Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhatten (iRiffs)

Film Year:  1989

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Rob Hedden

Starring:  The Big Apple...and a little bit of Vancouver...and a boat
Riffer:  EDISRAW

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

An undisclosed amount of time after Jason is dragged to the bottom of the lake by the zombie father of a psychic girl (?!), he is awakened and boards a vessel taking a graduation class to New York City for a senior trip.  One by one he murders people, because that's his thing.  The survivors escape the ship and flee into the city to hide from the mass murderer.

Jason Takes Manhattan one is one of those entries in the series that is seemingly hated but I don't really have any hard feelings against.  It always seemed to me one of those so dumb it's funny kind of movies.  The logic in the Friday the 13th has always been sketchy, but this one throws it all out the window and embraces it's own stupidity.  As a result we get over the top deaths, a teleporting Jason, an inane story, and laughable special effects.  I think it's a hoot, to be honest.

It does fuck up the timeline a little bit, as the main character claims she was almost drowned by a little boy Jason that lived in the lake about ten to twelve years prior, though Jason should have been an adult around that point (not to mention that Jason living in the lake as a child is all different kinds of stupid), so this shouldn't have happened.  It's a movie without reason, seemingly throwing random ideas into the screenplay and never bothering with a second draft.  But I have no excuses or reason for this movie.  It's just a hollow thing to watch and maybe get drunk to.

It's the final film of the Friday the 13th films made by Paramount Pictures (except for the 2009 remake, which was a joint venture with New Line Cinema), who chose to let the franchise just die as the box office dwindled.  It feels like an interesting bookend to the 80's slasher craze to have 1980 start the Friday franchise and 1989 end it.  Of course New Line purchased the Jason character and gave him several more movies, but to an extent those feel a bit too separated from what Friday the 13th seemed to represent.  I don't particularly think this franchise is all that great, but these first eight movies are something of a legacy worth noting, whether you like them or not.

The Riff

And instantly every fear I have about purchasing an iRiff is realized with one purchase.  This is one of the worst riffing experiences I've ever sat through.

::rubs temples::inhales deeply and exhales::  Okay, so let's start with the technical details.  This is a very low tech riff.  It's recorded as EDISRAW is viewing the movie while he's speaking into a microphone.  You can easily tell this because the movie echos in the background.  There is also a low hum that accompanies the entire track.  It also doesn't record his voice very well, and even at full volume he is constantly being drowned out by the movie.  This is partially due to his delivery, but put a pin in this point because I will talk about it further below.  Furthermore, one can constantly hear him messing around with stuff during the riff, possibly moving his microphone, typing on a keyboard, and just rummaging around.  At one point I'm pretty sure I heard a soda can being opened, but I can't confirm that.

I could have lived with this if the sync worked at all.  First of all the riff gave me no indication as to where I should start the riff or the movie to sync them up.  After about three minutes of screwing around I think I had finally found where it matched up.  Then it drifted.  I spent another good amount of time resyncing until I reached a satisfying result.  Then it drifted again.  I synced again.  Drift.  After about twenty minutes of this I suddenly realized this riff was synced to the PAL version of the film, which was never mentioned at any point in the description.  So basically I spent three bucks on a riff that wasn't even well made and I couldn't even use in the first place!

It was easy to find feedback on Hor-RIFF-ic's iRiffs, with this one I couldn't find any feedback at all.  I felt there needed to be something said about it so people who look at it might know what they're buying if they choose to purchase this.  A "let the buyer beware" message if nothing else.  I was determined to finish this experience, at the expense of keeping my hand on the pause button of the riff.  Taking into the fact that the constant resyncing was souring my mood, I did my best to review the riff as objectively as possible.  While I liked the idea of certain jokes, a lot of them made me cringe, as well as the several poorly placed callbacks to Mystery Science Theater.  It's possible that if they were delivered better this riff might have been funnier, but there are a fair amount that just made me raise an eyebrow.  The jokes that do seem like they could have been funny wound up misfiring because the poor syncing of the movie gave them to me in the wrong places, not to mention the EDISRAW has a tendency to mumble.  When I can make out what he's saying, the tone of his voice misdelivers almost every joke he says.  To be completely honest, his voice is nasally and overly sarcastic, almost as if this riff was recorded by one of the Goth Kids from South Park.  This especially becomes a problem when he tries to deliver a line as a character, but he just sounds the same just in a higher pitch.  It's monotonous.

Comparing a Friday the 13th riff to other Friday the 13th riffs, the team at Hor-RIFF-ic Productions provided pitch perfect sync instructions as well as supplying a Rifftrax approach to keeping the audios lined up.  Now I can accept that not everyone has these capabilities, but to not even give clear indication of syncing the movie or which regional version of the movie I'm supposed to be working with pretty much makes this riff worthless.  They also give the audience a more professional delivery system and enthusiasm for what they're doing.  And the big kick to the junk is Hor-RIFF-ic's far superior products are for sale at iRiffs for $1.99 each.  This is 90 cents more for an inferior product.  I can at least appreciate that the person who made this tried, but this shouldn't have been a riff I paid for.  This should have been for free on YouTube.

Not Recommended