So, after trying to take on way too
much with the January Friday the 13th marathon and having to skip
the April Friday the 13th due to work, that left us with only one
more chance to get our act together and do it right. The mission: to watch all
eleven Friday the 13th movies in one sitting and, if given time,
even watch the truly evil 2009 remake.
But the truth is, as long as we made it to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (yeah right) we’d make it farther than the last Friday.
Did we do it? I guess you’ll have to keep on reading to find out...
After the January letdown, I had to
reevaluate the situation. I mean, we failed our mission so hard, it couldn’t
even really be considered a marathon. And since then, we had also failed at My Bloody Valentine Day, April Fool's Day and the Leprechaun Saint Patrick’s Day
marathon; a pattern was starting to develop.
How did this keep happening? Simple: too much other stuff going on.
Every time we decided to have a marathon we had too many other plans as well (did
anyone really think the Saint Patrick’s Day marathon was going to work?). But
not this time, the July Friday the 13th was our last chance to have
a real Friday the 13th marathon and we weren’t going to miss it. I
mean, a year with three Friday the 13th’s - how could we? But unlike
in January, this time there would be no Epic Meal Time breakfast, no candy
sushi snacks, and not just because that stuff will kill you. No, because this
time our party would be catered by Costco (with the exception of cupcakes) and
meals would be all pre-made and ready to go. We still managed to get quite a
spread, but no cooking on Friday meant nothing but movie watching magic. Jaclyn
and I did make some cupcakes for the marathon, though. Nothing crazy or really
even Jason-themed, just some Red Velvet Cupcakes that are a Covino favorite and
well, I really wanted to try out the recipe (just because I couldn’t cook on
the day didn’t mean I couldn’t bake the night before, right?). So with the
Costco smorgasbord and cupcakes in place, Jaclyn and I sat down and started the
first movie…
Friday the 13th (1980)
What can I really say about this
classic? Besides the fact that this was the movie that started it all, it set
up the folklore that kept us coming back for ten more films. In 1957, Jason
drowns in Crystal Lake and a year later the first two kids are murdered (we see
them die before the opening credits). How this movie differs from everyone that
follows is we never see the killer until the very end.
***SPOILER ALERT***
In case you’ve never taken the time
to watch the original Friday the 13th or didn’t see Scream (you remember the
opening sequence with Drew Barrymore being questioned by Ghost Face?), you
might not know that Jason is not the killer in this movie. In fact, he doesn’t
even make an appearance until the very end of the film when he jumps out of the
lake to grab a very surprised Alice Hardy around the neck and attempts to drag
her to the bottom with him. No, the cool thing about the original movie is you
never get to see the killer until everyone but Alice has met their grizzly fate.
Only then does the killer reveal herself to be Pamela Voorhees, the former camp
cook (and friend of the Christy’s), but most importantly the mother of the
drowned boy Jason.
I guess what really makes the first
movie stand out is it seems like a movie that you and a couple of friends could
go out and make, and maybe that’s why it first captured my imagination. It’s a
simple story, but executed really well and it only seems to drag in the final
confrontation between Alice and Mrs. Voorhees; for some reason this scene just
really drags for me. Maybe it’s because everyone else dies so quickly? I’m not
sure, but after watching this film over and over again, I find myself wanting
to fast-forward just a little bit to get to the climax.
Friday the 13th Part II (1981)
The sequel of Friday the 13th starts off with Alice, the sole survivor of the last movie, home alone. I
realized watching it this time it doesn’t really establish how much time has
gone by or whether or not Alice returned home to California or was still in New
Jersey (that’s where Crystal Lake is, right?). What it does establish though is
that Jason didn’t drowned in the lake; he grew up in the woods as some kind of
out of control psychopath, a frightened retard, or a child trapped in a man's
body. First off, what??? Okay, it’s definitely cool having Alice find Pamela
Voorhees’ severed head in the refrigerator before being murdered, but didn’t
they establish in the first movie that Jason drowned? Isn’t that why Mrs.
Voorhees started murdering the camp counselors in the first place? Because they
weren’t watching her son and he died in the lake? I mean, okay, the part of the
first movie where the boy jumps out of the lake and grabs ahold of Alice could’ve
been just a dream like the cops state in the movie, but Jason doesn’t drowned?
So does that mean Mrs. Voorhees was just crazy or that Jason just wanted to
raise himself in the forest? It hurts my head to think about, so I just won’t.
After Alice is killed, we find ourselves back at Camp Crystal Lake this time,
not at Camp Blood but at a training camp for camp counselors. And guess what? They’re about to die, only
this time you kind of get rewarded for drinking because the random characters
we never really meet that go to the bar live and the ones that stay behind
don’t. Only this time, they’re not killed by Mrs. Voorhees, they’re killed by
the potato sack (pillowcase) wearing Jason. That’s right, this is the zombie
Jason of the later sequels, the elephant man/mountain man variety Jason. You
know, the frightened retard version (I can say that because it’s a direct quote
from the film easily offended guy). This
movie follows the same road as the last one as Jason picks the counselors off
one by one until finally only Ginny (this movies Alice) is left (okay, Paul
could’ve lived too - wasn’t quite sure about that one). When Ginny faces down
Jason in Ted Kaczynski’s summer home, she quickly puts on the blood sweater
that Mrs. Voorhees was wearing when she died and convinces Jason she’s really
his mother (frightened retard). Not the craziest thing to happen in one of
these movies, but still WTF.
The best part about Friday the 13th Part III is that it’s in 3D! Okay, just kidding. The best part about the third
installment of the series is Jason gets his hockey mask. Unfortunately, at this
point Jason is still, well, a mountain man and not quite the Jason of legend.
This is a fact that actually ties into the story because the movies protagonist
Chris (it can be a girls name) was attacked two years before by a disfigured
hillbilly (it saddens me this was Jason’s beginning). Shelly (it can be a boys
name?) is this movies practical joker (part one had Ned, part two had Ted) and
he has a dark sense of humor, using masks and fake blood to scare his friends
or, more accurately, to hide his own self-loathing. But it’s because of Shelly
that Jason finally dawns his infamous goalie mask. That is probably the saving
grace of this film. Well, that and the spear gun scene; that was just harsh. The
movie is okay, but guess the reason why is it was heavily edited - to keep it
from getting an “X” rating (before NC-17). It would be cool if we got to see
the movie the way it was originally intended and I doubt the gore would heavily
offend today’s audiences, but I’m sure the footage has been long lost. But
fingers crossed, we could someday get a real gory Real 3D version of Friday the 13th Part III. One more thing that makes this movie interesting is
the ending, which is a call back to the first film. After hitting Jason in the
head with an axe, Chris gets in a canoe and falls asleep floating out to the
middle of the lake. When she wakes up, she sees Jason is still very much alive
and staring at her from the house. She begins to panic as Jason runs out of the
house to attack her, but before he can Mrs. Voorhees jumps out of the lake and
grabs ahold of Chris, a nice little homage to the first film. I never knew that
this was supposed to be the end of the series, but I guess it was and if it had
been the ending would’ve worked perfectly with Chris then waking up from her
nightmare and the body of Jason still lying in the barn. However, this wasn’t
the last film: in fact, far from it.
 |
| From Left to Right Mark Covino, Jennifer Covino, Jaclyn Kehoe, Travis Kehoe & Diva |
So, by all rights, since this
sequel takes place directly after the last movie, this one would have to really
be Saturday the 14th right? I mean, maybe a year passed between the
first movie and the second, but this time it was definitely the very next day.
Some highlights of this film are, well, the Aerobicise video that Axel is
watching in the morgue. I still don’t really understand how this is exercise… but
I like it. This movie is also memorable because of the one and only Crispin
Hellion Glover and his spas-tastic dance. Knowing that it was his own choreography
that he made up originally to AC/DC’s Back in Black somehow still doesn’t make
it any less silly, but can anyone really forget it? Who else graces us with
their presence in this film? Oh yeah, a very young Corey Feldman who turns out
to be this chapter’s hero. I mean, you can argue that his sister Trish kills
Jason with the machete to the head, or even gravity kills Jason when his head
slides down the blade, but it’s Tommy Jarvis (Feldman) who shaves his head to
look like Jason and then proceeds to hack Jason’s head with the Machete over
and over again. This movie, like its predecessor, was meant to be the final
film of the series. Jason was supposed to die under Tommy’s blade, but we all
know that just wasn’t the case.
A Jason movie without Jason; that’s
crazy talk, right? Well we all know it worked for the first movie so why
wouldn’t it work for the fifth one? I mean, it’s not really a Jason movie
without Jason, but you still have a hockey mask wearing murderer killing kids;
his name just happens to not be Jason Voorhees. Tommy Jarvis (no longer played
by Corey Feldman) arrives at the Pinehurst Halfway House; it seems he spent the
years that followed his murder of Jason Voorhees moving from institution to
institution with the ghost of Jason haunting him. As fate would have it, as soon as Tommy moves
into the halfway house a kind of annoying patient named Joey is brutally
murdered by one of the other patients there, Vic. Because of Joey’s murder, the
whole ball starts rolling. We don’t find out until the movie ends that Joey’s
father, one of the paramedics that responds to Joey’s murder, is the killer
dressed like Jason. There are some clues, though, if you’re paying attention:
Jason’s hockey mask has red triangles, the fake Jason’s mask has blue lines,
that kind of stuff. But I guess the bigger question would be, why would Roy
Burns (fake Jason) choose to dress like Jason? Jason had been dead and buried
for years and it seems like only Tommy who couldn’t let it go. I don’t know,
maybe I’m just trying to read too much into the series, but it’s a strange
choice. The highlights of this film would have to be Reggie the reckless, one
of my favorite characters of the series, although I do love the scene between
Robin and Reggie’s brother Demon when they’re singing to each other from either
side of a port-o-potty wall. The biggest highlight of the film and I’m sure
Covino would kill me if I didn’t mention it would be Debi Sue Voorhees’s role
as Tina. If you don’t know what I mean, Google it and you will.
Jason Lives! is the one movie I
didn’t have when I was back in high school and therefore the movie out of the
series I’ve seen the least. It has one of the coolest looking Jason’s sans mask
and finally lays the Jason story straight because he is now officially
supernatural. Up until this point, Jason was a crazed hillbilly who never drowned
and was seeking revenge for the murder of his mother. Now that is no longer
true; Jason did drown (like the first movie says) but has always been a super
natural force… Okay, wait… How did he go from a boy to a man? Actually, I don’t
care because now we have a kickass zombie Jason who was brought back to life by
Tommy Jarvis stabbing him with a metal fence post that is struck by lightening.
That’s right, Jason rises from the grave like Frankenstein to wreak havoc once
again on the campers of Crystal Lake. But what makes this movie cool is for the
first and only time there are actually kids at the summer camp. Jason doesn’t
kill any kids, but still there are kids at the camp - Bonus! The town of
Crystal Lake has changed its name to Forrest Green to try and distance itself
from the killings, but that doesn’t stop Jason from returning to kill anyone
who is dumb enough to go near his lake. Tommy Jarvis once again has to square
off against Jason. This time, Tommy sinks him to the bottom of Crystal Lake by chaining
a boulder to his neck. The bottom of Crystal Lake is where we’ll meet up with
Jason again for the next two films.
Rumor has it that this installment
is where Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees were first supposed to meet up, but
Paramount and New Line Cinema couldn’t work out a deal and the movie fell
through. Enter the psychic! Tina Sheppard first found out she had powers when
her Dad was beating her mom and she destroyed a dock her father was standing on,
sending him to the bottom of Crystal Lake. Ten years later, Tina is back at the
lake house, supposedly receiving treatment from Dr. Crews to help her cope with
the guilt of killing her father. Secretly, or not so secretly, (his plans seem
pretty transparent) Dr. Crews really just wants to study Tina’s abilities.
After a tough session with Dr. Crews, Tina runs to the lake and tries to use
her powers to resurrect her drowned father, but instead resurrects Crystal
Lakes most infamous baddy, Jason Voorhees. Jason tends to his business as usual,
pretty much ignoring the weird psychic girl until their final confrontation,
which is a little laughable. I know this will sound weird, but I can take a
hockey mask-wearing machete wielding zombie but not a physic girl; she belongs
in a Stephen King novel, not a Friday the 13th movie. And in one of
the weirder twists of fate, Jason is defeated not by Tina but by her dead
father who drags Jason back to the bottom of the lake… Yeah, that’s right,
Jason is no longer the only ghost in the lake; beware Mr. Sheppard! The highlight
of this film was Kane Hodder playing Jason for the first time, and also the
infamous sleeping bag kill.
When a movie has Manhattan in the
title, you figure it would take place in Manhattan, right? Well, in the case of Jason Takes Manhattan you’d be wrong. This movie is more Jason Takes a Cruise and,
well, isn’t that bad. Jason is once again resurrected from the bottom of
Crystal Lake, this time by an anchor hitting an underwater power line. Jason
then boards the boat and gets his hands on a hockey mask. Why was there a
hockey mask on board? Oh, because the dude on the boat, Jim, was using it to
scare his girlfriend Suzie. Isn’t this a little odd? I mean, after the amount
of murders that had taken place on Crystal Lake, wouldn’t it be in poor taste
to do this? I don’t know, call me sensitive, but what about the families of the
victims? Oh wait, never mind, this was in ’89 - PC wasn’t a thing yet. Let’s
continue. So Jason is back and this time he’s going to terrorize the graduating
class of Lakeview High complete with Rennie Wickham, this film’s heroine. What
makes Rennie special? Well, years before when her uncle Charles was trying to
teach her how to swim (or drown her), she was attacked by the boy Jason and the
memory has haunted her ever sense. That’s right, boy Jason is back and Rennie
is going to have visions of him throughout the movie. But wait, I thought the
psychic girl was in the last movie? Don’t worry, she was; this girl just has
visions, not telekinesis. What’s weird is each time she sees a Jason vision,
he’s in a different form of hideousness. At first he looks like a normal boy,
but by the end he’s the deformed child we all know and love. I’m not sure what
this movie really adds to the series besides that it’s the final Paramount Friday the 13th movie, which is kind of sad and really the last true Friday the 13th because after this film New Line Cinema takes the
story in a whole new direction.
This movie scared and scarred me
when I was younger. There is something about a large black man eating a heart
that just stays with you. This movie is so different compared to the other
eight it’s hard to believe it’s even a Jason movie. Maybe it’s because New Line
Cinema took over, maybe it’s because for the first time ever Jason changes
bodies by turning into a demon worm. Maybe it’s because out of nowhere he has a
sister. Really? That’s strange; they never mentioned that before. This is also
the first Jason movie to feature fake breasts; something that really bummed out
Covino when he found out his childhood was a lie. Fun Fact: John D. LeMay, one
of this films protagonists, also was one of the three main characters on the
Friday the 13th television series. This movie also contains my
favorite kill of any of the movies. Yeah, that’s right, the metal sign post
through the girl in the tent while she is having sex; it doesn’t get any more
Friday the 13th than that. This
movie is also known for its ending which depicts Jason’s mask being dragged
down to hell by Freddy’s glove, although Jason and Freddy never appeared
together on the screen for another 10 years.
Jason X (2001)
Jason X is where I stopped taking
notes and started drinking. What can I say about this film? Well, it does have
some cool death scenes, including a new sleeping bag kill (a callback to Part VII), and unfortunately it’s Kane Hodders last movie as Jason. Besides that,
it’s in space; doesn’t that say it all? If you run out of ideas, bring your
character to space. They did with Pinhead in Hellraiser IV: Bloodline and the
Leprechaun in Leprechaun 4: In Space, so why not Jason, right?
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
The marathon ended with Freddy vs. Jason, a movie that I really love. I think it’s a great Jason movie and a great
Freddy movie. They do both franchises justice and in some ways make the Jason
legacy cooler than it deserves to be. My one and only problem with the movie is
Kelly f’ing Rowland. Why, for the love
of God and all that is holy, why? Okay, I guess I have more complaints than
that, like Kane Hodder not reprising the role of Jason. I wanted to see the
Jason that I knew fight the Freddy that I knew. And what’s with the character
Shack? Why does he act like Jack Black and why does Bill act like he’s Jason
Mewes? It’s just strange…
***SPOILERS END***
After all of that, I can now say I made it through the Friday the 13th Marathon. I know, I know, but what about the remake? The remake wasn’t part of
the original series and therefore doesn’t count and honestly, I tried to also
watch the remake, but I fell asleep. I don’t know if watching all of the movies
gave me a better or deeper appreciation for the series, but I can say that I
did it. Well, we did it. Special shout out to Jaclyn and Jenn and Mark Covino
for attempting this craziness with me and to Nate for showing up at just the
right time with beer to help us make it through. Until next time…
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