Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) (USA)

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A drop in graphic splat is made up for with a stronger than usual script and extremely likable characters. Tommy Jarvis royally screws the pooch in attempting to destroy the corpse of Jason Voorhees and ridding himself of his own personal boogeyman. In a moment of excusable trauma-induced rage, Tommy forgets the gasoline he’s brought along and rips an iron bar from the cemetery gate. He proceeds to stab away at the body of his enemy. When lightning hits the iron, it manages to resurrect the wormy corpse of that ultimate camp-counselor-annihilator. Tommy flees and tries warning the Crystal Lake (now called Forest Green) sheriff but he thinks Tommy is insane thanks to his run in with the slasher in the past. When corpses turn up done away in a Voorhees fashion, the sheriff believes Tommy is going to extreme lengths to get everyone to believe Jason has returned. Complicating things further, the sheriff’s rebellious daughter, Megan, has fallen for the young man her papa has locked up in his jail. Jason returns to his old stomping grounds and this proves fatally disastrous for the new group of camp counselors (one of them being Megan) who just got the batch of brats they’ll be monitoring over the weekend. With the censors already neutering the naturally violent slasher genre, part 7 puts a bit more effort into its script and is all the better for it. It leans more towards humor, some of which fails but some of which lands (counselor Cort’s explanation of Indian markers still kills me) and has a refreshing sense of humor about itself. The cast is likable and you end up wishing you got to spend more time with the counselor cannon fodder, which is always a good thing. Thom Matthews is great as Tommy Jarvis and I wish he had stuck around for a few more installments. Jennifer Cooke plays her character with the right amount of rebellion and doesn’t come off as annoying... also I’ve harbored a major crush on Megan for decades so I’m more than a little biased. David Kagen as the sheriff is one of my favorite authority figures to ever grace a slasher film and shows just how helpful it could have been to have a strong police presence in more of these teen-driven murder movies. It’s a damn fine entry in the F13 series and a damn fine piece of late 80s horror.