Best of Worst of
A Special Look at the Friday the 13th Series
A Special Look at the Friday the 13th Series
By
Kevin Scott Bolinger
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| Jason Voorhees, killer, not for hire. |
Greetings and salutations my friends. I thought I would get into the Halloween spirit by doing a special look at all the Friday the 13th movies, giving brief glimpses of each entry, and assigning them a small rating, that is in relation to the other films of the series. The ratings will be as follows, great, good, average, bad, and do not watch this unless you want your eyes to fall from your skull. I will be spoiling the end of each film, but given the age of these movies, most of you have seen them anyway.
To start with, a little background on the main antagonist of all but one of the films, Jason Voorhees. In 1957, the young Jason , an unfortunate boy with a disfigured face, attended Camp Crystal lake, since his mother Pamela worked there. The other campers were very cruel to the young Jason, teasing and taunting him. The councilors paid no attention to Jason or the others, feeling it was better to sneak off and have sex or get high. Eventually, Jason drowned in the lake, his body never recovered.
The following year, and where the first film opens, two councilors are murdered. After that, the camp became the victim of many unsolved arsons. It was at this time that the camp earned its nickname, Camp Blood. There has been much speculation in what exactly lead to the resurrection of Jason, but no one theory has been pinned down. For a fantastic look at the entire series, with interviews and behind the scenes footage, check out the DVD His Name Was Jason. Now, let us dive right into the very first film. I wont be naming people much, with a few exceptions, since most of them were just there to become victims. So, strap on your hockey mask, grab your machete, and enjoy this look at the films.
Friday the 13th (1980) :
As I said above, the film opens in 1958, where two councilors leave the group, and go off to have sex. Someone, unseen, confronts and kills them both. The film then flashes forward to Friday, May 13th, 1980. A young girl is looking for a ride to Camp Crystal Lake. The locals freak at the mention, but she gets a ride anyway. One of the locals, Ralph, tells her the camp has a death curse.
Her ride takes her halfway, then she ends up hitchhiking. She is picked up by an unseen driver in a jeep, who then chases her into the woods, slashing her throat. While that is going on, another group of councilors arrive at the camp to help get it ready for the summer. Their boss leaves, and of course, they slack off a bit, swimming and fooling around.
One by one, the mysterious killer, whom we never see, except for hands and feet, takes out the councilors in various bloody ways. A lot of the kills happen from the killers perspective, which is very effective. Their head of the camp makes his way back in a storm, but his vehicle is disabled. He is given a ride back to camp by the cops, and when he gets back, comes face to face with the mysterious killer. Oddly enough, he knows the killer, but that does not spare his life.
In the end, one girl remains, Alice. She comes across all the dead and freaks. Then she runs into someone she does not know, an older, blond haired woman. The woman seems friendly enough, letting her know her name, Pamela Voorhees. We come to learn about her son Jason, his drowning, and her revenge. The iconic ki ki ki, ma ma ma, that is heard in most of the films, gets its true meaning hear, as Pamela, imitating Jason’s young voice, keeps repeating “Kill her mommy!” She chases Alice through the camp, and eventually catches up to her at the edge of the beach. Alice, in a last desperate attempt to save her own life, grabs a machete, and removes Mrs. Voorhees’s head.
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| Pamela Voorhees, just showing a mothers love |
The next morning, Alice is seen in a canoe on the lake, simply resting, reflecting on the night before. Suddenly, without warning, the young, now reanimated corpse of Jason, jumps out of the lake, and drags her in. Alice then wakes up in a hospital, surrounded by police. She asks them about the boy, and is informed that they found no boy.
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| Jason makes his first appearance, and it does not disappoint! |
This film was ahead of its time in the slasher genre. It kept the killers identity hidden for the entire film, though the kills from the killers perspective had been done before, most notably in Halloween, in those instances, the audience knew who the killer was. It presented just enough background to make it interesting. The special makeup effects were outstanding, showcasing some of the earliest work by horror master Tom Savini. I highly recommend seeing this one. My final rating…Great!
Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981) :
The first of many sequels opens, after a brief flashback of the end of part one, on the survivor from the first film. Alice, in her own home, walks to her kitchen, only to discover the severed head of Pamela Voorhees in her refrigerator. As she scream, an unseen killer shoves an ice pick into her skull.
Five years later, another group attempts to reopen the camp. On the first night there, the head councilor tells the others the history of the camp, telling them of Jason, and his drowning, yet insists that Jason did not die, but is in the woods. He goes on to say that Jason witnessed his mother’s beheading. After another councilor does a stupid scare, we are treated to ore killer perspective shots, this time looking through a hole in a burlap sack.
Yet again, they are killed off one by one the most dramatic being a wheelchair bound councilor getting a machete to the face as his wheelchair rolls backwards down a flight of stairs in the rain. Eventually, Paul, the head councilor and his girlfriend Ginny, escape the camp and come across a mysterious shack in the woods. They try to lock themselves in, but are attacked, We see it is Jason, wearing a burlap sack to cover his malformed head. Paul tries to fight off Jason, while Ginny runs to another room in the shack, discovering a shrine with Pamela Voorhees’s head at the center, along with the dirty grey sweater she was killed in. Ginny puts the sweater on, just before Jason enters the room. The twisted Jason thinks she is his mother, and she tells him it is okay, he can stop. Jason, on his knees before her, moves his head a little and notices his mother’s severed head. As he is about to attack Ginny, Paul shows up, and Jason is hit in the shoulder with a machete, his sack falling from his head.
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| Burlap sacks are cool |
Ginny and Paul flee back to the camp. As they begin to feel safe, they are distracted by a dog that once belonged to one of the now dead councilors. Just then, Jason jumps through a window, his disfigured face showing, and he attacks them. The film fades out, with Ginny being put in an ambulance, Paul’s fate unknown, and Jason still free in the woods.
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| A face only a mother could love |
This one was decent for the first sequel, but really brings little new to the table. However, it is iconic, because it brings the series main antagonist to the forefront. We get to see that Jason is very much alive, and wants revenge for his dead mother. There are a few unique kills, and it does its job of moving the franchise forward. It is still very entertaining, and is recommended. My final rating…Good.
Friday the 13th , Part 3 in 3D (1982) :
This film picks up right where the last one left off. Jason makes his way to a country store, steals new clothes, and kills the owners. We are then introduced to Chris, a slightly disturbed woman who, two years earlier, was attacked in the woods by a disfigured man. She is going to have a fun weekend with her friends at some property her parents own at the lake. We are also introduced to a small biker gang with a grudge against Chris and her friends.
One of her friends is a practical joker, and one of his stupid scares is done wearing a hockey mask. The biker gang sneaks into the barn at the property, attempting to sabotage the fun of the others, but all three are killed by Jason, who we do not really see. Jason then begins his murderous rampage, killing all of Chris’s friends, including the joker in the hockey mask, taking the mask and creating an image that sticks in the public’s mind to this day.
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| An Icon is born! |
Jason then confronts Chris, chasing her around the property and into the barn. When he chases her to the loft, she hits him in the head with a shovel, knocking him out long enough for Chris to slip a noose around his neck. And drops him out the barn, hanging the killer. As she goes back down and opens the barn doors it is revealed that Jason is very much alive. He lifts his mask to get out of the noose, and when Chris sees his face, she realizes he is the same man that attacked her two years earlier.
Jason, now free of the noose, tries to attacker her, but is himself attacked by one of the bikers who managed to survive Jason’s earlier attempt to kill him. Jason cuts off the man’s hands, and begins to slice him up. Using this distraction, Chris grabs an axe and hits Jason in the head with it. He reaches out to her, still moving forward as she freaks, but he eventually falls to the ground, dead. Chris runs to the lake, and like Alice before her, gets in a canoe, and while she lays on the lake, she is attacked by a badly decomposed Pamela Voorhees. This is revealed to be a dream, and we see Chris, now very mentally disturbed, being taken away, as cops swarm the barn, Jason’s body laying where it fell.
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| Jason is dead...but is he? |
This one is unique in that is was shot in 3D. It also introduces the very iconic hockey mask that Jason is most well known for. The story is similar to the others, a group of teens, near the lake, killed off. Still, it is one of the better entries into the series, and is well liked. My final verdict…Good.
Friday the 13th : The Final Chapter (1984) :
This entry into the series is considered the best by many fans. The film starts with the police clean-up of the crime scene from part 3. Jason is still dead and lying in the barn. Ambulances are removing all the dead, with Jason being the last loaded. We then cut to a hospital, where the Doctor in the morgue is trying to seduce a nurse. He pisses her off, and after she leaves, Jason gets up off the slab and kills him. He then tracks down the nurse, and kills her. How he comes back to life is never explained, but who cares.
We then are introduced to this films list of victims. A group of teens, heading to the lake for a fun weekend. This time, they have neighbors in a house next to theirs, the Jarvis family. The character of Tommy Jarvis will be central to this film and the next two sequels. In this, he is just a little boy of around 12 years of age.
As we go through the film, we also meet a hiker, who knows about Jason, and is out for revenge for his sister, one of Jason’s previous victims. He and Tommy’s sister hit it off. There is also a nice set of twins that decide to join a party at the other house.
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| You are one ugly mother... |
So, Jason returns to his woods, and as usual, kills off the teens one by one. He also kills Tommy’s mom. As the night goes on, he knocks out the power, a storm comes up, and things get crazy. The body count is a little higher in this installment. In the end, Tommy, his sister, and the hiker are the only ones left. The hiker and Tommy’s sister go to the other house, leaving Tommy all alone in his own home. Jason kills the hiker.
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| When i grow up, I wanna be just like Jason! |
Jason chases the sister back to the other house, and they try to barricade themselves in Tommy’s room. Jason still manages to break in, but they knock him out for a few moments. As Tommy’s sister tries to lead the killer away, Tommy, an amateur in making masks and doing makeup effects, gets the idea to try and make himself look like a young Jason. He runs down the stairs, confronting the masked killer, and his sister knocks off the mask, showing a very deformed face. Jason has had a rough few days, his face getting worse and worse since part 2.
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| Um, Jason, you got a little something in your eye..oh, never mind |
Eventually they get the better of Jason, and a machete ends up in his head, as he falls, it cuts deeper into his skull and left eye. Tommy and his sister hug, thinking it is over. Then, in what was a big shocker, Tommy notices Jason’s finger twitch, and a madness overcomes him. He grabs the machete from Jason’s head, and just keeps hitting him, over and over, shouting “Die!” with each stroke. The movie ends with his sister in the hospital, recovering from her injuries. Tommy comes in to see her. The camera goes close in on his face, and he looks a bit insane…
This was the first of the series I saw in the theater, but I was only 10 when it came out. This scared the crap out of me. I didn’t sleep well for days . It really is one of the best of the classic era of the series. My final verdict…Great!
Friday the 13th : A New Beginning (1985) :
This one opens up with 12 year old Tommy Jarvis, in a thunderstorm, near the grave of one Jason Voorhees. He watches as two men dig up the killer, only to have him come back to life and kill them, a scene that almost foreshadows part 6, but we will get to that. Jason then sees Tommy, and moves to kill him. This turns out to be a nightmare by the now 16 yr old Tommy, who is in a van on his way to a halfway house, having spent the last four years in mental hospitals.
The halfway house is full of many hard cases, kids that have had a rough time in one form or another. One of them is an overweight teen who tries to help, but always makes things worse. Eventually, he comes afoul of one of the workers there, a rough looking man chopping wood. He annoys the man to the point where he hacks up the fat kid in front of everyone. Later, when the body is being loaded on the ambulance, one of the drivers seems really shaken up by this murder.
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| Look! It's not Jason! |
Tommy is shown to be very withdrawn after his run in with Jason four years earlier, and he rarely speaks. To make matters worse, a new killer is in the area, acting like Jason, even sporting a hockey mask. Tommy does make friends with one of the younger people he meets at the home, though he is not a resident. The kid calls himself Reggie the reckless, and he is only there because his grandfather works at the home.
As the norm goes, people begin to get killed off, one by one. Some in the woods, some in he halfway house, and even a few at a diner. The best has to be the hillbilly mom and her son. They hate the nuts in the halfway house, but are not taken seriously. Both are killed one right after the other. Eventually, only Tommy, Reggie, and one of the councilors from the home, Pam, are left.
The soon come face to face with the killer. He chases them around for a while, Reggie gets a bulldozer and hit’s the guy with it, knocking him out. The guy gets back up, chases them into a barn, and he stabs Tommy. Tommy fights back, stabbing the killer in the leg, but he then passes out from his wound. The killer chases Reggie and Pam to the loft, and somehow, Reggie knocks him out the doors on the top, causing the killer to fall onto a bed of spikes. They all climb down to see that the killer was wearing prosthetics to make himself look like Jason. It is revealed that the killer is a guy named Roy, he was the shaken up ambulance driver at the beginning. The overweight teen that was hacked up was his son. He took it upon himself to avenge his sons death by pretending to be the notorious Jason. The film ends with Pam in the hospital. Apparently, Tommy puts on a hockey mask and kills her, but all this was ignored going into the next film.
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| Jinkeys, it's old man Roy! |
This one was a sad experiment on how to do things wrong. It had it’s moments, but it really is one of the lower entries into the franchise. Is it the worst? No, but t is nowhere near as good as the four parts that preceded is. My final verdict…bad.
Jason Lives : Friday the 13th Part 6 (1986) :
Wisely, the heads at Paramount decided to forgo the new killer angle, and the next installment brought us a return of Voorhees. The film we got has a much different feel to the others, yet still retains familiar elements. It is also my personal favorite of the series.
We open with a truck barreling down a road. The driver, and much older Tommy Jarvis. With him is his friend Hawes. Tommy means to send Jason to hell for good. His plan, dig up his body and burn the rotted corpse, ensuring that he will never rise again/. They get to the cemetery, his friend getting nervous, and dig up Jason. His body is covered with worms, maggots and spider webs. Tommy sees him, goes and rips out a spike toped pole from the nearby fence, and stabs the body repeatedly. He then tosses the hockey mask in the grave, and turns back to get the gasoline. As soon as he does, two lightning bolt strikes the metal pole now sticking out of Jason’s body. After the second one strikes, we see Jason’s right eye open.
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| "Yeah, cuz he's back...! |
Jason sits up, crawls out of his grave, and with one swipe, rips out Hawes’s heart, causing the latter to fall into the grave, the coffin lid slamming down on him, his foot hanging out. Tommy then throws the gasoline all over Jason, but as soon as he lights the match, it begins to rain hard. Tommy runs for his life, with Jason returning to his grave to get his mask and the pointed pole.
Tommy runs to the local Sherriff, who doesn’t believe him. The town, it seems has renamed the are and lake Forrest Green, to hide its past association with Jason, and the last thing they needed was a nut spewing nonsense about the killer returning. Meanwhile, the grave keeper at the cemetery see the open grave, and the foot hanging out, and decided he doesn’t want to touch it, so he just refills the grave.
Jason begins his killing spree, first by killing the two head councilors that are on their way to the newly opened Camp Forest Green. Then, he comes across a group of corporate big wigs playing paint ball in the woods, killing them all. He then kills the grave keeper and a couple that were making out in the woods. For him, it was good to be home.
Tommy is arrested after trying to run from the police back to the graveyard. They see the grave is filled back in, but the refuse to dig it up. At the camp, the Sherriff’s daughter and her friends are soon greeted with another horror, and a first for the series. Actual campers at the camp. With the head councilors a no show, it is up to them to organize things. Jason soon finds his way to the camp. Tommy was escorted out of town, but has a new plan. The Sherriff’s daughter, Megan, decides to help him. She meets him out of town with the stuff he asked for, but they are caught by a road block set up by the Sherriff. Bodies are beginning to be found, and they are blaming Tommy.
One of Megan’s friends is away from the camp, having sex with a girl in an RV. Jason pulls the power on the RV, and the two get dressed. The guy goes outside to check what happened, and sees the power cord is broken. The girl comes out as well, and the two decide to leave. The guy drives the RV but they did not notice that Jason got inside. He grabs the girl into the bathroom, and smashes her head so heard against the wall, it leaves an impression on the side of the van. Jason then kills the guy, causing the RV to flip and crash.
Back at the jail, the Sherriff now has Tommy locked up, and is refusing to le his daughter return to the camp. He gets a phone call about the accident with the RV, and when he tells his daughter the time it took place, she lets him know that Tommy was with her the entire time. The Sherriff leaves, and Megan and Tommy trick the deputy. Tommy, now free, goes with Megan to the camp. His plan is to return Jason to his original resting place, the lake.
The Sherriff and his men get to the camp, only to find the councilors are all dead, but the children are fine. The other two officers are killed, and the Sherriff comes face to face with Jason. Realizing too late that Tommy was right, he flees to the woods, Jason close behind. Megan and Tommy get there while this happens. Jason decides to go after Megan, but the Sherriff jumps him. Jason bends him in half.
Tommy loads a very large rock onto a boat, and wraps heavy chains around it. He then taunts Jason into following him out into the water. Jason does, walking till he is submerged. Tommy pours gas on the water and lights it to bring Jason up. He eventually gets the chain around Jason’s neck, and Jason breaks the boat in two, getting dragged under by the large rock he is now chained too. He pulls Tommy down, drowning him. Megan swims over to save Tommy, but Jason grabs her. She starts the small motor on the back half of the boat, and cuts up the side of Jason’s head. She gets back to shore with Tommy, reviving him. The movie ends with Jason floating under the water, chained to the rock. The camera pulls in close to his hockey mask, where we can see his eye is still open, very much alive.
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| This lake wont hold me forever! |
I really do love this one, a kicking soundtrack provided by Alice Cooper helps set the tone. The effects were out standing, the makeup on Jason is probably the best of the series. This one is highly, highly recommended. My final verdict…Great!
Friday the 13th Part 7 : The New Blood (1988) :
I have a few issues with this one, but not with the story. My main gripe in that the production team paid very little attention to the last film. Jason goes from being in a button down dark shirt, dark pants, a utility belt and yellow gloves, to being in a blue jumpsuit. I don’t mind a character changing clothes, but Jason was chained to the bottom of the lake, when did he get out to change? And why would he get back in once changed? I know a minor gripe, but had to point it out. The other gripe is with the setting. Jason was chained to the lake about forty feet from shore, near the camp. Now he is off shore, but near two houses…I guess after he changed clothes he also decided to move his rock to a new location.
The film opens in the year 1990. A little girl runs out of a house crying, because her dad hit her mom…again. She gets into a boat at the end of a very nice covered dock. Her father runs out of the house to go after her, to apologies, but the girl has mind powers. She uses her gift to bring the dock crashing down on her dad, killing him and trapping his body on the bottom of the lake.
Ten years later ( this explains why part ten take place in space I guess, since the sequels take place many years after the year they are filmed in,) the girl, Tina, returns to the lake house with her mom and her Psychiatrist. In the house next door, a group of teens has gathered to throw a surprise party for the cousin of Nick, a guy who immediately takes a liking to Tina. Dr. Crews has brought Tina there, not to help her, but to exploit her talents. Tina gets mad at him, storms out of the house and to the dock. Her gifts manifest when her emotions are high, and she attempts to resurrect her father. Instead, she breaks the chains holding a badly decomposed Jason to the lakebed. She watches him rise, and passes out.
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| Um, Jason, I can see your ribs, eat more. |
Jason is in bad shape, his bones visible all over, including his spine, fingers, legs, jaw. Right away, he goes on his usual murderous rampage. He kills a bunch of couples in the woods, and then makes his way towards the two house. Tina can apparently see either when Jason is killing someone, or just before he does. Eventually, Dr Crews pisses her off again, and she runs off with her mom’s car, crashing it down the road when she has another vision. Her mom and Dr. Crews chase after her, but Jason finds them. Crews throwing the mother in front of himself, so that she gets killed while he runs.
Those in the party house are of course, killed off. Nick meets up with Tina, and they want to get everyone out of there, after Nick had found his cousin dead in the woods. He decides to go get the others from the party house, while Tina runs off to try and find her mom. She meets the Doctor in the woods, and sees he is covered in blood. After the Doctor lets her know her mom is dead, Jason quickly dispatches him. Tina runs back to her house. Nick also returns, now that the others are dead, except for the one really snotty girl. She is also at Tina’s house, but Jason soon breaks in, thankfully removing her from the film.
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| Dude! you need a dentist, stat! |
Tina starts to fight Jason with her powers, even snapping the mask in half, exposing his badly malformed and decomposed face. Eventually, a hole opens up, and she and Jason find themselves in the basement. She uses her power to cover him in gasoline, the lights him up with the fire from the furnace. She gets out of the house with Nick, onto the dock, and the house explodes behind them. Jason is still not done with them, he to gets to the dock, and in a last ditch attempt, Tina brings back her dad to drag Jason back to the lake, dropping the dock on him as well, to keep him there. The film ends with Tina and Nick being taken away together in a ambulance.
My ranting earlier aside, this one wasn’t bad. It did try to hard to be different, and in some ways it did succeed, but it failed in others. It did, however, mark the first time Kane Hodder put on the hockey mask of Jason, something he would do three more times, a record for any one actor in the role. My final verdict…average.
Friday the 13th part 8 : Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) :
This film marks the end of an era. No longer would Paramount hold the rights. This was the final Friday made under their watch, and I am sad to say, they did not go out well. The title conjures up so much potential, yet it is all wasted. The real title of this should have been Friday the 13th Part 8 : Jason Takes a Boat Cruise. I am not even kidding, they do not even get to New York City till the last 20 minutes of the movie…I call that false advertising.
The film opens up with two high school graduates on a boat. The guy drops the anchor, right near the ruins of the camp…funny how the two houses or dock from the previous film are anywhere nearby, but I digress. The guy thinks it will be funny to scare his girl with a Jason hockey mask. What they are both unaware of is that the anchor has hit a power line, and electricity has now resurrected Jason. He climbs on board, wearing, oddly enough, more clothes then in the previous film…enough said. He kills them both and take the boat.
The next day, we see a car with a teen and one of her teachers arriving at a dock. The graduating class is taking cruise to NYC as a celebrations. They all board the LAZARUS, a small motor vessel, captained by one of the students fathers. One of the deckhands notices the boat from the movies opening drifting nearby. Jason then makes his way aboard the boat, just as it pulls away from dock.
One of the teachers happens to be the girls very overprotective Uncle, but he is also a very unlikable person. It is a real shame he makes it almost to the end of the film. Anyway, Jason begins to kill everyone off on the boat, as per his usual M.O. After he kills the Captain, it is up to the man’s son to get them to the city. A storm comes up, the ship begins to sink, and only five of those on board manage to get into a lifeboat. The five, the teen, the teacher she came with, the nasty uncle, the Captain’s son, and a boxer. Also, the girls dog, who vanished earlier on board ship, somehow just miraculously shows up in the lifeboat.
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| Awww, New York loves me back |
Finally, we get to Manhattan, though it mysteriously looks more like Toronto. Our survivors get to the dock, climb up and begin to look for a phone. Somehow, Jason, without the aid of paddle driven water craft, is only a few minutes behind them. I guess all those years on the lake bed have given him webbed feet for fast travel in water. The group is mugged, with the girl taken by the muggers. They drug her, and are about to rape her, when Jason shows up…and saves her by killing the muggers, allowing her to escape.
The boxer finds a broken phone, then Jason finds him. He manages to get to a rooftop, where he begins punching Jason reputedly. Jason lets him continue till he wears himself out, then with one punch, Jason knocks his head off, and into a dumpster below. The other four manage to find a cop, but when they open the door to his car, the boxers head is in there waiting. Jason has found them. He quickly dispatches the cop.
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| No ticket, no subway ride! |
All through the movie, the girl has had flashes of Jason as a boy, drowning, begging for help. It turns out that when she was a kid, her Uncle had tried to force her to learn to swim, telling her if she didn’t she would drown like Jason. Apparently, even though she is only 17, and clearly Jason was around as an adult killing already when she was 9, which if you follow the timelines from the other films, you can clearly do the math, considering this one is set after part 7 which was set in the year 2000, the young Jason had grabbed her under water, leading to her fears and everything else. Sorry to ramble on there, but that is a really large plot hole, one you could drive a Sherman Tank though. Anyway, she jumps into the front seat of the cop car, and runs Jason over, then as she continues to drive, see the child Jason, and attempts to run him down as well, slamming into a brick wall.
Three of them get out of the car, but the teacher she first showed up with in the film, doesn’t. The cop car then explodes with way more force then the modest amount of fuel in a gas tank would allow, Michael Bay, eat your heart out. Now that she remembers what her Uncle did to her in the past, throwing her into the lake to force her to swim, she storms off with the other surviving teen. Jason then finds the uncle, and we finally are rewarded with his death, Jason holding him in a barrel of toxic water, drowning him, tragic irony, or poetic justice…you be the judge.
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| Mommy? |
The two escape into the subway, but Jason follow. They think they are safe on the train, but they are not. The filmmakers decided to show how no one in NYC cares, and everyone ignores their pleas for help from the obvious maniac trying to kill them. They jump off the speeding train, unhurt, and Jason follows, but he hit’s the third rail and is electrocute. Thinking it’s safe, they head to the surface. They get barely twenty feet from the subway entrance, and Jason is behind them. They run, and he follows, smashing the radio of some punks. They threaten him, but all he does is lift his mask and scares them off.
The two run into a diner, and yet again, we a shown that the typical New Yorker cares not for their fellow man…the writers really needed to actually go to New York, and see how people there really act. Anyway, Jason enters, kills someone, and the two run. They end up in the sewer. A maintenance worker informs them that the entire sewer system gets flushed out with toxic waste every night at midnight, for some odd reason, even though that is the dumbest thing in the world. Jason is down there, knocks the boy out, kills the maintenance worker, and chases the girl. She finds a small bucket of toxic waste…just go with it, and throws it into Jason’s face. It melts the mask, and reveals what is one of the worst Jason makeup’s ever!
The girl runs back to the boy, and they try to get out of the sewer at a nearby ladder, but the grate above is locked. Jason now staggers drunkenly towards them. He grabs the girls leg, to pull her off the ladder, just as the toxic waste begins to flush through the sewer. In what has to be the dumbest moment to date in the franchise, and believe me, the next movie is worse, Jason looks at the oncoming toxic waste, calls out in a little boy voice for his mommy, then begins foaming at the mouth…I cannot make this stuff up. His boy begins to succumb to the toxic waste, his head falling to pieces as he screams. Once the flush is finished, all that is left of Jason is the perfectly preserved corpse of his little boy self, complete with the swimming trunks he drowned in. That actually hurt my brain to write. Anyway, the movie ends with our two survivors coming out of the sewer near Times Square, the only real NYC location, by the way, and miraculously, the girls dog finds them, despite the fact that he ran off long before they rode the subway halfway across the city.
This one was dumb, it had potential, it even started off strongly. However, they spent way too much time on the damn ship. Jason barely did anything in Manhattan besides kill a cop, and a few punks. Skip this one unless you really want to see the entire series. My final verdict…bad.
Jason Goes to Hell :The Final Friday (1993) :
We finally come to it, the movie that almost killed the franchise. New Line Cinema, famous for bringing us the Nightmare on Elm Street films (See my two part look at those for my opinions, right here in my blog page.) was now in control of the rights to the Friday franchise. Right out of the gate, they bring us a story so dumb, a premise so ridiculous, that I am having a hard time making sense of it enough to fill in this entry. Expect multiple rants in this…
We open with an unknown woman going to a cabin in the woods. As soon as she enters, a light bulb burns out, and she has to leave the cabin, go to a shed, and retrieve a new bulb, not the most convenient place to store something like that, but I digress. She replaces the bulb, and strips to take a shower. Before she can get in the water, the power goes out. She goes to see what’s wrong, and we see Jason…and he looks awful. I mean really, are they trying to say the toxic waste from part 8 fused the mask to his face? It looks like his skin is growing around the mask…sorry, got sidetracked. She runs, he chases, she stops, he stops, and then all these lights go on in the middle of the woods. It is a military sting to kill Jason…I..I have no words. So, they shoot him, then blow him up.
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| Um, Jason, your mask is a bit tight. |
We find ourselves in a morgue, many states away, the pieces of Jason’s body having been flow there. The coroner is examining him for the record, but when he gets to the heart, it starts beating . There is no blood, only a black viscous fluid. For some reason never explained, the coroner eats the heart. Another coroner comes in, and starts taunting Jason’s remains. The first coroner, now apparently Jason in a new body, kills the other, and the two guards that were outside the morgue.
Jason is apparently a national celebrity, as a tabloid talk show how talks about him, and how three were killed at the morgue where his remains were taken. He then shows an interview he did with a bounty hunter. The hunter is determined to track down and kill Jason once and for all, but he wants 500,000 dollars. This is also the point where the writes thought it would be cute to throw in things from other famous horror films. The Bounty hunter pretty much quotes Quint from Jaws when he names his price…owww, that hurt.
We are now brought to the Crystal Lake area, where we meet a waitress. Apparently this waitress’ daughter and a young man at the counter, had a relationship that went sour. With all the Jason talk, she asks him to come see her later, so she can tell him something important. Meanwhile, she goes to wait on a table, and we see it is the bounty hunter. He tells her he needs her to kill Jason. Ok, I am gonna spoil this now, and save you all from reading a lot more rants. She is really Jason’s younger sister, that we never heard of till now. Apparently only a Voorhees can kill him, but he can also be reborn through a Voorhees, and how that happens. Well, lets just say necrophilia comes to mind…
The young guy picks up some hitchhikers and takes them to the old camp area. He then heads to the waitress’ house. The coroner/Jason then kills the three hitchhikers. He then kills another woman and kidnaps a cop, taking him back to the old Voorhees house, again, never seen before. They must have been a very rich family, because the house is massive. The coroner shaves the cops mustache off, then he gets in close, a black giant sperm-like thing comes out of his mouth and into the cops. Jason is now the cop…oy.
The young guy shows up at the house of the waitress, and before she can tell him her secret, the cop/Jason attacks, killing her. Despite being shot through the head and stabbed, the cop keeps going. The Sherriff shows up, and he blames the young guy for the woman’s death. He is put in a cell next to the bounty hunter, arrested earlier for being rude, did not realize that was a crime. The bounty hunter gives him information about Jason in exchange for breaking his fingers.
The woman’s daughter shows up, with a bay, of which the young guy is the father, and her new boyfriend, the talk show host from earlier. The young guy then breaks out of prison, by using one of the cops whom he is friends with. Taking the bounty hunters advice, he makes his way to the Voorhees house…where we get other horror reference number two, the Voorhees family had the very same copy of the Necronomicon that Ash was always dealing with in the Evil Dead movies, how quaint.
As he is searching the house, he hears a noise. The tabloid host shows up, gets on his phone, and brags to his producer that he stole the woman’s body, placed it in the closet, the same one the young guy is now in, and then that he had gone home and banged the woman’s daughter, all class this guy is. His plan is to film from the house, and discover the body there, claiming Jason took the body of his sister and brought it home. His plans go south, however, when the Jason/cop shows up, and Jason is transferred into the host, with the cops body shown to begin melting away.
The young guy sees all this, and knows his has to protect his ex and their baby. He gets to her as she is showering, and forces her to leave with him. She only has a shirt on as they do this. Once in the car, the Jason/host guy shows up, and the dude runs him over with the car, then backs over him for good measure, but he gets right back up anyway. As they escape down the road, the young woman hits him hard, and knocks him out, leaving him unconscious at the side of the road.
She goes to the police station, and tells them where he is, which ends up as horror reference number three. He is located down the road from the Myers house. Amazing how many famous horror event are connected to Crystal Lake. So, his friend cop finds him, but is pissed about how he used him to escape, and the two fight. Then they return to the station. They get there just as Host/Jason is attacking, killing several cops, and almost possessing the ex-girlfriend. They escape, and go to get their baby back from the diner where she is being watched.
They get there, the Jason/Host gets there, many are killed, and the baby is missing, replaced by a note. The baby’s mom leaves alone, and goes to the Voorhees house. The bounty hunter is there, with the baby. He gives her back the child, but convinces her to help him kill Jason. He gives her a small knife, which, when she grabs it, turns into a huge magic dagger. The baby’s dad shows up, as does Host/Jason. The bounty hunter falls through the floor, and into the basement, where the body of the woman’s mother is now sitting. Also down there, we are treated to our next horror icon reference, a crate from an Antarctic expedition, ala, the Thing.
They beat down the Host/Jason to the point where the little sperm, demon thing leaves his body, causing it to melt. It falls through to the basement, and basically makes it’s way into the dead Voorhees woman’s body through her vagina…just typing that makes my skin crawl. So, so bad, and just wrong. Anyway, Jason is now reborn, yet instead of being in his original, uncrowned and not ruined body he was born with, he comes out fully grown, in the same clothes, and looking exactly the same as he did at the beginning of the film. He kills the bounty hunter, the woman stabs him with the magic blade, he is grabbed by hands from the ground and dragged to hell. The film ends with his mask on the ground, and then, our final other horror reference, and the best know from this film, the arm of Freddy Krueger comes out of the ground, grabs the mask and drags it to hell, laughing.
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| Freddy? What the Hell? |
This Movie SUCKS! There, I said it. It has tons of plot holes, ignores a lot of the continuity from the previous eight films, and just plain makes no sense. I would avoid this one like the plague. Seriously…my final verdict…DO NOT WATCH THIS UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR EYES TO FALL OUT OF YOUR SKULL!!!
Jason X (2002) :
Someone, somewhere at New Line thought had the idea of making a Jason in space movie. This one was definitely played more for laughs, making it more akin to the latter A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Some argue the same can be said for Jason Goes to Hell, but the comedy is better executed here then it was in the previous film. Does that make it good? Well…not really. This film was merely a stop gap effort while Freddy vs. Jason was still caught up in development hell. It too is very inconsistent with established lore, but I think it does it on purpose for the sheer camp value.
Our movie opens at the Crystal Lake Research Center. Why a small little town like Crystal Lake would have a high security research center is beyond me. As the credits roll, we see doctors running experiments on someone or something. As the credits end, we see that it is Jason Voorhees himself, now apparently captured and chained, very heavily. The soldier guarding him does not like that Jason is looking at him, and throws a blanket over the killer.
Next we meet Rowan, a research leader, determined to see Jason frozen, since they have no other way to kill him. The higher up, however, have different plans, they want to exploit Jason’s ability to regenerate tissue…which if this were true, he would still have two eyes…but enough on that. Despite her protests, her boss and some army guys go in to move Jason. They remove the blanket, only to see that the guard is now hanging there dead. Jason quickly dispatches everyone in the room.
Rowan grabs a gun and runs, Jason behind her. She leads him down to the cryogenic freezing chamber, and knocks him in, starting the freezing process. Before he is completely frozen, however, Jason manages to shove his machete through the door and into Rowan. This causes the entire room to be locked and frozen.
Roughly 450 years later, an expedition enters the long abandoned research facility. They have a female android with them, KM 14, who scans the area, and the frozen Jason and Rowan. Realizing Rowan can be resurrected with their technology. They decide to bring her back to their ship. They are gonna take Jason as well, but one of the dumber students in the expedition, accidentally bumps into Jason, causing the frozen killer to fall, and the still sharp machete to cut off the dumb guys arm. He is quickly hit with pain killers and a magic self sealing bandage.
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| Look! We found a Jasoncicle! |
Earth it seems has become an uninhabitable wasteland. The expedition boards their shuttle and heads back to their ship, the GRENDEL, a space catamaran, with a main drive in the center, and two storage pontoons on outriggers. Jason is brought to one lab for study, while Rowan is brought to another for healing and revival. Thousands of nanobots cover her, repairing her wounds.
In the other lab, one of the more serious students is cataloging Jason, unaware that he has thawed out and is still alive. He grabs the young woman, throws her to a wall, then grabs her head, dips her face in liquid nitrogen, the smashes it on the counter. Jason then goes on to kill one of the students, right after he and his girlfriend have finished having sex, naturally.
Besides the students and their teacher the ship also has a few pilots, as well as a heavily armed Marine Corps unit. They gear up, while Jason comes across the dumb kid from earlier, and one of the Marines playing a game in the holodeck. Jason kills the hologram versions of the two, then, he kills the real versions. The Marines are ready to take Jason on now, or so they think, as he quickly takes them out one by one. He stabs their leader, Brodski, through a door with a spike, then when the tough as nails Marine refuses to go down, he shoves his rather large surgical knife in him.
The ship is approaching a rather large space station, where it is hoped a team there can contain the killer. Unfortunately, Jason kills the pilot, and the ship crashes into the station, losing one of its pontoons. As the ship speeds away, the station behind them explodes, making this Jason’s highest body count to date, because there were hundreds on the station. He then goes after the students, now joined by the other pilot. Jason jumps through a window into the lab, and the students escape, but not the professor.
Jason looks down and sees his old machete. The professor thinks that this is all Jason wants, and tries to reason with him. He thinks he is safe after giving him back the machete, but Jason kills him. The others decide to make for the shuttle and flee. As Jason gets closer, the one girl whose boyfriend was killed earlier, freaks and locks everyone out of the shuttle, then crashes it, killing herself. As Jason is about to kill the three by the shuttle doors, he is met with a surprise.
The guy that built the KM android has given her a kick ass upload. She is now programmed to fight and kick ass. Jason throws his machete into her midsection, and KM collapses to the ground, but this is just a feint, as she begins to get the better of him. Eventually, she blows off his arm, a leg and then about 90% of his head. His body collapses on the medical scanner, breaking it.
The Marine leader is still alive, so they take this opportunity, with Jason apparently dead, to heal him. The ship is shaking, as the damage from before is starting to weaken it. They decide to use charges to blow off the last pontoon, and use it as a lifeboat. Meanwhile, in the medical lab, a short circuit causes the nanobots to swarm over Jason. They do not have enough flesh to rebuild him, so they use metal from the ship.
Just as they are finishing setting the charges to blow off the pontoon, they are confronted by the now Uber-Jason, and yes, that is his proper name. He is now many time stronger, half covered in metal, and even more deadly. He quickly dispatches the android by knocking off her head. Rowan and all but one of the others, escape back into the main ship, and the student with the detonator in the hallway, blows the charges. The pontoon now gone, they survivors need to make their way to the other side of the ship, where a rescue shuttle has just arrived.
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| Don't screw with me, woman, I am the Uber-Jason! |
Before they can exit the room they are in, Jason punches through the hull and one of the students is sucked through a grate and into space in tiny pieces. The others run, but the door to the rescue ship has no power. The Marine suits up and takes a space walk. Jason is quickly making his way through locked doors. They need to slow him down and distract him, and we get to one of the funniest and best sequences in the movie.
Using the KM androids head, which is still perfectly functional, the one student programs the holodeck with a recreation of Camp Crystal lake 1980. To further slow the killer down, two female councilors are created, who talk about smoking pot and having sex, then they take off their tops and climb into sleeping bags. Jason spends a few moments beating them to death, then resumes coming after the survivors. Rowan and the student, along with KM’s head, get aboard the rescue ship, and before Jason can follow, Brodski locks him out. The rescue shuttle leaves just as the GRENDEL explodes.
They are in orbit of Earth 2, and as they breathe a sigh of relief, it turns to dread. Jason is floating right at them fast through space. At the last second, Brodski, still in his spacesuit, grabs Jason and the two plummet through the atmosphere, burring up on re-entry . On the planet below, two teens by a lake see the shooting star the two made, and say something landed in the lake. The film ends with a shot of Jason’s metal mask, burned and slightly melted, sinking to the lakebed.
This one, while not good, still has great camp value. It plays a lot like Aliens, but in a more goofy tone. It was not well received though, and was the last of the classic Friday films. But I am not done yet, we still have the crossover, and the remake to discuss! My final verdict…average, though leaning towards bad.
Freddy vs. Jason (2003) :
This is the one most fans of the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films had been asking for. The two titans of slash, going head to head. The idea originally came about in 1987, but since the two franchises were owned by different companies, it was stuck in development hell. Then, when the Friday films were brought over to New Line Cinema, it was thought that the film would be made, but, a decent story could not be fleshed out, and it languished in hell for another decade.
The film has a lot of controversy to it, most notably, the recasting of Jason. Fans wanted to see Kane Hodder, for many felt he was the best as the hockey masked killer. The Producers and Director Ronny Yu, however, wanted someone a few inches taller, so that Jason would tower over 5ft 10 Robert Englund’s Freddy. So they went with stunt man Ken Kirzinger, a stunt man who had previously worked on Friday VIII, being a stunt double and fill in for Kane Hodder in a few shots. Yu wanted a more lumbering, slow moving Jason in the film, and felt that Hodder always played him a bit to energetic.
The film opens with a woman skinny dipping in the lake. She gets out, thinking her boyfriend is there, then gets spooked. In the woods, she encounters Jason, who kills her, but then she speaks about the error she made, her body morphing into several others also confessing. We are in Jason’s dream. Suddenly, Jason sees his mother, who tells him he needs to go to Springwood, to hunt the children of Elm street. We then see Jason’s almost completely decomposed body, lying in the ground. It begins to regenerate, and the killer gets up and begins taking the slow walk to Springwood. We then see that his mother was really Freddy Krueger, hoping that Jason would cause enough fear on Elm street to get his powers back..
It turns out that the people of Freddy’s old hunting grounds had found away to make everyone, teens especially, forget Freddy. Without the fear he had brought to their dreams, Freddy lost all power, and ended up in Hell. Everything about him was removed from public record, never to be brought up again.
We then go to a house in Springwood, where a group of friends are hanging out drinking and being typical teens. Two of them go upstairs to have sex. Afterwards, the girl goes to shower, and Jason walks in and kills the boy, stabbing him several times, and then folding him in half with the bed. When the cops arrive, the girl whose house the murder took place in, overhears someone say the name Freddy.
As the film goes on, Jason kills more of them, all the while, Freddy growing strength. Eventually though, Jason crosses a line, and kills one victim just before Freddy was about to claim her. This pisses Freddy off, he needs the souls to survive.
The main characters begin to learn about Freddy, then a cop tells them about Jason. Realizing they are not safe awake or asleep, the go to a mental hospital, to try and get the experimental drug, hypnocil, first mentioned in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. At the Mental Hospital, Freddy possesses one of the teens, and dumps all the hypnocil. He then load two very large syringes with a very powerful sedative. As the others run from Jason, and with Freddy in control, the teen jabs both needle in the killer, but before Jason passes out, he slices the kid in two.
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| Welcome to MY nightmare, ugly! |
They now figure the best thing to do is to bring Jason back to Crystal Lake, which would effectively save them from one of the killers. They keep him sedated, but Freddy invades Jason’s dreams. The two fight in the dream world, with Freddy clearly having the advantage. Freddy figures out Jason fears water, and uses it against him. In the real world, Jason is drowning in the back of the van. They realize they have no choice, Freddy must be brought to the real world, then they can deal with both killers.
The one girl gets sedated, and enters the dream. She is at the camp, on the day Jason drowns. The kids are teasing the poor , malformed boy, and he runs off the dock, and starts to struggle in the water. The councilors are not paying attention, two of them screwing in the corner of a porch. Then the one councilor turns out to be Freddy, and the girl he was banging is now a dead husk. She goes to try and help the little drowning boy, but realizes it is Jason, and she freaks. Freddy then dramatically leaps from the water, and lands on the dock.
In the real world, the wake up Jason, and he causes the van to flip and crash. The crash keeps the girl in the dream world unconscious and face to face with Freddy. Jason chases the others to the camp site, being torn down to make room for houses. Jason causes one of the old cabins to catch on fire, and the one boy uses the flames to wake the girl up, while she is holding Freddy.
Now in the real world, the two finally face off. The fight rages on all over the construction site. Sometimes Freddy gets the upper hand, sometimes Jason. As they are fighting, the two remaining teens get ready to set the whole place to blaze, hoping to take out both killers. Near the end of the fight, Jason rips off Freddy’s right arm, but Freddy buries Jason’s machete deep in his body. The teens light the explosives and gas, and we get a nice approximation of a huge Baysplosion!
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| Welcome to my lake, bacon face! |
With Freddy and Jason both blown into the lake, the teens think it is over, however, they are wrong. A figure staggers towards them, carrying a machete. It is Freddy, looking worn and winded, but very much alive. Suddenly, Freddy’s own gloved right arm explodes out of his chest, and we see Jason behind him, sliding back in the water. The girl grabs the machete, and cuts off Freddy’s head, sending it and his body into the lake. Our film ends with a scene on the lake of Jason slowly emerging from the water. He is carrying Freddy’s head to his cabin. The head then smiles, winks and fades out on laughter.
The film was looked down upon by critics, but was a box office success. However, it does not hold up as well with multiple viewing. I am sure they could have come up with a better way to match these two icons together. I enjoy it, but only once in a while, and more for Freddy than Jason. I could never root for one or the other, being a big fan of both. If you haven’t seen it, check it out, but do not expect a masterpiece. It is a popcorn movie, plain and simple. My final verdict…average.
Friday the 13th (2009) :
We finally come to our last film, the remake of the original, produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes company, which has been remaking many of the classic 80’s horror films, but only succeeding in reminding us how much we love the originals. This particular remake take some of the event, though very loosely, of the first three Friday films and tries to do a retelling. They also throw in a few elements from part IV. In fact, the events of the first Friday film happen in the first two minutes of the film. While I enjoy the remake, it in no way compares to the original films.
As the credits roll, we get flashes of scenes showing a woman confronting a councilor on the lakes beach in the rain. She is blaming the girl for not watching her son, and allowing him to drown. As the woman tries to kill the girl, the girl decapitates her with a machete. We then see young boy, though we only see bits of him, go over to the fallen dead woman, where he takes the machete and her locket.
Twenty years later, a group of people are camping in the woods. Two of them are there to find a legendary stash of home grown marijuana. Later that night, two go off, and find the old camp. Two others go off to a tent and have sex. The final guy goes for a walk, and he finds the pot, only to be killed by Jason. Let that be a lesson, do not mess with a serial killers stash!
The ones having sex stop, because they hear noise. The guy goes out, gets his foot caught in a bear trap. The girl is dragged out of the tent by Jason, his head wrapped like a mummy with one eye hole, and with her in a sleeping bag, he hang her over the fire, where she burns to death.
At the camp, the other two find a badly decomposed head of a woman in a shrine near a bathtub. Jason then grabs the guy through the floor, and kills him, the girl running back to where her friends were camped. She gets there, sees her one friend burned to death, and tries to help the other get his foot out of the trap. Jason shows and cuts the guys head in half, and the scene ends with him violently swinging the machete towards the girl, but we do not see the outcome.
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| My sack is better then your sack! |
A few months later, and a group of friends are going to the rich guys lake house to have some fun. At a gas station, they run into a guy looking for his sister. She happens to be the one we never say Jason kill in the opening. The rich guy is rude to him, and he leaves. What follows is pretty typical for these films, almost everyone is killed. I will hit a few highlights.
The films producers really wanted Jason in the hockey mask, so we get a scene at a work farm, where a stoner has some of the weed from the woods. He hears a noise coming from the loft in the barn he is “working” in. He goes up, and starts talking and feeling up a manikin. Jason appears behind him, the guy manages to rip off the wrappings covering Jason’s ugly face, and Jason kills him. He is about to re-wrap his face, when he notices a hockey mask on the floor. He puts it on, and in what I think is a dumb shot, he admires himself in the mirror.
Eventually, the guy looking for his sister, and one of the girls from the house get together, and the rest are killed. They find out that Jason has tunnels under the woods, allowing him easy access to the whole area. Down in the one tunnel, the guy finds his sister, Jason having kept her alive because she looks just like his dead mother. Jason find the three there, and the girl from the house is killed. The other two eventually escape, with Jason close behind.
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| I can throw axes suck |
They end up in the barn from earlier, and eventually get the better of Jason. He is stabbed, hung, and then strangled, as a chain around his neck is pulled into a wood chipper machine. For good measure, the girl stabs him with his own machete. Jason is now dead.
The next morning, we see that the two are dumping Jason into the lake, followed by his mask. They feel safe, and hold each other, the brother comforting his now found sister. Just then, Jason leaps out of the water, we hear them scream, and it fades to black.
As I said, I enjoy this remake, but it is in no way like the originals. Too much is crammed into the hour and a half run time. It was almost as if they had a checklist with plot points from the first three films they wanted to hit. The story is not original, the deaths uninspired, and some of the acting eaves a lot to be desired. It did have a decent box office return though, and rumors have been off and on of a sequel. I don’t know though, maybe it is best to let Jason lie in his grave for good. My final verdict…average.
The series as a whole is still one of my favorite horror franchises. Although it may sound as if I hate a few of the entries, I don’t, but when put in the context of the other films, there are some that are just way below par. I still enjoy watching them though, if only for the groan worthy scenes that still make me laugh. Please, do not take everything I say about them to heart, I am merely an entertainer with an opinion, and as with all opinions, yours will invariably vary.
Jason Voorhees is an American icon of the silver screen. Most see a hockey mask, and think of him. The early films help define a genre, and are considered masterpieces for their time. Some of the later films may have lacked the polish of those, but they can still be watched for the fun campyness. So, this Halloween, sit back, relax, and watch a few misbehaving teens get what they deserve in Jason’s woods! Whatever you do though, never say “I’ll be right back!” Till next time, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this look at one of my favorite franchises.
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| He really loved his mommy! |
