October 22nd

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) directed by Rob Hedden

Kane Hodder as Jason
28 Jul 1989

Freddy vs. Jason XII: Jason Takes a Boat
Ah, the summer of 1989. What a time for a young film geek. Every week, it seemed, a classic was released. Jimmy Cameron conquered the ocean with The Abyss. Timmy Burton changed superhero films forever with Batman. Disney proved they could still make good live action movies with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Ghostbusters II featured the creepiest painting in the world. And the Man In The Hat returned to kick Nazi ass again in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. What was Paramount's contribution to this frenzy of awesome? The biggest rip-off in movie history, that's what.

Watch the trailer for this film below. It's really cool. Jason's standing there, looking at Manhattan, ready to tear it to pieces! What a great idea: put Jason into a completely new environment and let him run wild in New York City. I'm picturing Jason walking through a subway train, chopping dozens of heads off. I can see him throwing someone off the top of the Empire State building. You want a little humor in the picture? Have Jason hack someone up in the MET and later have patrons commenting on the corpse's symbolism, believing it to be a piece of modern art. It's gold!

Yeah, yeah, as we all know, Paramount didn't want to spend the money to shoot much in NYC and set most of the movie on boat. They didn't care. They were embarrassed by the character and were about to sell him to New Line, anyway. This not caring is stamped everywhere in the movie. The kills are lame -- except for one, mentioned below -- with Jason mostly just stabbing people with various items in a not-particularly gruesome manner. The characters are forgettable. There's a surprisingly mean-spirited scene where the main female lead is abducted by two scumbags who inject her full of an unknown drug as they discuss their plans to gang rape her all night. Some plot points are downright idiotic. The NYC sewers flood with "toxic waste" every night at midnight? What the hell?

Jason looks horrible in this one. His grotesque look from Part 7 has been abandoned. Now he simply looks soaking wet all the time. The guy is so wet, he squishes when he walks and wheezes when he breathes. It's actually quite annoying. Jason spends the last 10 minutes or so of the movie with his mask off. In the past, it was always sort of a treat to see what the guy looked like under that pillow case / hockey mask. He was a deformed child who later died and came back as a zombie, so he's always looked scary. In this one... check out the picture. He looks like someone dug up the corpse of an old man. Pathetic.

The only interest bit in this movie to me was that it somewhat validates my theory from yesterday: Crystal Lake is the actual source of evil. Jason is just a vessel. When the "toxic waste" washes over Jason, he begins to spit water out of his mouth. I would say that this is tainted Crystal Lake water: the evil that gave him his power. Once that has been forced out of him, he transforms back into the form he was when the evil lake got to him: a little boy. Makes sense to me.

Favorite Character
Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman): whose idea of swimming lessons involves paddling to the deep part of Crystal Lake and pushing his 13-year-old niece into the water and then yelling at her for not instantly knowing how to swim.

Favorite Sin
Attempting to snort coke not in your locked cabin away from prying eyes, but out in the open in the middle of the ship where anyone -- including teachers -- could walk by.

Favorite Kill
Julius (Vincent Craig Dupree), who attempts to box Jason only to have his head punched clean off. As Julius' head flies through the air and lands in a dumpster, we get a nice POV shot of his dying vision. This is the only bit I like in the entire movie.

Jason's Mood
Going through the motions.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) directed by Stephen Hopkins

Robert Englund as Freddy
11 Aug 1989

Freddy vs. Jason XIII: Terror of the Dream Child
The biggest pro-abortion movie ever made? As in Part 4, the solution to this Freddy issue is the death of one person. As in Part 4, Alice doesn't have the gumption to kill that person and her passivity allows more people to die. In this movie, Alice's fetus has inherited her power to lead Freddy to new victims when it dreams. There's absolutely no way to predict or control when the fetus sleeps and it's going to be doing this for 9 months. Once they realize what is happening, Mark immediately comes up with the only logical solution: abort the thing and save everyone from Freddy. Ironically, after Alice tells him no and says she is determined to have the baby, Mark is the next person to die when the fetus naps. How Alice lives with herself, I have no idea.

If that weren't enough, it's clear that another abortion would've helped everyone as well. A child conceived by rape, who has one clinically insane parent, who was raised in foster care because it would be unseemly for a nun to raise her own child... yeah, big surprise Freddy turned out to be a serial killer. Had Amanda Krueger ignored her religious edicts and had gotten Freddy-the-fetus scraped out of her, hundreds (!) of deaths would've been prevented. Abortion: it saves lives.

Like the Friday series, the Elm Street series is clearly running out of steam in 1989. I think the spoon glove Freddy uses to force-feed Greta is symbolic of this. Here's a monster with an original, terrifying weapon: a glove with razors extending from its fingers. When's the last time he really used that thing? I'm not counting simply stabbing people in the belly (see: Nancy and Kincaid). That's boring and something Michael Myers could do with his regular butcher knife. No, I'm talking about the fear of being sliced open. That is what makes the glove so powerfully scary. The very first death of the series demonstrated this the best when Freddy invisibly tears into Tina's back. Since Part 3, the glove has been consistently neutered. When it's not being turned into spoons or syringes, it's not being used at all. When Freddy grabs someone with his right hand, there is no fear of the knives. No one ever gets cut when Freddy grabs their face or body. The glove is nothing to worry about anymore. I'm glad Craven personally fixes this in Part 7.

Favorite Character
Mark (Joe Seely): latest in a long line of slasher nerds. This one is actually very good at his geek hobby of comic book illustration and he comes up with the Dream Warrior idea on his own when he transforms into the Phantom Prowler.

Favorite Sin
Premarital, procreative sex.

Favorite Kill
Dan (Danny Hassel), who is merged with his motorcycle in what appears to be an homage to Tetsuo, the Iron Man, except that was released in Japan just a month before this film. Neat.

Freddy's Mood
Going through the motions.

October 21st

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) directed by John Carl Buechler

Kane Hodder as Jason
13 May 1988

Freddy vs. Jason X: Mind Over Matter

This was my favorite of the series for a long time. It has a great cast of kids who are fun to watch: the sci-fi-dreaming Eddie, the nerdy girl Maddy, the ultra-bitch Melissa. There's a human villain in the form of Dr. Crews, which is a nice idea to mix up the series a little (and it's fun to cheer for his death because he's such an ass). Tina, with her Carrie-like telekinesis, makes for an interesting character and a decent idea for battling the physically-unbeatable Jason. While I think I like Part 4 and Part 6 better these days, this is definitely close behind. 

I love the look of Jason in this one. His time underwater has rotted him even further. Through his now-tattered clothes, we can see his exposed spine and ribs and kneecap. He continues to wear the chain Tommy threw around his neck in Part 6 for the entire movie. Part of his mask has broken off and we can see his messed-up jaw underneath. The guy looks monstrous.
.

This was also Kane Hodder's first go as the man in the mask. The guy is a great self-promoter -- I got to experience one of his patented choke-holds at a convention once! -- and has become the face of Jason in the fan community. I was skeptical, though, of how different his performance would be after just watching 7 other actors in the part. Yep, you can tell. Hodder has this distinct way of carrying Jason that makes him look like an absolute hulking beast. He oozes physicality in this movie and gives Jason an unstoppable aura.

"It's got a death curse!" Maybe Crazy Ralph in Part 1 was right? Maybe it's not Jason or his mom or Roy... maybe it's the place itself? Maybe Crystal Lake is the source of this evil? How else can we explain the plethora of monsters the lake produces? No, Jason is not the only one to emerge from Crystal Lake after death. In Part 2, Jason's mother's corpse jumps out of the lake. In this one, Tina's father does the same. There's something in the water. Something ancient and evil and corrupting... I think I just got an idea for a Friday the 13th-equivalent to New Nightmare.

Favorite Character

Eddie (Jeff Benett): the sci-fi geek with the crush on a girl way out of his league. Enjoys sitting around in his tightie-whities while opening another person's birthday presents. One of those sentences is too close to home...

Favorite Sin

Forcing a horny boyfriend to collect firewood before sexy times can commence.

Favorite Kill

Judy (Debora Kessler), beaten against a tree in her sleeping bag. Too bad this was censored for home video, but Jason X will make up for that a little.

Jason's Mood

Force of nature.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) directed by Renny Harlin

Robert Englund as Freddy
19 Aug 1988

Freddy vs. Jason XI: Failure of the Dream Master

I've always liked this entry quite a bit. Whenever I feel like popping in a Freddy movie, this is one I'll often grab. It gets back to the basics of series: Freddy is invading the dreams of high school kids -- who are in high school, not in an asylum; and Freddy is taking over their dreams, not their bodies -- and it's up to one girl to stop him. As is slasher tradition, it kills off the survivors of the previous movie at the beginning and pits an entirely new group against the dream demon.

Morally, once she realized what was going on, Alice should've killed herself. It's impossible to live without sleep and every time Alice slept, she allowed Freddy access to another victim. Rick and Debbie's deaths are the result of her unwillingness to consider this extreme option. In fact, the deaths of every single child in Springwood -- as we hear about in Part 6 -- would seem to be all Alice's fault. Maybe you could argue that Rick and Debbie were a small price to pay in order give Alice the power to defeat Freddy... but we all know he'll never be permanently killed. I think trapping him in his own rules -- his revenge is finished and there's nothing left to do -- was the best option.

As a plot device, this was a clever twist for the series. "Whatever you do, don't fall asleep... because one of your friends will die and you'll be fine." I don't think they used it to its full potential, though. With Nancy in Part 1, you could see the stress she carried as she struggled to keep herself awake. Imagine her if she had Alice's problem: Nancy would've been a basketcase, The less emotional Alice barely shows any response to this horror at all. The film is more interested in showing her toughen up as she absorbs everyone's powers (hey, look at Alice's new karate abilities!). I also don't think Lisa Wilcox is particularly good in this role and more could've been made with it with someone like Heather Langenkamp, as well. In fact, forget Part 3. This should've been the real third movie with Nancy in Alice's place as the Dream Master.

Favorite Character

Rick (Andras Jones): probably the most likable character in any of these series. A great brother to Alice. A great friend to Dan. A great boyfriend to Kristen. Because of his sister's unwillingness to end her own life, he gets to experience the unique pain of being turned into a meatball and eaten by Freddy. Dude did not deserve this.

Favorite Sin

Making out with a dream demon so intensely that you have a fatal asthma attack.

Favorite Kill

Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), who was dully stabbed in the guts by Freddy. But, he went out like a man, looking Freddy in the eyes and promising, "I'll see you in Hell."

Freddy's Mood

Playful.

Freddy's Nightmares 1.01: "No More Mr. Nice Guy" (1988) directed by Tobe Hooper

Premiering just a couple of months after Part 4, Freddy's Nightmares was an anthology series like Tales from the Darkside and the like. The twist was that Freddy himself hosted the show and sometimes -- but not often -- an episode would be about Freddy. This episode is the most notable of the series, as it begins at the end of Freddy's trail in which he is let free due to a legal technicality.

The show is filmed in a very "TV-like" manner. Shots are static and tend to cut between three angles. The acting is sub-par. The music sounds like someone tooling around on a Casio keyboard. Coming out in the days long before The Walking Dead, there's no gore or anything particularly scary. In short: it's bad.

Still, there's a weirdly creepy vibe running through the episode that is somehow effective. For one, they never show living Freddy's full face. Most of his face is always obscured in shadow or fog. The most that we get are close-ups of his mouth as he speaks in his Freddy voice. The story is actually pretty disturbing: a psycho kills and mutilates 20 kids in a small town. After a 2-year manhunt, he is finally caught, only to be let free because the policeman who arrested him screwed up. This is a parent's nightmare and I don't blame them for their reaction. Tied together with the aforementioned Casio keyboard music -- which seems to shrilly drill into your head -- the whole show feels a lot darker than any of the movie sequels.

Strangely enough, once Freddy is burned to death and transformed into a dream demon, the show is a lot less effective. One large issue is that Freddy decides to pursue revenge against a couple of the adults responsible for his death. That doesn't work. The idea that innocent children would pay for the sins of their parents is one of the many genius bits that Craven came up with to make the Freddy story so memorable. Freddy giving a grown-up policeman nightmares about going to the dentist is several orders of magnitude less interesting.

I hate that they ignored Part 1 and created their own continuity here. Where's Donald and Marge Thompson? Donald buried the body and Marge hid his glove... they're sort of important. For that matter, where's younger versions of Nancy, Kristen, Glen, Kincaid, Joey, etc, etc? Would it have been so hard to tie the show into the film series a little better?

While the series is currently tied up in legal rights issues, you can still watch this episode here in VHS quality.

October 20th

The Walking Dead 5.10: "Them" (2015) directed by Julius Ramsay
A little heavy-handed. The episode begins with the gang hungry and thirsty, tiredly walking down the highway. Behind them, a group of zombies follow. The symbolism is clear: there's hardly a difference between the two groups at this point. But, if you didn't get the message, later in the episode Rick helpfully calls the gang "the walking dead." Yes, he said the name of the series in an episode. C'mon.

There's also lots of talk in this episode about how they need to work together to make it through the end of the world. What happens later in the episode? They all have to work together to hold the barn doors shut against a horde of zombies. C'mon.

October 19th

The Walking Dead 5.09: "What Happened and What's Going On" (2015) directed by Greg Nicotero
Interesting mid-season opening, with the majority of the episode dedicated to Tyreese's dying delusions. Somber in tone to match the character's exhaustion with the world they're forced to live in, the episode was also edited a little more arty than normal. I liked it. Though, personally, I think they should've re-sealed the wall and tried to build a community in that place. I'm guessing the trip to Washington will be as successful as the trip to the CDC in season 1.

My favorite bit was Tyreese's imagined BBC Radio report from when the zombie crisis first began (with the announcer voiced by Andrew Lincoln in his native accent, no less). I wish we'd get more glimpses into the time period when Rick was in his coma (but maybe that's what the spin-off show is about? I haven't paid attention).

October 17th

The Editor (2014) directed by Adam Brooks & Matthew Kennedy

I love Astron-6. They're a gang of crazy Canadians who started off making amusing shorts for the Internet before working up to creating their first feature, Father's Day. They followed that up with the utterly crazy Manborg, a parody of cheezy sci-fi flicks like Full Moon's Mandroid. The Editor is their take on '70s/'80s Italian horror movies and it is a meticulous and ridiculous satire of every goofy theme or shot or character type you could possibly remember from those films.

Argento-style colored lighting decorates many of the shots. There's a black glove-wearing killer. An innocent film editor is framed for the killer's murders... but maybe he isn't so innocent? There's bad dubbing and random characters with Italian accents. There's unnecessary nudity everywhere. Blood sprays in torrents of bright red. Everyone acts like exaggerated versions of the characters in those old movies, with the chain smoking, and the bizarre personal interactions, and the slapping. Lots and lots of slapping. I loved it.

If there's a large flaw with the film, it's that you need to be familiar with Italian horror movies in order to be in on the joke. At one point, a door is being chopped open with an ax in order to free a girl caught by the killer. As the wood splinters near her face, everyone watching the movie who had seen The Beyond was completely expecting some eyeball trauma. The filmmakers knew we'd expect such a thing and cleverly substitute the eyeball damage with something else. Still, the other folks watching the film with no Italian horror knowledge were laughing up a storm at the silliness, so even this is no big deal.

Neon Maniacs (1986) directed by Joseph Mangine

Of the silly movies I brought with me for the second feature of the night, this one was picked. It's a forgotten near-gem from the height of the Freddy-Jason era. If having one slasher villain in your horror movie is cool, why not shove 13 slasher villains into the film and have it 13 times as cool? Not unlike a list of He-Man villains, the antagonists of Neon Maniacs are:

1. Ape
2. Archer
3. Axe
4. Decapitator
5. Doc
6. Hangman
7. Juice
8. Mohawk
9. Punk Biker
10. Samurai
11. Scavenger
12. Slasher
13. Soldier

They live in a maintenance garage in the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and come out at night to wreck havoc on sinning teens. It's an incredibly ambitious idea: unleashing a baker's dozen of slasher creeps into a major American city. It almost works.

I think the movie's main problem was that it couldn't manage quite this many villains successfully. Ape, Archer, Hangman, Juice, Mohawk, and Samurai get the lion's share of the screentime, with the other half of the group showing up to varying degrees here and there. Mostly, they're after the one survivor of their first attack. Thirteen monsters chasing one girl sounds like it has potential, but they fail to pull it off here. There's an anemic chase on a subway train, and Ape spies on her a little while she swims, but they fail to rally their entire crew appropriately to take care of this survivor.

Still, there's some cool stuff in the film. The main character's dream of raining blood while she's in her swimming pool is very visually striking. The sheer variety of maniacs guarantees there'll be at least one or two you'll really like (my favorite: Juice, just because the guy looked *so* happy when he got to drive the subway train). They all have their own personal methods of killing teens, so there's also a great variety of vintage '80s SFX deaths to enjoy.

The bizarre reaction of the main girl to her circumstances is also plenty amusing. The day after witnessing her entire group of friends being massacred, she cheerfully goes to school. Later she has time to flirt with a grocery delivery boy and attend a school dance. I'm almost tempted to say the entire movie is a metaphor for this girl's incredibly strong case of denial. Maybe the maniacs were all in her head and she was the killer?

October 16th

Tales from the Crypt 6.10: "In the Groove" (1994) directed by Vincent Spano
Like the Tales from the Darkside episode I just watched, this is more hatred for shock jocks. I suppose I remember in the 1980s/90s that, with the rise of Howard Stern in particular, America had a small moral panic about these guys polluting the airwaves. It was subject ripe for anthologies shows: "ha-hah, let's give these meanie assholes their just deserts!" Twenty/thirty years on, with an Internet filled with assholes available for the reading, its a little hard to remember what the big deal was.

One of my favorite character actors, Miguel Ferrer, plays the asshole this time, who somehow manages to host a phone sex show on the radio without getting reamed by the FCC. When he fires his phone-sexing partner, his sister and co-owner of the station hires him a replacement. Initially resenting the imposition, he discovers the new girl is great at her job and great at manipulating him. Needless to say, it ends badly for the asshole.

October 14th

The Walking Dead 5.06: "Consumed" (2014) directed by Seith Mann
The adventures of Daryl and Carol in Atlanta. Despite diving into a huge city post-apocalypse, this is a pretty low-key episode that focuses on strengthening Daryl and Carol's friendship as they look for clues in their search for Beth.

In season 1, Atlanta was swarming with zombies. Now people waltz down the empty streets without too much concern. According to Wikipedia, Atlanta has 447,841 people in it. Let's try to make some reasonable assumptions about this. Ignoring the people in the metro area, let's say that Atlanta was like New Orleans during Katrina and 80% of the population managed to evacuate. That leaves about 90,000 people left in town. Judging by what we've seen in this series, I think it's safe to say that at least 80% of those people died and became zombies. That makes for about 72,000 zombies wandering around. Atlanta is 132 square miles in size, so this gives it a zombie population density of 545 zombies per square mile. Yeah, I don't think this is a place you'd want to walk around in...


The Walking Dead 5.07: "Crossed" (2014) directed by Bill Gierhart
One of those calm-before-the-storm episodes, due to the mid-season finale coming up next. Rick and company prepare a plan to rescue Carol and Beth, while Glen and company have fun fishing.


The Walking Dead 5.08: "Coda" (2014) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson
I think the TV-invented character of Daryl has given the showrunners more latitude with Rick. In a prior episode, Noah steals his and Carol's weapons. Facing the death sentence of being weaponless in a zombie-infested city, Daryl irresponsibly stops Carol from shooting Noah. Why? Because Daryl is the fan-favorite who they are ensuring they keep good-and-pure. They want to keep someone that the audience will always root for so that they continue to tune in.

No longer the only lead character of this tale, Rick doesn't need to be likable or identifiable. They can send him down as dark of a path as they need. Which I like. In this one, he kills an escaping police officer in cold blood. To Rick, Beth and Carol are so important that he refuses to let this outsider screw up their rescue. It also shows some of Rick's disgust will the entire world's condition: the poor guy is sick of the constant crises and tragedies. "Shut up," he tiredly tells the officer right before shooting him. He doesn't have the energy anymore to deal with things in a more civilized manner. Interesting.

Also, Beth dies in a stupid manner. Bah.


Friday the 13th: The Series 1.01: "The Inheritance" (1987) directed by William Fruet
Since I'm in the middle of watching the movie series, I thought I'd check out the first episode of the TV show as well. Aired right between Part 6 and Part 7, I was hoping maybe there would be some reference to Crystal Lake in here somewhere. Nope. The only connection to the film series this show has outside of the title is the fact that Frank Mancuso Jr. worked on it.

This wasn't something I watched as a kid, so the only other episode of this show I've seen before was the Cronenberg-directed one. The premise of the show is excellent: two cousins inherit an antique store. Unluckily for them, their deceased uncle had been selling cursed items at the behest of Satan himself. It's now up to the cousins to track down all of these cursed items and locked them in vault below the store where they can't hurt anyone.

That's an idea absolutely ripe for story ideas. Sadly, for this first episode, they went with the tired "killer doll" cliche. It's not even a killer doll good at its job. It takes two tries to kill its owner's step-mother and fails to do more than scratch the face of its owner's babysitter. I'm guessing this is why the network chose to air this episode fourth rather than first... it's just not very strong and has to spend a ton of time setting things up.

October 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) directed by Chuck Russell

Robert Englund as Freddy
27 Feb 1987

Freddy vs. Jason IX: Destruction of the Dream Warriors
The Dream Warriors fail miserably in this film. Granted, it wasn't a bad thought on Nancy's part: figure out a special power you have when you dream and use that against Freddy. In such a desperate situation, it was worth a try, but the results speak for themselves:

• Kristen - acrobatics
  Mildly irritates Freddy when she knocks him down.
• Kincaid - slightly stronger than a normal human
  Mildly irritates Freddy when he bangs him with a dream pipe.
• Taryn - dresses as a punk and carries two tiny switchblades
  Mildly irritates Freddy when she stabs him in the armpit.
• Will - becomes The Wizard Master
  Mildly irritates Freddy when he shoots green magic at him.
• Joey - loud screaming
  Breaks Freddy's mirrors.

The only thing that has any lasting effect at all on Freddy is Neil sprinkling holy water on his bones in the real world. Even there, Neil almost dies due to Freddy's skeleton bonking him on the head with a shovel. Freddy is incredibly powerful: a god in the dream world who can extend himself into reality when needed. If it were me? I'd be eating Hypnosil™ the rest of my life and moving away from Springwood. 

I've always had mixed feelings on this entry in the series. Widely regarded as the best of the sequels, it also marks the beginnings of "Wise-Crackin' Fred," the slasher villain who feels the need to make a clever quip -- like he's James Bond -- before killing someone. To me, that can get irritating. I think it would work a little better if he were a little darker with his quips. I like "this is God" and "I'll split you in two" from Part 1 just fine. "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" and "what a rush!" just don't have the same utter malevolence behind them. Freddy isn't as scary if you're half-chuckling at what he's saying to people. This also puts the character on a destructive path, where each sequel gets a little sillier until we end up with "Stand-Up Comedian Fred" in Part 6.

Outside of that complaint, this is a great sequel. While somehow not as strong as she was in Part 1, it's nice to have Nancy back. Dreams also return after being mostly absent in Part 2, and they get a lot right with them. I like that they play with the geography of Nancy's old house: the hallways seem to shift and extend themselves, and nothing makes any logical sense. The bit where Kristen finds she can no longer run as Freddy chases her is great. This is all very true-to-dreams. Freddy also has more fun with his dream powers than ever before: he transforms into a snake and a marionette, multiplies himself in mirrors, and attacks Zsa Zsa Gabor on a TV show. He seems to be enjoying the hell out of himself during the entire movie, particularly when he's playing possum to allow the kids to think they've actually hurt him.

Favorite Character
Donald Thompson (John Saxon): broken by the events of Part 1, he's turned into an alcoholic security guard who rarely sees his daughter. He snaps back into his old self during his final moments when he attacks the animated, burned skeleton of Freddy, telling him "I've killed you once before, you son of a bitch."

Favorite Sin
Making out with a dream version of a nurse who is actually Freddy in disguise.

Favorite Kill
Phillip (Bradley Gregg), who has his arms and legs sliced open by Freddy. Freddy then uses Phillip's own tendons to marionette him off a building. I've always thought this is one of the most disturbing Freddy kills for shear gore factor alone.

Freddy's Mood
Cruelly playful.

October 12th

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) directed by Tom McLoughlin

C.J. Graham as Jason
1 Aug 1986

Freddy vs. Jason, Part VIII: Jason's Undead

This was one of the movies I chose to watch last Halloween, when I discovered that it's one of my favorites of the series. Which might be a little hard to explain... Like Part 5, this film was clearly gutted by MPAA demands. None of the gore survived the editing room and every kill ends abruptly in a quick cut. It's also bizarrely lacking in nudity... the only entry in the entire series to do so, if I remember correctly. Added to that, the goofiness that began with Part 5's redneck mother and son duo continues in this film. There's a ton of silliness in the movie -- from the dipshit cemetery caretaker to the business executive paintballers to the self-referential jokes ("I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly."). Despite all of this, the movie works.

I think the primary reason I like this entry is Jason himself. Jason is on quite the tear in this film. The body count is higher than ever before and Jason never seems to take a break from killing. In fact, the movie even inserts completely unnecessary characters (the picnicking couple) just to give Jason more people to kill. And, the man is mean. Mean, mean. He's crushing heads, bending people in half, twisting their heads off, and shoving their faces so hard into metal that we can see the outline of their screams. He's so mean, we almost believe that the camp's young children are in danger when he waltzes into their cabin.

Silly as the movie can be, Jason himself is always treated as an extreme threat to be taken seriously. That's the key. The second you're allowed to laugh at the villain -- see Freddy's Dead for a particularly egregious example -- you're making a comedy and not a horror movie. Even with the censored kills, Jason remains a fearsome force in this movie.

This helps heighten the tension in finale, which has my pick for the best ending of the Friday movies so far. Tommy's plan is to balance precariously in a canoe and get dangerously close to the resurrected monster, throw a chain connected to a rock around his neck, tighten the chain, and throw the rock overboard. Jason is a guy who has been shown to rip a man's arm off without even trying, just to get his machete. I'd rather try to wrestle a hungry bear than attempt such a feat.

And that final image, of Jason serenely floating under the surface of Crystal Lake and then opening his eye, is absolutely perfect. Had this been the "Final Friday," I think that might've been just fine. Jason's long-time nemesis Tommy defeats him in the most appropriate manner possible, yet we all know he's still underwater... waiting...

Favorite Character

Martin (Bob Larkin): the always-drunk cemetery caretaker who looks directly at us at one point and with not a small amount of accusation in his voice says "Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment."

Favorite Sin

Requesting super-human sexual endurance from your boyfriend in order to finish listening to a really lone Alice Cooper song.

Favorite Kill

Nikki (Darcy DeMoss), who has her head shoved into the wall of an RV so hard it deforms the metal exterior into the shape of her screaming face.

Jason's Mood

Super-grumpy after a long nap.

The Walking Dead 5.05: "Self Help" (2014) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson

An episode that flashes back to Abraham's backstory as his group slowly makes their way towards D.C. I like Abraham, so I enjoyed seeing more of where he came from before meeting up with Eugene. Abraham is a man who requires a mission in life. When the apocalypse hit, his mission -- like any good father -- was the protect his family. Unfortunately for him, the vision of him beating a -- zombie? bad human? -- to death with a soup can in a grocery store frightened his wife so much that she fled with the kids towards their eventual deaths. Eugene enters his life with his lie of a mission -- to stop the zombie plague altogether -- which stops Abraham from killing himself and gives him something to focus on, I'll be curious to see where the show goes with him now, now that he knows Eugene was lying and there is nothing to be done. In the comics, everything turns out OK, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything for the show.

October 9th

Tales from the Crypt 6.09: "Staired in Horror" (1994) directed by Stephen Hopkins
A fun piece about testing the limits of a curse. In this case, a cheating woman is cursed to be immortal, but ancient-looking on the first floor of her house and younger-looking and attractive on the second. For any men in the house, the reverse is true. When a good-looking convict decides to hide in her house, she discovers the middle of the staircase is the perfect place for the both of them. This being TftC, neither of them manage to stay in this perfect spot for very long before things go as wrong as possible.

October 8th

The Walking Dead 5.03: "Four Walls and a Roof" (2014) directed by Jeffrey F. January
Awesome. I was worried they were going to stretch out the cannibal story for the entire season -- or maybe the entire half-season -- and milk it dry. I'm glad they stuck to the theme of this story from the comics: even in such a brutal world, people can go way too far. Those who do should be taken out without hesitation for the good of the rest of the living. But, executing other humans will have a cost, no matter how awful they were. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the group reacts to Rick's savage murder of the cannibals. Also a nice touch that Rick kept his promise to the lead cannibal from episode 1.


The Walking Dead 5.04: "Slabtown" (2014) directed by Michael E. Satrazemis
Hey, Beth is back. She's now trapped in a hospital in Atlanta run by a group of police officers. Kind of a nice change of pace, actually. Though it does connect to the rest of the season thematically. Like the cannibals, this hospital group is doing whatever they think is necessary to survive, even if some of those things are horrible. Like Abraham, they are confident the world will be repaired in the future and they will be there to enjoy it. It takes all kinds at the end of the world...

It was interesting to see the Atlanta skyline after a few years of apocalypse. I can't help but wonder, though, where the power for the hospital is coming from. I suppose it's from a generator running the same infinite-life gasoline all of the cars seem to have in them. Like loud explosions in space, I'll ignore it.

October 7th

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) directed by Danny Steinmann

Tom Morga as Pseudo-Jason
22 Mar 1985

Freddy vs. Jason, Part VI: Jason's Still Dead
So Part  IV made a ton of money and clearly the fans want more. But, darn, it was called "The Final Chapter" and Jason is dead. What to do? Apparently, rather than take a page from their own book (Jason drowned as kid... but, no he didn't), the filmmakers figured they'd have to stick to their guns and go somewhere else with the series. I guess that's admirable: to sleep in the bed they made and try out something new. It just doesn't work, though.

My main issue with the movie isn't even Pseudo-Jason; it's the censorship. After the gore-fest that was Part IV, this film feels incredibly tame. I'm relatively confident that V could be shown on an American TV network with only the nudity censored and no one would be shocked. Every single kill cuts away immediately. Some even happen off screen and are simply implied. For a slasher fan, this is pure frustration. I know there's some awesome footage sitting in a can somewhere that the MPAA forced out of the movie in exchange for its R rating.

As for Pseudo-Jason... this is not a horrible idea. Jason is just a big, unstoppable dude in a hockey mask without too much personality. The problem with making him a regular guy who's upset about his son's death, however, is that it humanizes Jason far too much. Instead of a deformed man who lived alone in the woods for decades, surviving however he could -- perhaps more beast than man -- we've got a grieving parent who has snapped. I'm just not going to be as scared of crazy Roy as I am of a mutant man-mountain with a machete.

The implied path for Part VI shown at the end of this one, where Tommy assumes the mantle of Jason, is even lamer. Now the kid who killed Jason goes nuts and.... starts killing people just like Jason? It doesn't make any sense. How about this? Pseudo-Jason severely disfigures Tommy in an attack -- like eyeball hanging out, half his face messed up -- before Tommy throws him out of the hayloft. Looking into the mirror, Tommy can now only see Jason staring back. Now he truly snaps and starts killing people, but in a slightly different way than Jason used to. Using his karate skills and lean body, he's a quicker, sharper Jason. Think Bruce Lee in a hockey mask. There, there's "a new beginning."

Favorite Character
Demon (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.): the Jheri-curled, too-cool goofball who apparently lives in the back of his piled-high-with-trash van... yet is so smooth that he still has a girlfriend.

Favorite Sin
Demon's entire life, as represented by a van filled with junk food, pot, beer, and a friendly woman.

Favorite Kill
Eddie (John Robert Dixon), whose head is crushed when Roy wraps a leather garrote around both his face and a tree and then twists it so tightly the strap breaks. One of the most memorable kills in the entire series, I've always thought.

Jason's Mood
Dead.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) directed by Jack Sholder

Robert Englund as Freddy
1 Nov 1985

Freddy vs. Jason, Part VII: There's Something Inside of Me
How do you follow up Part 1, one of the most successful horror movies of all time? Apparently, you take the nightmares mentioned in the title almost all the way out and have the main villain possess a high schooler in a manner that is sort of a hybrid of The Exorcist and a werewolf movie. Huh?

What is Freddy's plan, anyway? He appears to want to possess Jessie's body like a ghost and walk around in the real world. Why? Is he tired of having limitless power in the dreamworld, with the added ability to cause real deaths there? Did he just want to check out a high school pool party? And, is attempting to frame Jessie for murdering his coach and best friend wise? How will Freddy have any fun if the body he controls is locked in prison? The subtitle of the movie is "Freddy's Revenge," but that was already what he was up to in the previous movie, anyway. The guy has no apparent motivation here.

I used to be a fan of this sequel, arguing with the naysayers that there's a lot of cool stuff in the film and at least Freddy's isn't too jokey yet. I take it back. This is definitely the second-worst of the series, only surpassed by the very disappointing 6. The main character whimpers like a baby most of the movie -- admittedly, Mark Patton sells this effectively -- and needs his girlfriend to defeat the villain via smooching. Freddy's makeup looks odd; I hate the gigantic cro-magnon brow they gave him. Those dogs with baby heads just don't work. Parakeet attacks. Worst of all: there's almost no dreaming. The very thing that made the first movie special is nearly absent in this one. What were they thinking?

There are bits that I love. The dream at beginning is very nice. The idea of being trapped in a school bus balanced precariously over a giant pit with Freddy coming after you is very effective. Christopher Young's score -- no surprise here -- is excellent. The shot of Freddy (above) at the pool party declaring "you are all my children now" is one of the best of the series. Freddy emerging from Jessie in Ron's bedroom -- with Freddy's eyeball looking out of Jessie's mouth -- is very cool. I though the theme of heat -- from presumably Freddy's death, or his boiler room -- was a neat touch to illustrate the weirdness going on in the house.

Still, I'm glad they went back to what worked in the original for Part 3.

Favorite Character
Ron Grady (Robert Rusler): A total bro, ever-forgiving of his new friend's increasing grumpiness and weirdness.

Favorite Sin
The entirety of Don's Place, Coach Schneider's favorite hangout.

Favorite Kill
Coach Schneider (Marshall Bell), who has one of the weirdest deaths in slasher history when Freddy/Jessie ties him up in a locker room shower, strips him nude, whips his ass with a towel, and then slices up his back.

Freddy's Mood
A man on a mission.

October 4th

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) directed by Joseph Zito

Ted White as Jason
13 Apr 1984

Freddy vs. Jason, Part IV: Jason's Dead
Jason feels quite a bit different in this movie compared to the prior two. He's far, far stronger than he's ever been before. Previously, he was clearly just a big human in a mask who could be fought with and sometimes knocked out. In this one, he is supernaturally unstoppable. He's able to -- with just one hand -- crush a guy's skull. He bursts through wooden doors like they were made of wet paper. He picks up and throws a man, who must weigh around 200 pounds, a dozen feet through a window. He throws an ax through a wooden door to kill a girl. Frankly, I'm starting to think he really did die at the end of 3 and this is the first zombie Jason movie.

Not that I mind. This is an excellent Jason movie... maybe even my favorite (I need to watch 6 and 7 again). It boils everything down to pure audience titillation, which, you have to admit, is why we're watching these things in the first place. There's more nudity than ever before. Fully half of the plot is simply teenagers trying to get laid. There's skinny-dipping, and shower sex, and pot-smoking, and beer bongs, and goofy dancing. Hell, they even show an old stag film at one point.

The violence is brutal. Jason isn't merely walking around dispatching people like in 3; he's angry as hell and wants to make sure the kids know this. One of the kids gets crucified (!) in a doorway. Later, when Jason needs to use that door, he rips the kid off the nails (as Zito gives us a close-up of the hand tearing away). When Jason kills the hiker Rob, he does not merely slit the guy's throat. Nope, he repeatedly gouges him with a random tool as Rob screams and screams. Like I said: brutal. Plus, the gore still holds up today: Jason's split hand, the machete through his head, and the head-crushing in the shower all work as well now as they did then. You can certainly tell Tom Savini came back to the series.

If this was going to really be the final Jason movie, it was a helluva way to go.

Favorite Character
Axel (Bruce Mahler): the impossibly horny, jerk of a hospital morgue attendant who gets cock-blocked by Jason's dead arm.

Favorite Sin
Watching an aerobics show in a morgue next to Jason's body without any intention of actually doing aerobics.

Favorite Kill
Rob (Erich Anderson), whose half-disturbing, half-hilarious screams of "You're killing me! You're killing me!" when Jason begins tearing him up with a random tool from a toolbox makes for a uniquely memorable kill.

Jason's Mood
Pissed off.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) directed by Wes Craven

Robert Englund as Freddy
9 Nov 1984

Freddy vs. Jason, Part V: Revenge of the Dream Demon
Horror movie gold. A Nightmare on Elm Street sits up there with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Exorcist, and The Thing as examples of horror at its very best. As a character, Freddy, I suspect, will last the ages, standing aside Dracula and Frankenstein. He is certainly my favorite monster by a long shot. Some thoughts on this first film during this latest re-watch:

Freddy's characterization in this one is far, far scarier than in any of the other films. He is completely batshit insane here. A horribly disfigured guy cutting off his own fingers ("watch this!") and then cackling about it is absolutely terrifying. That this same guy is in control of your dreams... good God. I wish this Freddy had stuck around or returned at some point (though New Nightmare Freddy is fairly close).

I think the dreams in this film are the most dreamlike of the series. It's the little things. I like the lamb in Tina's first dream ("like lambs to the slaughter"). I like how Freddy is not bound by physics or rationality: he'll pop up where ever is scary, stretch his arms out to encompass a whole street, and sometimes appear in two places at once. I like that after seeing news footage of Tina in a bodybag, that image invades Nancy's dreams repeatedly (a very normal thing to happen after a tragedy). I like how the kid in English class switches from Julius Caesar to an utterly appropriate Hamlet quote ("O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have bad dreams.") when Nancy nods off. The imagery of the bathtub scene is incredibly nightmareish to me (the worst dream I ever had was losing hold of my daughter in the middle of lake and watching her fall down, down, down into the darkness below). All credit goes to Wes Craven for his understanding of the human mind, I would say.

Conspiracy theory: is the entire movie Nancy's dream? She seems to think so. Towards the end, when Freddy emerges from her mother's bed, she says to him:

It's too late, Krueger. I know the secret now. This is just a dream. You're not alive. This whole thing is just a dream. I want my mother and friends again.

You could write this off as wishful thinking; a response to the trauma of four people dying that she cares about. But, there seems to be little hints here and there that she's actually correct. The biggest hint, obviously, is that she walks directly from this nighttime scene into a daytime scene in another location where her mother and friends really are still alive. That kind of random scene changing is very dreamlike. In fact, the editing of the movie is similarly dreamlike. Craven often uses soft fade-to-blacks to quickly transition to new scenes. I'm guessing this was intentionally mimicking the feeling of nodding off; of our eyes slowly closing, then snapping open again.

Earlier in the movie, though, we see a few other things. When Rod and Tina settle into bed shortly before Tina's murder, they pull up a inner blanket that is red- and green-striped. That same night, supposedly in the real world, we see Freddy stretch out the wall above Nancy's bed. When Nancy almost drowns in the bathtub, we never see her wake up. She simply swims back to the surface and hangs onto the edge. Shortly before Freddy gets him, Glen naps in a red- and green-striped chair in Nancy's room. Freddy seems to easily influence the "real" world. I suspect that the entire film is the slow mental torture of the daughter of the woman who kept Freddy's glove after burning him alive. Naturally, the sequels ignore all of this and take the film too literally, but, it's interesting to think about if this were a stand-alone movie.

Favorite Character
Nancy (Heather Langenkamp): the person we would all hope to be in a similar situation. Nancy quickly figures out the bizarre fact that a man is killing her friends in their dreams, devises several experiments to test the limits of this man's power, and then uses that info to execute a plan of attack. There's a reason why Nancy is one of the all-time great final girls in horror.

Favorite Sin
Using sex as a way to forget your nightmares.

Favorite Kill
Tina (Amanda Wyss), who is first tormented by Freddy in a nightmare, and then so viciously attacked that she's dragged up onto the ceiling. Still one of the most intense kills in all of slasher history.

Freddy's Mood
Maliciously insane.

October 3rd

Halloweentown High (2004) directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé

Well, there goes my Sophie theory. The poor gal has been shoved almost completely aside in this one, relegated to just a couple of scenes where she doesn't do anything important. I guess, technically, she's not in high school yet where this one is set, so it would be hard to use her more. Still, she should be about the same age that her older sister was in Part 1, meaning her mom and grandma, one would think, would be fighting over whether she should start training as well. Poor Sophie.

One thing that hasn't changed since the last two movies: Marnie is still a massive screw-up. In this one, she accidentally bets her entire family's magic powers that humans will be able to live with Halloweentown monsters without freaking out. What? For some reason, since opening the portal between the two worlds permanently in Part 2, she has a bee in her bonnet about getting both worlds to live together. Why? Last time in the distant past, as they told us in Part 1, humans were such meanies that they drove the monsters to make their own dimension -- Halloweentown -- to escape.

This is just the irrational X-Men thing again. Both Professor X and the Cromwells are so delusional in their hippy "let's all hold hands and dance together" crap that they want a collection of super-powered entities to invade the human world. Humans should be freaking out about this. The Halloweentown witches have, what appears to be, unlimited power to alter reality. How are these folks not going to take over the human world?

Even if they were -- very, very improbably -- all nice, they're still super-powered. Construction businesses? Gone. The witches have demonstrated they can build structures with a wave of the hand. Anesthesiologists: out of job. The witches can knock people out with magic. Airline travel? Gone: the witches can fly people on brooms. Could we humans do anything about this? Nope, the witches have a time travel spell and can prevent anything we do against them before it even happens. This is terrifying.

Sorry, as a human, I'm firmly on the side of "bad guy" Dalloway in this film who wants to close the portal forever. I'd like my daughters to grow up in a world with more career options than "Igor" or "Witch's Familiar."

October 2nd

Tales from the Crypt 6.08: "The Assassin" (1994) directed by Martin von Haselberg
Holy crap, I had no idea! William Sadler returns as the Grim Reaper! I am a huge fan of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and it was a pleasant surprise to see Sadler reprising his character in the wrap-around segments. Pairing his Reaper with the Crypt Keeper is brilliant. Man, 17-year-old me would've been geeked as hell to catch this on TV in 1994.

As for the episode itself, it's an amusing little piece. It's more enjoyable to me due to the actors in it. We've got Shelley Hack, the clueless wife from The Stepfather, in the lead role. Chelsea Field, who was Teela in the incredibly cheezy Masters of the Universe, and Marshall R. Teague from Road House, and a young Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad, and, of course, Corey Feldmen himself all join in the fun. The twist at the end of the episode is fairly easy to see coming, though weirdly timely. Let's just say that Shelley Hack's character is improbably pretty and petite and also quite "stunning and brave."

October 1st

The Walking Dead 5.02: "Strangers" (2014) directed by David Boyd
Well, damn, I have to eat my words: the TV show did go that far. This one ends with poor Bob having his leg eaten by the few cannibals that remained from Terminus in a situation not unlike what happened to Dale in the comics. I suspect, like Dale, Bob got bit by the zombies in the food shelter basement earlier and the cannibals will become infected. Color me impressed. I'm tempted to dig into Google and see what the normal people thought of this when it originally aired. Now, if they eventually kill off the uber-popular Daryl, the showrunners will have my complete respect. Still, this show is loads better than it was during the farm / prison era.

And yet another The Wire alumnus joins the cast. I ain't complaining: that show was packed with fantastic actors. Newbie Seth Gilliam plays a suspicious priest, joining Chad L. Coleman as Tyreese and Lawrence Gilliard Jr. as poor Bob. My next Wire request: I want to see a hard-ass, grumpy John Doman in the zombieland.

September 30th

The Walking Dead 5.01: "No Sanctuary" (2014) directed by Greg Nicotero
I was pretty geeked about the show by the end of season 4, feeling that it had gotten to a great place of tension and drama. That mostly continues with the start of season 5, which finds the gang trapped in a train car in Terminus, the cannibal city. Though ready to fight their captors as soon as the doors open, they are disabled by a teargas canister and taken to a slaughter room instead. There, a man systematically cracks each person on the back of the head while another slits their throat over a trough. It's brutal and probably purposefully reminiscent of ISIS videos. With the help of a Rambo-ish version of Carol, our main characters manage to escape and leave Terminus burning.

Though is this is all very exciting, I'm not sure I like how they're using the cannibals as compared to the comic series. In the comics, they were just a small group of nuts who would secretly kidnap people for food. They even grab and eat a part of Dale! I actually can't see the TV series going that far. Here, they're more of the stereotypical "small town with the dark secret" thing in the mold of Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I dunno. Maybe I'm just pissed that the group talked Rick out of going back to town to finish off the rest of the cannibals, like they so effectively -- and correctly -- did in the comic.

September 27th

Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001) directed by Mary Lambert

I'm still sticking with my theory that I came up with after watching the first one: little Sophie is the true power in the family. While Marnie is being easily seduced by Kalabar's son -- who uses the opportunity to steal her grandma's spellbook and almost end normal human existence as we know it -- Sophie is immediately aware that something is not right. Later, she easily flies herself and her brother on a broom without any prior training. Sophie is also the one to figure out that her mom's crush is actually a golem made up of frogs. Meanwhile, her grandma continues to fawn over her screw-up older sister -- the so-called future leader of the Cromwell witches -- who loses and fails to memorize a time travel spell and is only required to figure out a ridiculously easy one-word spell to reverse the damage her boyfriend has done to both worlds.

My girls enjoyed the show well enough. They got a little embarrassed during the flirty bits with Kalabar's son and his fake frog-dad, but nothing was remotely scary for them this time out. It's a completely harmless little movie. My main complaint would be we didn't spend any time at all in the non-cursed version of Halloweentown, which is, you know, the name of the series and the big, fun draw to these things.

Friday the 13th Part III (1982) directed by Steve Miner

Richard Brooker as Jason
13 Aug 1982

Freddy vs. Jason, Part III: New Jersey Barnyard Massacre
For me, Friday the 13th 3 to 8 are the meat of the series. This is where Jason is the Jason as we know and love him: relentless, nearly indestructible, and wearing a hockey mask. If I'm going to randomly pop in a Jason movie to relax one fall night, it's gonna be one of these (OK: not typically 8).

Though, Jason seems to be in a weird mood in this one. Maybe it's because he's run out of camp counselors to take revenge on? He doesn't exactly seem to know what to do with himself. He tries out killing middle-aged grocery store owners at the beginning of the movie, but that doesn't seem to be a path he's interested in pursuing further. Luckily, some horny young people arrive at a nearby farm and he's allowed to go back to his killing comfort zone.

Still, his approach is very business-like in this movie. He marches around, calmly and quickly killing everyone in his path. There's little malice in what he's doing. Jason's simply performing the job he was made to do, as if he were a factory worker tightening bolts. A poke with a hayfork here, a slash with a machete there...

We even get a glimpse at his process at one point. Near the end of the movie when he's chasing Chris and Rick, the two are split up. When Chris opens up the door of the house to look for Rick, the camera pans right and we see Jason has caught him. But, Rick isn't dead and Jason isn't in the process of killing him; instead, Jason has a hand clasped over Rick's mouth to prevent him from making any noise. Clearly, he doesn't want Rick's screams to alert Chris. He hasn't had time to get to the business of killing Rick and wants to ensure he can later do the same to Chris. This nicely demonstrates Jason's low time preference. He's not a creature of pure id, wandering the woods and murdering whenever the urge strikes him. No, he's an intelligent planner with a goal. That actually makes the guy even scarier.

On a different subject, I love the incredibly cheezy 3-D effects in this film. Even though I watched it in 2-D, the "wooo, this is 3-D" shots are awesome. People are constantly shoving things directly at the camera: sticks, yo-yos, snakes, weapons, eyeballs... Even without the 3-D effect, it's still a ton of fun.

Favorite Character
Shelly (Larry Zerner): the chubby, socially awkward, horrible-with-girls, practical-joking dork. Or, the representation of all of us horror geeks in the Jason universe. That he is the one who gives Jason his iconic mask: icing on the nerd cake.

Favorite Sin
Eating and drinking bits of food from your own grocery store and putting the rest back on the shelf.

Favorite Kill
Rick (Paul Kratka) getting his head squeezed between Jason's hands until his eyeball pops out in 3-D!

Jason's Mood
Taking care of business.

September 24th

Friday the 13 Part 2 (1981) directed by Steve Miner

Warrington Gillette as Jason
Steve Dash as Masked Jason
1 May 1981

Freddy vs. Jason, Part II: Revenge for Mommy
More or less, the same movie as Part 1. Someone who's face we're not allowed to see stalks and kills a bunch of horny camp counselors around Crystal Lake. Crazy Ralph tells people they're doomed. There's a downpour right before the climax. One or some of the counselors go into town to a restaurant, only to return to camp to be killed. A woman uses a machete to defeat the killer, but -- surprise, surprise -- Jason jumps out of nowhere to grab her. The second time around, it's all a little duller.

Not that I hated the movie. I found myself really enjoying backwoods Jason. Normally, I'm in the "Zombie Jason is Best Jason" camp, but living Jason grew on me. As a kid, had I been allowed to watch these, I think I might have found The Town That Dreaded Sundown rip-off Jason to be the scariest. I remember stories of crazy hermits who lived in shacks in the woods just like Jason's shack in this one (and there's a lotta woods here in Michigan). Nothing would be scarier than getting lost in those woods and accidentally stumbling upon a shack and its occupant. More scary even, if he's wearing a bag on his head with just one eye hole. "The man who's gone wild" is a classic trope and great for use in a horror movie.

We also have Part 2 to thank for several slasher cliches. Killing off the main character from the previous movie at the start of the sequel is something that -- correct me if I'm wrong -- started here. There's also the first instance of nighttime skinny dipping, to be repeated and then even parodied within the series. My favorite of the cliches, the vast variety of killing implements used by the killer, begins with this film as well. Joining Part 1's rather standard machete and knife tool set is a pitch fork, a wire garrote, a rope snare, and a toy spear used as you would a real spear.

Now that they've got all of the bits and pieces they need -- an adult Jason, creative kills, unnecessary nudity -- the series can enter its golden age. Still, there's just one more iconic bit missing...

Favorite Character
Ted (Stuart Charno): the lanky, red-headed prankster who escapes death simply by getting utterly wasted at the bar in town

Favorite Sin
Primitive handheld sports video game innuendo

Favorite Kill
Mark (Tom McBride) getting a machete buried in his face and then pushed down an enormously long flight of stairs in his wheelchair.

Jason's Mood
"Git off ma land!"

Tales from the Darkside: "The Devil's Advocate" (1985) directed by Michael Gornick
Jerry Stiller plays an angry shock-jock in the Dr. Laura mold who does nothing but berate people on his talk show. I was excited when I saw this episode was written by George himself, but I soon found myself disappointed. While Stiller's performance is excellent and he was the perfect casting choice for this part, the story is a pretty standard "asshole gets his just desserts" tale. Through the course of the episode, the shock-jock demonstrates how much of a jerk he is while slowly discovering that he has died and is in Hell, doomed to listen to whiny callers for eternity. It's far too predictable and the audience is going to be way ahead of the main character for most of the story.