FRIDAY THE 13TH
I have had an unwatched Blu-ray collection of the Friday the 13th films in Marilyn since last year so decided to watch this on (surprise, surprise) Friday the 13th for the first time in a couple of years. I don't think it's one of the top drawer slasher films, Halloween is better, but it is certainly one of the most influential because of the setting, innovative and bloody death scenes, and with Harry Manfredini re-working Bernard Herrmann's classic score for Psycho to great effect, a score which helps to ratchet up the tension and deliver some good jump scares.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2
Five years after the events in the first film, the legend of 'the boy in the lake' proves to be an attraction rather than a deterrent to aspiring camp counsellors at a secluded location on the banks of Crystal Lake. Again, the brutal death scenes and the score work very well, but my favourite aspects of this is Ginny who is a very likeable person and the way Amy Steel makes her such an easy person to root for is admirable. It may not be a great film, but it's entertaining and, even on a sunny summer evening, works, as a fun stalk and slash movie.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3
As I don't have a pair of lenticular 3-D glasses, I was unable to watch this in all of its gimmickry, so some of the shots designed to show off the stereoscopic technology proved distracting and a little annoying. This is certainly more gratuitously violent than the previous two instalments in the franchise, perhaps because Jason is now a fully grown adult and, in a sign of things to come, certainly more of a superhuman force of nature than five years ago. This is far from my favourite of the Friday the 13th films, but it is one with enough interesting locations and characters who you either want to survive to the final credits or die as quickly as possible to hold the attention.
FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER
Because the second sequel finished with Jason seemingly dead, the only logical beginning for this film is to basically make him indispensable as he escapes from cold storage in the mortuary and kill his way out of the hospital and to Crystal Lake where, for reasons unknown, he proceeds to try and kill everyone in its vicinity. This instalment is probably most notable for introducing the Tommy Jarvis character, played by a young and pre-Lost Boys Corey Feldman who, with his sister Trish (Kimberly Beck), becomes the main person you want to see survive the lakeside massacre. Despite the title, the ending shot in which Tommy, possibly possessed by Jason, stares straight to the camera.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING
The beginning section of this film is one of the most interesting and surprising in the entire series, taking place at a facility for teenagers with mental issues. Tommy may not have an eating disorder, anger management or esteem problems, but he does bear the mental scars of everything he witnessed and experienced a few years previously, scars which are not helped when one of the other residents brutally kills the annoying over eater with an axe. Although the perpetrators arrested, murders continue and Tommy becomes the prime suspect when some of the bodies are found in his bedroom. This tries to do something different by only having Jason appear in hallucination or dream sequences and have the principal maniacal killer as someone wreaking revenge for their son's murder. This one I enjoy more than I really should considering how formulaic and unsurprising most of the narrative, characters and situations are, and it's probably only because of the absence of Jason and the mystery aspect about the killer's identity.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES
Tommy Jarvis, now grown up and still suffering from his encounters with Jason, including killing him. Convinced that the only way he can overcome his hallucinations is by seeing Jason's body, he goes to his grave with a friend and (to no one's surprise) the corpse is bizarrely reanimated when the metal fence post which Tommy thrust through Jason's corpse is hit by lightning. Deciding to warn the authorities, Tommy is instead arrested by the most cartoonishly unsympathetic and obnoxious sheriff since Killer Klowns from Outer Space. With events now moving to Camp Forest Green (the new name for Crystal Lake) where Jason does what he does best, and murders his way through a group of camp counsellors preparing to open it for business. Determined to correct the mistake he made by inadvertently resurrected Jason, Tommy sets about trying to kill the indestructible fiend with the help of a boulder, chain, and the depths of Crystal Lake. As Friday the 13th films go, this is a slick, fairly self-aware and fun one, with the final showdown between Tommy and Jason surprisingly engrossing and with some great imagery.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD
If resurrecting Jason with a fence post and lightning wasn't complicated enough, having a telekinetic teenage girl (who has mentally buried her past encounter with Jason) bring him back with her misdirected mental powers. Although this is the first to feature Kane Hodder as Jason, a portrayal most would identify as the most iconic, it's also surprisingly boring simply because, aside from the telekinetic teen, there is nothing in this film which isn't in one of the previous six, with the skull crushing seeming particularly nasty and gratuitous.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN
If 'The New Blood' was approaching barrel scraping levels of tedium and unoriginality, this goes straight through the wood and into the floor beneath. Every franchise runs out of steam at some point and barely makes the title relevant by having most of the events take place on a boat with Jason only arriving in NYC with very little running time (and obvious victims) remaining.
Because it wasn't in the boxset, I didn't watch Jason Goes to Hell, nor Freddy vs. Jason and Jason X, films I remember enjoying more than parts seven and eight in the series simply because it was as if the filmmakers decided to throw coherent and serious storytelling out of the window and just have fun, embracing the paranormal, dream worlds and outerspace!
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