Frank sent us out to Griffith Park in Los Angeles to shoot some additional stuff. That's where we added the death of the caretaker and the two kids getting killed on the motorbike. Plus, we beefed up Sissy's death. Before, she got pulled out through the window and then you never saw what happened to her until her head rolled out of the cop car. Now, we added a shot of her head being twisted, pulled up and off. It was incredibly gory—and you saw all this skin stretch and all this stuff in her neck and then it snapped off.
Ultimately, these additions resulted in sequences that are kind of interesting. One of the images I am glad is now in the film is when one of the kids sees Jason, after Jason has just killed the caretaker. I always found it very unsettling—Jason turns and looks at the guy who has discovered him, and then starts the chase. That is one of the great nightmare images that that we have—you're watching something that you shouldn't be watching, and suddenly the monster sees that you are watching and he comes after you.
CJ Graham's photo album.
BRUCE GREEN:
I've never worked with Oliver Stone, but I'd be willing to bet that if you went to him and said, "If you cut this and this, the film would make an extra $15 million," he wouldn't do it. He'd say, "I don't care. I'm making my vision." With Friday the 13th, if marketing people say to the filmmakers, "If we can cut this and this, we can guarantee you'll make an extra $15 million opening weekend," the filmmakers will do it.
CJ GRAHAM:
I have the original script, and there was a different coda at the very end, something stupid. They were going to cut back to Deputy Rick, still locked in the jail cell. Then the door to jail opens—we don't see who it is, just the shadow of the door—and the deputy starts yelling, "Megan, Megan, let me out!" The impression is that it's Jason. Thankfully, they dropped that. It was too comical.
TOM MCLOUGHLIN:
At the end of Part VI, I wanted to introduce Jason's father, mainly because nobody had gone down that road before in the previous movies. To me, that would have made for one eerie epilogue—that there was somebody else out there that was the father of this unstoppable being. But Frank Jr. and the studio did not want to go to that next level. Which I can understand, because once you put that out there, does that mean you would have to focus on Jason's father in the next film instead of Jason himself? They definitely wanted to end with Jason down under the water in the lake, his eye open and ready to come back again—which he has.
When I was rummaging around recently, I found the paperback novelization of Jason Lives, that Simon Hawke wrote. I remember it was very cool—I'd never had something I've written turned into a novel before. And Simon did a really nice job of connecting the dots and making it work as a book. He also obviously got a hold of my original script, because it had my original ending in it, with Mr. Voorhees. So I'm glad that it survived, if not in the film, then at least in some form. Still, I hope that someday, someone will come along and tell us what happened to Jason's dad.
BOB LARKIN:
It would have changed the whole course of Friday the 13th if they had done the original ending. Jason's father, Mr. Voorhees, pays me extra money to take care of Jason's grave. And Jason's mother's grave, too—that was also going to be there in the scene. So Mr. Voorhees coming in at the end was sort of going to be the big final pay-off in the movie. And that role was never cast, but I remember from the way it was in the original script and talking with Tom McLoughlin about it, that Mr. Voorhees was going to be very menacing, and very somber. And a very big man. After all, Jason came from him, so Mr. Voorhees was the originator of that kind of scary, menacing persona.
VINCENT GUASTAFERRO:
The violence in Jason Lives serves the plot in many ways, so it's not gratuitous. And in horror movies, it's obligatory. You have to have it to scare people. But I thought Tom was really good at setting up the possibility for a violent act, building the tension, but then not ever showing a slash. Tom was trying to show that you don't have to be gratuitous to get the effect. Did you ever see One Dark Night? A bloodless horror movie, but it's scary. The guy is very good at what he does.
I remember talking to Tom about this. He said there were trends in censorship. If one movie was too sexy, the censors would come out and say, "No more bare breasts." But you could still say, "Okay, let's use more horrible language." Then that would get progressively worse, and then there would be no nudity or bad language. But you could still slit people's throats. And then they'd think that was way too violent, and say it would be better to show more boobs. And it all cycles back again.
CHRIS SWIFT:
The impact the ratings board was going to have on this movie was weight on everybody's mind even in pre-production. Frank Mancuso Jr. called a meeting with Tom, Marty and all the effects people and went through the original script, page by page. Things almost immediately started to change. In the initial script, people were getting their faces ripped off and there was some really good gore stuff. Frank took one look and said, "Forget it."
JIM GILL:
We also had a sequence in which a boy is speared and Jason actually appears to throw him through the air, a feat accomplished with an air ramp. That was cut because the ratings people didn't want to actually see the body on the spear. Originally, the script called for the guy to be speared, Jason lifting him in the air and having him slide down the spear, leaving guts hanging on the end. But that idea was trashed early on. Frank Jr. took one look at it during the early meetings and said, "It'll never make it, so don't try."
CHRIS SWIFT:
The X-rated version of that had Jason ramming the broken bottle into the old caretaker's neck. He goes down and the camera closes in on the bottle as the blood begins to flow out of one end. Sissy also suddenly became an on-camera kill that required a quick insert shot. That shot consisted of Sissy laying on the ground after being yanked out the window. Jason picks her up, grabs her head, turns it completely around and rips it off. What made it into the film from that was everything shot from the neck down. We knew, even while filming that scene, that we weren't going to get it past the board. So, we decided that we would go all the way with it.
For the death of Allen Hawes at the beginning of the movie, we built a false body on a rig. The front was porous and we filled it with all kinds of guts, arteries and a heart that would be pulled out by Jason. What you did see is Jason's hand coming out of the body and then a cut. What you did not see is that he dragged the guts and the heart out and then he drops the heart on the ground where it lays steaming. It was one of those scenes that really grabbed you, which is probably why it was snipped. And that's too bad, because people find it hard to grasp that Jason disemboweled Allen because nothing is ever shown.
TOM MCLOUGHLIN:
Ultimately, we had nine screenings with the MPAA. We had to keep chopping and chopping. It was difficult, because it wasn't like they were objecting to any one scene—nothing was excised completely. So much of what happens with the ratings board is based on the climate at the time and they govern accordingly. This was still when all anyone was making were Friday the 13th and Halloween clones. And just a few years before, we were all shocked when the MPAA gave One Dark Night a PG. I think the only reason they did was because they were so happy that, at that time, a horror movie was being made that was actually doing an Edgar Allan Poe thing with puss and maggots and corpses and stuff.
CHRIS SWIFT:
After the first MPAA meeting, almost everything went. The guts in the graveyard had to go. Sissy's head ripping, the bottle in the neck, the spear stunt. It all had to go. They didn't kill the back break completely, but they did claim it was a bit raw and strongly suggested that it be toned down. Tom went back a second time, and they were still telling him to tone things down and cut things. By now, Tom was getting a little disappointed. Eventually, everything was fine, and Tom was about to go out the door with his R rating when the board said, "Oh, by the way, the heart's gotta go." It is almost like they had to get that last jab in.
JIM GILL:
We were definitely disappointed that many of the things we worked on in the movie didn't make it to the screen. We knew a lot of our work was going right out the door, but what could we do? We knew what we were up against going in and we knew we would have trouble with the ratings board. Not so much because the film was so gory, but because it was a Friday the 13th that already had a built-in following. At that point, the biggest challenge was not so much to see what we could get by the ratings board, but more of giving them something they would accept. Our goal was to make the effects as big as possible and to have something we could live with when the board ultimately told us that we had to cut back. The rating board hurt the film only by cutting or toning down the kills, which, to be perfectly honest, is the Friday the 13th series' main attraction. But it's not like you can argue with them. You show them the film, they ask for changes, and you go back and make them.
Left: Official 1986 novelization of Jason Lives. Center and Right: With his 1986 hit single "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)," legendary shock rocker and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductee Alice Cooper became the first mainstream music artist to contribute to the soundtrack of a Friday the 13th film. ""I love the children of Jason," Cooper told Fangoria Magazine back in 1986. "In a way, the character of Alice and the character of Jason came from the same sort of weird place. I fell all over myself saying yes when the people at Paramount asked me to help score the film. Jason is a real heavy metal kind of character, and Alice is more than a bit influenced by horror. Doing the video and the music for Part VI is like a dream come true for me."
TOM MCLOUGHLIN:
Jason Lives was my schooling about the MPAA. It taught me to make sure I cover myself, because you don't want to totally sacrifice a sequence and you want to be as real as you can be in portraying a specific scene. Everything I've done after that I've done three versions of—"Here's the X version, the R version and the PG-13." Before and during my Friday, I don't remember consciously saying, "We're going to do three different versions." I think we just went for it, because Frank's whole thing is to give the fans what they want to see.
I wanted all the kills to be humanly impossible to do. I don't want to say the film was "bloodless," but they were sort of stretching reality. Pushing Darcy's face through the wall of the RV, or bending the Sheriff backwards in half, or lopping off the heads of three survivalists at once—that was all planned to be larger than life. I felt I had to figure out unique ways of doing supernatural kills, because once we brought Jason back from the dead I had this license to do all kinds of wild murders. Ultimately, in that sense, Jason Lives maybe was not as hurt as it could have been by the cuts. Or, at least, compared to the other Fridays.
Ratings board wrangling and last-minute reshoots notwithstanding, Paramount Pictures was confident that Jason Lives was a better, smarter, faster and funnier film than A New Beginning. Although Part VI was originally slated to premiere at the tail end of summer 1986, Paramount, optimistic that Jason Lives could turn out to be its most mainstream Friday yet, and eager to capitalize on the few remaining weeks before the target teen audience returned to school, bumped up its release date to August 1st. In a further attempt to broaden the film's appeal, the studio recruited legendary shock rocker Alice Cooper to contribute three songs to the soundtrack, including the pop-inspired single, "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)."
By the time Cooper's music video was enjoying heavy rotation on MTV, Jason Lives debuted on 1,610 screens across America. Even if the studio's ramped-up marketing campaign for the sixth entry in its longest-running film series wasn't enough for Jason to reclaim his title of "King of the Slashers," then early reviews of the film should have ensured its success, for Jason Lives earned the one thing that had eluded all five of its predecessors: the occasional positive notice. The prognosis was good for a commercial—and profitable—return to form for the series. Yet, despite Paramount's best efforts to breathe new life into the franchise, Jason Lives was a relative disappointment at the box office. Part VI was the first Friday the 13th that failed to capture the #1 spot at the box office during its opening weekend, and although the film grossed a respectable $6.7 million in its first three days—right behind another horror sequel, James Cameron's ALIENS—its final tally of $19.5 million (for 6.25 million paid admissions) made Part VI the lowest-attended Friday the 13th up to that date.
Arguably a slasher film ahead of its time, Jason Lives has come to enjoy a fondness and appreciation among a good number of Friday fans and genre historians alike in the years since its release. Considering that the film pre-dates by nearly a decade the post-modern thrills of Scream—filmmaker Wes Craven's self-referential ode to the slasher genre—Jason Lives seems positively prescient. Yet even on the heels of the unsatisfying A New Beginning, Friday the 13th Part VI still turned a profit, ensuring that Jason Voorhees would rise to kill again.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR.:
Over the years, many musical artists had expressed an interest in getting involved with the Friday the 13th movies. But when the idea of Alice Cooper came up, it just made perfect sense. Not only from a marketing perspective, but the general spirit of the movie and Alice's music—Jason Lives was just a more fun type of Friday the 13th. And, at the time, MTV had really started to become a truly substantive, youth-oriented marketing tool. How could we pass up the opportunity to put Jason in his first music video?
TOM MCLOUGHLIN:
I was just dying to do the music video for the Alice Cooper song, but the record company wouldn't let me. At the time, they had a core group of guys and all they would direct were music videos. Now that strict hierarchy has changed, but at the time it was very frustrating. And the funny thing is, I used to be in a band when I was really young called TNT. I was the lead singer, and we were a total Alice Cooper type of group—purely visual, with costumes and makeup and the whole thing, and we'd blow up tons of shit onstage. So I still think it would have been great if I had been allowed to do that video.
BRUCE GREEN:
I remember when Alice Cooper showed up at Paramount to see the film. He got out of his car, and he was wearing golf clothes. It was shocking to me. I wanted the makeup and him all in black, and he was wearing, like, searsucker pants! I was so disappointed.
FRANK MANCUSO JR.:
By and large, I wasn't involved in the production of the later Fridays the way I was with the early ones. But every once in a while, if I got inspired, I'd get involved with little pockets. On Part VI, I had an idea for a teaser I really wanted to shoot, that starts off with a long shot of Jason's grave, then it's hit by a lightning bolt and explodes. So I got the whole thing orchestrated and shot that myself. I always thought that was a great teaser trailer.
JON KRANHOUSE:
With the trailer, the marketing and the advertising, the Alice Cooper thing, and the summer release, Paramount was willing to roll the dice and spend a little bit more to get the profits back up. Part VI was a hope for a comeback for the franchise. I guess that didn't quite happen.
"At the end of Part VI, I wanted to introduce Jason's father, mainly because nobody had gone down that road before in the previous movies," says Tom McLoughlin of his original scripted ending for Jason Lives. "To me, that would have made for one eerie epilogue—that there was somebody else out there that was the father of this unstoppable being. But Frank Mancuso, Jr. and the studio did not want to go to that next level. Which I can understand, because once you put that out there, does that mean you would have to focus on Jason's father in the next film instead of Jason himself?" Although McLoughlin' ending was never filmed, it was adapted by Simon Hawke for the 1986 novelization of the film (previous image). Now out of print, the paperback remains a sought-after collectible among fans. McLoughlin's ending was also recreated in storyboard form (above), with illustrations by Crash Cunningham and narrated by Jason Lives actor Bob Larkin, for Paramount Home Video's Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives Deluxe Edition DVD release of the film.
> TIM SILVER:
Starting with Part VI, Friday the 13th was not as much of a sure-fire deal anymore. Jason Lives didn't open as strongly as A New Beginning. Ours opened at number one, because it was coming off the heels of The Final Chapter, which had a lot of production value. Even if Part VI were terrific, its box office in the first week would not be strong because Part V took the wind out of the sails of the franchise.
TOM MCLOUGHLIN:
Initially, Jason Lives was perceived as just another Friday the 13th. We all were certainly ready for the usual horrible reviews that these movies get. But when you have a character break the fourth wall like I had in the film, and look right in the lens and say, "Why did they have to go dig up ol' Jason?"—most reviewers just said, "You can't hate a movie that's making fun of itself." Throwing away the Siskels and Eberts and people like that who, of course, immediately gave it a thumbs down, much to my shock and everyone else's, we actually got some good notices from the bulk of the critics.
KERRY NOONAN:
There was a wrap party, but it wasn't that exciting or cool. It was in a warehouse or something. And CJ Graham, after the shoot, was managing this restaurant up at Universal in Hollywood, and they wouldn't let him off for the cast and crew screening. We were all upset, so we decided we'd go to his restaurant afterward. And the manager became really excited that we were all coming there, and they showed the Alice Cooper music video and tried to get us all to dance for CJ, and made a big deal out of it. So it was nice that we were, at least, able to give "Jason" his proper premiere.
Then I took my sister, who loves slasher movies, to see Jason Lives in Westwood the weekend it came out. Some people get upset when they see their loved ones getting killed onscreen, but when it came to the part where Jason is about to kill me, she turned to me and said, "This is the moment I've been waiting for my entire life."
DARCY DEMOSS:
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 50
