Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Tommy Jarvis is out of a psychiatric hospital but still has flashbacks to the night he killed Jason Voorhees as a boy. He drives back to Crystal Lake, which the town has renamed Forest Green, with his friend Allen Hawes. On a stormy night they dig up Jason's grave so Tommy can burn the body and end his nightmares for good. Seeing the rotting corpse sends Tommy into a rage, and he stabs it again and again with a metal fence post, leaving the post stuck in the body. Before he can light it, two bolts of lightning hit the post and bring Jason back to life.

Hawes hits Jason with a shovel, and Jason punches through his chest and pulls out his heart. Jason puts on the hockey mask Tommy brought and heads for home. Tommy races to the sheriff's office to warn the town. Sheriff Mike Garris knows Tommy's history and locks him up instead. Out on the road, camp counselors Darren and Lizbeth get lost on their way to the newly opened Camp Forest Green. They run into Jason, and he kills both of them with the fence post.

The next morning Garris' daughter Megan comes to the station with her fellow counselors Sissy, Cort and Paula, Lizbeth's sister, to report Darren and Lizbeth missing. Tommy tries to warn them about Jason. Megan is drawn to him right away. Garris decides to escort Tommy out of his jurisdiction. On the way, Tommy swerves into the cemetery to prove Jason's grave is empty. But the drunk caretaker Martin has already filled the grave back in to cover himself, and Hawes' body is now buried where Jason was. Garris handcuffs Tommy and drives him out of town with a warning never to come back.

In the woods, Jason stumbles on a group of executives playing corporate paintball. He smashes Burt's face into a tree and takes his machete. He cuts off the heads of Stan, Larry and Katie in one swing. Roy, the last player, hits Jason with a paintball and runs, and Jason hunts him down and cuts him apart. Children arrive by bus at Camp Forest Green, and the teen counselors do their best to run things while wondering where Darren and Lizbeth are.

That night Jason kills Martin with a broken bottle at the cemetery. Then he kills Steven and Annette, an engaged couple on a picnic nearby who see him. At the camp, Cort sneaks off with a local girl named Nikki to her stepfather's RV. Jason cuts the power and gets inside. As Cort drives off, Jason drags Nikki into the bathroom and smashes her face into the wall, then drives a knife through Cort's head. The RV flips, and Jason walks away from the wreck. When deputies find the bodies, Garris decides Tommy is the killer.

Tommy calls Megan. He believes the only way to stop Jason is to trap him back in Crystal Lake, where he drowned as a child. Megan helps him head for the camp, and when her father pulls them over she tells him Tommy has been with her for hours and could not have killed Cort and Nikki. Garris locks Tommy up anyway. Jason reaches the camp. He pulls Sissy out a cabin window and twists her head off, and he kills Paula. He finds a little girl named Nancy praying in her bunk and leaves the children alone.

Garris, Deputy Thornton and Officer Pappas head to the camp to find Tommy's supposed accomplice. Megan breaks Tommy out of jail, leaving Deputy Rick Cologne locked in a cell. At the camp, Jason kills Thornton with a dart to the head and crushes Pappas' head. Garris finally sees that Tommy was right, and dies trying to protect Megan when Jason folds him in half.

Jason is about to kill Megan when Tommy yells his name from a boat in the middle of the lake. Jason wades out after him. Tommy wraps a chain tied to a boulder around Jason's neck, but Jason wrecks the boat and pulls Tommy under. Megan dives in. Jason grabs her leg, and she shoves the boat's running outboard motor into his face and neck, sending him to the bottom. Megan drags Tommy to shore and brings him back with CPR as the kids cheer. Tommy says Jason is home now. In the last shot, Jason floats chained at the bottom of Crystal Lake, and his eye opens.

Story notes

• Tommy Jarvis accidentally resurrects Jason while trying to destroy his corpse.
• Jason returns as a supernatural killer and heads back to the renamed Camp Forest Green, where children are now staying.

Release & Reception

Paramount opened Jason Lives on August 1, 1986, in 1,610 theaters. It took in $6,750,837 that weekend, second place nationally. The domestic total was $19,472,057, 46th for the year. It made money, but its 5,248,533 tickets sold were the fewest of any Friday the 13th film up to then.

Rotten Tomatoes lists 61% from 35 reviews. Metacritic lists 30 out of 100 from 10 critics. CinemaScore audiences gave it a B.

Variety called it predictable but reasonably slick. Caryn James of The New York Times called it a gory waste of time and said the added humor could not overcome the predictable story. Gene Siskel gave it 1 1/2 stars and said the jokes made it the best in the series without changing the fact that it was the same story again.

Later reviews were kinder. Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress wrote in 2012 that it was easily the best in the series. David Nusair praised the pre-credits sequence but found the rest slow and short on gore. Over time it became a fan favorite, and writers have credited its self-aware jokes with paving the way for Scream.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: IMP Awards — Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives poster archive.

Cast

Crew

Production

A New Beginning made money but angered fans and got some of the worst reviews in the series. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. wanted to move away from what he called its coarse tone. He hired Tom McLoughlin, who had directed the horror film One Dark Night and was also known around town for his comedy scripts. That mix appealed to Mancuso. McLoughlin could tell the story any way he wanted, with one rule: Jason had to come back as the villain.

McLoughlin modeled the film on the Universal monster movies, mainly the 1931 Frankenstein, with Jason brought back by electricity. He took the idea of a weakness from vampire stories: Jason can be stopped by returning him to his home soil, the lake. That meant setting aside Part 2's idea that Jason survived his drowning and making him a supernatural force.

He also dropped the end of A New Beginning, where Tommy seemed to become a killer. He added knowing humor and action the series had not tried before, like shootouts, a car chase and an underwater fight. Lizbeth says she has seen enough horror movies to know to run, and Martin the caretaker looks into the camera and remarks on people's strange idea of entertainment. The opening titles were designed as a nod to the James Bond gun-barrel sequence. McLoughlin also cited Edgar Allan Poe and his Catholic upbringing, and this is the only film in the series with open references to God.

The film's working titles were Aladdin Sane, a play on 'a lad insane' taken from the David Bowie album, and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI. According to production notes, McLoughlin and cinematographer Jon Kranhouse went for a slicker look than earlier films, with sweeping camera moves, strong color and hard backlight.

Dropping Part V's story meant cancelling the sequel contracts of that film's surviving cast. At one point, when the film was still planned as a direct follow-up to A New Beginning, Pam and Reggie were to be killed in the opening minutes. John Shepherd was asked to play Tommy again. He was an evangelical Christian with doubts about the series after Part V, but liked the scene where Jason spares the praying girl. He chose to make the film Caught instead and then left acting for seminary. Thom Mathews got the part. McLoughlin later said he did not know about Mathews' horror work in The Return of the Living Dead until filming had started.

Mancuso kept final say on casting but mostly left it to McLoughlin. His one demand was that the final girl be a very attractive blonde. McLoughlin cast Jennifer Cooke after seeing her on the TV series V. Ron Palillo, Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter, played Hawes. David Kagen had worked with McLoughlin before and had been Cooke's acting teacher. McLoughlin's wife Nancy played Lizbeth, the first woman Jason kills.

Stuntman Dan Bradley started as Jason, but after the first day Mancuso did not like how he looked on screen. Bradley's paintball scenes stayed in the film. C.J. Graham, a 6-foot-3, 250-pound former soldier who managed a restaurant, took over. He had played Jason in a hypnotist's stage show at a restaurant, where effects coordinator Martin Becker saw him and recommended him. Graham said Paramount's rule was that the film could have some humor but could not make fun of Jason. He said the army taught him how to carry himself when he walked into a room, and he and McLoughlin were both fans of Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney.

Principal photography began March 10, 1986, in Covington, Georgia, and ran through mid-May on an eight-week schedule. Five of those weeks were night shoots. Other locations included Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge, Georgia.

Jason Lives is the only film in the series with no nudity. The RV scene keeps both actors dressed. McLoughlin did this on purpose to push back on the idea that the films punish teens for sex. Producers pressured him to have Darcy DeMoss take her shirt off. He mentioned it to her, and she said no.

In post-production the producers asked for more, not less. McLoughlin's cut had 13 kills as an in-joke, and the studio wanted three more, bringing the total to 16. He added Martin and the picnic couple Steven and Annette. He also had to extend Sissy's death. As first shot, she was pulled out the window and not seen again until Megan found her head in a squad car.

The script ended at the cemetery with Martin meeting Jason's silent father, Elias, who had paid the city to bury Jason and now knew his son was back. The studio did not want to set up Elias for the next film, and Martin's added death made the scene impossible anyway. McLoughlin also shot two other endings. In one, Jason's mask floats to the surface. In the other, the station door swings open while Deputy Cologne reaches for the cell keys, suggesting Jason got loose. The producers wanted Jason's survival made obvious, so the released version ends on his eye opening underwater.

Tom McLoughlin recalled watching the first five films consecutively in a Warner Bros. projection room before developing Jason Lives. His approach paired dark humor with opposing objectives for Tommy and Jason.

McLoughlin said he deliberately introduced action the earlier installments had not used, including the car chase and underwater struggle. He described directing C.J. Graham toward an inhuman, undead-soldier movement style informed by Frankenstein and The Terminator.

McLoughlin doubled for Tommy’s hands opening Jason’s coffin because Thom Mathews was unavailable for that insert.

Filming locations

• New Covington Cemetery, 9189 Highway 278 E, Covington, Georgia: Jason's grave and the night Tommy digs him up
• Porter Memorial Library, Monticello Street, Covington, Georgia: The sheriff's office, including Tommy's warning about Jason and Megan's escape with Tommy
• Karlov's General Store, Starsville, Georgia, off Highway 213: Tommy's phone booth call. The booth was a prop.
• Camp Daniel Morgan, Hard Labor Creek State Park, near Rutledge, Georgia: Camp Forest Green. Most of the cabin scenes and all of the lake and dock scenes. The cabins were painted grey for the film.
• Covington, Georgia: Town and police department scenes
• Swimming pool of Tom McLoughlin's father: Parts of the underwater climax, including the propeller attack
• A diving pool: C.J. Graham's underwater chained fight, about twenty feet down
• Principal photography began in Covington, Georgia, with additional work at Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge and surrounding areas; AFI records an eight-week schedule, five weeks of it at night.
• Covington supplied the town and police material, while Camp Daniel Morgan outside the city stood in for the renamed Camp Forest Green.

Effects and makeup

Chris Swift and Brian Wade did the special effects makeup through Reel EFX. Their assistants included Gabriel Bartalos, Chris Biggs, John Blake, Barbara Bock, Thomas Floutz, Bill Foertsch, Jim Gill, Jim McLoughlin, Richard Mayone, Steven Sommerfield, William Stoneham and Gail Taylor. Martin Becker was special effects coordinator, and David Weills and Ken Sher handled mechanical effects. William Wysock created the lightning effects.

Brian Wade said Chris Swift brought him onto the team. He designed Jason as the decayed undead figure the script called for, while keeping wounds from the earlier films, and did Jason's makeup on set. He recalled shooting both a gorier and a milder version of many effects so the editors had options.

Some of the climax was shot in the swimming pool of McLoughlin's father. The gore from the propeller shot clogged the pool filter. McLoughlin's brother Jim had painted ONE DARK NIGHT across the bottom of the shallow end, and McLoughlin credited Jim with helping build Hawes' punched-out heart.

C.J. Graham said his hardest scene was the underwater fight about twenty feet down in a diving pool. He was chained at the neck to a cinder block and worked until he was nearly out of air before signaling the divers.

Some climactic lake material, including the outboard-motor attack on Jason, was shot in director Tom McLoughlin’s family swimming pool; the gore used for the propeller effect clogged the pool filter.

Brian Wade said Chris Swift recruited him to the Reel EFX team. He designed Jason as the script’s decayed undead figure while retaining wounds from earlier films, then handled Jason’s on-set makeup.

Wade recalled filming both heavier-gore and reduced-gore versions of many effects, giving the production alternative material for the final edit.

McLoughlin said the family-pool shot had to use the deep end because his brother Jim had painted the One Dark Night logo across the shallow end. He also credited Jim with helping create Hawes’s punched-out heart.

Props and costumes

Maria Mancuso was costume designer.

The hockey masks came from the 'Mystery Mask' from Part III. They were vacuum-formed, painted white on the back with layers of almond and cream on the front, weathered with oil paints and given a single red forehead chevron. About a dozen were made for filming.

Jason's outfit is an olive work shirt, weathered yellow Thinsulate gloves, an olive-drab military pistol belt, grey khakis and worn tan boots. His weapons include a chromed machete, a survival knife, throwing darts and the fence-post spear.

C.J. Graham later made accurate Part VI costume replicas for convention photo ops, down to the seven spear marks on the chest of the shirt.

The Jason Lives hockey masks were vacuum-formed from a buck derived from the surviving 'Mystery Mask' lineage, then painted in layered white/almond/cream tones with a single forehead chevron and heavy weathering; more than a dozen production masks were made.

Jason's costume combines an olive work shirt, weathered yellow Thinsulate gloves, an olive-drab LC-2 ALICE pistol belt, silver-grey khakis and distressed Dunham boots. Signature production-made weapons include chromed Ontario machetes, throwing darts and the fence-post spear.

Production artifacts

Art and design

• The IMP Awards poster page credits B.D. Fox & Friends Advertising for the design.

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Harry Manfredini, credited as Henry Manfredini, wrote the score. He had scored every film in the series up to this point.

Three Alice Cooper songs are used: 'He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)' by Cooper, Tom Kelly and Kane Roberts; 'Teenage Frankenstein' by Cooper and Roberts; and 'Hard Rock Summer' by Cooper and Roberts. The first two are from his album Constrictor. 'Hard Rock Summer' was later released on the box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper.

Felony performs 'I'm No Animal' from its album Vigilante. AFI lists the song as 'Animal,' written by Jeffrey Spry and C. J. Spry.

'He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)' got a music video mixing film clips with new footage of Cooper.

McLoughlin said Alice Cooper wanted to write an original song, 'The Man Behind the Mask,' for the end credits. He also said the two had played on the same bill at the Cheetah club years earlier, when Cooper fronted the Nazz and McLoughlin sang in a band called TNT.

La-La Land Records released Manfredini's score in its limited 6-CD box set on January 13, 2012. Unlike Parts 1 to 5, this score came from original master tapes that Manfredini had kept. The set sold out in under 24 hours. The disc was reissued on its own on September 13, 2019, from the same master.

On June 27, 2025, La-La Land released The Ultimate Cut, remastered from the original tapes with cues not heard or not used in the film.

• Waxwork Records Jason Lives soundtrack sourced from original 1986 master tapes on colored vinyl with new artwork.
• McLoughlin recalled using an Alice Cooper song in the temporary score before Frank Mancuso Jr. suggested commissioning Cooper. Additional songs created a recurring musical presence; McLoughlin preferred the more rock-driven early version of He’s Back to the synthesizer arrangement ultimately chosen.

Home Media

• 2004: included in Paramount's From Crystal Lake to Manhattan DVD box set. The bonus disc had a 14-minute interview with McLoughlin and C.J. Graham and deleted scenes, including a 25-second dialogue clip where Sissy swears.
• June 16, 2009: Paramount Deluxe Edition DVD. Extras: commentary with Tom McLoughlin, editor Bruce Green and Vincent Guastaferro; Jason Lives: The Making of Friday the 13th Part VI (12:33) with McLoughlin, David Kagen, Nancy McLoughlin, Gabe Bartalos and Chris Biggs; Slashed Scenes (6:00), mostly carried over from 2004 minus the Sissy clip; Meeting Mr. Voorhees (2:46), McLoughlin on the unused ending with storyboards; Lost Tales from Camp Blood Part 6 (6:28); The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited Part III (9:10); teaser trailer (1:42).
• September 13, 2013: Blu-ray in Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection from Paramount and Warner Bros.
• 2014: double-feature Blu-ray with A New Beginning from Paramount and Warner.
• February 2018: Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection DVD set from Paramount, covering the first eight films.
• October 13, 2020: included in Scream Factory's Friday the 13th Collection Deluxe Edition Blu-ray box set.

• Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI novelization by Simon Hawke, 1986. It adds Mr. Voorhees, flashbacks to Jason's childhood and more backstory for Tommy and Sheriff Garris.
• NECA Ultimate Part 6 Jason 7-inch scale action figure.
• Alice Cooper's Constrictor album, featuring 'He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)' and 'Teenage Frankenstein'.
• La-La Land Records score CDs: 2012 box set, 2019 single-disc reissue, 2025 Ultimate Cut.
• Paramount press kit: black folder with red lettering, production notes, black-and-white press photos and a news release announcing the August 1, 1986, Los Angeles opening.
• NECA Camp Crystal Lake accessory set with camp sign, dock base, rock/sign base and chain for recreating Jason's lake-bottom imprisonment.

Books and publishing

The catalog

Trailers & clips

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Press & Promo

Effects

Props

Merchandise