Since its publication in October of 2014, “Ranking, Dissecting the ‘Friday the 13th’ Series” has been by far the most viewed post on Darkadaptedeye. In celebration of DAE’s fifth anniversary, that original piece has been revisited, expanded, and thoroughly updated, which is something its author both has wanted to do and, frankly, should have done years ago. Thank you for visiting and reading DAE. On behalf of blog/camp management, I hope you enjoy your time down at the lake! -EN
“He neglected to mention that, downtown, they call this place ‘Camp Blood’…”
John Carpenter’s Halloween is, without question, my favorite horror movie of all time – its prominence as recurring subject matter on this site, whether directly or as an invariably unfair comparison point, is conclusive proof – but its rough-hewn demon spawn, Friday the 13th, actually qualifies as my favorite horror series. I’ve been thinking a lot lately, in fact, about what a surprising little swath of my adolescence and teenage years was given over to fuzzy but fond memories of watching an unstoppable killer stalk nubile teenagers around the grounds of a New Jersey summer camp. For heaven’s sake, why, might you ask? I don’t rightly know. I have always felt an instinctive attraction to things “other”, of course, and have, as a result, found myself on the defensive side of more arguments about “harmful” art and censorship and selective morality than I can properly recount (or care to). One of the joys of growing up is the degree to which you can naturally go about pruning those sorts of conversations out of your life, whether by updating your social circle, changing your surroundings, or both. I still fondly recall a vivid memory of milling about, at (approximately) the age of nine, in the upstairs of my grandparents’ grand, gothic house with two beloved cousins, ten and eight respectively, when one of them announced, “we should play Friday the 13th!”
Play…Friday the 13th? Hmm. I was nonplussed. What was Friday the 13th exactly? Sounded like a very strange game to me, though my cousins were sure excited. The two brothers proceeded to argue for a little while over the parameters of the game, none of which seemed terribly concerned with rules or scenarios or the like, but rather boiled down to a single, belligerent point of emphasis: “I wanna be Jason!” I must’ve watched this back and forth for five solid minutes. Remember, I still had no conception of Friday the 13th whatsoever, though my mental gears were definitely turning. My cousins were invested in the idea, and I could see that “being Jason”, whatever the hell that entailed, was championship strategy indeed.
Shrewdly, I decided to break the tie. “I wanna be Jason!” I suddenly interjected. The two, perhaps having forgotten my presence altogether, looked at me for a pregnant moment with all the annoyance and high regard of a picnic goer who notices an inconvenient anthill in the middle of passing the green beans. I don’t remember what we ended up playing that night, but it sure wasn’t Friday the 13th. Nevertheless, the die was cast.
Let us briefly review, up front, what we know to expect from a Friday the 13th film, shall we? Horny, attractive teenagers flock to party at an infamous lake and, in the process, are observed, stalked, and dispatched in creative, creepy, and occasionally scary ways by an imposing masked killer. Following a shocking reveal of the preceding carnage, the killer engages in a far-ranging final battle with the lone survivor(s) and is eventually, albeit temporarily, neutralized. The end. Friday the 13th is the opposite of high art. It is not intended to be edifying. It is not intended to be inclusive. It occupies the far reaches of genre filmmaking, and swims in the deep end of a very disreputable public pool. It is, at the very least, as much fun as it sounds like it might be, and, often, quite more. We are not splitting the atom here, nor curing cancer, nor reinventing the wheel. That’s something to make peace with before entertaining the kind of foolhardy discussion I’m about to join. Otherwise, I respectfully advise you swim somewhere other than Crystal Lake. There are large variables throughout the series to be found in terms of acting, characterization, craft, scene setting, bloodletting, and effective suspense (read on for much, much more), but movies like this are derisively called “formulaic” for a reason: because, at least on the level being pitched, the formula works like a charm, and the critic, be they of the film or social variety, is probably none too happy at that fact. Whichever side of the fence you happen to land, you may take solace in the fact that A) you belong there naturally and B) you have lots of company.
Since the advent of motion pictures, people have crowded into theaters to see their nightmares contextualized on screen, the better to face them head on. Friday the 13th has its roots even further back, in the spooky campfire yarns* and cautionary tales told back in the days when folks had to invent their own fun. Many fans see horror cinema as a pressure release valve or a roller coaster ride, and some as a vehicle for true catharsis, while others (like me) just happily splash around in the mud puddles of dark fantasy, grinning at how stark, incredible, and/or absurd it all is. We are lovers of both convention and invention. Whatever your fixed opinion on the subject, please rest assured that you are correct. If you’re not already a fan of the Friday the 13th series, or horror movies in general, I’m certainly not here to convert you. Instead, I offer my winking congratulations on reading this far despite being such a fierce upholder and standard bearer of boring normalcy. What I am here to do is celebrate, for better and worse (and there’s more of the latter than the former to be had over the course of these twelve movies), and in fairly exhaustive detail (as is my history and prerogative), one of the inescapable foundational texts of my cinematic youth. And, yes, I said that with a straight face. Let somebody else claim crushing guilt over his or her pleasures. I love movies, always have, and I know they can’t all be Bergman or Ozu or Wilder. Sometimes it’s just much more fun to be Jason.
*The series’ second most often advanced misconception – after the notion, exploited by Wes Craven’s “Scream”, that Jason Voorhees is the killer throughout instead of an understudy who went on to become the breakout star – probably has to do with a persistent, outsized characterization of the infamous Camp Crystal Lake as the de facto “Friday” setting. In truth, only three of the twelve movies to come are about camp counselors at all, while the rest generally focus on hedonistic young vacationers or obtuse lakefolk who all just happened to be in the wrong space at the wrong time. The farther the series strayed from its home at the lake, of course, the more it drifted into oblivion. It was only when revisiting this piece for its long overdue facelift that I realized those three movies (1, 2, and 6) just so happen to also be the series’ best. No need to overly dwell on the strange primal potency of dangers at camp here, I promise, though I still doubt the connection is any coincidence.
1) Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Jason Voorhees’ traumatized rival determines to destroy his body, but his attempt unwittingly launches another killing spree…
Year: 1986 (act 6)
Director: Tom McLaughlin
Setting: The reopened/rechristened Camp Forest Green and various ports of call around town – police station, cemetery, gas station (all formerly Crystal Lake, NJ)
Tone: Self-aware
Nutshell: The Friday the 13th series was a horror powerhouse in the early to mid-1980s, unleashing five uncomfortably profitable movies in as many years and seeing its marquee villain morph from spectacular cameo to artisan to rock star before being killed off on purpose at the height of his popularity. In 1986, following the mercenary miscalculation of A New Beginning, the series was mired in a self-created rut, and stood at a crossroads. Producers had slaughtered their cash cow in hopes of huge box office returns, yet stumbled in his absence, finding Jason way easier to approximate than replace. Fresh perspective was needed, and came in the person of Tom McLaughlin, a long-haired liberal arts professor type with the look of someone plotting three moves ahead at all times. What audiences missed, obviously, was their fallen avatar, and McLaughlin’s first order of business, after prior brain trustees had gone to such lengths to both kill the fiend and confirm his demise, was to bring Jason Voorhees back from the dead. In so doing, he provided the series with its first real deviation from form – Jason was now officially undead as opposed to just being ridiculously hearty – but his contribution also had an elusive quality foreign to many of the derivants that would follow: it was just a really good movie. Tommy Jarvis, who first slayed his masked nemesis at age 11, and then an unconvincing doppelganger at age 18, returns to Crystal Lake (renamed “Forest Green” in his absence as a way of wallpapering over the lingering tragedy) to finish Jason once and for all, by digging up his grave and incinerating his body (never mind that Part V made a point of saying he’d already been cremated). At the moment he should strike the match, toss it and stand back, however, Tommy instead attacks the exposed corpse in a fit of post-traumatic rage, leaving a wrought iron spindle from the cemetery gates embedded right in the space where Jason’s heart should be. A convenient storm has rolled in by this point, and a precision lightning strike revives the formerly late Mr. Voorhees, a la Frankenstein’s monster. Thus begins one of the most top to bottom fun horror movies I’ve ever seen, as Jason stomps off toward his ancestral home to renew hostilities and Tommy, knowing full well of what his foe is capable, rushes to the local police station, where he immediately gets on the wrong side of the no-nonsense sheriff and into the good graces of his rebellious daughter, Megan. McLoughlin imbues the film with the spirit of not just Friday the 13th but also the Universal monsters of the 1930s, among others (he even cheekily tips his hat to James Bond during the opening titles), and shoots it full of two things the horror genre so often has in short supply: humor and logic. Tommy engages in a high stakes chess match with local police while Megan and her pals move back onto the lakefront and prepare to welcome in flocks of young campers. Jason stalks the campgrounds as tensions steadily, memorably escalate. Tommy and Megan become first a couple, then a team, and concoct a desperate, goofball plan to return Jason to his original watery grave. The film is (only) comparatively light on both sex and violence, but is really none the worse for it, because it also suffers from a surplus, for this series anyway, of creativity. Jason Lives plays off well-established horror tropes years before Scream made it profitable, and expertly ticks so many boxes that it stands as a symbolic rebuke to studio executives who think that horror movies craft themselves. McLaughlin, who lapsed back into relative obscurity after Jason Lives proved too esoteric for the marketplace to fully embrace, was absolutely the right man to undertake this renovation. I love where he took the series, even if wasn’t ever to be an extended stay.
Cast likeability/relatability: Pretty high. There are no jerks with any appreciable screen time. Flirty, fetching, and fun, Megan is a reliable breath of fresh air, and her camp counselor friends all present as bright, halfway decent, somewhat responsible twenty-somethings. It’s a kick to watch them struggle to engage their young charges in boring camp activities. Speaking of the legitimate kids, McLoughlin uses them strategically to up the stakes of Jason’s eventual camp invasion but wisely limits the peril they’re subject to, even clearing space for couple of spotlight roles, as with a young insomniac who tries in vain to convince the adults of Jason’s presence then resorts to surprisingly effective last minute prayer when he looms over her bed in the flesh, or with the boy who, while hiding under his bed during the film’s climax, asks his friend, “So, what were you going to be when you grew up?” Parts IV-VI comprise, in essence, the “Tommy Jarvis Trilogy”, but each movie has a distractingly different take on its hero. In Jason Lives, Tommy is hard to get a full handle on, earnest but shifty, obviously battle-scarred, and not a little reckless, though only to a point (Megan eventually surprises/ surpasses him there). It’s a nuanced performance for this kind of movie, indicative of the care McLoughlin has put into its creation. Even Sheriff Garris is essentially a good man and a good cop rather than a cardboard villain, someone who is simply overprotective of both his town and his daughter. When the time comes, after a film’s worth of hard-headed obstruction, for him to finally make the right choice, he doesn’t hesitate.
Notables: Jennifer Cooke, whose Megan was among the great crushes of my adolescence, also played the superpowered human/visitor spawn Elizabeth in her teenaged form on the original V: The Series. Leading man Thom Matthews starred in one of the decade’s great horror titles, The Return of the Living Dead, as well as its overreaching, undercooked sequel. In the series’ first overt bit of stunt-casting, Jason’s initial victim was played by Ron Palilo, better known as Horshack on beloved ‘70s sitcom Welcome Back Kotter. Per IMDb, runaway RV driver Tom Fridley appeared in not one but two of my favorite popcorn rockers, The Karate Kid and Face/Off, apparently without my knowledge. Hard rock legend Alice Cooper doesn’t actually appear in the film but his songs feature in welcome, heavy rotation on its soundtrack.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 19
Originality of kills: Camp Forest Green is open for business! Jason tears Horshack’s beating heart out of his chest, just, you know, to show up front that he’s not messing around (I’d bypass the cops entirely, hit the county line and just keep running). On the police relations front, he snipes one officer from long range with some sort of metal dart, and later, in a cool but excruciating sequence the MPAA simply adored, bends Sheriff Garris slowly backwards until his spine snaps. Jason also kills groups of two and three at a time with a single machete stab or swipe – SHOWOFF! – twists the head of one of Megan’s friends off completely, and pushes another’s face into the wall of an RV bathroom with such force that it leaves a full facial impression, mid-scream, on the exterior. My bad. That’s him showing off. Though not technically a kill, perhaps the film’s biggest laugh comes after Jason has run afoul of a group of War Gamers on a corporate retreat and one makes the mistake of shooting him in the chest with a paintball gun. McLoughlin modulates his kills effectively instead of wallowing in excess, keeping some offscreen entirely despite suggesting the worst (I advise whatever lucky soul was in charge of cleaning that overly bloody cabin interior to cut his or her losses and use a blowtorch instead) and wrapping others in humor, as when an offending weekend warrior is flung into a nearby tree with such force that he loses his entire arm in the process, the point of impact revealing a smiley face carved into the tree, still plenty cheerful despite the added blood.
Jason Notes: Time in the grave has done wonders for Jason’s skin, which, scaly and cracked, now looks like either overcured leather or tree bark, depending on how the light hits it. Parts VI-VIII can be pretty easily grouped together as the next evolution of Jason’s overall look, post-life/pre-demon, and Jason Lives makes him appear suitably ready to rumble. The big facial reveal actually takes place at the movie’s beginning this time, as we’re treated to medium shots of Jason’s cobwebbed, insect-riddled pit of a face before lightning strikes and McLoughlin zooms in on his manic, newly opened eye, swimming in a sea of gleefully included crawling maggots. You see, Tommy also brought along Jason’s mask, with the intention to burn it too, so that’s nothing if not handy. Best laid plans, doncha know…snuffed out tragically, like a lit match in a rainstorm.
Final Word: Original Scream (3.5/4 stars)
—
A camp counselor’s workshop opens on a New Jersey lake, fatally close to the site of an infamous massacre…
Year: 1981 (act 2)
Director: Steve Miner
Setting: Packanack Lodge, a camp counselor’s training center adjacent to the abandoned/condemned Camp Crystal Lake, NJ; wherever the hell Alice lives/lived
Tone: Balanced
Nutshell: In the early ‘80s, the brain trustees at Sean Cunningham’s “Horror, Inc.” (minus, one presumes, original writer/eventual opposing plaintiff Victor Miller) were still figuring things out on the fly, and having to transition from one incongruous but wildly memorable villain to an entirely different one must have been a daunting task for them. It’s to their credit that, if so, not much evidence of the struggle made it to screen. Replacing homicidal den mother Mrs. Voorhees with her pitchfork-wielding, inexplicably alive, equally inexplicably adult son, Jason, was, in retrospect, probably the only route the series could’ve gone without descending into wholesale inanity. Meanwhile, most critics seemed to notice none but cosmetic differences, while audiences were too busy having fun to care. This has much to do with the low expectations endemic even then to horror sequels, in which lesser returns are almost a given, but it also has to do with this particular sequel’s approach, since it could well have induced conceptual whiplash or the wrong kind of nausea in different hands. Friday the 13th Part 2 effectively approximates the look and overall feel of the original, and makes minute but noticeable improvements where they count, particularly in terms of pacing and characterization. With its almost elegantly unsubtle substitution of antagonists, we also witness a marked change in emphasis from “murder mystery” to “murder factory”, and however much certain folks might’ve groused about that over the years, there has never been any indication that audiences somehow favored the former over the latter. We begin in spacious, off-campus Victorian housing as 1980 heroine Alice, art student turned camp counselor turned resilient headswoman, suffers and flails through an extended-length nightmare flashback recounting the carnage of the original movie. Upon awakening, she wanders her house uneasy, then is dispatched by a shadowy assailant with dirty fingernails who, unnoticed, had apparently repeatedly used an open kitchen window for ninja-like access, once even throwing a jump scare disguised as a cat directly into Alice’s arms as precursor to his dramatic final B&E. Them Voorheeses shore got some fearsome movie powers. An indeterminate time later, Camp Crystal Lake has been rightly condemned, roped off with police tape and given back to the elements, the community’s shame hiding, unspoken of, in plain sight. Nature abhors a vacuum, and, sure enough, soon an attractive, defiantly 1980s-looking menagerie of counselors in training has sprung up on the outskirts of the infamous camp, and an ominous new figure is watching, hunting, and picking them off one at a time. Not having any particular reason to hide the killer’s identity (or gender) frees him up to be more active and menacing this time around, even if only personified as a pair of disembodied feet or a slouching shadow. Director Steve Miner still cannily delays the full reveal until just the right moment, as love-struck Vickie investigates the wrong bedroom and totally misreads what lurks beneath the covers. The legend of Jason Voorhees is discussed in detail twice, once around the campfire and later amongst the movie’s three principals at a nearby bar. Her boyfriend dismisses the tale of the feral man-boy wreaking vengeance on Crystal Lake trespassers for his mother’s death as a harmless scary story with only a passing basis in truth, but Ginny Field is convinced there’s much more to the tale than just empty words. Upon their return to camp at the end of a dark and stormy night, the two will receive the worst kind of confirmation possible. Along with The Final Chapter, Part 2 is the clearest ever distillation of the series’ overall winning formula, smarter and stronger than its predecessor, and consistently scarier than any of its successors.
Cast likeability/relatability: Well above average. Amy Steel’s Ginny is, by far, the series’ best heroine, plucky and intelligent, empathetic, resourceful, and relatable. I especially enjoy how you can see her mind working in tense moments (and let’s face it, no one but Willard really likes rats). For that matter, Jason, as presented here, is, though way outsmartable, still nowhere near the ineffectual battering ram he’d become. Perhaps he was still growing.). Stu Charno’s Ted, that fearsome player of both practical jokes and handheld video games, is a massive upgrade over original series oddball Ned, and I always loved the fact that his good-natured determination to have just one more beer actually keeps him away from camp while his friends are all fighting for their lives, making him, to my knowledge, the only principal in the entire series to have never come face to face with any killer, Jason or otherwise. I also like how the film intimates Ginny’s boyfriend, head counselor Paul, is not quite the pompous stuffed shirt he initially presents, allowing him an agreeable balance of successfully showing off and being shown up. Despite his protestations to the contrary, I seriously doubt he smokes pot in any but a Clintonian manner. Though their relationship is tragically cut short just as it’s blossoming, sunny, fresh-faced Vickie and wheelchair bound athlete Mark still make a fairly adorable, halfway believable couple. In fact, every piece of teenaged cannon fodder here with more than a line of dialogue is allowed at least 1.5 dimensions, though that does little to dissuade their impending doom.
Notables: Next to none, as befits the lean and ragged sequel to a surprise early ‘80s horror hit, though the great Amy Steel also appeared in genre favorite April Fool’s Day, and Stu Charno (Ted, see, was the original “boy who lived”) had recognizable bit parts in ‘80s cult films Once Bitten, Just One of the Guys, and Christine.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 10
Originality of kills: Alice, having survived the original 13th, has an impromptu reunion with what remains of Mrs. Voorhees at the end of the overlong pre-title sequence, then receives a lovely ice pick from her son as a parting gift. As with the original, the emphasis here is still on atmosphere and some semblance of suspense, so the in-house “Create-a-Kill” department is in its formative stages. Nevertheless, there are two serious contenders: 1) Jason walks in on two lovers and shish kebabs them with a spear, mid-afterglow, which is simply badass (note Sandra’s stunned, helpless reaction, pinned into missionary position, before getting skewered), whether or not it was lifted directly from Mario Bava’s Italian proto-slasher Twitch of the Death Nerve; and 2) the aforementioned Mark, who it should be said is allowed to be a halfway compelling character here disability and all rather than a simple prop, is hit with a machete while waiting for his date on the big house porch, and then careens dramatically down a long, Exorcist-style staircase, backwards, in the driving rain. While I still find the geography of this kill dubious (we glimpse the staircase in daylight just long enough to establish its existence, though not its apparent extreme proximity to the front porch), not to mention some fairly laughable physics**, the sequence itself is startling, tragic, and memorable, like Brenda’s overheated death scene in the original. That’s horror, people!
Jason Notes: It’s the bag-head! It’s the bag-head! Jason’s first grown-up, landlocked appearance in the series is also the only one to not feature his iconic hockey mask, but that’s totally okay. I think the repurposed pillow case he wears in Part 2 is, in some ways, far more unsettling than the mask, though he, like Alice, shows a perhaps trendy but still unfortunate preference for wearing bib overalls. As a practical matter, I’ll never fully understand why Farmer Jason only cut one eyehole in the sack, but as an aesthetic concern, it works marvelously. The final reveal of his face is appropriately discomfiting: swollen, misshapen, with bulging eyes, a crooked, gaping mouth, and patches of stringy, long hair. Also okay. Though Jason, in an impressive but entirely premature bid at HGTV stardom, had fashioned together a sort of ramshackle “Fort Voorhees” (Manfredini has called it “Chez Jason” in interviews, which is charming) in a wooded clearing out of sheets of plastic, discarded lumber, car parts and love, I didn’t notice that it contained any reflective surfaces.
Final Word: Gritty prototype (3/4 stars)
**Just humor me. So the camera makes Jason appear to be creeping up behind Mark. But if Mark is hit from behind – and he isn’t – why would he possibly carom backwards? If Jason hits Mark in his face while somehow standing behind him, wouldn’t Jason impede Mark’s backward momentum a little? If Jason hits Mark in the face while standing beside or in front of him…then what the hell, is he just INVISIBLE?! Is he a close-up magician? Is he Nightcrawler from the X-Men?
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3) Friday the 13th
Twenty-one years after a child’s death helped shut down a summer camp, its new owner and employees face the wrath of a mysterious killer…
Year: 1980 (act 1)
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Setting: Camp Crystal Lake; Downtown Crystal Lake, NJ
Tone: A Midsummer Night’s (Bad) Dream
Nutshell: The massive financial success of the independent horror classic Halloween caught Hollywood off guard in 1978 and rewrote the rules for low budget filmmakers across North America. One such inspired rogue was Sean S. Cunningham, a production vet of Wes Craven’s notorious The Last House on the Left. He immediately set out to seek his own fortune via an under radar horror film (a “potboiler”, in his own words), and determined that translating Halloween’s winning formula – attractive teenagers have fun then pay for it at the hands of a mysterious killer – to a more novel setting (a long-abandoned summer camp reopened in spite of its scandalous history) would prove the path of both least resistance and greatest potential return. Cunningham actually seized upon the film’s potent title before he or writer Victor Miller had even dreamed of Camp Crystal Lake, and ran ads hyping the movie before a scene had been shot. That sense of daring served Cunningham well in piecing together both the very specific mythology of Friday the 13th – that shadowy killer Pamela Voorhees was, in fact, a rather insane woman wreaking retroactive vengeance over the negligent drowning death of her special needs son Jason some twenty years past, when she was a cook and he a bullied boy at summer camp – and the film’s raison d’etre, which was to (attempt to) place Halloween’s spectacular sustained level of suspense into an environment where deaths could be rendered at a shocking and unexpected level of graphic detail. Though it boasts its fair share of clunky and uneven narrative elements (Halloween‘s supremacy remains yet unchallenged), on a technical level, buoyed by Tom Savini’s bleeding edge makeup effects, Cunningham’s directorial competence and abiding sense of patience (if not necessarily restraint), and series secret weapon Harry Manfredini’s memorable, Psycho-inspired score, Friday the 13th proved to be a cut above the competition to come, competition it would largely inspire. The film’s box office success opened the floodgates for imitators and peers alike, and, in a neat bit of inversion, finally inspired production to start in earnest on Halloween II. The comparatively elegant Halloween may have popularized the rules of the nascent “Slasher” subgenre, but Friday the 13th codified them, and definitively named the game. From the second Cunningham’s camera assumed the killer’s point of view, observing an unsuspecting couple from afar, or, better still, from the moment the killer’s jagged breathing (“chi-chi-chi, ha-ha-ha”, or, as many would later claim, “ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma”***) first echoed through theater speakers and into an audience’s psyche, Friday the 13th was special. And then the piece de resistance, as young Jason, rotting and implacable, suddenly emerged from the lake to drag the last survivor from her canoe, disturbing the water’s deceptive glass stillness as the rude punctuation to what we assume was a dream. Or was it an omen? Audiences screamed with shock and delight, Alice awoke seconds later in the hospital, frantic and disoriented, and chilled at the thought that the boy from her nightmare “was still there”. This genie would never be put back in its bottle.
Cast likeability/relatability: Prototypical “final girl” Alice is one of the series’ better heroines, cheerful and outwardly demure but possessed of surprising inner strength. First victim Annie is an amiable chatterbox right up to the point where her ride misses a fateful turn on purpose. Mischievous but level-headed Brenda is a warm, steady presence – lover of animals, inventor (for all we know) of the evergreen party game “Strip Monopoly” – who only wanted to help and deserved a far kinder fate. Resident smartass Ned is, of course, terribly annoying, though he is the second counselor to bite the dust, which is at least minor compensation for all the time wasted elsewhere. It’s somewhat telling that, despite a thunderstorm, conspicuous loss of power and psychopathic killer on the loose, few if any of Ned’s peers seem troubled by, or even particularly cognizant of, his absence. Lovers Jack and Marcie are attractive and inoffensive, as archetypes of this sort should be, and are really only notable because one of them happens to be Kevin Bacon in an early role. This makes him, in essence, the Johnny Depp of Friday the 13th, or, more accurately, makes Johnny Depp the Kevin Bacon of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Notables: Well, Big Momma V. Betsy Palmer was a working Broadway and TV actress from the 1950s on, starring with Henry Fonda and Jimmy Cagney in 1955’s Mister Roberts, among others. But really, it’s all about the Bacon, isn’t it?
Number of kills: 10
Originality of kills: Plenty bloody, but not terribly high, despite the hype, though the forward momentum grows steadily. Everybody’s body gets a star turn eventually, many of them presenting slit or otherwise inconvenienced throats, but in real time Cunningham splits the difference between showing and insinuating, which proves a surprisingly effective strategy. The aforementioned Brenda gets the harshest and most affecting demise, as she follows a little girl’s cries for help out into the rainy dark, then, terrified, is accosted by a blinding bank of floodlights with the killer lurking, unseen, behind them (she dies off-screen, which seems a mercy, until we get a lingering glance at her viciously tenderized corpse later on). Mrs. Voorhees gets her first of many gold stars for patiently waiting under Bacon’s bed long enough for he and his beloved to finish having sex and split up before stabbing him with an arrow (upward, through the mattress, and through the frigging neck!), then later dispatching his love with an axe to the head. Everyone’s favorite mom is eventually the beneficiary of SFX savant Tom Savini’s flashiest trick, when mousy Alice, operating at the dizzying height of realism, decapitates her with a single swing of a rusty machete.
Jason Notes: Not technically applicable, although Savini’s makeup job on the mossy, pre-pubescent Jason contributed mightily to cementing the character’s last minute reveal as one of the iconic moments in modern horror history. I offer instead a few words in praise of Pamela Voorhees, devoted, demented single mother. Betsy Palmer plays Mrs. V. sans ego or restraint, as a woman teetering on the ragged edge of sanity at all times, a veritable carnival of toothy grins and dramatic outbursts – not only repeatedly affecting her dead child’s voice but conversing with and responding to it as if he was in the room with her – so histrionic and tightly wound that the very act of drawing her next breath might prove sufficient to permanently unmoor her. Cunningham keeps his villain ambiguous and obscured until the film’s final ten minutes, so when the fearsome killer is finally revealed as a backwoods soccer mom, it just makes her prodigious feats of solo strength up to that point (hanging bodies from trees, hurling bodies through windows, nailing bodies to cabin doors using naught but hand-wielded arrows) all the more impressive, though enthusiasm inevitably dips somewhat at the spectacle of a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old engaged in a life and death slap fight. Palmer may cut a ridiculous figure but she also makes a fairly unforgettable impression, chewing enough scenery in ten minutes of screen time to make up for the eighty from which she was technically absent. It’s a gutsy, literally show-stopping performance, one to which all subsequent insane horror mothers owe a debt of gratitude, or at least acknowledgement.
Final Word: Camp fun (3/4 stars)
***Though, honestly, who are you supposed to believe? Me and/or your own ears, or the word of legendary series composer Harry Manfredini? Ugh/okay, I grudgingly concede my point.
—
4) Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Notorious killer Jason Voorhees escapes the morgue and resumes his murderous ways at Camp Crystal Lake…
Year: 1984 (act 4)
Director: Joseph Zito
Setting: Two neighboring houses near Crystal Lake, NJ; the Wessex County Morgue; the stretch of highway connecting them
Tone: Slutty
Nutshell: I must have something personal against Corey Feldman, and, for that, I’m not proud. I’m sure he’s a lovely enough guy in real life, but his presence on screen haunts, or, more accurately, taunts me. It’s hard to explain without sounding unreasonable. The proverbial child star who never really grew up, Feldman was either a focal point or window dressing in some of the most enduring films of the already durable 1980s (Gremlins, The Goonies, The Lost Boys, and so on), and also a natural born ham and inveterate spotlight hog. For much the same reason I am inherently disturbed by overactive or talkative or otherwise zealous children in public, something about Corey Feldman’s presence in a scene just grates on me. The cartoonish voice, the flip attitude, the twelve-year-old face on the forty+ body, all of it. That, as the series’ ostensibly biggest star who was also readily available, he should have been called to narrate the otherwise sterling recent documentary Crystal Lake Memories was a foregone conclusion. What’s funny is when the section on The Final Chapter begins and Feldman turns from narrator to interviewee. It’s like some desperate, attention-courting switch got flipped, and I remembered all over again why I instinctively avoid him whenever possible. Feldman is at his career-best most unavoidable in Friday the 13th’s first of two official attempts to kill off Jason Voorhees for good, yet his amok energy and ferocious anti-magnetism actually helps the film more than hindering it for a change. Call it a lucky debut? The Final Chapter begins in Part 3’s aftermath, as police and EMTs seek to make some sense out of the previous film’s mayhem. A prone Jason is breathlessly introduced for the twelve people who thought they were watching A Passage to India, then taken from the barn where Chris “killed” him to the local morgue, where he recovers from getting the breath knocked out of him with an axe whilst a devil-may-care mortician romances his only half-sensible nurse girlfriend in the foreground. Jason convalesces for a hot minute – I always enjoy the puff of breath that escapes just before Axel closes the cooler drawer door – springs to life, kills them, and heads back to Crystal Lake, dispatching a banana-loving hitchhiker on the way. Upon his return, he is no doubt intrigued to find his beloved lakefront decorated with its second different two-story house in as many days, plus a log cabin beside it. Said cabin is occupied by an adorable family built for future ABC Friday nights, including a mother/daughter tandem who spend each morning casually jogging together despite the fact that, if you string Part 2 and Part 3 together, as circumstantial evidence would seem to strongly suggest, some eighteen people have been brutally murdered in their backyard over the previous sixty hours. I think I’d go visit my Aunt Millie in Newark. They select option B, however, along with the houseful of randy, oblivious hedonists next door, so Jason really has no choice but to kill them all, see? It’s a tough old world.
Cast likeability/relatability: Personality plus, for better and worse. By 1984, the garden variety “mad killer” variant of the Slasher subgenre had already pretty much exhausted itself, and The Final Chapter plays like a combination Greatest Hits compilation and Bon Voyage party. The film hedges its bets with the introduction of not one but two oddballs, and in a clear nod toward the beating heart of its burgeoning fan base, makes one of them – an overeager DIY makeup effects wizard played by the not unknown for much longer Feldman – its overt hero. At the opposite pole is put upon Jimmy, whom the inimitable Crispin Glover endearingly plays as perhaps the most earnest, socially awkward person alive. This cast is sex-obsessed even for a Friday the 13th film, and every topic of conversation is some variation on who is/isn’t/was sleeping with person A, who hasn’t ever, who wants to, and either scheming to make it happen or overcompensating after it doesn’t. This single-minded sense of purpose keeps things humming right along, though the flow is occasionally interrupted by the next door mundanity of that single mother, her teenaged daughter (Kimberly Beck, who I once pegged as the series’ first ever subpar final girl, but has grown on me since), her precocious grade school son, and the mysterious, handsome, and helpful drifter they befriend when their car breaks down. As the son, Corey the Great and Terrible runs roughshod over almost every scene he occupies through sheer force of personality. He and Glover are wisely kept apart, for fear of quirk overload. The rest of the kids act more or less like kids, conversely petty and chill, and get impressive mileage out of their one-track minds.
Notables: One of the better Z-grade casts in horror history, or at least before filmmakers like Rob Zombie started routinely doing stunt casting as a hobby. The twin headliners – as put upon Jimmy and pint-sized giant slayer Tommy, respectively – are noted eccentric Crispin Glover, best known for his high profile supporting turns in The River’s Edge and the original Back to the Future, and noted attention troll Corey Feldman (who I’m sure would appreciate the extra mention), best known for his high profile supporting turns in The Goonies, The Lost Boys, and the dregs of reality TV. No offense is intended here to the film’s actual twin headliners, sisters and Playboy Playmates Camila and Carey More. Peter Barton did some serious time later on The Young and the Restless. Horndog mortician Bruce Mahler played accident-prone Fackler in the Police Academy series. Horndog jerkwad Lawrence Monoson was Eric Stoltz’s spineless bestie in Mask. House sex counselor and obligatory “girl who gets naked in the lake” Judie Aronson was Wyatt’s love interest in Weird Science.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 13
Originality of kills: An early high water mark. The Final Chapter is beloved by fans, first and foremost, because it marked Tom Savini’s triumphant return to the makeup chair, and, not coincidentally, represented the moment where Jason’s killing acumen finally got turned up to eleven. Our hero is no longer merely slitting throats; he’s fully dressing turkeys, getting creative with bone saws and corkscrews, spear guns and multiple applied laws of motion. And don’t look now, kids, because that’s Jason standing patiently outside your second story bedroom window or heroically holding his breath underneath a floating inflatable raft, waiting against all logic for just the right dramatic moment to strike. As ever, his commitment to fulfilling the filmmakers’ vision is inspiring.
Jason Notes: Tom Savini’s return also ensured that, in essence, the man who brought Jason into the world would be the one to take him out. Before the magic hour commences, Jason still cuts an imposing figure, wearing some approximation of the dark gray work shirt and khakis he sported in Part 3, just wetter and muddier. Veteran stuntman Ted White strives to create a thoughtful performance while amping up the menace and largely succeeds despite the inherent restrictions of acting in a mask. Most importantly, this is Jason’s first full outing wearing that iconic hockey mask, and it’s already impressively scuffed, complete with a nice, long gash at the top where Chris’ axe blow landed. Jason is unmasked by a deft swing of Trish’s machete during their final encounter at the Jarvis cabin and his visage, initially unseen by us, is enough to make her drop the blade in shock. The Voorhees facial reveal has traditionally been an underwhelming aspect of most every Friday, but Savini makes the most of his spotlight, providing Jason with his most memorable makeup since the original climax in the lake by using that as his inspiration then expanding on it. We’d never quite see the likes of this incarnation’s twisted, grinning, utterly ghoulish face again, although many would try and fail. The coup de grace, when Tommy buries the machete in the side of Jason’s head, then stands by in horror as Jason sinks to his knees, falls forward and proceeds to slide slowly down the length of the embedded blade, blood pouring, eyes bulging…well, words can scarcely do it proper justice. Bravo, sir. Bravo.
Final Word: Viva gluttony (2.5/4 stars)
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5) Friday the 13th
A hulking, monstrous killer stalks the forest adjoining a vacation lake house…
Year: 2009 (act 12)
Director: Marcus Nispel
Setting: A summer house near Crystal Lake, NJ; nearby gas station; abandoned Crystal Lake campground and adjoining woods
Tone: Grim
Nutshell: Certain rare exceptions notwithstanding, I am opposed on principle to remaking classic horror movies, which, in addition to their universal potential to affect willing audiences over the course of years, are, to me, indelibly representative of the time and place in which they were made. The pitch black Platinum Dunes reboot of Friday the 13th, released 29 years after the original, is the exception that, for me, proves the rule. Strangely enough, I felt little of the trepidation with F13’09 that I normally do when attempting to build up interest in a horror remake. Instead, I was just excited to see someone embrace the property after years of neglect and mismanagement. I’ve always been of the opinion that the Jason/Crystal Lake concept has so much native flexibility that what you do with it is far less important than how you do it (though unfortunately, with this series, intriguing ideas and poor execution tend to walk hand in hand), and was interested to see a dark, unspoiled, definitively 21-century take on the Voorhees legend. And, truth be told, having invested so much time in watching him log miles and tread water in NYC, and Springwood, Ohio, and outer space, and on the sets of a procession of poorly-written and realized grand guignol soap operas, I was just thrilled that Jason was finally getting a proper homecoming. F13’09 operates at the same level of heightened, stylized, overrealistic horror that director Marcus Nispel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot did, and sets itself up, ambitiously, as a sort of combination reboot, origin story and greatest hits album, shoehorning in a metric ton of characters, motivations, funny and/or sexy and/or marvelously tense moments, and even, wonder of wonders, some semblance of a plot. The minor “drifter searching for his lost sister” subplot from Final Chapter is smartly updated and expanded here, becoming the axis on which the reboot turns. More credence is given to the concept of Jason as a backwoods survivalist than in any movie since Part 2. He makes the abandoned camp his home while haunting the entire lake region, including the lux vacation house at which our plucky gaggle of kids congregate for the weekend. The film posits that part of the reason Jason gets around the area with such unsettling efficiency is that he has dug/developed a network of underground tunnels. Lots of time is spent negotiating this tunnel system (and also a bravura early set piece in the upstairs of a dilapidated house), which allows for several claustrophobic moments and heightens both the terror when Jason is on screen and the lingering unease whenever he is away. At some points, the reboot more closely resembles a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie than Friday the 13th, but, all in all, the tinkering works. F13’09 does a bevy of important things too skillfully to deserve close to its generally crappy reputation. My advice would be to treasure it, since the way things are looking on the legal front now, it may be several more years yet before someone gets to take another shot.
Cast likeability/relatability: Focus tested and audience-approved, featuring a cross-section of affable, conventionally attractive, mostly Caucasian twenty-somethings awaiting imminent slaughter. A far cry from its primitive ancestors, F13’09 is quality assured to within an inch of its life, and is, honestly, all the better an experience for it. Long gone are the days when we were forced to develop affection for conspicuous non-actors. As the drifter, Jared Padalecki hits all the notes required of him while also looking cute, as do Amanda Righetti as his kidnapped sister, and Danielle Panabaker as the good girl who aids his search in open defiance of her ridiculously smug, rich boyfriend, played by Travis Van Winkle, perhaps too effectively, as among the douchiest bags to ever inhabit planet Earth. Arlen Escarpeta and Aaron Yoo, through clever writing and natural charisma, transcend their obvious comic relief job descriptions to become my favorite pair of irreverent stoners this side of Willie Nelson and Dave Chappelle. Yes, Julianna Guill presents her, ahem, bona fides as the series’ standard-bearer for dirty blonde sexpottery going forward – could there possibly be a better song to which to strip than the updated P-Funk slank of “I Like It, I Love It” by Lyrics Born? Rhetorical question! – though she, like pretty much all her peers, establishes first an unfussy and convincing approximate realism and later largely behaves believably in the face of impending death. There’s not much more you can ask for or expect from a Friday the 13th character, really.
Notables: An overstuffed and overqualified, or at least superficially familiar, list. Padalecki has had two pretty epic television runs on Gilmore Girls and Supernatural. Righetti logged several years on CBS’ The Mentalist. Panabaker has alternated between sporadic TV and genre work since facing Jason, including The Crazies, another recent horror remake that was rather better than it had any right to be. Van Winkle played a different entitled d-bag in the underrated 2006 campus comedy Accepted and had a role in Bay’s Transformers that was unmemorable even for that movie. Willa Ford was a pop singer turned reality TV host in the early Aughts. Ryan Hansen, as magnetic and oblivious here as ever, was a fixture on the late, lamented Starz sleeper Party Down, and, of course, also played the wonderfully smarmy Dick Casablancas in both incarnations of Veronica Mars.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 15
Originality of kills: Utilitarian and dependably brutal, as befits a more “realistic” depiction of the backwoods killer, and often in the kind of extreme close quarters that render creativity irrelevant. As if to make a statement, the film’s first two perilous moments come in the form of a burning sleeping bag (somewhere, New Blood director John Carl Beuchler is probably still fuming and/or lamenting being born too early to simply sidestep the MPAA) and an extra-grisly sprung bear trap. Later, Jason reveals rock solid hunter’s credentials and makes a play at entering the ESPN Outdoor Games with a long distance arrow shot through the eye of a moving speedboat driver and a perfectly thrown two-handed axe to the back of a fleeing victim. Van Winkle is impaled on the back of a runaway tow-truck, not long after unleashing the best, most unexpected scream of the movie, the series, and, just maybe, horror history. The biggest callback to the good old days occurs, appropriately, at the lake, as the girlfriend of Jason’s slain speedboat quarry huddles under a pier while he slowly walks above her, visible only through the spaces between board slats. Just when it seems she might have escaped him, his machete drives down through a gap into the top of her head. To extract the blade, Jason pulls upward, actually lifting her out of the water momentarily. Great series moment, since approximated countless humorless times on The Walking Dead, and still worthy of at least a golf clap.
Jason Notes: The F13’09 Jason keeps his massive physical presence intact, but tones it down to a far less cartoonish mass. This Jason, as performed by stuntman and Voorhees superfan Derek Mears, allows flashes of anger, frustration, and confusion to bubble to the surface, intermixed with his normal savagery. He lumbers when walking, careens when running, and means business at all times. The wardrobe is a bit underwhelming, but as a combination reboot/origin story I understand the choices. Jason also gets to book time with both the Part 2 bag head and the iconic hockey mask. Bag Head 2.0, in fact, updated as a sort of haphazard head wrap and still boasting only the single eyehole, if anything, becomes the vehicle for arguably his most hulking and intimidating self yet.
Final Word: SQUEEGEE! (2.5/4 stars)
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6) Freddy vs. Jason
All-star serial killers Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger engage in an unlikely and bloody turf war…
Year: 2003 (act 11)
Director: Ronny Yu
Setting: Springwood, OH; Camp Crystal Lake, NJ; the stretch of interstate connecting them, plus various battlegrounds/waystations located on the ethereal plane
Tone: Spastic
Nutshell: Despite what one would assume was my predisposition to do so – on account of age, history, etc. – I was never much of a fan of Freddy Krueger. All horror series are hokey on multiple levels, of course – that’s part of the fun – but I just never fully accepted or appreciated the degree to which Krueger became a hack comedian first and a killer second the further the Nightmare on Elm Street series progressed, or the way those movies, which should by rights be thralls to imagination and potentially unforgettable, became, in their way, just as predictable as Jason’s yearly jaunts through the woods had been from the start. It felt to me like the series strayed from the terrifying roots established by Wes Craven in its excellent opening chapter just as soon as it was able. To be fair, Elm Street 1-4 all have their outstanding moments, often many of them strung together, and even the degradation in tone that set in with the breakthrough 1988 release of The Dream Master just means that Freddy jumped the rails only slightly before Jason did. Horror fans couldn’t get enough of these two villains, though, and, as is the case in any arena with two established alphas, salivated at the thought of them sharing the same screen. Sixteen years and numerous script iterations after the first failed negotiations between New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures opened, Freddy vs. Jason finally came to fruition in 2003. Perhaps the only thing more shocking than the film’s existence after so long in development hell was the fact that, for the most part, the damned thing actually worked. FvJ opens with some appropriately crotchety Freddy voiceover, as the original burnt weenie in an ugly Christmas sweater sits, lamenting the fact that, despite his extreme infamy and decade-plus litany of murderous deeds, he has been consigned to the dustbin of history because no one fears, or even remembers, him anymore. Without this kind of healthy trending buzz – as ever, brand awareness is key – it seems Krueger is practically powerless to invade dreams anymore, and, even once there, cannot cause injury to anything other than his own pride. Desperate, he hits upon the bright idea of recalling Jason Voorhees from hell and unleashing him upon Springwood, Ohio, in hopes that the ensuing murderous rampage will reignite fears among the older population that Freddy has returned to his killing ways, and that those concerns will trickle down to and infect their children, preparing the crops for harvest, so to speak. However harebrained Freddy’s scheme might be – call it “Slasher Reaganomics” – as horror conceits go, it’s still a pretty good one. I especially like the counterpoint, which catches Krueger off guard, that Jason, once set in motion, would not only be overly effective but also too dimly single-minded to ever cede back territorial rights, killing in ever increasing numbers and even stepping on Freddy’s toes more than once. I also appreciated the dark and foolish lengths – consistent with Elm Street mythology – to which the Springwood parents went to hide Freddy’s presence from their kids. The film is cleverly written and effectively staged overall, however talky and overstuffed. Because of the metaphysical and mythological hoops necessary to jump through in order to make a corporeal killer like Jason and a supernatural killer like Freddy plausibly exist on the same plane and do battle – and let me state for the record that, no matter how much it might make theoretical sense to a tapped out screenwriter, I still despise Jason’s weakness to and paralyzing fear of, apparently, any water whatsoever – Freddy vs. Jason feels much more like a Elm Street sequel than a Friday the 13th movie. Nevertheless, I like that it gives Jason his due respect, and allows him sufficient room/agency to kick ass and take names.
Cast likeability/relatability: Those minor complaints notwithstanding, Englund does provide welcome, tangible star power as Freddy. Our foreground heroes all hail originally from Krueger’s Springwood, and are further subdividable by gender. The female trio – comprised of a good girl, a sassy best friend, and a party girl – are all appealing, even vaguely recognizable faces, and the male duo – the good girl’s long lost boyfriend and his best bro, who have returned after escaping from an upstate sanitarium – prove effective delivery devices for plot details and provide a jolt of energy whenever the film’s sense of urgency flags. Tobogganed stoner Freeburg may be an occasionally grating, over-obvious ode to “Jay” (minus Silent Bob), the pot-dealing gatekeeper of Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse, but he unequivocally gets in the movie’s best line, when, while fleeing the cornfield massacre, with his peers desperately try to prioritize the threat posed by Freddy vs. Jason, he interjects: “Man, that goalie was pissed about something…”
Notables: Obviously, horror icon Robert Englund in (what at the time we presumed was) his cinematic swan song as Freddy Krueger; Kelly Rowland, in her first foray into acting post Destiny’s Child; Jason Ritter (the late John’s son) had a run on NBC’s Parenthood and also played Jeb Bush in Oliver Stone’s W. Katharine Isabelle is well-known to genre fans from the brutal, poignant Ginger Snaps, and also played Margot Verger on season two of Hannibal. Among other TV work, Monica Keena was the flighty object of desire on Judd Apatow’s beloved, killed before its time (fitting, eh?) FOX college comedy Undeclared.
Number of kills (minus the headliners): 26
Originality of kills: Freddy gets opportunities to twist reality with something approaching his usual aplomb, but probably not enough of them for die hard Elm Street fans, seeing as he has to share stage time with his professional rival. In the kill department, Jason therefore comes out holding a decided advantage, a state of affairs with which I am well pleased. The masked monster slashes his way through a cornfield rave (while on fire, so additional points for degree of difficulty), dispatching every drunk glo-stick holder within a fifty-yard radius and, in the film’s first kill, hacking up Katharine Isabelle’s ridiculously obnoxious boyfriend, then effortlessly crushing him backwards into a fold up bed. Freddy and Jason’s protracted final battle – half in the dream world, half at Crystal Lake (who knew Ohio and New Jersey were separated by such a reasonable, drivable distance?) is good for a thrill and timely reversal or two, and also more than a few knowing laughs. The movie’s final shot, as Jason emerges from a dreamscape body of water washed of color, machete slung against his shoulder and carrying Freddy’s severed head in his other hand, cinched it for me, and, as an image, was probably as good an ending for the rivalry as any. When Freddy’s dead head suddenly smiled and winked at the audience as Jason walked off camera, I had to offer my own grin in return. Seems sometimes a laugh and a wink were all you were ever good for, buddy.
Jason Notes: Not so much assuming the role of Jason as wresting it from the clutches of long-running fan favorite Kane Hodder in a violent corporate coup is the B-side of this cinematic odd couple, Ken Kirzinger. At 6’5”, Kirzinger was the tallest man yet to play Voorhees, and, indeed, at times seems closer to ten feet tall than six, especially when towering above the cornfield stalks or looming suggestively over mighty mites like the 5’1” “final girl” Keena. This Jason sports a slightly more oblong head and isolated tufts of long hair that just look wrong in a “nature’s mistake” sort of way, but is otherwise very much of a piece with the high standard set by zombie Jason in The New Blood and JTM, albeit perhaps cleaned up a bit for class photo day. This movie was an event, after all.
Final Word: Jason wins. (2.5/4 stars)
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7) Friday the 13th Part 3
A weekend’s lake retreat turns grisly for a group of teenaged friends…
Year: 1982 (act 3)
Director: Steve Miner
Setting: “Higgins Haven”, a summer house in Crystal Lake, NJ; a nearby convenience market and gas station
Tone: Scatterbrained
Nutshell: History is written by the victors, and, in Hollywood, that equals box office. Insofar as it did more than any other movie of its era to popularize the use of (still awful) 3-D technology – thus greasing the skids for the arrival of behemoths like Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, and the immortal Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn – Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3-D is the Avatar of its day. That’s right, I said it. Beyond that, admittedly, a strict comparison holds less water, though both movies are distractingly serious on the page and in love with their respective innovations (IMAX CGI vs. ostensibly three-dimensional parlor tricks) to their detriment. An honest, earthbound assessment might see the movie as Part 2 with a different, slightly dumber cast and a needlessly overcooked backstory, completely beholden to its troublesome central gimmick to the point that, early on, when the film should be working harder to flesh out some wafer-thin characters, the process seems to intrude into every fourth shot instead. That never changes, by the way. Here’s a baseball bat pointed directly into the camera! Here’s a mouse on a clothesline! Say, what’s that old vagrant got in his hand there? Get a closer, lingering look at it, would ya? Hey, look, popping popcorn! Plus a few dozen others – less memorable, if no less eager – that slipped my mind as soon as they attempted entry, probably by walking into a closed door.**** Stupid lack of depth perception. On the plus side, Part 3 is, like its forebears, reasonably suspenseful, and especially heavy on jump scares. It boasts a quality heroine and some above average kills. Its tremendous climax includes isolated showdowns in a stalled van and a dusty barn, the timely surprise return of a guest star thought dead, and contains the series’ third straight, and most effective, variation on Halloween’s famous “closet” set piece. Part 3 is also the first 13th to openly explore Jason’s seeming inability to be killed, though the dream sequence coda is a cheap, nonsensical attempt to rebottle the magic of the original’s ending. Of course, the headline here is the arrival of the iconic hockey mask, which follows its own grand tradition by being found equipment randomly brought to camp by one of the kids and unwittingly transferred from victim to killer (110% unlike how your grandfather might’ve passed down a favorite watch!). Also, all hail the Harry Manfredini disco theme! Fun fact/headline #2: Following a dozen dedicated viewings of Part 3 since my childhood (and this post’s original writing), I finally saw Part 3, in the theater and in 3-D, not once but twice, and can now definitively answer the snarky question I ended on back in 2014. No, 3-D does not appreciably make bad acting better.
Cast likeability/relatability: Here we have an impossibly cute power couple, a dumber than rocks boyfriend for the heroine, two giggling stoners, and, in the lonely, terminally self-deprecating attention whore Shelly, perhaps the oddest “odd man out” in the series so far. Not a lot to latch onto. We also spend a plodding, painfully padded ten minutes enduring the travails of a frumpy, henpecked Crystal Lake store owner and his nagging, stereotypical “curlers and housecoat” wife for no reason whatsoever, then later detour into a close encounter with a tenacious but underwhelming three-person motorcycle gang. Part 3 is the series installment where producers must’ve realized that if the fans were largely showing up for the kills alone, why should they particularly care who was getting dispatched? Despite being by far the worst acted film of the original tetralogy, Part 3 does shine in the deployment and development of its heroine, Chris. Dana Kimmell, an All-American Girl straight out of Central Casting, is tasked with pretty much carrying the entire movie, and acquits herself nicely on the whole, imbuing Chris with senses of both playfulness and melancholy. Saddled with an overarching story of past trauma that only ever goes to weird places, the character largely overcomes it on the strength of Kimmell’s presence, before engaging Jason in, as mentioned above, arguably the series’ best ever final act. As was the case with its predecessors, the strongest impressions in Part 3 are made by the heroine and the oddball, though I do have a warm spot in my heart for the biker trio, and also for Shelley’s unwitting date, Vera, who actress Catherine Parks nobly refuses to portray as one note.
Notables: Next to next to none, as befits the slightly less lean and ragged (but somehow scuzzier in appearance) sequel to the sequel to a surprise early ‘80s horror hit, though power couple alpha Tracie Savage became a long running television news anchor in Los Angeles, and Larry Zerner left Shelly definitively behind to practice entertainment law. As a service to the confused and disgruntled 13th civilian fanbase, Zerner has provided some incisive updates and commentary lately on the ongoing Miller/Cunningham lawsuit via Twitter.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 12
Originality of kills: 3-D wasn’t merely Friday the 13th Part 3’s gimmick but rather its M.O., its watchword, and its complete reason for being. As such, practically every aspect of the production was beholden to this surprisingly ambitious calling, including laborious shot setups that took hours, and sometimes upwards of thirty takes to get exactly right. Though this imbalance at least partially helps explain why the acting is so uneven, 3-D was definitely a boon to the Create-a-Kill department, who, alongside the otherwise extraneous shots (from below) of a goofball slinging a yo-yo and (from above) two goofballs juggling apples, provided us with murder by pitchfork, by long distance spear gun, the single-shot bisection of one of the aforementioned goofballs as he walked a hallway on his hands (next week on New Jersey’s Got Talent!), and, most memorably (albeit cheesily), by popping eyeball.
Jason Notes: Also for the third straight time, a Friday the 13th villain is shot exclusively from the neck down, or else reduced to an indistinct shape seen from afar, for at least half the movie. But then Jason strolls out of the barn dressed in a gray work shirt and khakis, carrying Shelly’s spear gun and rocking Shelly’s hockey mask, and everything changes. Vera, whose reaction doesn’t speak too well of her short term memory or basic comprehension skills, initially mistakes Jason for Shelly, but by her second sentence is already freshly alarmed and reversing course. Too bad that by that point he’s already aiming his spear gun. From such auspicious beginnings came one of the ubiquitous, enduring horror images of all time. 36 years later, and no Halloween store is complete without at least a couple of cheap plastic hockey masks hanging on its wall. The mask would become an even more striking visual icon over time, but it’s still plenty potent here. This, the first real Jason “performance” of any note, is by the late English stuntman Richard Brooker, who mostly brings his 6’3” height to the part, along with an odd, almost hunchbacked way of standing. It’s a shame in a way that he didn’t hold onto Farmer Jason’s overalls from Part 2. Jason as a hybrid Country-Canuck? That would’ve been terrifying.
Final Word: One-dimensional. (2/4 stars)
****Rick’s ping pong eyeball, the abcess where Vera’s used to be, the acrobatic pretty boy becoming half the man he used to be, etc., etc. For what it’s worth, the full arsenal of 3-D trick shots is fairly painstakingly catalogued in my “Part 3” live blog…to such a degree, in fact, that it feels like I didn’t talk about much else. To be fair, there wasn’t much else to discuss.
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8) Jason X
Awakened from cryogenic stasis, Jason Voorhees advances on an unsuspecting space station centuries in the future…
Year: 2001 (act 10)
Director: Jim Isaac
Setting: Crystal Lake Research Facility; medical spaceship in the 25th Century
Tone: Larcenous
Nutshell: After many years of whining that remaining chained to formula, and to Crystal Lake as a setting, had rendered Jason’s adventures either stagnant or too painfully predictable, the Friday the 13th brain trust used the series’ waning days of relevance as an excuse to finally push the envelope, with fairly disastrous results. Having already sent Jason on a tepid, some expenses-paid cruise to Vancouv-York City and essentially making him the final boss in a crappy cinematic RPG, it’s understandable why the next logical step might’ve seemed to just launch him into space. In the year 2555, a group of medical students prospecting on the now uninhabitable Earth uncover in the ruins of a research facility two cryogenically frozen bodies, one of which, upon returning to their ship, they are able to successfully revive and the other of which returns to robust predatory form without sanctioned help. Jason X’s first hour, as Mister Frostee thaws out, ramps up, and steadily acclimatizes himself to his new killing ground – and as the ship’s security detail, android concierge, and pacifist crew realize with dawning disbelief exactly what they’re facing – is reliable, fairly inventive fun, presenting not so much a Friday the 13th movie as a C-level sci-fi/action pastiche (taking a pinch of Aliens here, a dash of Terminator there, of Star Trek: TNG in other places, and of the original Alien everywhere else holes need filling) with pronounced horror elements. In a cute closing riff on Jason’s legendary indestructibility, his doggie bag-sized remains are reconstructed using nanotechnology by an overly helpful surgical computer, which outfits him with a titanium exoskeleton and a sleek facemask that, like its newly retrofitted owner, looks far more ridiculous than fearsome. Jason X stumbles toward the finish line before finally floating out into space – though a last minute detour “home” definitely soothes the ache and almost salvages the experience – but, unlike its aforementioned, half-measured predecessors, the film at least has the full courage to follow its otherworldly conceit, contains some clever writing and plotting, some terrifically fun details and story beats, and makes an admirable effort to steal from the best.
Cast likeability/relatability: Mostly distinguishable by hair color, though just because I didn’t know who anyone was doesn’t mean they were disagreeable. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of Jason X is that a majority of its cast is presented as being of above average intelligence. They are med students, after all, even if a few of them would rather sneak off to have sex rather than ponder and take the vitals of a frozen caveman. The cast initially presents as amiable, inquisitive, and interchangeable. Once the fur starts flying, they segregate temporarily into two units for more efficient hunting: an overconfident and quickly overwhelmed military squad, and the aforementioned soiled pants brigade. The SPB spends much of the movie’s final hour running around the ship in an aimless clump, albeit one with steadily decreasing membership, applying mostly ineffective logic to the many problems at hand and freaking the hell out in equal measure. As Jason’s 21st century foil, Lexa Doig essentially plays the part of Ripley in Aliens, issuing dire repeated warnings and periodic calls to the remaining security personnel to “get your people out of there” which never, ever seem to be acknowledged in time. The film’s ostensible villain, a slimy, lilly-livered professor played by Johnathan Potts, is the first to piece together Jason’s identity, importance, and monetary value as a weapon, and searches for a clandestine way (a la Paul Reiser in Aliens, in case you were noticing a theme) to deliver the big fella back home in one piece. He’s a greedy weasel, sure, but a theoretically understandable one. In space, no one can hear you scheme.
Notables: Hardly any to speak of, with the exception of horror royalty/director extraordinaire David Cronenberg, who makes a brief early cameo as Jason’s earthbound jailer. Though Lexa Doig did go on to a way reasonable existence as a familiar face on sub-prestige sci-fi television (the V reboot, Andromeda, Continuum, and more).
Number of kills (minus Jason): 25
Originality of kills: Jason X’s dramatic change in venue also allows for an appreciable upgrade in the Create-a-Kill department. To wit: A student’s head is flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and then crushed, looking after the fact like a spilled cherry Icee with some hair in it. A security grunt is impaled on a giant, exposed screw and cascades down it like a pinwheel, continuing the sci-fi/horror tradition of the randomly appearing obscure pieces of apparatus whose only practical use seems to be helping facilitate a cool death. Jason and the android have a presumably final confrontation, in which blood, bullets and limbs fly in copious amounts. In the film’s best moment hands down, the remaining students buy time for their escape attempt by distracting Jason with an immersive holographic representation of Crystal Lake, complete with two bubbly female victims-to-be, all smiles and extolling in unison the joys of drinking, pot, and premarital sex. The film cuts away for a tense moment and when it cuts back, both holographic girls have retreated into zipped up sleeping bags and Jason is beating one with the other, visibly flustered that they won’t die. The hologram girls’ muffled, confused cries of “oof” and “wow” and “hey” are in admittedly poor taste, and also dark comedy gold.
Jason Notes: “Cyber-Jason” is a transparent marketing gimmick in desperate need of a coherent reason to exist, and not only am I stumped, but the filmmakers also seem unsure what to do with him once unleashed. Thankfully, it happens late. The titanium-enhanced suit looks just terrible, and adds little more than an extra level of impermeability to a villain whose entire hook is that he can’t be destroyed in the first place. Alternately sad and jokey, the finished product looks like initial concept art that should have been immediately rejected. Before the transformation, this Jason is a perfectly acceptable model, obviously beefed up in his time since taking Manhattan but still blessedly free of all of Jason Goes to Hell’s hideous stylistic flourishes. The student who unwittingly revives him does so after inspecting his brain, so there are even neat scalpel marks outlining the mask, which is a nice touch. Cyber-Jason’s prominence in the movie’s final third drags the whole enterprise down a half star (or more) in my estimation. There are some nice budget digital effects surrounding him, though.
Final Word: Lost in space. (2/4 stars)
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9) Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
A troubled young woman with telekinetic abilities tries and fails to resurrect her murdered father, with unexpected and deadly consequences…
Year: 1988 (act 7)
Director: John Carl Beuchler
Setting: Neighboring houses on the shores of Crystal Lake, NJ
Tone: Dour
Nutshell: As a kid, I don’t suppose it ever truly registered on me just how much frustrated demand for Freddy vs. Jason powered the dubious creation of Friday the 13th Part VII, which is subtitled The New Blood but could just as easily have been called Carrie vs. Jason if only Stephen King’s lawyers had been cooperative. I had long since declared my allegiance, and didn’t particularly care if I ever saw the Rushmore horror heads face off. I was just stoked to spend another summer at the lake. “Carrie vs. Jason” is the sort of irresistible high concept that, once blurted out – one imagines in a Tourette’s-like torrent – becomes a cinematic mission statement for no really good reason, turning copyboys and gophers into temporary boardroom heroes in the process. It definitely promises fireworks. Willing this sort of explosive melee into existence is a tricky proposition, and The New Blood, which, despite its production value, feels very much like a “Carrie vs. Jason” spec script brought to premature life, moves with leaden feet, weirdly placing its emphasis on stuntwork over more traditional horror business. Jason Voorhees had never really faced an opponent who could hurt him. Moreover, the Friday series had never before trafficked in the supernatural, at least not until its antagonist was revealed as an undead zombie, and not just some overly tenacious guy who was really, REALLY good at not dying, ever. To his credit, director John Carl Beuchler does pick a tone – coal mine dark – and sticks with it. Like The Final Chapter, TNB unfurls as another story of neighboring lakefront homes, and the sordid goings on going on within their respective walls. In house #1, we find a wholly unremarkable gaggle of horny teenagers intent on partying what remains of their lives away, which will not quite take the weekend. In house #2, we meet Tina Shepard, a burgeoning but emotionally fragile telekinetic, returning to the scene of her life’s formative and greatest tragedy – her father’s drowning – with her concerned mother and duplicitous psychotherapist in tow. One night, Tina stumbles out to the pier at her most fraught, and impulsively attempts to raise the dead, unfortunately unsuccessful in quite the way she’d hoped. The lasting impact of The New Blood is, almost without exception, visual in nature. This is the slickest, sleekest – in many ways, the prettiest – and darkest, both in photography and overall tone, entry in the series, or at least until the 2009 reboot reset just about everything. While I wouldn’t call The New Blood bleak per se, it is nevertheless strangely forbidding and pressurized, carrying over none of the well-placed and pitched irreverence that helped Jason Lives stand so far out from the crowd. At least it owns the choice. There are some eye-catching kills, and a modicum of thought clearly went into everything that reaches the screen. Of the series’ nine “decent or above” installments, it is probably still the least, and, not coincidentally, the least fun.
Cast likeability/relatability: A symphony of wet blankets. Tina is a walking pathos engine, not to mention a delicate porcelain doll that, properly motivated, could probably kill you with a glance, so, yeah, she’s a little hard to know. Her psychiatrist Dr. Crews, notable as the series’ first overt non-Jason villain, is a couple of shades above moustache-twirling caricature. The kids next door include, in the late Susan Jennifer Sullivan, the series’ finest ever queen bitch (the character’s final words are, for me, a joyous excuse for audience participation/call and response), plus a promiscuous white couple, a frankly conspicuous black couple, a wallflower, a sci-fi nerd who makes the characterization in early seasons of The Big Bang Theory look like the height of sensitive observation, and Tina’s doting stealth boyfriend Nick, a bland pretty boy with whom she generates so little chemistry that it wasn’t exactly a shock when the actor portraying him later came out as gay. There’s nobody particularly to root for here, though Tina’s mom is impossibly well-meaning and supportive, and the lowest-situated two social butterflies are kindly gifted one redemptive moment each…just before they die. Well, obviously.
Notables: An eclectic group. Jason’s nemesis, Tina, is played by actress Lar Park-Lincoln, who had a four-year stint on small screen soap Knot’s Landing. Tina’s dastardly psychiatrist Dr. Crews is played by Terry Kiser, of Weekend at Bernie’s fame, who brings all the gravitas and believability to his portrayal of the good doctor he’d later channel as the 1980s’ most famous slapstick corpse. Susan Blu, who played Tina’s mother, is an 11-time daytime Emmy nominee for her work as a voice actress and director of children’s programming.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 16
Originality of kills: The New Blood has garnered a reputation as one of the series’ more mortally adventurous chapters, and facts on the ground largely support it. Here we have death by tent spike, by harvesting sickle, by repurposed sleeping bag, by party store horn to the eye (complete with awesome sound effect upon impact), and by plummet from a second story window (did we learn nothing from The Final Chapter?), not to mention the bevy of more garden variety slashings. Tina’s late father puts in a surprise last minute appearance, looking tanned, rested, and remarkably well-preserved for a man who has, by this point, spent at least a decade pickling at the bottom of Crystal Lake. More stupid studio notes. How I’d love to think that somewhere – perhaps the vast warehouse where, in my imagination, the MPAA cruelly lords over vaults containing all the excised violent shots it requires to award an R rating – additional footage must exist of the film’s most memorable moment, when the sniveling Dr. Crews finally runs short on both balance and real estate and finds himself on the receiving end of a weed eater that has been refitted by Jason with a buzz saw blade. Alas, any existing additional film is apparently too degraded to ever yield a proper Director’s Cut. In interviews, the dearly departed Beuchler held little back in expressing either his disappointment in the chopped up theatrical version or contempt for the governing body that so made it. It’s a shame. The New Blood could have really stood apart. Unfortunately, creeping compromise helped render it ordinary.
Jason Notes: Lots has been made over the years of the performance as Jason of stuntman turned convention icon Kane Hodder, here making his debut, without too often mentioning that his quartet of movies behind the hockey mask are unquestionably among the series’ worst. Such miasma is hardly his fault, as Hodder exudes so much brute physicality in the role that his Jason survived punishingly stupid concepts like X’s chrome umpire suit and Hell’s Stay Puft brand Muffin-wear with both his rep and dignity more or less intact. At least he got off to a great start. Under the watchful eye of well-known SFX slinger Beuchler, The New Blood features arguably the best, most fully-realized Jason ever. Fresh from his sabbatical at the bottom of Crystal Lake, Jason’s clothes here are ragged shambles, slicked with blood and grime and slime, and through which exposed vertebrae and errant bones can be seen. The hockey mask carries forward all its previous signs of wear and is barely in one piece, with a prominent section of its lower corner now sheared away, the better to show Jason’s partially naked jawbones furiously grinding. The fiend even wears remnants of the chain noose Tommy used to drown him in an estimated twelve feet of water (in the deep end of Tom McLaughlin’s parents’ pool) at the end of Jason Lives. The New Blood as a movie is uneven at best, but its Jason is both formidable and a technical marvel…until, of course, he loses his mask during the finale and is revealed as a cracked brown iguana with candy corn for teeth.
Final Word: Semi-kinetic. (2/4 stars)
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10) Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning
A spate of new murders in the Crystal Lake community raises suspicions that Jason Voorhees has returned…
Year: 1985 (act 5)
Director: Danny Steinmann
Setting: A halfway house for troubled teenagers off Crystal Lake, NJ; a nearby diner; the stretch of highway connecting them
Tone: Sleazy
Nutshell: Half a star may seem a paltry difference in the grand scheme of things. Yet in my ratings hierarchy it is the last chance line of demarcation separating movies that are theoretically worth seeing in at least some respect from those with minimal redeeming value (or less). The only thing Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning has in common with any of the two-star films mentioned above is its woodsy setting, frustrated goalie villain, commitment to indiscriminate slaughter, and the associated privileges in terms of audience expectations that come along with that name in the title. It’s a small miracle that, following this debacle, Paramount didn’t reboot the series for Part Six as a touching suburban coming of age story featuring a put-upon teenager named Jason wiling away summer vacation at the side of his trusty golden retriever, Mancuso. *deep breath* But I digress. So Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman, for at least a few more precious minutes before being replaced by charisma/vitamin B12 deficient adult stand-in John Shepherd), the future Goonie who killed Jason and then stared down the camera at the end of Final Chapter, is all grown up now and, quite rightly, suffering from PTSD (apparently, this is the tact the producers wanted to take with Ginny following Part 2, but Amy Steel wisely backed out). He awakens from a literally home movie-level***** nightmare/pre-title sequence – in which, (thankfully) mute, terrified and soaked to the bone, he witnesses two yokels in search of kicks unwisely choose to dig up Jason’s grave – to find himself in transit to a camp for disturbed teenagers located…why, in that part of the Garden State where all canny entrepreneurs choose to open their summer camps, silly. Over the next couple days, Tommy will mingle amongst the at-risk youth while Jason appears to him in a series of increasingly vivid hallucinations. Meanwhile, a Jason copycat indiscriminately murders approximately everyone in the area code – having been triggered for a highly specific reason that no one could’ve conceivably guessed without having already seen the movie (though who would wish that punishment on them?) – and town elders wring their hands over the thought that Voorhees (who the movie goes so far as to say was cremated after Final Chapter) has somehow returned to cull the local tourist trade in person. They, and we, should be so lucky. This is the “pure” (i.e. gimmick-free) original series at its lowest possible ebb, tawdry and plain, crude, cheap, pretty much shameless, and utterly mercenary. It only retains what little status it has due to the fact that it doesn’t seem embarrassed to be part of the series. To the contrary, it wants desperately only to belong, but can’t.
Cast likeability/relatability: Little to none. John Shepherd makes his adult, institutionalized Tommy sullen, tortured, and impenetrable, 180 degrees removed from the energy and enthusiasm Feldman brought to his younger incarnation, or the pluck and relatability of Matthews’ elder interpretation. As the camp authority figure, Melanie Kinnaman is adequate but unmemorable. Keeping track of Kinnaman’s disappearing/reappearing pink cardigan sweater as she flees Sugar Free Jason Zero through a climactic rainstorm is far and away the most fun to be had here. Just about everyone else is some degree or other of awful – especially a shrill and completely extraneous hillbilly family that, despite writing and characterization on par with some recent hits, thankfully predates the nadir of reality TV by decades. Young Shavar Ross, as ostensible fan favorite “Reggie the Reckless”, can cut diamonds and make canine heads explode with his upper register scream, so there’s that. Always the red-headed stepchild of the series proper, not to mention the obvious stylistic transition point from the relatively straightforward first four movies to the rampant batsh*ttery that would eventually follow, A New Beginning is not at all helped by its coarse, practically antisocial, utterly anonymous cast of characters, who are, almost to a person, morose and/or painfully self-centered, attributes only partially explainable by the fact that half of them are patients at a camp for troubled teens. Who knows what the other half’s excuse is.
Notables: Well, the newly ascendant Feldman has that high profile flashback cameo that, along with Shepherd’s sporadic hallucinations, represent actual Jason’s only appearances in the movie. Tea Kettle Ross was Arnold’s best friend Dudley on Nancy Reagan’s favorite sitcom, Diff’rent Strokes, and also had a recurring role on Family Matters. Miguel Nunez, here seen being impaled by a metal spike while sitting in a port-O-san, also had his face eaten during a mass zombie attack in 1984 masterpiece The Return of the Living Dead. It’s something of an open question as to which was the better fate, or the more dignified.
Number of kills: 22
Originality of kills: To hear grindhouse/softcorn porn auteur turned master of ceremonies Danny Steinmann – was one of those directorial gigs more prestigious than the others, I wonder? – tell it, any number of terribly wicked, legitimately upsetting methods of destruction were plotted out before being walked back by MPAA edict. That…sucks? I mean, that sucks, since what made it screen is uniformly amateur hour cheap and ugly. Lots of axes and knives striking what might as well be pillows. Some dude chokes on a lit road flare. A post-coital couple is dispatched in a wooded clearing by some precision garden shears and a leather strap skull crushing respectively. Not a single thing else of remote note, despite a body count that falls just short of Avengers: Infinity War.
Jason Notes: The two best things about A New Beginning are its poster tagline – “If Jason still haunts you…you’re not alone” – and the LOL-funny realization that it took five credited writers to cobble together such sub-literate garbage. As for Jason, as you might have gathered by now, it’s not even Jason, so who cares? It’s actually (SPOILERZ!!!!) an unbalanced ambulance driver named Roy, wearing a pristine jumpsuit and an oversized mask with blue markings instead of red. Seriously, move along, folks. Nothing (at all) to see here.
Final Word: Rancid (1.5/4 stars)
*****The offending dream sequence, which is nevertheless still among the most professional and effective parts of the movie, was actually shot out under the sprinklers in Corey Feldman’s California backyard. Three minutes flat and he’s gone, the tease. The remaining movie must qualify as the only example of which I am aware of Corey Feldman’s absence actually making the heart grow fonder. *shudder*
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11) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Jason Voorhees hitches a ride on a post-graduation pleasure cruise bound for New York City…
Year: 1989 (act 8)
Director: Rob Hedden
Setting: Crystal Lake, NJ; A Manhattan-bound ocean liner; Manhattan (Vancouver!), NY
Tone: Soap-operatic
Nutshell: Series protagonists have been exploiting the, shall we say, more sensitive aspects of Jason Voorhees’ patently rotten childhood since the moment he first took the stage. Ginny turned the tables in her Part 2 showdown with Farmer Jason by appropriating a dirty sweater and maternal tone and pretending to be Mrs. Voorhees. Though of, one would think, tender age, young Tommy the Barbarian was able to stop the killer’s advance in its tracks after descending the Jarvis cabin staircase by simply sporting the horror genre’s most infamous bald cap, in a throwback tribute to Jason as a boy. Hell, Freddy Krueger seized upon my least favorite of Freddy vs. Jason’s numerous plot contrivances – that this immortal, unstoppable killing machine should nevertheless be deathly afraid of water – and turned that particular screw ruthlessly. But nobody shared quite so uncanny a bond with Jason as did Rennie Wickham, Part VIII’s studious, soft-spoken “final girl”, who arrives to the NYC party boat already haunted by childhood trauma, and soon experiences no fewer than five generally unexplained, full-blown hallucinatory manifestations of pre-pubescent Jason, mid-drowning, outside her cabin window, in her bedroom, in the streets of Manhattan, etc. Jason Takes Manhattan not only took the series to problematic places geographically, uprooting it from Crystal Lake for the first time ever, but was also the movie that turned Jason’s backstory, previously an extra bit of cool, creepy detail, from a bug into a feature. Director Rob Hedden seems to have little grasp in general on what made the preceding movies memorable, or functional, and instead doubles down on the notion of Jason as a tragic character rather than an implacable agent of destruction, at the same time expending distracting energy on his free-flowing, blatantly supernatural hunting abilities – such as his seeming ability to teleport, or to literally be in two places at once. The bulk of the movie actually takes place on the doomed ocean voyage, with Los Angeles and Vancouver standing in for the Big Apple, augmented by approximately five minutes of footage filmed on location in Times Square. Aboard the ship, JTM is merely a homeless, substandard Friday the 13th film. Despite a mild jolt of adrenaline from the abrupt change of venue, there is little improvement whatsoever once the characters finally reach land. Fun fact (and reason for the aspiring screenwriters at home to dream big): Jason “takes” Manhattan by storming like a machete-brandishing runaway cab through exactly one (1) back alley, one (1) city street, one (1) subway train, one (1) late night diner, and then cutting overland through Times Square (the moment where he scares the teenaged punks straight by merely lifting his mask will always be awesome) on his way to the sewers, just in time for the most idiotic climax in series history, which includes Jason Goes to Hell, just for the record. Toxic waste. Truly. See, we clean the already oddly pristine-looking sewer tunnels nightly by scouring them with a controlled flood of toxic waste! Ed Koch was a good-hearted mayor whose moderately progressive track record apparently featured some out-of-the-box ideas. As it turns out, the lime green goo even has substantial youth-restoring properties. Just ask QVC spokesmodel Jason V. (you won’t believe the “after” picture). Look, I’m not actually opposed in theory to unleashing Jason on New York City. Indeed, it’s the film’s only truly clever conceit (the original [quickly banned] poster, with him slashing through an “I Heart NY” sign, is arguably the series’ coolest), but the thinking here is just so muddled overall, and the execution is unforgivably shoddy on almost every level.
Cast likeability/relatability: Behold, the single most 1980s cast ever assembled! Thrill to acres of high-waisted, flared denim and New Jersey Mall Hair! Here’s a rocker chick channeling Joan Jett! Here’s a film geek who looks like a lost member of R.E.M. circa-1985! Here’s another blonde queen bitch straight out of a CBS soap opera! And a plucky boxer from back when that was still a thing! And a hanger-on for each! Otherwise, this cast is both vast and virtually anonymous, as the ship teems with redshirts primed for imminent slaughter and the background Manhattanites generally can’t be bothered as our rapidly dwindling crew rushes past. Rennie’s officious combination guardian/chaperone observes the world from atop a high horse and can only be taken in tiny doses, which is unfortunate, given his ridiculous amount of screen time. He continues the series’ needless latter-day tradition of including a villainous sub-boss in most every episode, the better for Jason to flatten in much the way cartoon metal overlords Gwar used to routinely “kill” their opening acts to the audience’s unwavering delight. Rennie, who is something of a writer apparently, also has a stealth boyfriend who’s the disappointing, misunderstood son of the ship’s captain for some reason, as well as an inspirational English teacher who believes in her so much she gives her “Stephen King’s pen” as a graduation gift. Rennie later stabs Jason in the eye with it, which is one of the few things in this movie of which I imagine King might approve.
Notables: Vanishingly few, though wannabe mean girl Kelly Hu had a recurring role on the CW’s Arrow, was recognizable in X2: X-Men United and opposite The Rock in The Scorpion King, and even did some character modeling for video game Mortal Kombat X. Peter Mark Richman carved out a workman’s existence on TV in the 1970s and ‘80s and had “that guy!” bit parts in both Beverly Hills 90210 and as an evil energy baron in Naked Gun 2 ½. Everyone else here pretty much registers just as anonymous out of Jason’s clutches as they were in them.
Number of kills (minus Jason): 21
Originality of kills: Not too bad, actually. Unlike the departure for which it paved the way (see below), at least Jason took Manhattan in both full view and somewhat high murderous style. Here we have death by application of hot sauna rock, broken mirror glass, and hypodermic needle, by slashing and impalement, by a rare instance of outright strangulation, and via both electric guitar and plain old electrocution. And did I mention the toxic waste? There are some missed opportunities, however. At one point, Jason engages in a rooftop brawl with the aspiring boxer, with whom he goes toe to undead toe with for something approaching a full 3-minute round. Unofficial punch stat numbers show the pugilist landing a devastating 55-56 in total punches, including 26-27 on power shots, but Jason is unmoved. The boxer, who has literally punched himself out, defiantly tells his opponent to take his best shot. Jason proceeds to decapitate him with a single uppercut, because, golly, how strong is this guy, right? Eh. I know some fans love this one, but I always thought it would be more fun for Jason to not punch back at all, but rather just nudge the exhausted boxer off the building’s edge with a single finger. Variety, people! You could devise something gnarly to break his fall pretty easily, if necessary, assuming the fall itself wasn’t sufficient to kill him. This is “New York”, after all.
Jason Notes: At the end of both Jason Lives and The New Blood, Jason is consigned anew to his watery grave rental at the bottom of Crystal Lake. Those two films (2/3 of an unofficial, extremely loose trilogy, as I mentioned earlier) also feature two of the best-imagined and realized character models in the entire series, with zombie Jason working his way diligently through advancing stages of physical deterioration. While not quite the revelation that The New Blood was, Jason Takes Manhattan realizes that its task is not reinvention but rather refinement, and its Jason, basically the New Blood edition with some cosmetic tweaks and a new, thicker coat of slime, is one of the few dependably good elements of an otherwise moribund enterprise. Until, of course, his mask inevitably comes off during the aggressively offensive grand finale, and Jason looks like nothing so much as a melting, unbearably sad, Tylenol gel-cap.
Final Word: Waterlogged (1.5/4 stars)
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12) Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
The immortal evil spirit of Jason Voorhees possesses the bodies of the innocent and makes them his pawns…
Year: 1993 (act 9)
Director: Adam Marcus
Setting: Various generic ports of call in and around Crystal Lake, NJ
Tone: Toothless
Nutshell: Sharp-eyed viewers will no doubt notice this is the series’ second “final chapter”. As ill an omen as that might seem on its face, the results are somehow worse. By 1993, Friday the 13th was, quite rightly, a cinematic afterthought, and, with four years gone since its most recent offering, definitively on its last legs. The New Blood and, especially, Jason Takes Manhattan, had been overly gimmicky but still comparatively acceptable examples of diminishing latter day returns for a series that, except on a cosmetic level, had always been wary of taking chances. The problem was obviously that they didn’t go far enough! Enter Adam Marcus to put the old warhorse out of its misery in the most insulting way possible, by turning Friday the 13th into putrid, barely comprehensible, sci-fi melodrama. Just thinking about this movie makes me angry. Watching it again was just short of an endurance test. It’s as if simply ending the series wasn’t enough for this director and these producers. They had to try to desecrate it as well, though that job, like any other the movie attempts, is handled ineptly. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is, of course, kneecapped from the start by its conspicuous, and, as it turns out, terminal, lack of Jason, who after a throwback pre-title sequence is reduced to metaphysically hopping from coroner’s table to (possessing) said coroner, and then from body to body a la the alien parasite in 1987’s vastly superior sci-fi police thriller The Hidden. Each of Jason’s new hosts almost exclusively spends his, her, or its screen time all blood-spattered and glowering, leaning hard into the impersonation to an almost cartoonish degree, but, ironically enough for actors whose faces are in clear view sans anything but basic trick-or-treating makeup, without the mask, the height, or Hodder’s substantial physical presence, the exercise is not only irritating but pointless. John Carpenter tried this whole “minus iconic villain” logic out on the fans of his Halloween franchise once too (albeit in a much more original way) and found them so disgruntled that, five years later, Michael Myers, who one always assumed was incinerated in the fiery climax of Halloween II, instead conveniently awoke from his movie coma just in time for a lucrative box office return. JGtH plays like low grade episodic television throughout – it might’ve made a passable late season time-killer during the run of Friday the 13th The Series – stuffed to the gills with annoying characters, dramatic contrivances, and ridiculous mythology. Why, yes, since you inquired, there is a prophecy! And a magic knife! And an infant for some reason! It’s actually Jason Voorhees’ grand-niece! These elements and obstacles are all just props and distractions – more flaming bags of poop than flaming hoops – convoluted mechanisms invented to enable Jason to return from the spirit world to the well-known corporeal form he never should have left in the first place. The twists are, without exception, stupid, the kills, with one (qualified, as you’ll read below) exception, retrograde, and the final shot an expert troll job on the fanbase it had sought to fleece, though it did foreshadow somewhat the series’ eventual uptick a decade later. Among its many sins, perhaps the most unforgivable is that Jason Goes to Hell doesn’t feel remotely like a Friday the 13th movie, unlike every one of the series’ previous departures. Sean Cunningham even returned to produce the film and lend it some tacit legitimacy, but that can’t mask the stench of such a naked, and tone-deaf, cash grab. If this was to be the “Final Friday”, the series really should have quit while it was ahead.
Cast likeability/relatability: Not remotely/I don’t care. When a redheaded camper with four total minutes of screen time makes a bigger and better impression than the remaining cast put together, ‘tis a dire sign indeed.
Notables: Legendary Buck Rogers hottie Erin Gray pops up as Jason’s (ahem) long lost sister, another convention the producers unwittingly shoplifted from the Halloween series (however nonsensical that ended up being, it is positively Shakespeare compared to the intrigues of the extended Voorhees family…plus, a respectful show of hands from everyone who remembers, in Pamela’s Part 1 monologue, her lamenting li’l lost mongoloid Jason as “her only child”); 21 Jump Street’s Steven Williams has the only fine old time in either the movie or the audience as amoral bounty hunter/strutting peacock Creighton Duke. Befuddled Sherriff Billy Green Bush also played a hapless lawman in the original The Hitcher and was the dad in Critters. FBI Agent Julie Michaels (who sets the whole miserable enterprise into motion by luring Jason into a fatal ambush in the pre-title sequence) had memorable bit parts in Road House and Point Break. Steven Culp had a fairly notable post-Hell TV career, with long stints on ER and Desperate Housewives, among others.
Number of kills (minus Jason, ugh): 27
Originality of kills: The MPAA’s longstanding vendetta against the Friday the 13th series reached its zenith with the merciless, comprehensive defanging of JGtH’s theatrical cut, so this category depends almost entirely on whether you watch the rated or unrated version. Neither is at all stellar – and I’d like to personally congratulate Warner Bros. for including the wrong one only in the otherwise comprehensive 2013 blu-ray collection (Scream Factory’s beautiful recent box thankfully fixes the omission) – but the unrated version at least boasts one of the series’ very best individual set pieces, offering up some unsubtle commentary on the perils of unprotected sex as “Jason” interrupts a couple, mid-flagrante dilecto, by splitting open their pup tent, among other things, with a railroad spike. Everything else is appropriately pitiful – I mean, I guess the massacre at the local diner has its moments – despite “Jason”’s newfound love for, and ninja-like facility with, hand to face combat and a couple of deaths played strictly for laughs. Those are indicative of the tone the filmmakers probably meant to channel throughout, before they got swallowed up in all the nonsense of “only a Voorhees can kill him, and only through a Voorhees can he be reborn”. Ugh, and quintuple ugh.
Jason Notes: Unlike the series’ early installments, which at least seem like charming relics of a bygone era, Jason Goes to Hell looks fairly modern and yet has still not aged well at all. The further along the series went, the more determined it became to blow Jason up to levels of steroidal absurdity diametrically opposed to his origins as a feral child of the backwoods. Since JGtH operates firmly and openly in the realm of magic, not reality, I guess I’m supposed to overlook the abiding weirdness of this incarnation. Good bloody luck. Along with his appreciable growth in physical size, Jason’s head now has the look of a great mass of tumors with the iconic mask fused to/growing out of it instead of worn in any traditional sense. It’s kind of a striking take from afar, though it doesn’t pass close scrutiny, and is shelved for the bulk of the movie anyway whilst Jason possesses the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker instead. Fun fact: This is the first applicable Friday sequel ever to not reveal Jason’s face during its endgame, and, frankly, I’m grateful, since I have no doubt they would have royally screwed that up too.
Final Word: Notion-sickness. (1/4 stars)
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Crystal Lake Memories, an excellent 2013 documentary on the history of the Friday the 13th, is available to stream via shudder.com and for rent or purchase via Amazon, Youtube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and more.
Revisit the original Ranking, Dissecting the “Friday the 13th” Series post here. It’s way cute.
Grateful h/t to imdb.com and fridaythe13th.wikia.com
darkadaptedeye 
Great list. Very comprehensive. Although we would’ve ranked 7 a little higher and the Nispeil remake a bit lower. But to each their own! We did a franchise deep dive a while back. Check it out, let us know what you think : https://newfleshpodcast.com/2019/01/15/friday-the-13th-franchise-deep-dive/