I've been trying to do a Friday the 13th Franchise watch for several years now, but finding the films on physical media (prior to last year) proved to be difficult. Not all the films are available on streaming, and the ones that are were spread across various services. Lo and behold, Scream Factory released a Blu-ray box set last year in time for the first film's 40th anniversary. Only problem was mine didn't come until late in October, so I had no way of watching all the films for 2020's Horrorfest. I watched the first film for last year's Friday the 13th, which fell in November. By the time 2021 rolled around, I had watched the first four films in the franchise. Then, life and other "appointment watches" took precedent. So, starting with this year's unlucky date, I re-started the watch in August. I finished this past Sunday. Prior to these re-watches, I had only ever seen the first film, Jason Goes To Hell, Freddy Vs Jason, and the 2009 reboot. I absolutely hated the last three, and only had mild affection for the original. But, I had watched all of the Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Texas Chain Saw Massacre films in years passed. Why not add Jason's oeuvre to the list?
(Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)
It's funny to look back at this film 40 years later. It's almost quaint. Hugely profitable because of its very low budget, it was a notorious film with critics who bashed it as everything that was wrong with movies (OMG SEX! OMG VIOLENCE!) at the time. There's no way around it, though: it's a total knockoff of Halloween. Less elegant, not anywhere near as scary, but with the body count and skin on display amped way up. A group of camp counselors arrives to Camp Crystal Lake, where near twenty years earlier a boy drowned because counselors were busy having sex. The new group starts getting picked off one by one by...someone. It's important to remember the killer isn't Jason, rather his mother Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). Palmer was nominated for a Razzie for her performance, which is a total joke of a nom. Palmer is actually pretty terrific in her limited screentime. The rest of the cast, led by a solid Final Girl played by Adrienne King, are mostly forgettable, though the film does feature the earliest significant work by Kevin Bacon. Roger Ebert had referred to these movies and their ilk as the Dead Teenager Movies. I've found this odd as it's not established that these are in fact teenagers. Most of the actors were in their early to mid 20's at the time of filming. I'll chalk all this up to the thin characterizations, but I always thought there were supposed to be college students. It probably doesn't help that two of the couples look exactly alike. After all these years, Friday the 13th holds up surprisingly well. Campy, sure, but still a bloody good time. GRADE: B+
(Steve Miner, 1981)
Second installment introduces Jason as our slasher, though he doesn't have the hockey mask just yet. Instead, his deformed face is adorned with a burlap sack. Another group arrives at Crystal Lake five years after Mrs. Voorhees' slaughterfest. Thankfully for me, they are confirmed to be college students. I'm glad we got that sorted out. The group is led by this chapter's Final Girl, Ginny (Amy Steel). She is easily the franchise's best Final Girl, smart and quick witted, a psych major who analyzes Jason's obsession with his mother and figures out how to turn the tables on him. The other character's this time get enough introduction that they aren't just there to show up and die. (Well...) The body count is again very high, and at times this almost feels like a direct remake of the original. I'd say its even more successful at what it attempts. King returns from the original for a brief scene at the beginning, otherwise the cast is almost brand new. A superior sequel thanks to more memorable characters! GRADE: B+
(Steve Miner, 1982)
In 3D!!! Well, I didn't get to watch it in 3D, sadly. You really feel the loss as so many scenes and shots play up the gimmick. A group of young people head to a Crystal Lake-adjacent location for a vacation. Dropping the camp location was a definite mistake, but we do get the debut of the iconic look that Jason is associated with after he finds a hockey mask. The final girl is forgettable, the rest of the characters are too obnoxious, the suspense is nonexistent, but at least some of the kills are fun. I suspect it might have been a little bit of guilty fun if it were viewed in 3D, but as it is it's just a limp sequel with little too offer. GRADE: C-
(Joseph Zito, 1984)
Absolute improvement over the previous sequel, this chapter features another horny group of teenagers going to a cabin near Crystal Lake. There, they are staying opposite a woman, her teenage daughter and young son. The son (Corey Feldman) is interested in movie monsters and masks, and he's probably the first Final Boy. His sister meets up with a young man in the woods, who is there looking for his sister who went missing. (Turns out she was one of the characters from the second film). Memorable characters with a slightly more focused tone than the goofiness from Part 3, I did find is amusing that Feldman's character takes the time to basically turn himself into Jason during the big climax. GRADE: B
(Danny Steinmann, 1985)
Feldman's character from Final Chapter, Tommy Jarvis, is now a teenager and played by a different actor (John Shepherd). Mentally unstable, he's sent to a rural halfway house with a bunch of other troubled teens. Jason arrives, naturally, to kill off the various inhabitants of the house as well as the more colorful characters of the surrounding area. This has a bit more a raunchy feel than the previous films, as I guess those broad comedies of the era have their fingerprints on the tone. Also worth nothing is that Jason ends up being a disguise for someone else. Outside of that, it's standard 80's slasher fare. GRADE: C
(Tom McLoughlin, 1986)
Yet again played by a different actor, Tommy (Thom Mathews) returns to Crystal Lake to cremate Jason's body. Instead, Jason is revived after lightning strikes his heart. (Yes, really!) Right off the bat, this film embraces the ridiculousness of, well, everything about the franchise and runs with it. It's tonally different than any other film in the franchise, mixing in tongue in cheek humor. Packed with memorable characters, clever kills, one-liners, and shockingly progressive gender politics, this is the best in the franchise. The story smartly moves the action back to the Camp Crystal Lake as the summer camp is about to reopen, though now called Camp Forest Green. It's a good thing this one is sooooo good, because it's all downhill after this. Watch for a brief role from a young Tony Goldwyn. GRADE: B+
(John Carl Buechler, 1988)
A young woman with telekinetic abilities (it's the seventh installment, what do you expect?) is taken to Crystal Lake to be studied by a doctor. There, they are across a house with a seemingly never ending supply of horny, young assholes for Jason to show up and slaughter. (Seriously, how many people were staying at that house?) Very typical slasher movie featuring a too pervasive score. I'm surprised I've gotten this far having not mentioned the "cch-cch-cch-ah-ah-ah" theme, but it's waaaaayyy over used in this part. Final Girl is forgettable, and the climax is groan-worthy. Also, the violence feels really tame. Apparently, there were a lot of problems with the MPAA. GRADE: C-
(Rob Hedden, 1989)
Jason going to NYC sounds like it could be a fun time. I guess we'll never know in part because most of this installment takes place on a cruise ship going to New York. And when they do get to Manhattan, it's clearly not NYC outside of a scene shot in Times Square. Most of the film was very obviously shot in Canada. Jason killing his way across The Big Apple sounds like a blast, and maybe one day we'll get that film. Until then, we're stuck with this pretty awful film in which Jason kills a bunch of high school graduates on a ship. I believe it's also the longest film in the franchise, running 100 minutes. Feels like it's twice that. GRADE: D
(Adam Marcus, 1993)
I saw this previously at some point in the mid 90's, probably 96 or 97. At the time, I thought it was easily one of the worst movies I had ever seen. Watching it a few decades later and having seen a few thousand movies since, I can confirm it is indeed one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Jason is caught and killed, but his soul is somehow spread from person to person until he's brought back to Crystal Lake. So zombie Jason now has to be killed by one of his relatives, because this film likes to invent stuff as it goes. I saw the uncut version way back when, which adds considerable gore to the proceedings. It's tone is way off from the previous installments, and even with minimal slasher budgets those films looked way more impressive than anything offered up in Hell. GRADE: F
(James Isaac, 2002)
Jason goes to space for this tenth chapter. It plays out exactly how you'd expect. I'll admit some of the jokes actually do land, but I was surprised by how dull this was. The rest is like watching Jason slash his way through a Z-grade Syfy movie, with terrible production values and visual effects. However, it does feature a cameo by David Cronenberg. He also had a cameo in To Die For, so clearly that film is part of a shared universe with Friday the 13th. GRADE: D
(Ronny Yu, 2003)
The ending of Jason Goes To Hell hinted at this matchup. Funny, but this film seems to be far more in the Elm Street universe than the Friday the 13th one. Maybe that's because Freddy supremely dwarfs Jason in personality and really shows that the hockey masked villain was never much more than a Michael Meyers knockoff. After Freddy finds himself unable to kill teenagers from their dreams, he raises Jason from Hell to do it in real life. The film begins on Elm Street (which apparently is in Ohio) and ends in Crystal Lake (which is in New Jersey). Just thought that was worth noting, and I did like the mention that Freddy died by fire while Jason was killed by water. Outside of that, there's very sadly little of note here and seems to be doing a poor impression of both franchises. Standard final girl (Monica Keena), mostly annoying characters, over the top kills, but none of this is any fun. Both slashers have trouble figuring out their place in a post-Scream slasherverse. By the end of the decade, both series would have remakes/reboots. GRADE: C-
(Marcus Nispel, 2009)
Closer to a reboot than a straight up remake, as Mrs. Voorhees is already dead at the beginning and it picks up with Jason being a legend of Crystal Lake. A man (Jared Padalecki, who appeared in the remake of House of Wax) goes looking for his missing sister who went camping near the tourist destination. Meanwhile, a drove of assholes and Danielle Panabaker (who appeared in the remake of The Crazies) arrive at a swanky cabin along the lake. They soon must unite to stop Jason before he butchers everyone. Jason now has an underground lair, and the town around Crystal Lake is home to loathsome rednecks. Yup, this is definitely a redo from the late aughts. Brutal kills, but I'm not sure why everyone in the film has to be so unpleasant. It also has that drab visual style that plagued so many of these remakes from the aughts, with everything being too dark. Not particularly scary, and certainly no fun. GRADE: D+
(As a sidenote, watching the Blu-ray to the 2009 film, I was struck by how much better than first films in the franchise looked. The restorations done, in particular on the first two films, are nothing short of breathtaking. Bravo to Scream Factory/Shout! Now, if we could an Elm Street boxset...)
And my ranking of the films...
1. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
2. Friday the 13th Part 2
3. Friday the 13th (1980)
4. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
5. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
6. Friday the 13th Part III
7. Freddy Vs Jason
8. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
9. Friday the 13th (2009)
10. Jason X
11. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
12. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday
As for the next franchise I should tackle, I was thinking The Exorcist, Sleepaway Camp, or The Amityville Horror. Availability will be the determining issue.
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