To me there is no greater horror saga than the Friday The 13th series. It has pretty much everything; including strong morals, that you ignore in favour of cheering the big bastard on. Jason, the potato sack and, latterly, hockey mask wearing unkillable madman has a lust for the blood of the naughty. Fuck, drink and smoke weed anywhere near Crystal Lake and there is a strong chance Jason will hunt you down and chop you in half. If you're lucky enough to have never fucked anyone, or drank and there is a chance you can evade death and maybe even send the bastard back to where once he came.
In the summer of 2000, when I had just left school, I went to work in New Hampshire at a summer camp. On a day off a bunch of us decided to go to the cinema. On the road there we drove by a lay by which led down to a lake, there was a rope swing hanging on a tree over the water. I had a crazy sense I had been there before, but I had never been to the state, never mind some out of the way lay by in deepest darkest New Hampshire, whose state slogan is "Live Free Or Die!". I told my buddy Chris that I recognised it, maybe deja vu I said. He said "it's in Friday 13th Part 4." It was only then it dawned on me that I had taken a job at a camp on Crystal Lake. I shat it. I didn't sleep for a week, and I stopped drinking, and I stopped trying to bang the Russian kitchen staff.
I was really worried.
A few years later I would end up study cinema, forever ruining the mystery of movies for myself and those around me. But back then, given my geographical location, the surrounding woods, the lake and all these fucking promiscuous camp councilors around me, I feared the worse. Like the Loch Ness Monster, the story of Jason had to come from somewhere, I thought. Every little noise outside my window at night would make me think of Jason... It is the middle of nowhere, in the woods, there were lots of noises.
Anyway, to me there is no greater example of great American slasher movies. Freddie can go fuck himself. The Nightmare on Elm Street series never got over the exceptional first movie, after that they all sucked so much, it is a wonder any body involved wanted their names attached. The only time Freddie became watchable again was in Freddie Vs Jason.
Jason can't be stopped. That is a stone cold fact. The limits of what is acceptable in terms of coming up with fresh storylines is pushed to the absolute limit throughout the series. But up until part 4, it is straight up good, gory fun. In Part 1 it is the murderous, grieving Mrs Voorhees who makes the slut councilors pay for the drowning of her son. It isn't until part 2 where we get to see Jason, but it isn't until part 3 when Jason becomes the Jason we all love, that machete wielding, hockey mask wearing madman.
He can't be stopped, but he can (technically) be killed. Although already dead, he has been ripped ton pieces over the 10+ movies. Even reanimated in outer space in Jason X, which got panned like fuck, but is worth watching for the bit when he drowns a girl by pushing her face into liquid nitrogen, he then smashes her face on a work surface. Genius.
It is the deaths which drive these movies, it doesn't matter who he kills. It's how they die. Final Destination movies brought this back to popular culture. In a world of creepy, but ultimately pish Japanese movies about kids hiding in lofts, it is good to know that some people still desire to see elaborate, largely unbelievable and always worthy of a cheer kind of kills. Where else could you cheer a guy in a wheel chair getting macheted in the face?
It is a notoriously difficult series to properly get into, in terms of writing about it due to lack of care when new installments were being written. Fuck, it's hard enough keeping track while watching them.
As famous as he is, an iconic character in the long history of cinema, transcending his genre. He almost never was, no one expected a sequel to the first movie, and this shows throughout the series. But you ignore all that, and instead focus on things like Crispin Glover being nailed to a door frame and then ripped violently from it. But he deserved it for being such a dick about the Back To The Future thing.
So, Jason drowned. His mother got decapitated after a revenge killing spree. Jason somehow witnessed the decapitation (which was a plot point added later in the series) and that sparked his saga, al;though he definitely wasn't there at the end of the first movie. There is no logic in the series, only awesomeness. Jason is a warning to America, don't drink, smoke of have pre-marital sex, lest you be picked up in your sleeping bag and repeatedly battered against a tree until dead. He is the big, sharp stick of morality in Reagan's America. Christ, it even had the Reagan Anti Drug poster boy Corey Feldman who, despite his age in part 4 was probably out his tits on something... But he made the 4th movie incredible. It is probably the best. It is called The Final Chapter, and maybe should have ended after it. Between Feldman's terrible idea to pretend to be a young Jason to confuse him, and the aforementioned Crispin Glover bit, it really is amazing.
Keep yer Hostels and Saws. Gory for the sake of it, and a sad attempt at playing to peoples fear of being injured. Give me unkillable, machete wielding maniacs who hate sluts any day of the week.
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