Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives (1986)

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

Taglines: Nothing this evil ever dies.

Friday the 13th Part 6 movie storyline A year has passed since the events of the previous film, and Crystal Lake has been renamed to Forest Green. Tommy Jarvis, still suffering from hallucinations ever since his past encounter with Jason Voorhees, returns with his friend Allen Hawes, hoping to cremate Jason’s body and therefore stop his hallucinations. At the cemetery, they dig up Jason’s corpse, but seeing it causes Tommy to snap, and he stabs Jason’s body with a metal fence post. As he turns his back on Jason, two lightning bolts strike the post and revive Jason, who kills Hawes.

Tommy makes his way to the sheriff’s office, where he panics and attempts to grab weapons, but is caught and arrested. His warning that Jason has returned goes unheeded by Sheriff Mike Garris, who is aware of Tommy’s mental problems and thinks he is imagining Jason. On the road, camp counselors Darren and Lizbeth get lost looking for the camp and run into Jason, who impales them both with the metal rod that resurrected him.

The next morning, Garris’ daughter Megan and her friends Sissy, Cort, and Lizbeth’s sister Paula ask him to search for Darren and Lizbeth. Tommy warns them about Jason, but as he is now considered an urban legend, they ignore the warnings, though Megan becomes attracted to him. In the woods, Jason happens upon a corporate paintball game; he kills the players for their equipment. During these kills, Jason discovers that he is far stronger than before when he rips off a man’s arm without actually meaning to.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) - Nancy McLoughlin

At Camp Forest Green, the children arrive, and the teens do their best to run the camp without Darren and Lizbeth. Meanwhile, Garris decides to escort Tommy out of his jurisdiction due to his influence on Megan. Tommy tries to make a run for Jason’s grave, but finds that the caretaker had covered it up to deny responsibility for it being dug up, and Hawes’ body is buried in its place. Tommy is then escorted out of town.

That night, Jason murders the caretaker and a nearby couple who witness the murder. Meanwhile, Cort goes out to have sex with a girl named Nikki, but both are killed by Jason. The sheriff’s men find the victims’ bodies and Garris immediately implicates Tommy in the murders, believing he has gone insane imagining Jason.

Tommy contacts Megan and convinces her to help him lure Jason back into Crystal Lake. Meanwhile, Jason makes his way to the camp and kills Sissy, then Paula. Meanwhile, Tommy and Megan are pulled over by Garris. Despite Megan’s alibi that she was with Tommy, he does not believe him to be innocent and arrests him, then goes to the camp to investigate. As Tommy and Megan develop a ruse to trick the watching deputy and escape, Jason kills Garris and two other deputies when they arrive at the camp.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (also known on screen as Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI) is a 1986 American slasher film and the sixth installment in the Friday the 13th film series written and directed by Tom McLoughlin. Although the original concept called for Tommy Jarvis, the protagonist of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, to become the new villain, the poor fan reception of A New Beginning prompted the producers to bring back Jason Voorhees as the series’ antagonist.

In resurrecting Jason, McLoughlin made Jason an explicitly supernatural force for the first time in the series, depicting him as being raised from the dead via electricity; this version of Jason, an undead serial killer and more powerful superhuman, would become the standard depiction for the rest of the franchise, until 2009’s remake. The film likewise broke with many other series conventions, introducing metahumor and action film elements including shootouts and car chases.

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

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

Directed by: Tom McLoughlin
Starring: Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, Kerry Noonan, Renée Jones, Darcy DeMoss, Tom Fridley, Vincent Guastaferro, Nancy McLoughlin
Screenplay by: Tom McLoughlin
Production Design by: Joseph T. Garrity
Cinematography by: Jon Kranhouse
Film Editing by: Bruce Green
Costume Design by: Maria Mancuso
Set Decoration by: Jerie Kelter
Art Direction by: Pat Tagliaferro
Music by: Harry Manfredini
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: August 1, 1986

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