Dr. Crews was a bit of a douche bag, wasn’t he? I mean, he wanted to exploit Tina’s powers, he gets her mother killed. I was quite happy when he died. But that was pretty exciting. Tina did a pretty good job fighting Jason. I mean, not before a dozen people were killed. But it was exciting to see him get set on fire, electrocuted, fall into a basement, have a roof collapse on him. All of this does nothing of course because JASON IS A ZOMBIE AND NEEDS TO BE SHOT IN THE HEAD. Despite of this, Tina does what she meant to do at the beginning of the oddly titled sequel and uses her powers to raise her dad from the lake, who pulls Jason back under, which again, according to some book Tommy read in part VI, is the only way to kill him (as long as there are no blondes walking around firing off telekinesis all willy nilly). Then our heroes wake up in the morning and are carted off by an ambulance. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t fathom that Jason can come back after all of that. No, sir. Trapped by the lake. He has been subdued twice by that lake (oddly enough after he was dead, and not when he was alive). What could possibly happen next?

Jason Takes Manhattan opens a year after the New Blood (1994). Jim and Suzi are part of the graduating class of Lakeview High. They are taking a boat out for a nice romantic romp on Camp Blood itself. It amazes me, the pull that Crystal Lake has on visitors. The boat’s anchor snags a power line, which happens to be right near Jason. Once again, Jason is brought back to “life” via electricity. While this is happening, Jim tells Suzi the “legend” of Jason. Now, I don’t mean to keep harping on this, but I don’t care how many years have gone by, this story cannot be a legend to anyone. Even if you don’t believe it’s Jason, there are too many dead people (that have been reported on the news!) for anyone to logically think it is a good idea to go within 100 fucking miles of this place. I mean, how do you refute that? “Jason isn’t real!” “Yeah but what about all those dead people?” “Uh, the plague? Yeah, we won’t get that, we’re safe.” Regardless, Jim and Suzi want to fornicate on a boat, so I guess this was their only choice. Unfortunately for them, they die. The next morning, the rest of the seniors (about a handful) and 2 teachers board the Lazarus, a creepy old ship, for a class trip to New York. Having incredible foresight, or serendipitous laziness, Jason is still under the lake and climbs aboard the Lazarus. One of the students, Rennie, seems to be having hallucinations of a drowning boy who tries to “kill” her. Jason picks off everyone but 3 students (Rennie being one of them) and the 2 teachers. They manage to get in to a rowboat and make it to New York City. Jason, who loves to toy with people, pops out of the water, seconds after they dock, having walked the whole way underwater (zombie!). Then, a hilarious fish out of water (but in New York, no one will notice!) comedy ensues! No, but seriously, a pretty  lame and insulting Jason film wanders to a close on the streets of New York.

This is a terrible film. It pains me to say that, because Kane Hodder’s Jason is so angry and vengeful. Though you can not see his eyes, you can read the hate in his face. It makes him seem less supernatural (zombie!) and more like a real live psychopath. He even chooses not to kill a small gang of street kids, because he would rather chase down Rennie. He is really great in this chapter.

At this point, the franchise’s biggest problem, is the ever weakening connection each sequel has to the overall story. For example, when Jason was “dead” we continued with Tommy, who had a direct connection to the storyline. But suddenly that was abandoned and have some largely uninteresting (and conveniently never before mentioned) story lines with characters that really don’t have a connection with Jason at all (comparatively). Rennie’s connection is really weak. Why even bother making that part of it anymore?  On top of that, there seems to be a “new” element where the same old formula is used, in an effort to be different. This one is in New York, part VII was about telekinesis, part 5 had a different killer. This is understandable, in the sense that the viewer may get bored seeing the exact same thing over and over again, but where was this logic during the first 4 films?

These films are feeling less and less like Jason films. They just seem like random slasher films with an F13 story line shoehorned in. Perhaps the 90′s will be kinder to the Jason legacy.

Favorite kill: One punch. Head flies off, lands in a dumpster.

Hooray, Jason’s back! In Jason lives, the Forest Green (formerly Crystal Lake) Sheriff was convinced that Tommy was killing people to fabricate a story that Jason was alive. Little did he know that he was alive. I am sure he was convinced of this when Jason folded him in half like he was closing a suitcase. So now that Jason is the undead, how could Tommy and his new lady friend Megan, stop him? Shoot him in the head? Nope. Chop him up as he has done to others so many times? No. During the massacre, Tommy had time to buy, or check out from the local library, some books on the occult. From these, he gleans that the solution is to return Jason to the site of his death; the lake. They do this (thankfully before Jason kills any of the little children campers) and chain him to a boulder so that he is stuck under water. Jason “drowns” and the kids are saved! Hooray! At the very end, as we see Jason floating underwater, he opens his eyes and glares at us right before the credits roll. In the world of film, this is called “open door for a sequel.”

The New Blood (what?) starts with a flashback. A little girl named Tina and her parents are at Crystal Lake sometime after the events of Jason Lives (fucking idiots!). Tina’s parents are fighting and her father hits her mother. Tina runs to the lake and gets in a boat. He father and mother chase her and Tina yells to her father that she wishes he was dead. Tina becomes so emotional that her telekinesis (oh yeah, she has that) takes over and the pier that her father is on collapses and he falls in to the lake and drowns. Many years later (which apparently puts us in 1993), Tina, her mother, and Doctor Crews (Terry Kiser) all meet at Crystal Lake (I guess they changed the name back?), where her father died. Tina has been in a mental hospital due to the extreme guilt she feels having killed her father. As far as Tina and her mother know, the plan is to try and rehabilitate Tina, and convince her that her father’s death was not her fault. The truth, is that Bernie, I mean Dr. Crews, just wants to exploit Tina’s abilities. Of course, there is a gaggle of teenagers next door, partying like there is no Jason legend. I guess I can excuse that this time, since Jason has been at the bottom of the lake for 5 or so years. On second thought, no I can’t. BURN THE PLACE TO THE GROUND YOU FUCKING MORONS. Sorry. Tina, upset after a session with Dr. Crews, runs out of the cabin to the pier. In an attempt to bring her father back, she wakes up Jason, who I guess, fell back asleep after the end of Jason Lives. Then kids get killed, blah blah blah.

So, what the hell happened to Tommy? Who knows. This film disregards or does not pay any attention to any previous film except for the newspaper clippings that someone has. Autonomously, I guess this film is okay.  For some reason, The New Blood does not continue with the new comedy approach that Jason Lives did. It does have a much more sinister tone reminiscent of part 2. This may or may not be due to Kane Hodder, who makes his first appearance playing Jason here.  Hodder is easily the best Jason and incidentally, Adam Green’s reason for masturbating.

I really have no complaints about this film. It is unique (besides  stealing from Stephen King) but it’s downfall is trying to employ the same formula that it already made fun of itself for. Because of  this sequel’s weak connection to the franchise, even as good as it is, it doesn’t matter. Sorry.

Favorite kill: Jason zips up Judy in her sleeping bag and slams her against a tree. Awesome.

Wow, what a mind fuck that last picture was! It wasn’t Jason at all! In case you skipped that one (as you should), allow me to fill you in on the events of A New Beginning. As Tommy is “recovering” at Pinehurst, a halfway house type place that employs a similar set of rules as Pablo Escobar’s self built prison, the townsfolk are being murdered by an unknown killer. The killer makes his way to Pinehurst to kill all the people there as well. We finally get to see who it is, and it’s Jason! Right? No? Well, let’s see. He is wearing a hockey mask like Jason. But it has blue on it rather than red. Did he get a new one from a sporting good store? He certainly has the same M.O. as Jason. Killing everyone and having a special distaste for teenagers. But alas, it is not Jason. Tommy gets the better of him and kills him. His mask comes off and we see that it is Roy, one of the ambulance guys. Quite a shock, as every time Roy was on camera, he had the goofy facial expressions, and mysterious music played. Turns out Roy is the father of the kid that was axed to death at the beginning of the film. Whew! At least Jason is still dead. Right?

Jason Lives opens with Tommy (who now is a dead ringer for Michael Dudikoff circa American Ninja) and his friend determined to make sure. They have escaped from a mental institution and are headed to Jason’s grave. Tommy wants to cremate his body and send him to hell (be patient Tommy; you’re 3 sequels away from that). They get to his grave and open his coffin. By now, Jason is a badly decomposed corpse and a multi-family dwelling for worms and the like. Tommy, who is batshit crazy, stabs him numerous times with a metal rod, leaving the rod in his chest. A couple of lighting strikes and Jason is awake. Or is reanimated into a zombie. Whichever, he kills Tommy’s friend and Tommy drives to Crystal Lake to warn everyone that he is alive. Crystal Lake has been renamed Forest Green in an effort to separate the Jason legend from the town. Tommy goes to the Sheriff’s office and starts rambling about how he dug up Jason’s body and how he is coming after him and is immediately locked up to prevent him scaring the townsfolk. This would hardly be a proper sequel if there weren’t some camp counselors coming in to town to re open the camp. This time, however, it opens, and a bus load of kids actually make it to the camp (Nice job, parents. I don’t care if it does have a new name, there were still countless murders there). Jason walks his way back to the camp killing everyone in his path until he arrives.

Puck says that this is his favorite. While it is not mine, it is a pretty good installment. Jason Lives takes a different approach (not being crap). It realizes that the franchise has basically become a parody of itself, and runs with it. There is some genuinely good comedy in this, and it is well placed. The film is still “horror” when appropriate and the story is fairly interesting. Consistent with it’s predecessors, the acting is sub-par to mediocre, but it fits. This film strikes me as a product of a fan of the series that made a sequel with the intention of making it fun. It works.

I still say that it is retarded that people still inhabit this town let alone patronize the camp. I mean holy shit, there is a group of executive office workers playing paintball in the woods at Camp Blood. Really? And I don’t know about you, but I have a kid, and if I even remotely suspect that something dangerous might happen by letting her do something, she ain’t doing it. Why would any parent send their child to this camp?

Favorite kill: Folding the Sheriff in half. Although Nikki getting her face smashed in to the bathroom wall so hard you can see an impression of her face from the other side is a close second.

Also, Jason is a zombie. He may have been brought back to “life” by lightning, but he is shot several times (not in the brain!) and survives.

Wow. That last film was exciting, wasn’t it? We got to see Crispin Glover dance. We met the Jarvis family, who live in Crystal Lake. I guess the Jarvis family is like the really old couple from disaster films that refuse to leave their town no matter what danger might threaten them. We met Rob, the hunk that breezed into town to avenge his sister’s death. Most importantly, we saw twelve-year-old Tommy Jarvis give himself an incredibly bad haircut and then hack Jason up with a machete. At the end of the film, as he embraces his sister, he looks at the camera and give us a look that may imply that he is now mentally disturbed, and may possibly hack someone else up. Although I don’t think Tommy would snap that quickly after the events of the film, I did like the cliffhanger implication that Tommy might kill as well. Also, Jason must be dead. He has to be. I mean, Tommy was like Vince with that Slap-Chop, minus that headset. I think I did hear Tommy say, “You’re gonna love my nuts,” while killing Jason, though.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning opens with Tommy, who is apparently now 15 (which would make it now 1987), having a dream about Jason. The dream startles him awake and we find him in the back of a van. He is taken to Pinehurst which quite possibly is the best mental health facility/halfway house on the planet. For you see, it is in the woods (an excuse to be in familiar scenery without being in Crystal Lake) and operates on the honor system. There are no locked doors, no staff of people to prevent you from leaving or acting out. There is only Pam, the assistant director, Dr. Matthew Letter who runs the joint, and a cook. All the “patients” help out by doing work like laundry and chopping wood. This is the precise setting you would want a troubled boy who killed someone in self defense to be taken to heal. It is unclear why any of the other residents are there. It is also unclear where exactly this place is. Right away, one of the residents kills another with an axe which does not do much for Tommy’s problems. He is haunted by dreams and both aural and visual hallucinations of Jason. After this murder, the townspeople start getting murdered, also. Eventually, the unknown assailant makes his way to Pinehurst and begins taking care of business there. Who is this mysterious murder? Jason? Tommy? Some other dickhead? How long must we be in the dark?!

This movie is a piece of crap. First of all, no. No. A facility like this cannot, nay, must not exist. Secondly, this movie feels weirdly detached from the entire rest of the franchise thus far. Which is funny because all the same elements are there; in the woods, cars that die, rain, naked teenagers. But even with all that and the inclusion of Tommy, it is just not the same as the rest.

I gripe about this film all the time, but honestly I do like some things. I like the attempt to keep the series going, but with Tommy, even though it wasn’t the way I though it would go after the end of part 4. That was a bold decision to make, and a challenge. I just think it was too ambitious for the filmmakers assigned to the task.

This film also did an interesting thing where we would meet certain characters and we were sort of led to believe that they may have a motive to be the killer. However at some point, this was abandoned. All those people just became the same as anyone else; we barely get to know much about them and they are killed off before we ever give a shit about them.

Possibly the most hilarious thing in this film are the deaths toward the end of the film. As per usual, we are walked through a number violent deaths. As the film draws to a close, the bodies of the rest of the characters are either hurled on screen or found at random spots as the surviving characters are trying to escape. It’s sort of like, “Oh by the way, for continuity or body count sake, here are all these other cadavers. Please take note.”

So, yes, it gets the crap category. It cannot be helped. The film is a giant fail and lacks any tension, decent acting, horror and even at some points writing that even makes sense. Favorite kill: decapitation while riding a motorcycle. Partly because of the awesomeness and partly because of the death of a fucking annoying character.

The last chapter in our bloody journey ended rather poorly. Chris, who had come back to her father’s cabin 2 years after being attacked in the woods, had survived the latest bloodbath. After seeing Jason’s face, she realized the he was the one that attacked her. Chris not only hung the now hockey mask wearing murderer, but put an axe in his head. In an obvious dream sequence homage to the ending of part 1, Mrs. Voorhees jumps out of the lake and attacks Chris (I say obvious as Mrs. Voorhees had her head cut off, yet it is attached to her body here). We then see Chris, laughing hysterically, obviously now mentally disturbed, being taken away by the cops, who for some reason refuse to slash and burn the entire Crystal Lake area to prevent future killings.

The Final Chapter opens with the police cleaning up the carnage from part III. Jason’s body is taken to the morgue. Now, as I mentioned above, Jason was hung and then had an axe hit him, and stuck, in the head. For some reason, he wakes up in the morgue. No explanation. No voodoo curse, no George Romero (are George Romero and Stan Lee brothers?) set visit, no weird bloodline Danielle Harris excuse, he just wakes up. He quickly dispatches the nearest (and apparently only) hospital workers and returns to Crystal Lake. Now, I can sort of buy the fact that a new group of teenagers may want to visit Crystal Lake this time, as the news reports that the killer is dead. What I don’t buy is why anyone who lives remotely near the area, like the Jarvis family, would not move the fuck out after 3 movies worth of killings have happened. I also do not understand why they do not speak of the previous events until Rob, a random hitchhiker arrives, to avenge his sister Sandra’s (from part 2) death. I realize that Facebook and Twitter do not exist yet, but does anyone own a radio or TV? More importantly, would they not have heard the helicopters, police cars and ambulances that routinely run through that area?

Anyway here is the “plot” of the “final” chapter. The Jarvis family consists of Trish and her brother Tommy (Corey Feldman) and their mother. They live in the same neighborhood as Camp Blood. The cabin next door has been rented by some kids. Most notably, Jimmy (Crispin Glover) who is possibly the best dancer on the planet. Trish and Tommy run into Rob, who fixes their car and as repayment,  give him a ride, expecting never to see him again. So there you go. Kids party, get naked, angry brother seeks to kill his sister’s killer.

This film is fucking retarded. In lieu of a critique, I have a list of questions for this film, and the franchise in general:

1. Why does Tommy say “You can’t be hunting for bear,” especially after the bear warning from part 2?

2. Where do all the harpoons come from?

3. Why does it rain all the time?

4. Where did the rain come from in this chapter (out of nowhere is my guess)?

5. How does Jason corkscrew Crispin Glover to death one minute, and then then suddenly throw Tina out of a second story window the next?

6. Really? Do we still need the calling of the names convention? “Ted? Is that you?” It’s the fourth film, come on.

7. I saw that Jason had black fingernails, was he in The Children?

8. Did Jason lift weights? He is quite diesel. I assume no gym would take him, as he probably stinks and is rather unsightly, so he must have exercised at home.

9. Why would Trish and Rob leave Tommy at the house now that they know Jason is loose?

10. Why is there a slow motion shot of Gordon (the Jarvis dog) jumping out the window?

11. Why does Tommy cut his hair? And further, why does his bald head hypnotize Jason?

12. Why does Trish rush back home and lock the door after seeing the dead kids? Is that really the safest place? Run somewhere for Christ’s sake?!

Also, I saw Jason breathing when he was laying down. Fuck this movie. Despite Feldman and Glover.

Previously at Crystal Lake, eight people had been killed in highly entertaining ways by a man wearing a sack on his head with one eye hole in it. It is clear that this person is Jason, the boy who everyone thought had drowned. Now he is all grown up. In trying to escape, Ginny runs across Jason’s shack in the woods. Inside, she finds the head of Mrs. Voorhees, surrounded by candles, as well as the body of Alice. There is a scuffle between her, Jason and Paul and Jason takes a machete to the shoulder (the obvious place you would chop someone if you wanted to kill them. I mean fuck, there is a severed head in the room, did that not give you any ideas?). As Paul and Ginny are back at the cabin recovering from the attack, an unmasked Jason leaps through the window and grabs Ginny. His hair is wild and unfettered. His face is deformed. He is quite ghastly. The next scene is during the day and Ginny is being placed in the back of an ambulance. This scene leaves us unsure as to what happened during the last scene (if it even happened at all; it is ambiguous just like the end of the first one) and what happened to Paul.

Friday the 13th Part III takes place the day after Part 2 (so we are still in 1984). And right there is the first thing that is wrong with this sequel. Why in the FUCK does it switch to Roman numerals? That, to me, is more disturbing than the machete to the crotch one of the kids gets whilst walking on his hands. But I digress.

Chris and a bunch of her friends are going to her father’s cabin, Higgins Haven. Guess where it happens to be near? If you guessed Elm Street, you are dead wrong. Two years ago (1982) Chris and her family were at the cabin and had a fight. After her mother slapped her, she ran in to the woods. Seeking shelter from the pouring rain, she sat under a tree (!) and fell asleep. A disfigured man startles her awake and attacks her. She hands us some flimsy story about having blacked out and waking up in her own bed and not remembering how she survived. She is returning to Higgins Haven to prove to herself that she is strong.

Or fucking retarded. At this point, there are more than a dozen corpses from just the first two films alone before anyone dies in this one. There is a legend of a killer, the camp down the road is nicknamed Camp Blood and you were attacked. How many more warning signs do you need? How about a weird old guy laying in the road who found a human eyeball? No? Well, then fuck it, go get you and your friends killed.

This film is also in 3-D (and Paramount’s first film produced in 3-D since 1954) which would normally bother me, but it was 1982 and 3-D was all the rage back then (I guess. I was 6). There were a lot of 3-D gags, but eventually they become less frequent. Although the harpoon flying at the screen was entertaining.

This film is vastly inferior to the previous installment, which both were directed by Steve Miner. I guess it’s really not his fault, per se. At this point the formula has started to become tiresome. The “legend” aspect of it is interesting, as we see Jason progress. For example, this is the film where he gets his trademark hockey mask. But this chapter is rife with way too many false scares, and it also begins the whole “wouldn’t Jason have died after that?” thing. Not to spoil the ending of a film that is almost 30 years old, but I declare that Jason is officially a zombie after this film. It is assumed that he survived his drowning (by the fact that he is an adult). Therefore he has to be dead at the end of this film based on what happens to him.

The previous two films had scenes at the end where the survivor is “attacked” and then suddenly wakes up or a new scene happens. As the viewer we are left to wonder if the attack scene was real. In part III, the attack scene is clearly a dream and ruins what was a neat little device to cap each film off.

So, this is where the series begins to unravel. It is not a complete mess yet, but it is getting there. Favorite kill of part III: Andy is walking on his hands (cause that’s what the cool kids do) to get a beer. He looks up and sees Jason. BAM! Machete right to the crotch. Nicely done, sir.

So in the last installment, we saw everyone but Alice get killed by an unknown murderer. Alice runs outside and finds a woman who identifies herself as Mrs. Voorhees, an old friend of the Christys. Alice feverishly informs her of how everyone is dead. Mrs. Voorhees says that she is not afraid and goes in to investigate. After seeing one of the bodies, she tells the story of how Jason drowned due to the negligence of the counselors. Mrs. Voorhees was in fact working that day as a cook. She then drops the bomb; Jason was her son. Her niceness then morphs into psychosis as she repeats, “Kill her, Mommy!” and exclaims that Alice let her only son drown. At this point, it is obvious that she has been killing everyone. There is a chase and some biting, and they both end up at the lake. Alice cuts Mrs. Voorhees’s head off with a machete. She gets in a canoe, rows out to the middle of the lake and falls asleep. In the morning, the police find her and as they are calling her from shore, what appears to be a deformed youngster leaps out of the water, and pulls Alice under. She wakes in the hospital and the police inform her that all of her friends are dead. She asks about the boy, Jason. The police have no idea what she is talking about, stating that they did not find a boy. Alice is then convinced that Jason never drowned and is still alive (kind of a poor bit of number crunching; he died in ’57 and is still a child in ’80? Unless the dream was just a general premonition).

Two months later brings us to Part 2. Alice is at home sleeping dreaming about the above events (presented to us in flashback). She wakes startled, takes an annoying phone call from her mother, has a shower. She opens the fridge and Mrs. Voorhees’s head is inside. Naturally Alice panics, and is immediately stabbed in the head with an ice pick by an unseen assailant.

Five years later (which makes it now 1984), a new group of teenagers arrive at a counseling training center, which is located near the now shut down Camp Crystal Lake. On the first night, the head counselor Paul, tells the story of Jason and what happened on Friday the 13th. Part of the story of that night is that Jason actually saw his mother beheaded, and now lives in the woods, waiting to kill anyone who arrives. After scaring the fuck out of everyone, he then maintains that it is only a legend, and that Jason surely drowned. So the teenagers are free to fornicate and tell bad jokes ’til summer’s end, without fear of being slaughtered.  And these kids make the last ones look like Mormons. They are drunk, naked or having sex every fucking second they can be. However, much like the last kids, this makes them completely oblivious to the fact that their peers are being offed one and sometimes two at a time, this time by a psychopath in a flannel shirt and a sack on his or her head.

Part two is better than part one. This is because since there are more people, the killings are closer together and the film moves at a pretty brisk pace. Again, we are not seeing cinematic genius, but it is actually not a bad flick. Still no over the top stereotypes, and the killings are all fantastic. So many great deaths. Spear through two people at once. There is a counselor that is wheelchair bound, and he gets a machete in the face, and rolls backwards down a huge flight of stairs. That is my favorite kill in this one.

Every time I found myself getting irritated at the horror film formula (i.e. “Hello” Is that you?” or a cat jumping in the room creating a false scare) I had to remind myself how old this film is, and that it practically invented those devices. That being said, this honestly is a completely enjoyable chapter in this story. It is more dark and brutal than the first and definitely an excellent follow up.

I will end this review by saying that Friday the 13th Part 2 punches A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 right in the fucking balls.

As a child of the 80’s, the Friday the 13^th franchise is quite special to me. Most likely, the first time I ever saw a naked breast was in a Jason film. I became quite enchanted with the concept of summer camp: The sex. The drinking. The skinny dipping. Kevin Bacon. Not so much the machete-wielding psychopaths. Inspired by Halloween, director Sean S. Cunningham gave us the first of twelve Friday films, Freddy vs. Jason included. I am already starting to dread my trip back down this series of films because in comparison to the original,  most of the latter sequels are complete garbage. This does not bode well as the first one is mediocre at best.

Don’t get me wrong, this film does what it is basically supposed to do; make you laugh, perhaps a bit uncomfortable, maybe even disturb you at times. However, considering its legacy and the genre it helped popularize, it is less sensational than the sensationalism. If this film had been released in say, the late 90′s or early 2000′s it would have been lost in a sea of run of the mill slasher films that most horror fans only see once, if at all. It simply does not have the aesthetic stab as a Halloween or Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Yet, it does have a charm, and that, coupled with instant nostalgia make for a pleasant viewing at any time.

So here we are at the beginning. Camp Crystal Lake is cursed. It has a death curse according to crazy Ralph, the town lunatic. In fact, the townspeople refer to it as Camp Blood. Charming, no? Basically, here are the events that led up to the camp being dubbed as such, not necessarily revealed to us in this order:

In 1957, a young boy named Jason Voorhees drowns in the lake, while the camp counselors that were supposed to be watching him were having sex. In 1958, two counselors are murdered after they leave a rousing campfire sing a long to have sex. There are some mysterious fires at the camp, and in 1962, during an attempted reopening, the water is found to be bad,  so it never opens.

Back to present day (1979), and specifically, Friday the 13th. Steve Christy, the camp’s present owner, along with the help of some attractive, oversexed counselors are fixing up the camp so they can open it yet again. Annie, who is backpacking through town, comes across a diner. After failing to obtain directions to the camp from a dog outside, she wanders inside the diner and asks the patrons inside. They all give her the “what the fuck?” look and after one of them calls it Camp Blood, a man offers to drive her half way there (I assume this is either due to country hospitality, or his desire to see if she will live). During the drive, Annie tells the driver that she is going to be a counselor there, and his response is to give her the horrible legend of Crystal Lake. Apparently neither his story, a warning from crazy Ralph, or the disturbed looks on the diners’ faces will deter her. She will counsel some kids, goddammit.

Exposition now complete, we are introduced to the camp counselors: Ned, Jack (Kevin Bacon), Bill, Marcie, Brenda and Alice. They are call cool and rad and every other 80′s slang term for being hip, and love having a good time. Whether it be swimming, having sex, drinking or playing strip Monopoly, these kids are all about hedonism. As we watch them having incredibly boring conversations and meander around the campground doing equally as boring activities (even the sex was a bit mechanical), they start getting picked off, one by one, either off camera, or in Tom Savini awesomeness. This basically is the constant state of events until the film’s end.

Somewhere in the middle of this film, I realized I was wanting the kids to die. Not because they were bad people (they weren’t) or what they were supposed to represent to their dispatcher, but because they were insanely boring people stuck in long stretches of tensionless scenes. Yes, the only tension to be found is seconds before someone dies. There is never any build up. I could sort of see this tactic being used to simulate us, the viewer, also being hunted, but the constant use of the killer’s POV would negate that.

One thing to appreciate about this film is the lack of over the top character stereotypes. Unlike the later films, there is not 1 geek, 1 snobby girl, 1 hot guy that snobby girl likes but he cannot stand, a lone minority, etc. They were all just kids having a good time (you know, until say, an axe to the head). Also, while the acting was not terrible it was just good enough for us to believe how laid back, silly and sometimes clueless to their surroundings they all were.

The on-screen killings are pretty entertaining. You can see the beginnings of the outlandish deaths yet to come in the franchise. I am torn between two in this installment for my favorite. It’s a toss up between the completely out of nowhere spear through the neck or the straight up brutality of the axe to the face.

Friday the 13th is good in spite of itself. While it never goes below tolerable, I find that it is not the cinematic masterpiece most folk remember it to be. However, it has my adoration, and rightfully so.  It sparked my love of horror and the franchise remains my favorite, and not just because Terry Kiser was in Part VII. The series doesn’t span nearly 3 decades for no reason.

Every once in a while, someone comes up with an idea that makes you think “Man, why hasn’t that been done sooner?” About a year ago in a conversation with Digger, I remarked how I’d like to see a balls-to-the-wall action movie with all of the action heroes of old. Little did I know, and Digger was quick to point out, that Sylvester Stallone already had that idea with his upcoming movie The Expendables.

Even though I had heard mostly positive things about the movie (mostly from my testosterone-driven friends and associates), I was hesitant. When you put Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, and more together in an action movie, it could either be awesome in a manly kind of way or very over-the-top and cheesy. I assume that director Stallone was going for the former but the cheese factor came into play far too much for my taste.

We have all of the requisite action tale staples: an exotic locale, a former colleague who goes rogue, a main bad guy, and a love interest whose part mainly consists of giving exposition and being dragged from room to room. The plot is basically a thinly veiled ruse for action-packed scenes and the details are not important for us to know. I just want to see death and destruction. On that front, Expendables delivers in spades with some of the more off-the-wall but similarly spectacular action sequences since the heydays of the 80s. Once, my father and I tried to keep a running tally of the people Schwarzenegger gunned down in Commando. Needless to say, we lost track. I wouldn’t be able to make tic marks fast enough to keep up here.

For its intended purpose, the aforementioned cast as well as Terry Crews, Steve Austin, and Eric Roberts (!) do their best to chew scenery and look busy while things explode around them. But everything comes to a grinding halt whenever there is any talky-bits that I assume are supposed to provide depth to the characters. This does not work well. Rourke has a tender reflection on the preciousness of life (I think that was the point at least) that not only reeked of overacting but it was also incredibly out of place. Similar for Li’s crying that he has to work harder because he is smaller than the rest of the team. I assume that scene was also for comedic purposes but it was odd and wholly unnecessary especially considering the kick-ass car chase that was about to commence.

In fact, one of my main problems was that there was so much freaking dialogue. Save for a few members, this cast is not well known for substantial acting abilities. All I needed were a few one-liners sprinkled into the wall-to-wall gun fights and car chases and a line or so just to give a flimsy story of why these men are going to this foreign country to kill a bunch of people. Admittedly in most films, I get irritated at the lack of a narrative but this is one of those movies where I am all but willing to give that a pass.

The main thing I would have liked to see in the movie is some silly, self-referential material. I’m not asking for Kevin Williamson style awareness but let’s be honest. Stallone is well within the AARP membership bracket and to have him, or even some of the others on the team, address that would have elevated it from a random action movie to a random action movie that knows it’s an action movie. There’s a big difference.

All in all, Expendables wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. Granted, I had no idea what the hell to expect from it but still. Perhaps with the apparently already greenlit sequel, Stallone can take things a little more lightly and give us what we want. Hot girls like Charisma Carpenter and Giselle Itié, senseless violence, and not a lot of pointless character-driven scenes. I feel a bit silly criticizing a movie for having too much plot, but then again, I know I did not expect that from this movie.

I hate to quote the same thing in less than a week but Digger posited in his previous marathon that Predator is “without a doubt one of the greatest action movies of all time.” Die Hard certainly deserves a spot on that list as well and perhaps not coincidentally is directed by the same man: John McTiernan. You all should know the story very well so I’ll keep the synopsis short. John McClane is a NYPD cop. His estranged wife lives in L.A. and works for a powerful foreign firm. McClane flies in for Christmas. Terrorists take over the building which houses a shit ton of money. Pure entertainment for the next two hours ensues.

It may not be your go-to movie for Christmas like Elf or the Muppet Christmas Carol but Die Hard is not only an awesome Christmas movie in its setting and references but also a damn near flawless action movie. In fact, I would almost consider this the anti-action movie in that the normal conventions and clichés that are commonplace today are nowhere to be found here. The plot is solid, the terrorists are not simply one-dimensional, and the one-liners aren’t corny. It helps that Die Hard is lauded for pioneering some of the more outlandish action stunts in succeeding movies but the point still stands.

Unlike the mindless popcorn, ‘shoot-em up’ movies we suffer through nowadays, Die Hard is always on its A game. Bruce Willis‘ McClane is not the supercop that the later sequels made him out to be. Here he is just a guy in a wife-beater with no shoes stuck in a perilous situation, with nothing more than his cunning wit and whatever ordinances he swipes from the folks rendered dead by his hands. While the effects are extraordinary, there is nothing (save for Karl’s Christ-like resurrection) that strains logic or pokes at your fragile suspension of disbelief.

Besides McClane and Alan Rickman‘s chilling classically-trained, high class Hans Grueber, the rest of the supporting actors are crafted in the vain of actual human beings, not disposable plot contrivances. The fact that the main baddies have more depth and personality than most anyone in … Zombie Strippers(?) is commendable and even Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) has a more satisfying arc than characters with an entire two hours devoted to them.

Given that it was made in the ’80s, Die Hard does not look or feel dated other than the terrorists that look like they could start a pop band called “The East German All Stars.” (There’s a reference there by the way.) Of course, there are standard movie elements like the requisite douchebag characters, namely Ellis and the police chief, but even they get away with lines and delivery that are on point with some of the funnier movies I’ve seen. In fact, I could probably watch Paul Gleason‘s delivery of the line “For chrissake, he could be a bartender for all we know” on a loop and not get tired of it.

It’s unfortunate that I haven’t watched this movie in so long because it is, in the simplest terms, a veritable masterpiece.

Merry Movie Scum Christmas!