New Line Cinema, however, appeared happy with the results. Jason Goes to Hell was never intended to reignite the languishing franchise, but rather to serve as a launching pad for Freddy vs. Jason. The film turned a healthy profit, and also benefited from strong sales on home video, buoyed no doubt by the first-ever unrated release of a Friday the 13th film on VHS and Laserdisc. Whether Jason Goes to Hell helped, hindered or simply had no effect on the long-term viability of the franchise, neither its fans nor its detractors deny that the film certainly remains one of the most unique entries in the series.
STEVEN CULP:
The first time I saw Jason Goes to Hell, I did quite enjoy myself. There was a premiere at the Mann's Chinese Theater, and we all came by limo. We were even introduced to the crowd after the film ended. It was so much fun. And the audience was so into it. I was also happy that my monster stuff came off as well as it did. And I remember thinking when Scream became such a big success, "Huh! This is kind of reminiscent of what we were trying to do with Jason Goes to Hell."
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
I saw it once, laughed my ass off, and then I was done. And I have to be happy with the film, because someone paid me to play, and I didn't have to wait tables.
LESLIE JORDAN:
It's really hard for me when I first saw Jason Goes to Hell, because I don't think of myself as being quite as effete as I really am. It's really just hard for me to sit and enjoy any movie I'm in because I almost faint sometimes. I do remember at the end of our Friday thinking that I could have done better. But you're going to always think that, in some ways. And I did like the movie. Though, did it do very well? I don't remember it doing really, really well. Certainly, it wasn't like a Scream.
JULIE MICHAELS:
I went to the screening and watched the first 15 minutes, which is pretty much me alone with Jason in the woods and it sets up the rest of the movie. Then I covered my eyes through the rest. I'm still a three-year-old girl when it comes to that kind of stuff because it scares me. I'll tell you what I did like. Usually, the dynamic of a Friday movie is there's a character lurking around alone, and then there's a reveal: either Jason's there, or he's not there. Then a kill. I thought it almost got to the point where it had become comical. I liked the fact that Adam brought a whole new essence to these movies.
KARI KEEGAN:
When I went to the premiere, I wanted to get into some rag magazines as "worst dressed." It's always been a running joke of mine with girlfriends, that if you ever make it really big, you have to wear an outrageous outfit at least once. And since I didn't know if I was ever going to work again, I figured this was my time. So, to my mother's horror, I wore this green-sequined mini-dress with white Converse high-tops and a fake tattoo on my ankle. And my mother had bought me this dagger that made screaming noises that I carried with me, that was retractable with the flowers taped on it.
Then I get into the press line, and David Hasselhoff is behind me. And he's like, "Wow! That is such a bitchin' dress!" And I turned around and was like, "Thanks." So I finish going through the press line and go inside to where my family is sitting. Then he comes up to me again, and he's like, "Hi. I'm David. David Hasselhoff." And I knew exactly who he was. I was just like, "Hi!" Then he goes, "Don't I know you?" I'm like, "I don't think so. I'm Kari Keegan." This went on for like four minutes. He didn't know me—he didn't even know I was the lead of the friggin' movie! And I'm with my boyfriend, and he's standing right next to me—he's like an ex-Calvin Klein model. And Hasselhoff's like, "I have this script idea you might be interested in. Maybe we should have coffee sometime?" I just said something like, "Why don't you call my agent?" Finally, the movie starts and then when it's done, they introduce all of us cast to the audience. And then they go, "The great David Hasselhoff is here!" I'm like, "You have got to be kidding me!" I think he was the biggest star there, unfortunately. You're not going to get superstars out to see a Friday the 13th Part IX. It was so bizarre. I guess "Baywatch" was still out then? Maybe he was between gigs. My acting teacher and used to say to our class, "This business has nothing to do with talent."
I thought the movie was great. I thought I was terrible. At the premiere I was horrified. I felt like I ruined the movie. Even back when we were looping, I was like, "Oh my God, it's terrible!" I called my mother in tears, "I'm never going to work again!" But I think I'm just an incredibly critical person. And it's impossible to watch a movie that you're in, because there's so much backstory behind every shot. You don't watch it, you analyze it.
But then after the premiere, I went to the Mann's in Hollywood for the midnight show on a Saturday night. It was awesome. We have become a society of pay-per-view and instant this and instant that, and there's something to be said for going to the movies and getting your popcorn and your soda and sitting down with an audience. I have seen movies that were terrible become good, because the audience made it good. You've just got to go see Friday the 13th with a black audience—it was the most fun I ever had in my life. My character was called "Bitch!" a bunch of times. And, "Dawg, don't turn around!" It was hilarious. Then some guy behind me went, "She is phat!" I turned to my friend next to me and said, "I don't think I look that fat!" And she said, "No, that's good!"
STEVEN WILLIAMS:
I think I saw a cast and crew screening. Or maybe I rented the damn thing? But I liked the film. I don't know if "happy" is the right word—I was satisfied. I didn't have a problem with it.
JOHN D. LEMAY:
I couldn't make the proper premiere, so my friends and family had one for me in Minnesota, at the Maplewood Theater in St. Paul. They arranged it so that if I signed autographs for the opening night of the show, we could have the theater early in the afternoon for all my friends and family to come—like 150 people! And they were all so proud of me that they overlooked the fact that it was a total gross-out movie. I was horrified—here I am, sitting next to my aunt and uncle and somebody's getting sliced up the middle. But they just loved it. There were all so generous, so of course my fears and my insecurities were totally overblown and not necessary at all. So that was a nice memory.
I thought the movie turned out well. My character in the movie, he was just an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. There wasn't really any layering of attributes that I had to throw in there. I was just excited to work on Jason Goes to Hell because, ultimately, Adam really wanted to make an old-fashioned horror film, and make these characters, that hadn't always necessarily been three-dimensional in the series, three-dimensional. But I wonder if the fans didn't go to the movie expecting one thing and not getting enough of it. I don't know how much criticism of our Friday there has been because it was so different, but it certainly is what made it fun for me to do it.
ERIN GRAY:
The only negative to the entire experience for me was when I went to the premiere, and I'm there with this crazy, wonderful audience who are yelling and screaming and having a great time. So I'm watching this film, and I'm really getting into it—and then there's that scene at the end where that blob or whatever it is crawls up between my legs.
I don't know how to describe my reaction other than to say there was a sense of violation. And a sense of anger because you feel that you sign on to do a project and you read the script and you think that's what you're doing. Then you find out that, through special effects and other things, they add scenes and make it look like you but it's not you. So there's a sense of, "I wouldn't have done that! I didn't agree to that!"
ADAM MARCUS:
That was a corporate decision to make the story elements kind of link up easier. I admit it's a little distasteful. And I regret that shot, even though, trust me, audiences love it. It's terrifying. But I remember when we were at the screening and I saw it I was like, "Ewww."
I don't disagree with Erin. It's a little cringe-inducing. Especially for the actress who plays the role. But I gotta tell you, I had so much love for the people who were in that film. They were really brave to let me be at th
e helm of what they were doing. On her last day of shooting, Erin gave me, from the set of Buck Rogers, the flight wings that a new pilot would get. I was so knocked out by that. I still have it in my office.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
New Line left me completely alone on Jason Goes to Hell, and they were completely happy-they made a bunch of money, so they had no complaints. And what did anyone expect? It's Part IX of Friday the 13th! Did you see Part VI? Part VII? Part VIII?
For me, it is way past an embarrassment. The body-morphing plot—it was a dismal idea. I suspected that early on, but the finished film completely proved it. I made many, many mistakes. Adam came to me and said, "The last thing the fans want is to see Jason going through Camp Crystal Lake chopping up teenagers again." Of course, it was the only thing they wanted to see, and Adam delivered this movie that was so not good.
DAVID HANDMAN:
I had fun doing Jason Goes to Hell, but I don't know what it's about. I still couldn't tell you.
GREG NICOTERO:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween and Friday the 13th—I think it was about the kills. Then when A Nightmare on Elm Street came along, it created a whole new set of rules. Which is why Freddy became more popular than Jason, because those movies could have visuals—not just gore gags, but fantastical elements. I think that's where Jason Goes to Hell strayed from the path. Once the ground rules were set for the Friday the 13th films, the fans kept coming because that's what they expected to see, and they wanted more of the same. Which is understandable, because people invest so much into the movies they love. It's the same with zombies or anything else. People don't want you to fuck with what they've come to revere.
ADAM MARCUS:
I think horror movies have always suffered from the problem that they do gangbusters on opening weekend and then they drop off. That happened with Jason Goes to Hell, but we still did good domestic business. We came in right behind The Fugitive. And we were actually the number one domestic horror movie of that year—well, if you don't put Jurassic Park in there. I think New Line was surprised we did as well as we did. I remember my favorite thing was the front page of Variety after our opening weekend. It said, "Number One Goes to Fugitive, Rest of Box Office Goes to Hell."
I'm very proud of my Jason. I really am. We did something different. I know we got hammered by many of the critics, but we actually got some nice notices, too. And we did stuff in our movie that was self-referential, that was cheeky. We did it years before Scream but we never got any credit for that. Some fans complain that we tried to explain too much in Jason Goes to Hell, that there shouldn't have been so much of the mythology. I think that's a mistake. Look at that great moment in JAWS when Quint gives his big speech about the U.S.S. Indianapolis—that's backstory for a shark! For me, it is the same with Jason. I'm not saying that our concept was the best or whatever, but you know, I think Norman Bates isn't frightening if Norman Bates doesn't have a mommy problem. And Michael Myers was a kid when he murdered his sister. That's important to know.
There are a lot of fans who should examine themselves a little bit and wonder why they keep wanting to watch the same damn movie over and over again. I don't get that. The advent of the video age has allowed us to do that anyway. So there's a movie that you love? Then buy it, that's great. But don't hamper the filmmaking community because they don't want to make the same thing again and again. Because that's the attitude and the way in which these types of movies are usually made. Which I think is a shame.
Look, nothing approaches the first Friday the 13th. That had a rawness and immediacy to it that I don't think anyone will match again. Friday the 13th, along with Halloween, really opened up a Pandora's Box—no other horror movie of this type will ever capture the zeitgeist in that way again. I also think Friday the 13th Part 2 is terrific. I loved it. Then, I'd put Jason Goes to Hell in third position with Jason Lives. They both have a really healthy sense of humor. Both wanted to take the series in a new direction. Both included a real community, a town, and more interesting characters than just Jason. I think that's fair.
10. Evil Gets an Upgrade
With the final, crowd-pleasing coda of Jason Goes to Hell—featuring Jason's trademark hockey mask being dragged into the bowels of hell by the razor-sharp claw of a cackling Freddy Krueger—it appeared that the promise of horror's most anticipated screen showdown was finally about to become a reality. While The Final Friday was by no means a blockbuster, it successfully brought to a close a period of nearly 13 years that saw the Friday franchise become the most financially successful horror film series in history. Freddy Krueger, too, had just come full circle with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a wry and inventive postmodern wink at the franchise slasher craze. It seemed hard to imagine a more opportune time to stage a match-up of two of horror's reigning slasher icons, especially now that the popularity of both characters was undeniably on the downswing.
Fate, however, had other plans. By the end of the 1990s, after more than a dozen writers and nearly as many screenplay drafts, the producers of Freddy vs. Jason were still no closer to solving the project's conceptual challenges. As the "development hell" of Freddy vs. Jason lingered on during the next six years, New Line was growing tired of spending millions of dollars on new writers and new screenplays. Despite the best efforts of a seemingly unending parade of talented scribes, none had successfully cracked the most basic of questions: how do you bring Freddy and Jason together in a logical and satisfying way? The Friday the 13th brand name was also precariously close to losing whatever box office potency it may have had. But most importantly, Sean Cunningham was running out of patience. Shortly after Jason Goes to Hell, Cunningham created a new production company, Crystal Lake Entertainment, to co-develop Freddy vs. Jason with New Line. His Cunningham Productions was also continuing to cultivate projects within and outside of the horror genre. The stagnation of Freddy vs. Jason was a growing financial and creative black hole for both companies. So as the new millennium approached, Cunningham felt it was time to seriously think about another Jason adventure. But if Jason was to survive into the 21st century, he would have to undergo his most radical re-invention yet.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM, Producer:
I had been working for Sean doing development, and we had done the whole Freddy vs. Jason rigmarole for a while. We worked with the studio for a long time and the scripts were always good, just not good enough. Also, while we were trying to develop Freddy vs. Jason, Cunningham Productions was trying to expand without spending the money that comes along with that. That's tough. If you're an independent producer like Sean and you have three people working for you and you don't have a deal with a studio, you can easily be racking up—on the low end—$250,000 a year just to keep the lights on. Then if you want to buy a script, pretty much everybody else has seen it by the time it comes down to you, so most of what you get on that level is pretty much useless. So you try to develop your own stuff with new writers. In that time we also ended up shooting an experimental short, as well as a movie called Terminal Invasion. But everyone still wanted to see Freddy vs. Jason happen, and Sean was just sitting on the Jason rights the whole time. Finally, he said, "Fuck it. We've got to do something with this. I can't just let it lay here."
SEAN CUNNINGHAM, Executive Producer:
I got so frustrated with the Freddy vs. Jason process that I finally said to New Line, "I'm taking this away. If we're not making it, let's make something else. The franchise has to be out there in some way. So do one or the other." But also, there having been nine Jason movies, I was completely baffled as to how we could make another Friday that had anything new or fresh to say, or that was worthy of the fan base. An awful lot of people out there are attached to the Friday the 13th series and they want something new, something better. I think there'll always be a market for horror films, but not for the same one, over and over again. And to be honest, I don't know that the first Friday the 13th would have been successful if it were released today. By that point it was 2
0 years old. A 10th Friday had to be totally new, only with Jason still at the center of it.
TODD FARMER, Screenwriter/"Dallas":
My high school class picture is of me sitting at a typewriter. I wrote stories more than anything else. I was always the guy at parties and camp-outs telling ghost stories that, most of the time, I was making up on the fly. And I remember Star Wars scaring me when I was eight years old—seeing C-3PO and Chewbacca and thinking they were horrifying. So I guess I was destined to go into horror. Then I moved out to Los Angeles in 1996 and I dove into the trenches. You can go to film school, learn what you're doing and while you're there make great contacts. But I didn't do it that way. I just made mistakes along the way.
I met Dean Lorey through my best friend in college. I sent him a script I wrote that I liked, and he read the first 40 pages and decided I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. So, to some degree, he took me under his wing even though he's just a year older. He taught me how to write. Dean also introduced me to Sean Cunningham. I wrote a spec script for Sean that Dean had actually come up with the idea for. The plan was that Dean would direct, Sean would produce and I would write. That didn't happen, but by the end of 1996 I was working for Sean as a writer and "creative executive." I did rewrites, I did originals, whatever Sean wanted.
Freddy vs. Jason had been going on for several years. Early on, Mark Haslett , who was a vice president at Sean's company, had mentioned several times about doing a straight Jason movie. Sean basically said, "Look, I've got Freddy vs. Jason. I don't want to do anything to mess up that deal." Then every six months or so, we'd go back to Sean but he still wouldn't want to do anything. It wasn't until Sean got totally fed up that a new Friday could happen.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 73
