Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Timing: 1:26 (86 min)

6.253/10
1312

5.899/10
9201

6/10
57000

All about film

Video 12

Photo 102

Actors and characters

Release date

1986-08-01

Country

United States

Production

Paramount, Sean S. Cunningham Films, Terror Films, Terror, Inc.

Genre

Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Budget

$3 000 000

Revenue

$19 472 057

Website

Director

Tom McLoughlin

Actors

Tony Goldwyn, Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, Darcy DeMoss, Renée Jones, Ann Ryerson, Temi Epstein, Michael Swan, David Kagen, Kerry Noonan
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Don Behrns

Operator

Jon Kranhouse

Composer

Harry Manfredini

Artist

Audition

Fern Champion, Pamela Basker

Editing

Bruce Green, Don Behrns
All team (127)

• Alice Cooper wrote three songs for the film: “Teenage Frankenstein,” “Hard Rock Summer,” and “Man Behind The Mask.”
• The opening credits of the sixth "Friday" are stylized after the opening credits of early James Bond films.
• C. J. Graham, who played Jason, was not an actor, but a night club manager who was casually noticed by someone from the film crew and invited to play Voorhees. The film was his acting debut.
• The initial script featured a scene with Jason's father visiting the graves of his wife and son. This plot twist did not make it into the film, but appeared in the "book" version of the series.
• According to the script, the town council renamed the lake and Crystal Lake camp to Forest Green, but the creators of subsequent films persistently ignored this fact and restored both the lake and the camp to their "original" names.
• The store from which Tommy calls Megan is called Karloff's General Store—a way for the filmmakers to express their respect for the legendary horror and thriller actor Boris Karloff.
• The film depicts a total of eighteen corpses.
• S.J. Graham, who played Jason, was not an actor, but a nightclub manager who was spotted by someone from the film crew by chance.
• On the first day of filming, Jason was played by Dan Bradley, one of the film's creative team, but it was then decided to cast someone less heavyset. The role ultimately went to a certain S.J. Graham, a restaurant manager who had no prior experience with film, and had started working at the restaurant immediately after leaving the army. In other words, he was accustomed to following orders. The scenes already filmed with Bradley were not reshot (they accounted for only a small portion of the screen time), so Jason was played by both Bradley and Graham.
• Having turned to faith, John Shepherd declined an offer to reprise his role as Tommy – a character he embodied in Danny Steinmann’s horror film *Friday the 13th: A New Beginning* (1985) – and the role went to Tom Matthews.
• Tom McLoughlin was initially hired for the project as a screenwriter, but producer Don Burns insisted that McLoughlin also be allowed to direct. Burns later stated that, otherwise, the studio would likely have given the position to Danny Steinmann, who directed the previous film in the franchise, *Friday the 13th: A New Beginning* (1985), and Burns strongly did not want to work with Steinmann due to disagreements that plagued their collaboration on the horror film *The Invisible* (1980).
• Director Tom McLoughlin was extremely dissatisfied with producer Don Burns due to his penchant for saving money and habit of making changes to the script without informing the director beforehand. Some of Burns' shortcomings can be found, if not justification, then at least explanation: he had made several agreements with the studio, one of which stipulated a bonus if filming was completed exactly on schedule. McLoughlin learned of this over time. He also found out that Burns had arranged to take the cooler installed on the roof of the truck after filming (it was claimed that the cooler and its installation cost the film’s budget a substantial sum). In retaliation, McLoughlin ordered the fasteners holding the cooler on the roof to be unscrewed before filming the truck crash scene, so that when the truck flipped over, the cooler flew off the roof and shattered upon impact.
• The scene of the cemetery caretaker's and the couple’s deaths was filmed and added to the film after the main shooting period had ended – all because one of the producers felt there weren't enough deaths shown in the film.
• He wasn’t credited in the credits as a stunt performer, but S.J. Graham performed all the stunts for the role of Jason himself, even in scenes where his character was shot and when he was set on fire.
• The scene where Jennifer Cook's character attacks Jason with an outboard motor was filmed in three locations – underwater shots were taken in a special tank in Los Angeles, where the water temperature could be controlled; shots above the water surface were filmed on a deserted, and therefore seemingly gloomy, lake in the state of Georgia; and the shots of the motor propeller cutting through Jason’s mask were filmed in the swimming pool of Tom McLaughlin’s father (during filming, the pool’s filtration system was hopelessly damaged).
• The scene involving the overturning of the RV was filmed last. Director Tom McLaughlin was very afraid to begin it, because everything had to be filmed in one take, and the crash scene itself was extremely dangerous for S. J. Graham. Why McLaughlin was so worried remains unknown, since Graham’s character isn’t even shown when the RV flips, so the actor could easily have not been placed in the RV at all.
• The opening credits of the sixth "Friday" are stylized after the opening credits of early James Bond films.