Movies : Is It Really ‘Final Friday’ for Murderous Jason?

“Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday” is no occasion for bloody Auld Lang Syne. The “Friday the 13th” series, nine movies and innumerable corpses after its 1980 debut, here comes to a supposedly permanent dead-end, as we watch the second of its resident maniacs, truculent Jason Voorhees, repeatedly shot, hacked, blown to bits, vivisected--by a coroner who also eats his heart--and dragged off to hell by what seems to be the local chapter of the Night of the Living Dead. Somebody with a sense of symmetry is operating here. Thirteen years after the original Camp Crystal Lake blood bath, the “last”--produced by the original’s producer-director, Sean S. Cunningham, directed by newcomer Adam Marcus and scored by “13th” mainstay Harry Manfredini--was released, without press screenings, on Friday the 13th.

Does this mean that the filmmakers are really closing the circle? That the long, bloody and mostly dumb career of Jason, a rampaging hulk in a hockey mask who loves to kill lecherous teen-agers in flagrante delicto , is finally over? That, after deluding us with “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” in 1984, thumbing their noses at us with “Friday the 13th, Part 5: The New Beginning” the very next year, and then hacking and bashing their way, in fairly quick succession, through Parts 6, 7 and 8, Jason’s employers--now New Line Cinema rather than Paramount--have finally decided that enough is enough?

Don’t bet the cemetery on it. There’s only one sure way to kill Jason, and that’s to stop going to his movies.

Actually “Jason Goes to Hell” gives us plenty of reasons to quit. On the movie’s feeble plus side are Richard Gant’s acting (as the coroner), Manfredini’s music and one funny joke in the last half-minute. On the minus side: ludicrous characters. Garbled nonstop gore. Persistent loud, clanging noises that give you the impression of being trapped inside a malfunctioning radiator. Shadowy lighting that makes you feel as if you’re staggering around in the dark.

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And more: Scene after scene where supposedly “normal” human beings behave with monumental stupidity--and are promptly tortured and killed, sometimes in elaborate S & M rituals. Dialogue and performances that might convince you English is your second language--or third. Innumerable close-up shots of insane murderers grabbing victims and French-kissing them with black, snakelike tongues.

Obscene shouting matches between repulsive dimwits. Police that make the Keystone Kops look like a convention of Nobel laureates. One “hero” who molests waitresses and breaks fingers for kicks; another who spends most of the film running around frantically, trying to catch up with the murders. Great gory spews of bloody entrails, photographed in loving detail.

If all that isn’t enough to make you quit Crystal Lake, nothing will. But then, nothing ever did before.

“Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday” (rated R, for violence, sensuality and language) does have a new wrinkle--though new only to this series. Probably by way of John McNaughton’s underrated “The Borrowers,” the script writers have lifted the old John W. Campbell “Who Goes There?” gimmick of the monster hopping from one new body to the next--giving us not one maniac, but a batch of them, each new “Jason” lurching off with murder on its mind as soon as the old one gives it one of those snake-tongued soul kisses. Beyond this horror-show variant of “La Ronde,” it’s business as usual: One synthetic shock after another, designed to drive teen-agers on dates to grapple each other, and teen-agers without dates to snicker at the fates of those who have them.

What do they mean “Jason Goes to Hell?” If hell isn’t a series of “Friday the 13th” movies, repeated into eternity, then “Halloween’s” Michael Myers is a pacifist and Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger is a Nobel Peace Prize candidate. As for Jason, if it’s really time for him to hang up his ax and get a day job, there’s always Wall Street. Or maybe even movie criticism.

“Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday”

John D. LeMay: Steven Freeman

Kari Keegan: Jessica Kimble

Kane Hodder: Jason

Steven Williams: Creighton Duke

A New Line Cinema presentation of a Sean S. Cunningham production. Director Adam Marcus. Producer Sean S. Cunningham. Line producer Deborah Kayn-Cass. Screenplay by Dean Lorey, Jay Huguely. Cinematographer William Dill. Editor David Handman. Music Harry Manfredini. Production design W. Brooke Wheeler. Set decorator Natali K. Pope. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (Language, sensuality, violence).