31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Jason Goes to Hell

I'm stumbling to the end of my Friday the 13th marathon feelling like there's a hatchet in my brain (another migraine). I made it as far as Jason Goes to Hell and I think - unfortunately - I'm going to take some time before watching the rest. I will watch them - but I need a break after the last two films. While I was able to find details in them that I could enjoy I can honestly say I (mostly) hated those movies, and they left a bad mental taste in my brain that is threatening to color my memory of the whole series.

Jason Goes to Hell (1993)
You know, I think there's a universe where this isn't a Friday the 13th movie and it's become a cult hit. Body hopping serial killer with a magic bloodline and a character like Duke hunting him? Those crazy folks at the diner? The gore and nudity? Yeah, this is someone's favorite horror movie in another timeline.

But not this one.

Things start of promisingly enough - a return to the classic formula: a woman heads to Crystal Lake (no longer Forest Green, I see) alone. Not a particularly bright person, you might think - I mean, at this point the place has got to be pretty famous. Still - this is a Friday the 13th movie and this is kinda thing is to be expected. Sure enough, Jason shows up, looking none the worse for wear since being melted in a New York sewer. He attacks, she flees, he follows - right into an FBI ambush. Nice try FBI guys! It's going to take more than bullets to take down...

Oh. Rocket launcher. Yeah, that uh, that seems to do the trick.

Well, thank God that's over. Who's up for a beer?

Well, okay, I guess we'll see where this goes. Maybe there's a cool scene in the morgue where Jason's constituent bits all come back together, leaving him with like a jigsaw puzzle and... ah, geez, what? That's not sanitary doc. So the coroner eats Jason's heart and Jason possesses him? But it's still Jason! See, there's his reflection in the...

My god, this movie. I mean, on one level I appreciate the complete chutzpah it has, to take a well established series and just throw everything about it out the window. To make things up out of whole cloth. There's a Voorhees family now? And a Voorhees house that's not the shack from Part 2? Is this Halloween?! And Jason's a body-jumping slug right out of The Hidden? And mystical bloodline nonsense. And this crazy cowboy guy who trades finger breaking for information? And the nebishy guy with the letter jacket is the hero?

If this looks stupid to you... you're right.

On the plus side, the gore quotient is significantly upped in this installment. I mean, I've only seen the unrated DVD, so I imagine it was cut a bit in the theater, but still - that whole eating the heart scene, the poor woman who gets cut in half by a road sign, whatever the hell that thing is that crawls out of the reporters neck. The movie gets some points for imaginative squick, for sure.

But it's just... it's such a mess. Such a weird, nonsensical mess. I don't even care when Freddy's gloved hand appears at the end, I'm so confused and pissed about the new 'mythology' crap. Not a good start, New Line (who ended up with the series after Paramount saw the returns on Jason Takes Manhattan). No wonder it would be 8 years before we'd get another Friday film and 10 before Jason and Freddy finally faced off.

But hey, at least we got some comic books out of it.
Which I now need to find because I'm a masochist, apparently

So, yeah. I know I have two more movies in the original series and one remake/relaunch/whatever it was, if I want to include that. It's... it's going to be a bit before I get to them. I promise it won't be 8 years, though.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Friday the 13th 7 & 8 - The New Blood and Jason Takes Manhattan

Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood (1988)
 So, full disclosure, I hated this movie when I first saw it. That was probably 1989 or '90, as I know I didn't see it in the theater. For the longest time I refused to watch it again, that's how much I'd hated the experience. I didn't watch Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason Goes to Hell in part because I remembered disliking The New Blood so much. (I suppose I should be thankful on that count.)

So when I finally got around to re-watching it a couple of years ago I was astonished. What the hell was my problem? It was the same movie - Jason vs Carrie, essentially - but my experience of it and reaction to it was completely different. It's still not my favorite, but man - I couldn't tell you why I'd had such a visceral reaction to it back then.

Critics called this film "Jason vs Carrie" and it kinda does feel like they got Stephen King to pen a Friday the 13th movie. Traumatic childhood incident where a girl, Tina, uses her burgeoning psychic abilities to accidentally kill her father. Ten years later overbearing establishment figure bent on using (now teenage) girls abilities to further his own career/agenda brings her back to the scene. Protective mother figure is blind to what's really going on until it's too late. Escalating emotional stress exacerbated by adolescence, a budding relationship and torment by peers leads to a final confrontation where psychic girl kills everyone in a pyrotechnic display of her powers.

"I'm doing this? I'M DOING THIS? With my MIND?"

Actually, wait - no, it's Jason who kills everybody and HE's the one on the receiving end of the pyrotechnics.

This movie features my favorite Jason design, with rotting flesh, exposed spine, chain around the neck and gooey fluids. This is Kane Hodder's first outing as Jason and he's just great, with excellent physicality and various head movements and ticks that - pardon the pun - really bring Jason to life. His background in stunts and willingness to do whatever it takes to get the shot also serves the film well in the final third, when Tina starts kicking Jason's ass six ways to Sunday.

Dude! That's his SPINE! So. Cool.

My main complaint about the film at this point is that the teenagers and the kills are pretty boring. We get stabbings and impalements and head crushings, but they're not very... well, exciting. This film also suffered at the hands of the MPAA, being sent back 9 times (as with Part 6). As a result it too is fairly bloodless, with lots of kills cut away from at the last minute. It's too bad, as the director, John Carl Beuchler, was actually a special effects guy first. I understand quite a bit of the original gore was excised - including a rotting father from the end sequence. We do get some gooey Jason shots, including what looks like pus and brains leaking from his head as Tina constricts his mask. There's also a hilarious attack when Jason picks up a camper in a sleeping bag and swings them against a tree. (Reminding me of an even more ridiculous attack in Prophecy - the skinless bear one, not the Christopher Walken one.)

I don't have a good screencap of the sleeping bag scene, so... uh, here's this.

Things really get going for me when Tina and Jason finally square off, because this is really the first time Jason has had a foe that can actually take him on. And Tina can - she electrocutes him, hits him with lights, tvs and someone's severed head, she strangles him, crushes him, drops him through the floor and then sets him on fire. Then she escapes while the house blows up around him. This is all pretty epic and a fantastic tour-de-force of a final girl fight. It's not, y'know, ENOUGH to kill Jason, but damn does she give it the old college try.

 

And then Tina resurrects her dad to grab Jason and drag him under water. And suddenly I remember why I hated this movie so much. Schlubby McWifeslapper is brought back from the dead to save the day by taking out Jason? HE'S WEARING A CARDIGAN. Guys who wear cardigans should not be the ones to take down Jason - even if they're summoned back from the dead by their psychic kids.

Tina and her new boyfriend survive - continuing the trend of "final girl plus one" from the previous film. I kinda wonder if Tina is still out there, ready to take Jason on again. There needs to be like a big Expendables style team-up of all the Friday the 13th final girls where they hunt Jason down and beat the crap out of him.

Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Okay, to be honest, I'm kinda losing steam here, and this and the next film are going to suffer in the review department as a result.

Jason gets on a boat, kills a bunch of teenagers, follows the survivors to New York and then gets turned into a little kid by toxic waste. I'm not kidding.

I've only seen this film once before and I'll give the film this - it's not as cheap-looking as I remember it being. It's still got all the ambiance of a first-season X-Files episode (also shot in and around Vancouver), but the ship has some production value and not all the rooms look like soap opera sets. The teenagers are the least likeable bunch of victims in a Friday the 13th movie so far, but at least they make an effort to protect themselves, arming up once they realize the danger. It doesn't help, of course. It never does.

Did you know Crystal Lake connects to the ocean? Me either - not something they promote in the brochures. Still, that's how Jason gets on the boat.

"I heard it was a singles cruise..."

Kane Hodder is back as Jason, so at least we have that - not that he gets a lot to do. The kills are pretty anemic and Jason suddenly has magic powers (other than constantly coming back from the dead). He can teleport now - bebopping around a dance floor and instantly appearing at the top of a ladder. Also his child ghost is haunting the main character, whose name I can't really be bothered to remember or look up. This ghost looks like it was played by three or four different kids over the course of the film and I couldn't tell you why he appears, exactly. Maybe it's supposed to be a flashback for... crap, okay, I'm looking it up... Rennie, right - a flashback to Rennie's childhood almost-drowning on Crystal Lake.

Yeah, Rennie's guardian, uncle Charles "Complete Asshole" McCullough threw her in the lake as child, even though she couldn't swim. That's why she's afraid of the water. Also maybe drowned child Jason tried to kill her back then. I dunno.

Which is why I'm not sad when he gets the Toxic Avenger treatment.

Jason goes about murdering teens as usual, though several people get drowned off-screen by doing what the English teacher tells them to do. (There's the one lesson you can take from this movie - the advice of English teachers can get you killed. That's true in Call of Cthulhu as well, by the way.) Rennie, Charles, English Teacher, un-named boyfriend and Julius (whose name I only remember because of the one cool scene later on) escape the boat and end up in New York. Which is apparently Times Square and an endless series of alleyways out of a Troma movie. There are druggies and would-be rapists that rob and separate them. Jason is the good guy in one scene, which is weird. Julius and Jason have a boxing match on the roof, which is fun as hell and the highlight of the film for me. (It doesn't go well for Julius.)

"Okay, that's a really good shot."

Jason chases Rennie and unnamed boyfriend onto the subway and in the most egregious move in a movie full of egregious moves Jason walks through a series of subway cars and DOESN'T KILL ANYONE. Not a single person. Not so much as a bunch of screams and blood hitting the windows. This... this offends me, somehow. This should have been a centerpiece, a monumental piece of bloody carnage that would culminate with a crowd of screaming, bloody people erupting from the subway entrance to be followed by Jason into Times Square.

Instead he just walks through, comes up the stairs and - so rude - kicks a gangs boombox. And scares them by showing them his face.

That moment when Jason looks around and the camera shows us that he's really standing in Times Square is pretty cool. It's like 30 seconds of time. Jason doesn't take Manhattan. He walks through it, quickly.

"Hey, it's Jason! Jason's in Manhattan everybody! Oh... is it done already?"

Rennie and unnamed boyfriend find themselves in the sewer. Which floods with toxic waste every night at midnight. I don't know if this is a nod to CHUD or just what the screenwriter thinks really happens in New York. Some running occurs. Jason finally kills a guy. Toxic waste floods the sewers and the stupidest looking Jason makeup ever melts away to reveal... a kid in his underwear.

Rennie, unnamed boyfriend and dog I forgot to mention earlier survive.

I don't... I just... I can't. 

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Friday the 13th Parts 4, 5 and 6

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I actually live about 5 minutes from Crystal Lake. well, A Crystal Lake, anyway. It's got a locals-only beach that my wife and I go to in the summer and directly across from that beach is an old Catholic summer camp, Camp Gregory. It's no longer in use, and looking up to see the paint peeling off the old concrete retaining wall in the shadow of the looming pines always gives me a bit of a chill, no matter how hot it is.

I hear they're renovating and hope to open again soon. I'm sure it's fine.



Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter (yeah, right) (1984)

This and Part 6 form the apex of the Friday the 13th movies for me. If I had to pick one over the other, though, it would be this one. It's got all the elements that make a classic Friday the 13th movie - teenagers in lust, Crystal Lake, Jason and - most importantly - Tom Savini. Add to that Matthew Star (sans powers), Doublemint twins, Crispin Glover (and his amazing dance skills), a Goonie and the best Jason death ever... well, that's winner, winner, chicken dinner. (A phrase I only learned recently and have resolved to use as often as possible.)

Another bunch of idio... er, teens, head up to Crystal Lake, including Glover and that kid from The Last American Virgin. They're once again thinly written stereotypes, but as with Part 2 the actors do their best with what little they have. A new addition to the pool of potential victims this time around is a family - Trish Jarvis, her mom and her little brother, Tommy. Why anyone would still be living on that lake at this point is an open question - but maybe they're just underwater on their mortgage. One other addition is Rob - a guy 'hunting bear' who's actually hunting Jason - seems he's the brother of Sandra from Part 2. (That's another nice thing about this film - the nods and references to the previous installments.)

Did I mention the dance, though?

The teens do what teens do in slasher films - they skinny dip, drink, hook up, fight, stomp off alone to go swimming in the nude. Jason shows up because that's like catnip to a slasher and proceeds to impale, slash, stab, nail, crush and otherwise make mincemeat out of them. Winner, winner... you know, I'm done with that phrase already. (And just as an aside, who the hell is renting cabins on Crystal Lake to teens, anyway? That's like aiding and abetting homicide. In my head cannon it's now Vincent Price, laughing maniacally every time he gets some teens to sign the rental agreement.)

"Yes, this counts against your security deposit."

The two main locations - the Jarvis house and the rental - allow for some interesting back and forth chase sequences and the kills in general are more interesting than usual. (I remember reading that some of the actors had to do their own stunts, and some of that stuff looks damn dangerous.) Tommy is a fun addition - having a kid that loves makeup and special effects is an obvious shout-out to Savini and it works much better for me than the 'have someone read a copy of Fangoria' placement in Part 3.

Part 4 also features the only moment of real horror in any of the Friday the 13th movies - as far as I'm concerned, anyway. Jason's already slaughtered the teens next door and both Rob and Trish are investigating. Rob descends into the basement - because being near Jason obviously causes IQs to drop sharply - and is attacked. He screams for Trish to run and as she does we can clearly hear him screaming in the background, "he's killing me! He's killing me!" That is a legitimately horrifying moment and the one time I'm actually not treating the whole film like a carnival thrill ride.

The final sequences with Jason chasing Trish and Tommy are great, as is the final confrontation with Tommy having made himself up to look like Jason as a kid. Jason's death is fantastically gory - especially considering the relative tameness of the previous attacks. There's no doubt - as he lands on the machete and slides down it, the blade biting deeper into his skull - that this is the end of Jason Voorhees. A real final chapter. No doubt in my mind. None.

Looks like you've got a splitting headache there, Jason! (sorry)

In the general sense there's nothing special about Part 4 - it's full of standard Friday the 13th stuff - but in the details it succeeds at doing all those things in the best possible way. I know there are issues with the making of the film - Joseph Zito was notoriously difficult to work with and there were injuries, walkoffs and threats - but none of it comes through in the film itself. It's tense and fun and gory and would have been a great sendoff for a classic character.

But then it went and made a ton of money.

Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning (1985)

*Sigh*

Look, I'm trying to find something (anything) to enjoy in these films as I watch them, because otherwise it becomes an exercise in self harm. So, in that spirit, it's... mostly in focus?

Actually, let's give the film a little credit - they did try and do something different with this installment. The opening sequence - in which Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldmen) watches two jackasses dig up Jason for... uh, reasons - is actually pretty cool. (So cool they'd make a whole movie out of the concept next time around.) When Jason comes to life and digs the worms out of his eyes (doesn't literally happen - but should have) you start thinking there might be something to this New Beginning idea.

Unfortunately, that's the last time you actually see Jason. And it's a dream sequence.

So's this. I kinda wish the whole movie had been a dream sequence.

The basic setup is that Tommy is being sent to a halfway house for wayward teens (not a camp, it's different, see?!). Local neighbors Ethel and her son, Junior, are none too happy about the way the kids sneak on to their property and fornicate. The local sheriff tries to make peace, but he has his hands full with...

Geez, am I really going to try and write out this plot? Let's sum up - one of the kids goes nuts and hacks up another, setting off a series of killings that seem at least inspired by Jason. Tommy isn't certain if it's Jason, someone else or - due to his random way of losing it and kicking the shit out of people - himself. People are picked off one by one until a final confrontation with a guy who isn't Jason - or even believably threatening - and a 'twist' ending with Tommy, a mask and a knife.

And they didn't even get the mask right. Blue slashes? Seriously?

Things I liked about the movie. The kid, 'Reckless Reggie,' has a brother named Demon (yes, that's his name). It's always nice to see actors from Return of the Living Dead in a Friday the 13th movie and he's pretty entertaining (Demon sure has a lot of fast food in his van). I really hated the 'comic relief' neighbors, so I liked when they were finally killed off. (For years I thought Ethel was played by the same actress that plays the first victim in the first Friday the 13th movie.) Violet's got some serious dance moves. Reggie has a pretty snazzy red jumpsuit. Umm...

You know, I dislike this movie a lot and as a Friday the 13th movie it's seriously lacking in... anything that makes it feel like a Friday the 13th movie, beyond teenagers getting killed. If it was another in a long line of imitators instead of a part of the franchise it might have been better received. Maybe. I still hate Part 3 more, though. This is at least TRYING. And they do kill a lot more people.

The movie is pretty clearly a setup for an adult Tommy Jarvis to become the new Jason. I imagine they had plans for a series of movies with that character that were pretty sharply derailed by the reception Part 5 got at the box office. You can ignore critics (and really, if you're a slasher film you kinda have to), but you cannot ignore the bottom line.

Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives! (1986)

"Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment."

Part 6 was the first (and for a long time, only) Friday the 13th film I got to see in the theater. I don't even remember the circumstances, just bits and pieces of the film itself - particularly seeing Horshack (Welcome Back Kotter's Ron Palillo) in the opening sequence and the part where Jason climbs onto the top of the burning RV. I do remember loving it. For the longest time Part 6 was my favorite of the series, mostly because it's the most shamelessly fun entry.

I'm torn as to whether Part 6 ignores the entirety of Part 5 or just the particulars of the disposal of Jason's corpse (it's mentioned he's been cremated) and the ending with Tommy and the mask. I'll go with it all being in continuity with the discrepancies being down to Tommy's illness.

Jason Lives starts things off in grand style with Return of the Living Dead's Thom Matthews taking over the Tommy Jarvis role. He heads to the cemetery where Jason is buried (hauling along his poor, doomed buddy Hawes) looking for some kind of closure. Instead he ends up inadvertently bringing Jason back to life in the time-honored method of the corpse struck by lightning. "He's back," to quote from the Alice Cooper song on the soundtrack, "the man behind the mask!"

80's lightning effects! Awesome!

Jason's not really a man anymore, though. He's a supernatural creature, a rotting corpse with a desire to kill and a homing instinct that drives him back towards Camp Crystal La... er, I'm sorry, Camp Forest Green. On the way he'll kill a future president (Scandal's Tony Goldwyn) and slaughter members of a corporate paintball retreat. These scenes help reinforce the self-referential comedy aspects of the film ("I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly.") and the supernatural strength of the revived Jason, who seems just as surprised as anyone when he tears a man's arm off.

These jokes just write themselves, really.

Meanwhile, Tommy - having escaped from Jason (not Hawes, who ends up dumped in Jason's grave) heads to the sheriff's office to tell them what's happened. The authorities don't believe him however, especially when they figure out who he actually is, and end up running him out of town - though not before he meets the sheriff's daughter, Megan, and her friends, the new counselors up at Camp Bloo... Camp Forest Green.

Speaking of the camp - for the first time ever in a Friday the 13th movie the children's camp actually has children show up! Much fun (and significant tension) is had with Jason stalking around the buildings as kids sleep inside. Once things go (inevitably) wrong and Jason is murdering counselors and cops with equal enthusiasm the kids are forced to hid beneath their beds. "So," says one, "what DID you want to be when you grew up?"

I can't help but wonder - did their parents send these kids to Camp Blood on purpose?

Tommy escapes with Megan's help. They arrive at camp too late to save any of the adults, but just in time to save the kids. Tommy's plan to chain Jason to the bottom of the lake in some half-hearted supernatural ritual almost doesn't work. Luckily Megan knows how to use an outboard motor AND do CPR. Leading to yet another "it's over, it's finally over" statement - this time from someone who should really know better.

No, yeah, sure, sure - he's dead this time. Of course. Totally.

I know some Friday the 13th fans who absolutely cannot stand this movie, because they feel it's making fun of something they love, ridiculing it. To me, though, it manages to have its cake and eat it too. It works because it's still a Friday the 13th move - with teenagers, Jason, murders etc. - and it's also an action comedy that pokes fun at the ridiculous elements of its own mythology. It's a meta-comedy horror film years before Scream was a thing. It's just plain fun - something that's going to be sorely missing in the films that are to follow.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Friday the 13th Parts 2 & 3

Friday the 13th Part 2
This was the first of the Friday the 13th movies I got to see. I'd like to think it was because this was the first film of the series that I saw featured in Fangoria (something my brother Scott reminded me of). It's more likely that when I went to rent the first film the store didn't have it in. They always only had one copy of any given film (except for new mainstream releases), so this was a constant problem back then. Want to see the original Jaws? Sorry, how about The Revenge? Gah.

Anyway, this was my first experience of Friday the 13th and it colored my perceptions and expectations for the other films. It's the first of the series with Jason as the actual antagonist (though he runs around looking like the killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown for most of it). It's considerably more polished with the cinematography, editing and acting than the first film. And I found the characters to be actually likeable - something that didn't always prove the case as the series progressed.

I also remember this film as much more bloody and violent than it actually is. Most of the gore is cut away from fairly quickly or (like the infamous spear) isn't actually shown on screen. I don't know if this is a result of Paramount getting more involved or the MPAA starting to crack down on horror movies, but I was surprised at how tame it is - especially for a series famed for its violence. I'm guessing I've somehow transposed behind the scenes shots from Fangoria for the edited sequences in the film.

And ya know, stuff can be disturbing without overt gore.

The Movie (I'll probably skip these title breaks for the later films)
The opening pads time with a recap of the events of the first movie and follows that up with a sequence featuring the sole survivor of those events, Alice. It's a bit of a mean-spirited scene, with a rough end to a strong character. Knowing the actress, Adrienne King, had to deal with a real life stalker after the first movie also makes it more uncomfortable.

And putting this right next to open milk cartons is just rude.

After that it's all young people, camp, hanky-panky, doomed, slaughtered - yadayadayada. The song seems familiar, don't it? They definitely chose not to stray too far from the original, which makes sense. Why mess with what works? It's in the details and the overall improvement in skill that I find what I enjoy about Part 2 - it's certainly not in any deviation from the formula.

I mostly like the characters, which I guess isn't that much of a change - but I also find it easier to differentiate and identify them. Other than Kevin Bacon (and primarily because of his later work) and Alice (because she's the final girl) I don't really care that much about the characters in the first film. The broad strokes of character development are still in place - the joker, the former jock in a wheelchair, the horndog, the fitness girl - but the actors seem to do more with them, somehow. I really wanted Vickie and Mark to get together, for instance - I sure as hell wasn't that invested in the characters in the first movie.

Oh Mark, no - she just put on the 'fancy' underwear.

I also really like the cinematography in Part 2. Things are framed well, let well, and I can generally tell what's going on in any given scene. I also really like the long, Steadycam shots as Ginny is trying to escape from Jason. We still get plenty of Jason POV shots as well, but those tracking sequences feel a little like we're running alongside Ginny, trying to escape as well. (And it also gives a great sense of space and uses the levels of the setting well to show us where the killer is in relationship to her.)

He's behind you. He's always right f&%!ing behind you.

And I love Ginny. She's my favorite final girl. She's smart, sarcastic, capable and strong without being a fearless automaton. She's terrified the entire time she's being chased, but you can see her overcome it and do what she has to. There's a shot of her sitting on a bed, holding out the business end of a broken pitchfork at the camera, dirty, disheveled, hurt - and yet determined. That's my mental image of the character.

Now sadly reminds me of part 3, in 3D.

The ending is an unfortunate cheat, however. We never really know what happened. Jason's brief appearance sans-mask isn't even necessarily real. Did she pass out? Did he really appear like a deformed hillbilly? Where's Paul and what happened to that damn dog, anyway. Ginny is taken off - strapped down, though she appears completely coherent - and we get no answers. Now or in the sequels. I always kind of wanted to see that character again - showing up with a chainsaw and a Psychology textbook to save the next batch of teenagers. Alas, Amy Steel declined to do any further Friday films.

The Bottom Line
My first Friday the 13th movie, and the one for which I have the fondest memories. It's basically a remake of the first film, but as it's better in almost every way I don't really care. (I do miss Tom Savini's makeup, though.)

Friday the 13th Part 3: In 3D!
I only vaguely remembered Part 3. My biggest memory is actually that of frustration - I couldn't go see it in the theater, so I never got to see it in 3d! And that's really the biggest drawback of the film - it knows it's a gimmick film and so it shoves that gimmick into every frame it can. Poles come at you, rats come at you, machetes, pitchforks and eyeballs come at you. And because it's NOT being seen in 3d, it just screws with the tension and pacing and you start getting annoyed. Yeah, I see it - stop holding it right in front of the camera for crying out loud.

The second biggest problem with Part 3 is that I really don't like any of the characters. They're... annoying. Even our supposed lead, the final girl, Chris, is... I dunno, flat. Vapid. I don't even like the nerd stand-in character of Shelly. In fact the character I end up liking the most is Vera - and she gets a spearfishing spear in the eye way too early.

The third problem for me is that they moved the production of the film to California. It's obviously California. The vegetation is all wrong, the light is all wrong, hell, the 'lake' is just a dug out area beside the house. It looks like a billion other films shot in California and loses everything that said "rural New Jersey."

And don't get me started on the 'biker gang.'

The best thing that can be said about Part 3 is that we finally get the archetypal Jason. The huge, deformed killer wearing the hockey mask.

BOO!

The Bottom Line
I really don't like this movie much and it's flabbergasting to me that it's directed by the same guy - Stephen Miner - that did the second film. If it wasn't for the iconic mask I'd say skip this one and move directly to Part 4.

I still kinda want to see it in 3D though. 

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13th (1980)

I spent way too much of my adolescence watching slasher flicks. Part of it was just that it was the 80's, and that was the heyday of the slasher. Especially the early years of the decade when you couldn't go to the theater without rubbing shoulders with Michael and Jason and their horde of imitators. Not that I got to see a lot of those films in the theater - no, I wasn't able to see an R rated film in the theater until long after Freddy and the 'rubber reality' horror trend had upended the parade of nubile campers/sorority girls/cheerleaders and those who stalked them.

No, I had three things to thank for my interest and experience of the slasher film. The first of these was, as it often was for all things horror, Fangoria. It's a sad state of affairs that the pre-eminent horror magazine (at least since Famous Monsters of Filmland) hasn't seen an issue hit stands since 2015. Yeah, they still update the website - but it's gone in all but name. Many an afternoon was spent going over my friend John's copies, marveling at the newest Tom Savini makeup effect. The second thing I had was the occasional (possibly pirated) access to HBO. I saw a lot of things on HBO that I probably shouldn't have (including far too much of Kirk Douglas in Saturn 3). The third - and probably most important - thing that fed my diet of decapitations, throat slittings and stabbings was the advent of the VHS rental.

Oh, there you are old friends...

I hate to be that Gen X'er that waxes poetic about the video store, but man... that was a magical place. Chain stores eventually made them a more corporate experience - a GameStop for movies - but when they first appeared they were all mom & pop shops in weird locations with mis-matched shelving, stacks of cheap rentals near the door and VHS players for rent that were heavy enough to cause back problems. Early video stores - and some small shops that kept up the tradition long after Blockbuster and Movie Gallery had bought out everyone else - were where you could find the imports, the weird films, and the horror movies. Yeah, maybe they were stocked in the back under a flickering fluorescent light next to the curtained doorway that led back to the 'adult' section, but they had 'em. And mostly what they had was slasher flicks.

And these were like $60 a pop if you wanted to buy them.

That's how I saw Slumber Party Massacre and Sleepaway Camp and Prom Night. That was how I saw Hell Night, My Bloody Valentine, and The House on Sorority Row. And that was how I saw all the Friday the 13th movies. (Well, not all - I didn't end up seeing Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason Goes to Hell until much later.) You might have had to be 17 to see those movies in a theater, but in the early days of VHS rental you could rent pretty much everything but porn, as long as you had cash. (And maybe even that, if someone you knew was running the register that day.)

Yeah, this guy was totally going to let you into the back room.

To be honest, I barely remember most of the slasher movies I saw in the 80's. They were a dime a dozen and even the blood and nudity couldn't make most of them memorable. Halloween and Friday the 13th were different, however - the bad guys, the faceless and nearly mindless killers of teenagers, became the main characters, somehow. Jason was the reason I ended up renting Friday the 13th movies - not Kevin Bacon, not Corey Feldman, not that guy from Return of the Living Dead. I kept coming back for the monster - the modern version of Frankenstein and Dracula. That's the thing Wes Craven got immediately with Nightmare on Elmstreet. Make the monster interesting and that'll carry you through all the pretty corpses you can stack up in the sequels.

Not you. Nice try, loser.

Among my horror watching friends you were either a Michael fan or a Jason fan. If I had to try and sort them I'd say that the Michael Myers fans tended to be a bit more cerebral, a bit more likely to watch a horror movie like Scanners or Hellraiser and talk about the cool concepts in Videodrome. Jason fans tended to like films with titles like Blood Hook or The Woodchipper Massacre and rate films on how many decapitations there were or how many pairs of boobs.

I was a Jason fan.

How can you not love this face?

To be clear, I also loved Scanners and Hellraiser and Videodrome, but to me Jason was always the winner in that matchup, hands down, because he was just a better monster. And as the series progressed and he went from malformed child to malformed redneck to malformed zombie he became an even better monster. When I was a kid Michael Myers bored the shit out of me - which is why I ended up seeing something like seven Friday the 13th films and only three of the Halloweens.

All this rambling boils down to this - I love the Friday the 13th movies the way that I love old black and white monster movies, 50's giant bug movies, and 60's science fiction. Through a haze of nostalgia and an appreciation for what they were at the time I saw them - an escape and a thrill when I really could use them.

The Medium
This year, the majority of the Friday the 13th movies are available for streaming on Starz. They've got a 7 day free trial, so here we are. (They don't appear to have Jason X or Freddy vs Jason, though, so if I'm going to watch those I'll have to find another way.) Streaming quality was okay - with some weird stuttering - but it's still miles better than the VHS days (or even the DVD days).

The Movie
You know this story. Even if you've never seen it, you know the basics. A group of young people go to a remote location and do young people things (smoke weed, engage in pre-marital sex, play strip monopoly), then they're murdered one by one by some maniac until a final survivor - the 'good girl' - has an extended confrontation with the bad guy and defeats them. This is followed up a 'stinger' (or 'chair jumper,' as director Sean Cunningham refers to it) which suggests the nightmare isn't over.

"Doomed! You're all DOOMED!"

This first film in the series, the slasher that launched a thousand on-screen teenage deaths, is not my favorite of the bunch. It's not even the first of them I saw. (That would be Friday the 13th Part 2 - a film I enjoy more in almost every way.) I don't even think it's very good. The acting ranges from good to terrible. The second half of the movie is so dark at times that you can't even tell what's going on. The plot 'twist' is completely unearned - the murderer is a character that's never even introduced until after most of the cast has been killed! The scares are generally of the cheapest sort of jump-scare variety. Most egregiously for me - Jason's not even the bad guy! The few moments that he does appear are in flashbacks or a dream sequence. He's a far cry from the imposing presence that he'd become in later films.

Still creepy, though.

However, there is something about it. A certain almost innocent energy. It's not trying to be self-aware, it's not even trying to make much sense. It just wants to make sure you're good and comfy before jumping the shit out of you. (There's only one person killed in the first 40 minutes.) When the action does really start up it keeps a fantastic pace - building suspense and executing (literally) on that buildup with great timing.

As an aside - this is actually close to what my migraines feel like.

We're all inured to this kind of movie now, of course. It's such a part of pop culture that Wes Craven made his second fortune with a series of films that's just a deconstruction of the slasher genre. Fox had (has?) a TV show called Scream Queens. White Wolf put out a book in their Word of Darkness line called Slasher. Friday the 13th is no Frankenstein, though - it's effect on pop culture is all outsized to the film itself. Sean Cunningham just wanted to cash in on the success of Halloween - and ended up making the distilled version of what made Halloween work with half the style. It's the cheap beer to Carpenter's... well, to his less cheap beer.

The Bottom Line
Look, Friday the 13th is only a step above the classic exploitation flicks of the 1970's. It features a cast of varying ability, a script which could charitably be called 'thin,' and lets dim lighting, gore and (admittedly awesome) music do most of the heavy lifting. I freely admit that much of my enjoyment has to be put down to nostalgia.

But I did enjoy it. God help me, yes I did.