11. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Jason doesn’t so much “take Manhattan” as he does “take nearly the entire movie to arrive in NYC on a slow-moving boat,” though the journey really is the destination in this case, since said boat is packed full of vapid teens. After Jason’s zapped back to life and sneaks aboard a boat out of Crystal Lake, he sidles on over to another vessel— the SS Lazarus (get it?), which is ferrying a group of recent high school grads on a cruise to the Big Apple. As Jason starts picking off victims, one among the group, the hydrophobic Rennie (Jensen Daggett), starts having visions of Jason’s drowning death.
Truth be told, the most distressing part of Rob Hedden’s 1989 entry (other than the general lack of Manhattan-ness promised by the title) is that when the Lazarus survivors finally make it to the city, they’re immediately mugged by junkies who make off with Rennie and inject her with drugs. Fortunately (?) Jason shows up to rip them apart before anything worse happens, but seriously, WTF? In the last 15 minutes, you finally get to see Jason on the subway, stomping around Times Square, etc. before he’s finally done in by the good ol’ NYC sewer system…but by then, Jason Takes Manhattan has long since lurched past unwatchable.
