Review of Jason Lives - Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) by Allan C — 27 May 2017

I don't think I ever saw this entry in the long running series before and was pleasantly surprised by it's tongue-in-cheek nature. This film wisely abandoned the dumb possession storyline from the prior film and brings back Jason Voorhees proper.

This film also wisely returns to it's original Crystal Lake setting. What makes this film work better than others is that writer/director Tom McLoughlin fully embraces the predictable, formulaic nature of slasher films (years before Kevin Williamson did the same with "Scream") and ends up making a rather meta entry into the series.

The story here picks up with the Tommy Jarvis character, this time played by Thom Mathews from "Return of the Living Dead" fame, trying to get rid of Jason's body once and for all, but ends up bringing him back to life.

You can probably guess what Jason then wants to do the rest of the film. There's a lot of good laughs and also some decent suspenseful sequences and also an ending that seems to leave things quite open for many many more Friday the 13th films.

Tony Goldwyn made his film debut in a small part as one of Jason's many victims and Ron "Horshack" Palillo has a small role as well. Harry Manfredini again provides the Ch Ch Ch Ah Ah Ah music.