This is the sixth article in a series revisiting one Friday the 13th movie every Friday the 13th. Read parts one, two, three, four, and five.

You could probably make the case that the Friday the 13th movies are art—but you’d be arguing against producer Frank Mancuso Jr., who is flatly unpretentious about the franchise that launched his career. "What needs to be said is that the Friday the 13th movies films were about as close to a risk-free transaction as possible," Mancuso Jr. recalled in the series retrospective Crystal Lake Memories. "I remember several times where the movie would open on Friday, and on Monday, I’d get a call from Paramount saying, 'Go make another one.' It was simply and purely an exercise in commerce."

The Bloodiest, Most Deranged Friday the 13th Movie In 1985, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning attempted to find out whether the franchise could succeed without the character who made it so iconic. It was a weird experiment.

And by 1985, Friday the 13th was practically a self-generating machine. At a release rate of nearly one per year, the franchise had proven an extremely reliable draw. Friday the 13th was never going to lose money, because each movie cost practically nothing to make. But on the heels of the unevenly received Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning—which didn’t feature Jason Voorhees at all—the franchise faced a different risk: dwindling enthusiasm from its most devoted fans.

Sensing the need for a return to the basics, Mancuso Jr. tapped Tom McLoughlin, a talented up-and-comer with a single low-budget horror movie called One Dark Night to his name. Mancuso Jr. gave McLoughlin the chance to do pretty much anything he wanted with Friday the 13th Part VI, with one key exception: Whatever else happened, McLoughlin needed to bring Jason Voorhees back to life.

Though the resulting film, Jason Lives, certainly blazes its own trail, McLoughlin worked overtime to ensure that it would also sit comfortably within the greater Friday the 13th continuity. Tommy Jarvis—the character at the center of both Part IV: The Final Chapter and Part V: A New Beginning—is the lead role once again, making him the closest thing Friday the 13th has ever established to a recurring protagonist. Even the smaller details of Jason Lives tend to match with the earlier movies. After noting that Jason had endured a particularly vicious blow to the head from a machete Part IV: The Final Chapter, McLoughlin ensured that his Jason was missing an eyeball in the same spot.

But for all the close attention to franchise history, McLoughlin makes one big deviation. He utterly ignores the twist ending of Part V, which revealed that the Tommy Jarvis—having descended into madness after multiple encounters with psychotic killers over the course of his young life—had put on the hockey mask to become the new Jason.

Instead, Jason Lives begins by riffing on the dream sequence that opened the previous film. Once again, a couple of idiots decide to dig up Jason Voorhees’ body—but this time, it’s for real. The ringleader of this moronic grave-robbing mission is none other than Tommy Jarvis—not the new Jason, but a troubled loner attempting to process the trauma of having his childhood ruined by Jason when he was a little kid (when he was played by Corey Feldman, natch). Tommy’s unconventional approach to overcoming his psychological demons is to dig up Jason’s corpse and destroy it. Alas, when Tommy jams a metal pole through the corpse’s stomach, the plan immediately backfires; lightning strikes the pole, and Jason—a la Frankenstein—is miraculously revived by electricity, more powerful than ever.