Editorials
I Don’t Like ‘Jason Goes to Hell’ But Absolutely Love the Opening Sequence
A pretty young lady arrives at Camp Crystal Lake. But nothing is as it seems.
I’ve never been a fan of Jason Goes to Hell, which is not-so-fondly remembered by most Friday the 13th fans. By the ’90s, the franchise had totally worn out the simple stalk ‘n slash premise that made it so successful, and in an effort to breathe new life into the whole thing, the idea was devised to have Jason die and then literally hop into the bodies of other people; turning them into crazed killers in the process. I suppose one has to mildly applaud the creativity, and at least somewhat celebrate Jason Goes to Hell for trying to be different, but alas, the film isn’t very good.
And don’t even get me started on the look of Jason in it. Yikes.
But the one thing I do love about Jason Goes to Hell (aside from the cameo appearance by Freddy Krueger at the end, of course) is the opening sequence, which has a level of brilliance you wouldn’t expect to find in the ninth installment of a dying franchise. In order for Jason to hop into the bodies of other people, he first had to be definitively killed off, and that’s accomplished in pretty clever fashion.
In the opening sequence, we see a black car driving to Crystal Lake, and at first, it appears to be a man behind the wheel. But once the car arrives at a cabin in the woods, we realizes that it’s actually a woman who has for some reason traveled to the iconic locale. She has her hair up in a ponytail and is wearing a baseball cap and jacket, initially making her look quite unlike your traditional Friday the 13th victim. And that’s because, well, she’s anything but your typical Friday the 13th victim.
After fixing a burnt out light-bulb, the woman heads into the bathroom to take a shower. She lets her hair down and gets completely undressed; the camera, in typical Friday the 13th fashion, lingers on her naked body. And this is where Jason Goes to Hell starts to feel very familiar. As if on cue, the lights cut out and ominous music begins playing. The door to the cabin mysterious flings open, and it’s not long before Jason Voorhees strikes. He begins chasing the towel-clad woman through the woods.
Eventually though, she stops running. Just as Jason is about to strike the fatal blow and end her life, massive spotlights light up the woods of Crystal Lake. The woman, clearly not a victim but rather a total badass who was expecting everything that just happened, acrobatically flips out of frame. FBI agents appear and blow Jason to pieces.
The reveal, totally unexpected to viewers at the time, showed that the whole thing was a setup. A beautiful woman, an FBI agent herself, was deliberately sent out to a cabin in the woods on a mission to bait Jason Voorhees so that he could be killed off once and for all. And in order to make sure he showed up, she was instructed to essentially play the role of a Friday the 13th victim. Get undressed. Take a shower. Wait for Jason. As expected, he showed up right at the very moment the woman’s clothes came off; when you think about it, a self-referential jab at the character.
You can almost see the “dammit, they figured me out” look on Jason’s face when he’s caught.
By this point in the franchise’s timeline, Jason had slain several groups of young people who dared enter his woods, and I just love the idea that the FBI had finally caught on and decided to use his penchant for attacking scantily clad young women against him. To see the franchise, within one of its films, acknowledge that beautiful women are Jason’s kryptonite was clever and pretty damn meta at the time, and though the whole “to catch a predator” concept of the opening went over my head back in 1993, I very much appreciate that whole sequence today.
Just when you think you’re watching another paint-by-numbers Friday the 13th sequel, Jason Goes to Hell quickly flips the franchise on its head, and for that, I can’t help but respect it.
As for the rest of the film… maybe it’s best we just don’t talk about it.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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