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Until the series was enlivened creatively by 2001's Jason X and financially by 2003's Freddy vs. Jason, it seemed as if the screenwriters of the Friday the 13th franchise would be forever forced to return to the familiar environs of Camp Crystal Lake to deliver their 90 minutes of bloodshed. Although execrable by almost any measure, this late-'80s outing at least attempted to give the hockey-masked killer a change of scenery. Mostly set aboard a cruise ship full of 11th-grade stereotypes, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan abandons summer camp and its trappings for a sort of John Hughes-with-carnage milieu. Save for one memorable set piece in the boat's discotheque, the new environment doesn't do much to enliven the overfamiliarity of the material. But at least it serves the purpose of getting Jason away from his homeland and into the Big Apple. The final reel -- a sort of "who's on first?" routine involving Jason, the ship's survivors, and some New York lowlifes -- may be enough to rouse those who have drifted off during the preceding tedium. It was only with the next installment, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, that the series' producers began truly to attempt wilder variations on their formula.