by Brian Eggert
10/23/2007

Finding time (and patience) to write more than ten full reviews for each Friday the 13th movie seems pointless; the same set of tropes applies to nearly every film. Per slasher entry, only a few differences exist here and there. In one case, the killer, the venerable Jason Voorhees, “takes Manhattan” instead of the small campsite at Crystal Lake; another time Jason wears a bag over his head; sometimes it’s not even Jason killing sexed-up teenagers, but someone else entirely.

These movies blend together in my head; the result is a bloody mess of random horror images and confused plot points. After rewatching them all recently, I decided to help myself and my readers distinguish the vast differences between Part III and Part VIII, as well as how to discriminate between The New Beginning and The New Blood. Consider this your referential guide to Friday the 13th and its subsequent ten sequels, with brief plot descriptions and highlights of each. Be warned, however, heavy spoilers ensue. Not that it should matter, since a few things are certain with these movies: sex will be had, teenagers will die, and Jason will eventually be back for more…


Friday the 13th (1980)
Welcome to Crystal Lake, a backwoods town where local Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) rides his bicycle around town, barking at tourists about a “death curse”. A group of camp counselors prepare the ramshackle site at Crystal Lake into a place burgeoning with joy for youngsters. Flirtations and sexual encounters spring about as work continues, while a mysterious figure, seen only from point-of-view shots, wanders the surrounding woods, killing those that stray from safety in numbers. It’s sad, since the counselors never get the chance to bring the camp’s building back up to code—instead, they have knives and arrows jutted into their bodies; the children’s hopes for a fun summer at camp die with the counselors.

We are introduced to the Crystal Lake mythology where a young boy, Jason Voorhees, was neglected by the camp’s 1958 counselors (those damned lazy sexaholics) and drowned while unattended. Jason’s mom, Pamela (Betsy Palmer), takes revenge on the counselors/dorks, including Kevin Bacon in one of his first movie roles. …Maybe Pamela should be asking herself why she wasn’t keeping an eye on Jason. Try taking a little responsibility for your lousy parenting, lady. Sheesh.

Actress Adrienne King plays Alice Hardy, the one survivor and decapitator of Pamela Voorhees. In the end, there’s a shocking, if not nonsensical scene where Alice finds herself on a boat on the lake. It’s a heavenly, serene scene until Jason’s decaying corpse blasts from the water and grabs onto Alice, pulling her in. The dreaded “it was all a dream” solution presents itself, finding Alice in a hospital, recovering from her Pamela Voorhees ordeal. She asks a police officer where Jason is, if he’s dead too. The cop replies that there was nobody else up there.

Why, if that was all a dream, are we meant to believe that Jason is “still up there”? Is Alice just crazy? Is there really a pre-teen zombie-boy haunting Crystal Lake? And what does Crazy Ralph think about all this?


Friday the 13th Part II (1981)

Despite popular belief, Friday the 13th Part II is actually the first sequel, not Saturday the 14th (seriously, it’s a movie) released this same year…

Let’s get some baggage out of the way, namely Alice, whose illogical raving at the end of the first film annoyed patrons enough that they ventured to this sequel with brains on empty. When Jason shows up to kill Alice, we learn right off that dead children actually grow. Jason is now a full grown man, having hit undead puberty and matured into the deformed freak he was destined to be. He’s so deformed, in fact, that he wears a white cloth bag over his head, with an eyehole for his one working eye. Crazy Ralph is back ranting “You’re doomed!” and the teens are dull, per usual. Although, strangely there are some lucky survivors: after going to a bar in town, a few stay behind and avoid their friends’ subsequent beheadings.

There’s a silly attempt to psychoanalyze Jason Voorhees by the lead female, Ginny (Amy Steel). She determines that Jason’s childlike mind must be lonely and traumatized by the loss of his murderous mother. Ginny argues that, living alone in the woods, Jason has likely reverted to some form of animalistic violence. In the finale, after Jason has killed almost everyone, Ginny finds his shack in the woods, where there’s a creepy shrine to his mother, including her rotting head. Ginny slips into Pamela Voorhees’ clothes and goofs as Jason’s mom, confusing bag-head long enough for her to get a machete into his shoulder. (Note: Why are there always machetes in these movies? I’ve never seen so many machetes in my life! It’s not the Burmese jungle, it’s Camp Crystal Lake.)

The ending confuses me… Jason jumps through a window, his mutated hillbilly face wrought with poorly-attended facial hair, and grabs onto Ginny. We fade out, and then fade back in to Ginny alive, asking where Jason is. So where is Jason? What the hell just happened to her? Was that a dream too? Is Jason just an urban myth that this series’ female survivors use as an excuse to kill everyone? Perhaps there is no Jason, just Alice and Ginny and so forth. Maybe not.



Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

The tagline “A new dimension in terror” plays-up this sequel’s use of the unneeded 3-D effect, which, on DVD, serves only as a marker for hilarity. How thrilling it is to have yo-yos and the handle-end of yard tools jutted into our face! Besides that gimmicky device, Jason finally gets his iconic hockey mask, except not in the grandiose manner you’d expect. Jason finds his mask on “the fat kid” Shelly (Larry Zerner), a curly-haired chubby whose down-on-his-luck attitude wears thin quick. Jason takes the mask, replacing his eye-holed bag.

Crystal Lake is substituted by Higgins Haven, another lakeside resort. Jason spends most of his time in a nearby barn, slaying teenagers and local hooligans until only the traditional female survivor, Chris (Dana Kimmell), strikes Jason in the noggin with an axe. She’s subject to a similar hallucination as Alice in the first film: she escapes to a canoe in her nightmare, only this time the film's survivor is nonsensically grabbed by Mrs. Voorhees (head reattached) and pulled into the water. Rest assured, Chris is wheeled off to the mental institution, where survivors of Jason, and people who have seen this movie, all eventually go.



Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)

Wow, a whole year between Jason movies! Thus far, the series made sure to crank out a new flick annually. Time was clearly spent on perfecting gore effects and maybe even talent scouting for this one, arguably the best in the series. Child actor Corey Feldman stars at age 13 as Tommy Jarvis, a reoccurring character for the next few films. You just know the kid who likes horror movies will be the one to survive; we learned this movie truism on both Salem’s Lot and The Monster Squad. Tommy likes masks just as Jason does; his obsession with horror makeup is meant as homage to Tom Savini, co-creator of the series and makeup effects man on this sequel, the original Friday the 13th, and classics like Dawn of the Dead.

Tommy’s lives with his mother and sister in the woods. Sexified campers show up next door one day, ready for intercourse and their eventual deaths. Meanwhile, Jason awakes after his 3-D experience in Part 3, understandably a little disoriented, now reanimated in a morgue where he kills a nurse and an attendant curiously drawn to a soft-core workout program. He finds his way to Tommy’s house on Crystal Lake, where your typical slew of murders follows, supported by Savini’s nasty makeup work—the most graphic in the series. This Friday also contains the best teens, with a young Crispin Glover  weirding-up the screen as a romantically challenged oddball. His dance (which you can see here) screams of the 1980s, and may be the single best moment in this franchise.

When it comes to the end, the flick makes an odd turn when Corey Feldman chops up Jason Voorhees. Tommy has dressed himself like a young Jason; he even shaves his head, giving him that “potential killer” look. Tommy gets the jump on our hockey-masked villain, hacking him to bits with a machete (yes, another machete). Could Tommy become a killer himself?



Friday the 13th Part V: The New Beginning (1985)
Years after the events in Part 4, Tommy, now grown up and played by John Shepherd, lives in institutions. He’s still obsessed with masks, barely says a word, and is hardly an interesting character. Tommy is taken to a work house for troubled teens, run by an idealistic counselor that believes a little freedom will help the kids. That freedom leads to this series’ usual slew of pre-marital sex and bad behavior, including the murder of one troubled teen by another.

I’ll give this sequel credit, it tried something different, insomuch as it pulled a slight Halloween 3 (continuing with the name of a franchise with its central villain missing). “Jason” does appear, but the film makes sure to point out that Jason is dead—he’s the killer, only he isn’t the killer. Someone is donning Jason’s garb to execute costumed killings. Is it the clearly disturbed Tommy? Another of the jerk-ass teens? Or perhaps the shifty-eyed paramedic? Of course it’s not the paramedic, because that would make no sense…

Big surprise, the paramedic is the killer. If I tried to explain why, my head would blow up. The ludicrous conclusion suggests Tommy might go on to commit murder in the guise of Jason, even though they’ve already established their killer, who is not Tommy. Or is it? Is it? Seriously, can someone explain it to me? There are enough stupid twists at the end to fill dozens of Jason movie finales, making this one of the worst. What’s more, none of this is of any consequence since in Part VI, all events herein are seemingly forgotten.



Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Not only is Jason reborn, but so is Tommy Jarvis (here played by Return of the Living Dead Parts I and II celeb Thom Mathews)—this time he’s not the mumbling basket case we learned to despise from Part V. He’s more just annoying now, which is an admitted improvement. Escaped from the local loony bin, Tommy Jarvis is determined to kill Jason once and for all. Fortunately, he has the sheriff's flirtatious daughter on his side. Megan (Jennifer Cooke) flirts with everyone at the lake, including the supposedly nutso Tommy, and even her father in a few uncomfortable scenes. She and Tommy fall in love pretty quick, but so does everyone else when they've got a machete-wielding psycho after them.

This sequel ends with Tommy placing a chain with a rock attached around Jason's neck, sinking him to the bottom of Crystal Lake. Why, with Jason's super-strength and invulnerability, is he unable to break free, or simply not drown? There is no answer. And thus, the Tommy Jarvis trilogy ends, this time happily, without suggesting Tommy might go on a killing spree himself.



Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
In this pseudo Carrie-meets-Jason approach, young woman Tina Shepard (Lar Park-Lincoln) has telekinetic powers. She’s taken to Crystal Lake with her mom and psychiatrist Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser) for emotional healing. As a child she killed her father with a mental outburst, causing a dock, with her father on it, to collapse into the lake; she never got over her father’s drowning. In an attempt to resurrect her father via psychic abilities, she awakens Jason Voorhees, still at the bottom of the lake where Tommy Jarvis left him. Now awakened, Jason breaks free of his chains, ready to kill again (which begs the question, again, why couldn’t he do that at the end of Part VI?!).

To hike up the body count, your usual gang of horny teens is in the lodge next door. One of them gets it in their sleeping bag: Jason takes hold of the open end, drags the sleeping bag with screaming bimbo inside out of her tent, and swings it against a tree. If that isn’t a reason never to go camping, I don’t know what is…

After the teens are all dead, Tina fights off Jason with her mental ability, moving trees and power lines and overhead lamps and so forth. During the final standoff between Tina and Jason, she conjures up her drowned father to grab Jason and take him down to the bottom of Crystal Lake once again. If you notice, Tina’s father doesn’t look too water damaged; you’d think that more than a decade at the bottom of a lake might decay one’s body. Not the case here. Perhaps Crystal Lake is some kind of fountain of youth for corpses, which is why Jason takes a year or two to rejuvenate between movies?



Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

After stowing away on a yacht, Jason finds himself in New York City, back in the 1980s version of the town when murders and heroin use still commenced in every alleyway (as shown over the opening credits song, seen here). Jason is right at home here among the muck. However, he never actually “takes” Manhattan, just disturbs a few folks living there. New York’s abundance of toxic waste (?) is used to wash away Jason’s face, leaving a cleaned-up little boy underneath the deformity and poor dental care. Is this ending just a hallucination, or just stupid? Either way, we’re left wondering what the hell is going on.

Watch this movie for one scene set upon a rooftop, where a “tough” jock teen decides to test the hockey-masked villain’s strength. Toughguy begins to throw punches, with Jason taking a step back on each impact. All across a rooftop they go, until finally Toughguy stops to take a breath, even though it’s clear Jason remains unaffected. Finally, Jason punches back, knockin Toughguy’s head off, which flies off the roof and lands in a dumpster. No machete needed.

The problem here is that Jason spends most of his time in dank alleys and in the sewer. Why didn’t Jason impale teens on the crown of the Statue of Liberty, throw heads off of the Empire State Building, or break dance on Carnegie Hall? Where was his run-in with the mafia, a living statue, or learned NYU film students? This is the movie I wanted to see…



Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
After the miserable box office failure of Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount Pictures sold their dead slasher franchise to New Line Cinema, who intended to eradicate/renovate the series by finally bringing Jason’s penultimate death to audiences. Jason is targeted by FBI agents and blown to bits; his heart remains beating, compelling the coroner (Richard Grant) to chow down on it. Jason now transfers himself by forcing his heart down his victims' throats, using them as hosts. Normally with this franchise I would say different is good; not in this case.

Writers Jay Huguely and Dean Lorey, with director Adam Marcus, completely divert from the Friday the 13th model, resorting to a faux mythology where a bounty hunter named Duke (Steven Williams) appears, claiming “only a Voorhees can kill a Voorhees." Meaning, there’s a whole Voorhees family line never mentioned in the previous eight films.

But even if I were to disregard the inconsistencies, this is still a horribly made movie. Notice the music, which is like an electronic pang constantly stabbing into our ears with its ersatz instrumental teeth; notice the complete lack of even the slightest character development; notice how in every respect this picture fails to live up to the ultra-low standard set by previous entries. Disappointment peaks in the finale, where the last shot leaves us wishing for a different movie, rather than the dreck we just viewed.



Jason X (2001)
At the end of Jason Goes to Hell, giant hellbound arms reach out and pull him underground, neglecting only his broken hockey mask. All at once Freddy Krueger’s hand reaches out to take Jason’s mask. We would then assume Jason and Freddy might battle in Hell, perhaps in a sequel already in production... That assumption is incorrect. Strangely, New Line Cinema opted to make “Jason Goes to Space” first (eight years later, that is), which, is surprisingly entertaining, if not stupid and implausible even by this series’ low standards. Directed by Skinwalkers helmer James Isaac, there’s enough style and unique gore effects to demand a casual viewing. 

After a 2010 prologue (curiously featuring David Cronenberg making one of his rare on-screen cameos) where Jason in cryogenically frozen, our villain awakes in 2455, thawing on a spaceship en route to Earth 2. What happened to Earth 1?  It’s now a wasteland; the ship’s crew travels there for leftover relics (like Jason) to study or to sell to the highest bidder. Jason resumes his usual killing spree on the transport, the crew subjected to future-assisted murders. In one gruesome scene, Jason puts a woman’s head in nitrogen oxide, freezes it, and then smashes it on a countertop corner.

After taking heavy damage, Jason returns new and improved thanks to a regenerative device. Now with metal armor, improved strength, and red eyes, our killer continues his slaughter with the power of the future. The movie ends with Jason jettisoned into space, so you might think his slashery adventures would end, though you’re probably wrong. Here’s hoping for another sequel sometime soon where an alien ship finds Jason. Being alien won’t prevent them from underage drinking and pre-marital sex, I assure you, nor from having all four of their arms chopped off by Jason, who will probably find a machete on their craft.



Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Freddy Krueger is trapped in Hell, weakened from his most recent death. Disempowered, he relies on Jason to carry out his every murderous wish by manipulating Jason's mind. Krueger appears in Jason's head as Pamela Voorhees, telling him to kill the particularly horny teens on Elm Street. But if Krueger has enough power to control Jason, shouldn't he have enough strength to kill at least one horny teen himself? As we watch Jason used like a marionette, Krueger's personality underlines what a faceless character Jason has remained for more than twenty years, reminding us why A Nightmare on Elm Street is the better franchise. 

Usual Elm Street parental conspiracies arise, making mom and dad just as cruel as Freddy, thus empowering clueless teens to uncover their town's horrific secrets. We could care less about "characters" after the hour and ten minutes of build-up to the anticipated showdown, which, is disappointing. No one wins, which leaves horror fans feeling unfulfilled thanks to its anti-climactic resolution.

Despite high production value (visible only in the occasional bit of CGI and numerous fake breasts), clichéd monsters serve as poor dueling antagonists. It's an interesting video game concept, or question in hypothetical Who would win in a fight between-type conversions, but as a movie, it lacks sustainable characters (just as the other popular “vs.” movie, Alien vs. Predator).



Concluding thoughts…
Friday the 13th movies attempt reinvention on their own concept over and over, but the roots of each sequel go back to the formula of those first two: a POV-seen killer stalking and murdering to che-che-che, hah-hah-hah background music. For the best of that, check out parts IV, VI, and X. Apart from those, you’re at risk of numbing your brain beyond cure.

Aside from the mindless enjoyment of watching moronic teens get hacked to bits, there’s not much to offer from this franchise. I suppose the worst part is that they take themselves relatively serious; the earliest pictures avoid the humor found in A Nightmare on Elm Street or George A. Romero’s zombie movies. There’s no personality to enjoy, just a faceless automaton killing machine. We’re laughing at the movies rather than with them. The whole series is worthy of the MST3K Award.