Institutions in Horror Film. Palgrave, 2015.
