Woodyanders This eighteen-minute doc offers a pretty entertaining and illuminating chronicle on the making of "Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan." Among the folks interviewed are director Rob Heddon, actresses Jensen Daggett, Sharlene Martin, and Tiffany Paulsen, actors V.C. Dupree, Scott Reeves, and Peter Mark Richman, composer Fred Mollin, editor Steve Mirkovich, and his son Tim, who played young Jason. Heddon reveals that the eighth sequel was initially going to be the last one of the series while Hodder talks about having to actively campaign in order to be recast as Jason and how shooting in Times Square was a big thrill to do. Daggett admits that all the scenes with the dog required multiple takes. Hodder and Dupree talk at length about the infamous boxing scene; Hodder says that Dupree didn't pull his punches and really beat the hell out of him. Everyone states for the record that Hodder was a nice guy on the set, but got real intense and scary whenever it was time to play Jason. Martin has the best anecdote to relate about Heddon stripping nude on the set in order to make her comfortable enough to strip down and do a shower scene. Once again the gory murder set pieces had to be toned down in order to avoid an X rating. Although one of the lesser entries in the popular slasher series (it frankly fails to realize the full potential of its premise), this making of featurette is nonetheless well worth a watch.

Michael_Elliott New York Has a New Problem: The Making of Friday the 13th Part VIII (2009) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Here's another very good featurette from Paramount, this one taking a look at part 8 in their series, which is often considered one of the most disappointing. Director Rob Hedden is joined by Kane Hodder, VC Dupree, Jensen Daggett, Scott Reeves, Peter Mark Richman, Tiffany Paulsen, Sharlene Martin, editor Steve Mirkovich and his son Tim who played young Jason in the film. Fans often consider this one of the worst in the series and the director talks about various subjects including the budget just being cut so they couldn't shoot that much in NYC and they also discuss some of the death scenes that were trimmed by the MPAA. Thankfully there are a few outtakes that we get to see, which shows some of the carnage that was cut out. The cast members also have several fun stories about shooting and Hodder mentions that his favorite moment as Jason was filming on Time Square. There's also another funny outtake where the director stripped down naked so that the actress in the film wouldn't be as embarrassed about her nude scene. There's an outtake of the director in the shower, which is pretty funny. There's also talk about the ending and why it didn't work as well as everyone had hoped. Again, we get an outtake of what they were trying to go for but this effect really looks poor. Hodder also puts a rumor to rest that he hated the ending. Fans of the series will enjoy this even if it runs way too short.