There is a scene in 1989’s "Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan" in which our favorite hockey mask-wearing serial killer confronts a female Asian teenager that’s alone in the ballroom of a decent-sized ship sailing toward New York City. Never mind why she’s there, why the ship is going to NYC or what the freaking hell Jason is doing aboard it (I’ll explain that in a minute). After a brief ‘where did he go?’ cat-and-mouse moment Jason proceeds to grab the teen’s neck and choke her to death. The camera doesn’t sway or perform a cool dolly or wrap-around shot. It just stays there, watching as Jason (AKA Kane Hodder) gradually takes away the breath (and life) of yet another disposable, generic and forgettable teen that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For some reason this scene stuck with me long after the DVD had been ejected from my PlayStation 2. There are many more (cooler or bloodier) deaths in "Jason Takes Manhattan" to look forward to, but the strangling of the Asian teen symbolized to me just how dry, lazy and soulless the "Friday the 13th" assembly-line franchise had become up to this point of its existence. The fact that the movie advertises in its title a potential ravaging of the Big Apple (NYC’s very own Manhattan) by Jason, then proceeds to take two thirds of the movie to get Mr. Vorhees to a dreary-looking Vancouver (looking anything BUT like what NYC looks alike except for a couple of scenes) that doesn’t come anywhere near a takeover, betrays the film’s premise and audience expectations that something cool is happening (or soon will).

Then again, the insults to audience intelligence that characterized previous "Friday the 13th" feature films shouldn’t surprise anyone that wants to loose him/herself into a world of idiocy and retarded teenager behavior. A world in which Jason, as the most likable character by default (!), gets to perform on these losers the anesthesia-surgery we wish we could inflict upon them. Awakened from his underwater grave by an electric cable sliced by the anchor of a boat belonging to a couple of teenage lovers in heat (!), Jason harpoons his way into the boat and watches over what used to be Camp Crystal Lake (now with a new name and a completely new look; surprise, surprise! :-( ). After this boat drifts for miles Jason winds up as the uninvited guest of a chartered boat carrying a group of wealthy but troubled (aren’t they all?) teenagers, along with a few adult chaperones that are headed toward New York City on a field trip. Throw in rough weather and plenty of instances in which these dopey teens walk away into their own separate (and dark) corners of the ship, and voala! ‘R’ rated carnage for (then) dwindling masses of "Friday the 13th" followers to chump on with relish.

Unlike the charismatic heroine with Psychokinesis powers from "The New Blood" prequel, the handful of leads in "Jason Takes Manhattan" (Jensen Doggett’s Rennie, Sean Robertson’s Scott Reeves, V.C. Dupree’s Julius, etc.) are one sorry bunch of unappealing losers. Even the grown-up characters (Barbara Bingham’s Colleen Van Deusen, Peter Mark Richman’s Charles McCulloch, etc.), which are usually good for a cheap laugh or two, are overplayed so badly as to seem comical. You know your troupe of movie performers aren’t worthy of Canadian Community College Theater training when a stuntman (Kane Hodder, AKA Jason) displays better comedic timing than all of them combined in one scene (Ch.16) that pays homage to Yuck, the deformed dog with a doghouse-for-a-mask sidekick of "Micro-Man" (a forgotten cartoon from the 1970’s). This scene takes place in New York’s photogenic Times Square locale, one of the few saving graces of an otherwise dreadful exercise in waiting impatiently for the next extra to be brutally dispatched and for another neck (preferably writer/director Rob Hadden’s) to be sliced and diced. The dullest and most innocuous "Friday the 13th" movie from the Paramount era.

DEATH TOLL: 19, 14 men and five women, plus someone shot and killed by another character besides Jason. MOST GRUESOME AND MEMORABLE DEATH: no contest! Julius (V.C. Dupree) exhausts himself while giving Jason a boxing clinic; a single well-placed punch by the masked killer decapitates the young man’s head, which appears a few minutes later as a trophy inside a NYC cab! One of the most laugh-out loud classic moments in the entire series. Honorable mentions go to the impaling of a guy into a boat’s antenna (a concept that would be further refined in 2002’s "Jason X") and an annoying guitar-playing teen that gets the Pete Townsend treatment performed on her (with her own guitar no less).