MOVIE REVIEW : JASON SLASHES AGAIN IN ‘FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART VI’

Midway through “Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI” (citywide) a demented, drunken cemetery attendant stumbles on a violated grave and a cracked-open coffin. Miffed, he stares straight at the camera and complains: “Some folks got a strange idea of entertainment!”

It’s director-writer Tom McLoughlin’s sly dig at detractors of this lucrative movie series. Why, those carping critics, those moralistic nitpickers: They’re no better than a lot of babbling old drunks, staggering around in a graveyard! Worse, they can’t even take a joke.

But it’s true: some folks do have a strange idea of entertainment. The audiences for the “Friday the 13th” series, for example. Time and again, teen-agers and the young at heart flock into theaters across America to applaud and shriek at the murderous antics of Jason Vorhees, a guy in a hockey mask who runs around Camp Crystal Lake, slashing, slaughtering, and decapitating the camp counselors.

Every summer, a new batch of woodland frolickers shows up, and every summer Jason pulls on his mask, grabs a knife or an ax, and lurches off to decapitate a few more. Ah, those carefree, nubile, hot-blooded counselors. . . . They never learn. They sneak off for a little sylvan hanky-panky, and there’s Jason the killjoy, ready to slash.

How can they even get kids to apply for these jobs anymore? Carrying nitroglycerin across bumpy mountain roads and camp counseling at Crystal Lake: those must be the two biggest high-risk jobs in the Western hemisphere.

As for Jason, nothing discourages him--not even when the camp sneakily changes its name to “Forest Green.” Supposedly dead before the first movie began, killed or apparently killed numerous times since, he keeps popping back up, reeking and ripe for action. (Drowning, shooting, stabbing, exploding, burning and burying him haven’t stopped this maniac in a hockey mask. Perhaps the local authorities should consider something more radical--like trading him to the Toronto Maple Leafs.)

In this sixth variation on a bloody theme--which began life as a low-budget clone of another movie, John Carpenter’s “Halloween”--first-time director McLoughlin tries for reflexive, inside humor. He salts the movie with quirky transitions and oddball gags. At one point, a camp tot falls asleep with Sartre’s “No Exit” across his chest, which is either a joke on intellectuals or on the special hell of sequels.

The humor is welcome, some of the camera work inventive. And the young actors--Jennifer Cooke, Thom Matthews, Renee Jones, Kerry Noonan and Tom Fridley--are cute or lively (at least until Jason shows up). McLoughlin actually shows promise as a film maker. But eventually the movie, like its hero, lumbers back into its sadistic, unbreakable routine. Like Jason, it begins squirting gore indiscriminately in every direction, piling up kills with blithe abandon, leering over its own ingenious butchery, and ending as a chained, rotting, soggy corpse floating across the screen--eyes darting frantically in search of another resurrection.

No doubt it will get one. Perhaps teen-agers will once more swarm like lemmings to the theaters for another rollicking night in the charnel house, giggling and gagging. Maybe this sad excuse for a movie (rated R) will clean up, generating a “Friday the 13th, Part VII”--and another, and another, right on up to the ultimate: “Friday the 13th, Part XIII.”

But, by then, some moviegoers may have taken up other, less dangerous occupations. Like camp counseling at Crystal Lake.

‘JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART VI’ A Paramount release of a Terror, Inc. production. Producer Don Behrns. Director Tom McLoughlin. Writer McLoughlin. Camera Jon Kranhouse. Music Harry Manfredini. Editor Bruce Green. Production designer Joseph T. Garrity. Special effects Martin Becker. Songs Alice Cooper. With Thom Matthews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, Kerry Noonan, Renee Jones, Tom Fridley, C. J. Graham.

Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).