Man's Best Hindrance

I was thinking about the dog in "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan". It shows up in the second scene and shows up unexpectedly for a last scare at the end, but in between it doesn't do much. It doesn't fight Jason or tip someone off to Jason or get killed by Jason. The last of those things is the last thing that would happen in a movie. People will tolerate a thousand people getting butchered in a movie without worrying a bit, but God knows they won't accept one dog getting killed even if torturing and killing animals is a known precursor to being a serial killer.

Any of those other things would be a viable reason to include the dog. If the dog affected the story at all, that would be a good reason. I can't remember one important thing the dog did. It just was there for a little bit, gone for a while so that you forget it ever was there, then there again at the end. The only thing you could even begin to argue the dog did was impact the image of its owner, the character Rennie. The trouble there is that Rennie's already supposed to be very likable without being demonstrably kind to animals. If Mickey Rourke was in the movie you'd have to show him being nice to dogs.

What's the excuse for Rennie bringing the dog? Well, people don't usually take their pets on cruises, I don't think- or rather, they didn't then. Today there are no doubt many pets-centric cruises, let alone pets-allowed ones, but then I think less so. You'd leave the dog with a friend or put it in a kennel, but you'd want it out of the way, not needing to be fed and walked and picked up after. It's a vacation, you know?

Besides, if nothing had gone wrong, that dog's going to New York. What are you doing with it once you get there? You're going to lug a dog all over a city that it's probably going to spend all its time freaking out in? Never mind whether you're even going to have a place to stay where you don't have to hide the dog from the staff. You spend all your time back home with the dog. Why have it taking up your attention when you're on a trip you're spending serious money on? It's just something that bugs me. I like dogs, but I'd never bring a dog on a damn cruise to New York.