I've just watched all ten
Friday the 13th films (not all together in one sitting or anything insane like that, and not counting Freddy v Jason, which I am going to watch but which doesn't really count does it?) in honour of the remake that's due shortly and with the intention of writing something on them and, well, just because it's so long since I watched any of them and I love these films.. First off though, seeing as I've been neglecting this blog recently I thought I might do a Top Ten of
Friday the 13th films. How exciting? Plus I figured it might help me get some thoughts together on the whole Jason
corpus.
So. Here goes.
10 - Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan. Just a dreadful movie. First off how does Crystal Lake become connected to a waterway that can have yachts go in and out of it and connected to a waterway that gets you to New York? Besides this pedantry my main quibble with this film is that Jason is no longer the effective and efficient killing machine he has been upto this point in the series. Previously, one blow and you're dead and you generally don't see him coming. In this film he ends up chasing pretty much everyone before he kills them and there is now an awful misogyny to his kills which (despite the popular conception) was never there before. The women are all killed slower than the guys - there is one strangling, something Jason would never have bothered with before, far too slow. It's not just the misogyny either. Whereas previously he would kill anyone who came in his path in this film he walks the streets of Manhatten ignoring pretty much everyone, and when some kids yell at him, he doesn't kill them - he does a pointless scaring of them. Jason? Is that really you?
9 - Part 9: Jason Goes To Hell. I was close to putting this in tenth but it gets put here, not because of any redeeming features it may possess, but because Part 8 really is soooo bad. This is also utter rubbish, from the opening capture of Jason, through the absolutely laughable resurrection to the final "battle" and the crummy hint of Freddy v Jason at the end. Not so much a
Friday the 13th film but a hotchpotch of horror movies mashed into a big pile and scattered over the wall indiscriminately and with no care for the resulting mess.
8 Part 6: Jason Lives. This one is the first of the ones which is actually good. It's one of the standard lump, nothing exceptional but then again nothing too awful. The whole beginning is pretty bad but it picks up into not a bad film. Interesting that they actually manage to get some kids into Crystal Lake for the first time and Jason
is a nice guy who just leaves those kids alone.
7 Part 2: Again, pretty good. Some interesting moments - Jason as Christ references; sex as a little moment of death; shrine to dead mother. Some nice touches throughout
6 Part 3: This I like. Starts off and reminds me of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, something to do with the whole bizarre characters in the gas station I guess(the scene in which the guy walks through the shop randomly eating things off the shelves and putting them back in packs half eaten is an amazing scene and quite disgusting). And then turns into a pretty entertaining slasher flick. Good stuff. And the nod to the first one at the end - genius.
5 Part 4: The Final Chapter. An excellent example, everything's here, some fine kills, good humour, awful dancing, giving Jason flashbacks, skinny dipping, all the classic motifs really.
4 Jason X: Brilliant. After 8 and 9 I feared the worse here and it was done, so I read, as a stop gap till
Freddy v Jason but it is absolute quality. Features one of the best kills of any of the films. Very entertaining. Still manages pretty well to stay within the formal constraints of the series while leaving the confines of Crystal Lake (unlike 8). It is interesting to note how as the series progresses more people survive, from the lone survivor of the first few, through the couple who survive in the middle portion to Jason X where the couple are joined by a third (and there actual survival depends on the sacrifice of the fourth.
3 Part 1: Maybe, as it is the first, I should have put this at no. 1, but as a stand alone film I prefer the two I've got above it. I think If you were watching for the first time this would be the only place to start but if you look at the series as a whole, after seeing them all, it takes its place nicely here. It's interesting, Knowing the ending, seeing the conventions which build up over the series to compare this to the others. Jason is obviously present though absent. It's retroactively given more meaning than intended. This I guess is the interest of the series, how looking at the whole changes the singular. Anyway, a quality film, and the shock ending is still pretty amazing.
2 Part 7: The New Blood. The way they resurrect Jason in this one is pretty much genius, so much better than the standard shot of electricity... The whole film is amazing. My one concern is that it is perhaps in this film that we see the inkling towards the drawn out kill which makes 8 so dreadful, but here it is handled well enough. The other amazing thing about this film (the ending is amazing as well to be fair (overuse of the word amazing fully justified)) is the way that Jason hunts people through the forest with a seeming ly random array of weapons, culminating in a chainsaw on a huge stick - the genius of this kill is its absolute anticlimax, after hunting this guy with it and getting him on the floor and starting up the chainsaw, the actual kill is nothing, we see nothing and hear nothing. Whether this was due to some cutting by the censors, who knows, but the affect is, well, to say stunning is perhaps odd given the anticlimax, but it is stunning in its shattering of expectation.
1 Part 5: A New Beginning. This is the real deal. On every level. It is the best example of the
Friday the 13th "formula", the purest movie if you will, and yet it is also the one which takes the greatest distance from the formula, it is in many ways a parody of the films, while at the same time being a superb example of the films; it is the one in which Jason is the most Jason, in the ruthless efficiency and quickness of his kills, and yet Jason isn't even in it. This is the greatness of Jason - his emptiness, he is nothing but the mask (the mask which doen't even come into the films till the 3rd one) he is pure extimacy - he doesn't have to be physically in the films to be in the films, even the first one which predates him - he is retroactively in it. Just as his presence is all over 5 even though he is nowhere to be seen.
This also includes my favourite bit of any of the films, the bit where the ambulance man takes off the cover from the body, all the kids gasp or cry and the ambulance man sneers, "Bunch of pussies". Pow!
