A Brief History of Cinema Issue #1: Friday the 13th series
I'm switching it up for this special Friday and bringing you something I won't do too often: a look at an entire film series from beginning to end in brief (hence the title). I won't likely be doing another until the new Godzilla film comes out in May 2014, but until then, here is the Friday the 13th series, in its entirety as it currently stands.
I'm hoping this day will be a lucky one rather than the alternative; I'm going to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug today, and fingers crossed that it will be as epic as I hope. But enough about Middle Earth: Happy Friday the 13th, stay safe out there!
A Brief History of
Cinema:
Friday the 13th series
It all began in 1980 with Friday the 13th, a title that
would be continually utilized despite the plots not being concerned with the
actual day of Friday the 13th. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham, this
film was a product of cashing in on the success of 1978’s Halloween—another film that spawned a string of sequels featuring a
killer who continues to come back from the dead. Friday the 13th was a sleeper hit when it first came
out, and is now viewed as one of the scariest slasher films of all time, ranking number
31 on Bravo’s Top 100 Scary Movie Moments. Cunningham never returned as
director, but did produce a few of the later entries in the series.
Ironically, the original is the one entry
in the series that doesn’t feature Jason as the killer. Spoilers ahead for
those who haven’t seen it, but at the film’s climax, it is revealed that
Jason’s mother is the killer. She is trying to keep the camp from reopening by
killing everyone, and is getting revenge for her son’s death. Jason drowned at
Camp Crystal Lake because some camp counsellors were too busy having sex to notice that he couldn't swim. At the end of
the film, the last survivor decapitates Mrs. Voorhees with what would become
Jason’s signature weapon: a machete.
Friday the 13th Part 2 reveals that Jason is indeed
alive, now fully grown and really disfigured. He returns to Camp Crystal Lake
to protect it from intruders. Another group of teenagers shows up to start a
new camp, but they are all executed one by one. At the end, the lone survivor
discovers a rundown shack in the woods, with the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees on a
shrine. The final girl battles Jason and impales a machete through his shoulder, leaving
him for dead. It's not a bad sequel, especially in comparison to some that were to
come, and is closer to what the series eventually became most well known for.
In Part III, Jason pulls out that machete and leaves the shack,
wandering to a local homestead where he hides in a barn and kills anyone who
comes in. Again, he is seemingly killed at the end, this time by an axe to the
head. This was the first film where Jason put on the hockey mask, which he
stole from one of his victims. The film was also originally presented in 3D,
and features some of the cheesiest 3D gimmicks I have ever seen. At one point,
a guy plays with a yo-yo and the camera is below him pointing up, with the yo-yo going right at the screen.
The biggest lie of the series
came in part four, wrongfully titled Friday
the 13th: the Final Chapter. Jason targets teens renting a house
on Crystal Lake, slaughtering all except for two. One of them is Tommy Jarvis,
played by 80's child actor favourite Corey Feldman. Tommy kills Jason at the end,
but if we’ve learnt anything so far, it’s that a good killer can’t stay down
for long.
Only a year later, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
came out. This time it follows Feldman’s character Tommy—now an adult and
traumatized by his encounter with Crystal Lake’s killer—who is in a mental
institution and always fearing that Jason will return. Never fear, Jason isn’t
gone long. This sequel was where the formula of the story started to seriously
dwindle, as we get a guy who takes on the persona of Jason, and then after he
is killed, his son who was killed by a patient at the institution does the
same.
Next up is Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Having just got
out of another institution, Tommy visits Jason’s grave, where he gets
resurrected Frankenstein-style by a bolt of lightning. Jason heads back to
Crystal Lake and kills the new summer camp workers there. Eventually Jason gets
sunk to the bottom of the lake by Tommy, who chains him to a boulder. In addition to the very beginning and very ending being great, this sequel has some of the best kills and moments throughout.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the first to
have actor Kane Hodder portray Jason, who would play the killer another three
times. A telekinetic woman accidentally brings Jason back to life, and lo and
behold, he goes on another killing spree. At this point, the series was starting to get
tired, and they needed something new to keep people watching, but the new direction that followed was a flawed endeavor.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan may be
the most disappointing of all the sequels. Jason doesn’t even get to Manhattan
until the end. Most of the film takes place on a boat, which was due to budget restrictions.
New York had to be substituted by Vancouver during shooting, as well. All I can say is despite a couple fun moments this one really dropped
the ball.
The ninth entry, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday,
doesn’t even explain Jason’s latest resurrection. He gets killed by the FBI in
the first act, and the rest of the film entails Jason surviving by passing on
his heart to others. Finally, Jason is dragged to hell at the end. Freddy
Krueger's glove made a cameo in this one, indicating a Freddy vs. Jason movie was coming in the future, but it wouldn't end up being the next movie to feature Jason.
The tenth sequel, titled Jason X, takes the only logical next step
in a franchise this exhausted: it goes to space. Jason is cryogenically frozen
and gets on a space ship. This plot was designed not to confuse audiences with
continuity, as the Freddy vs. Jason
film was in development hell at the time—what an appropriate term for it. The plot wasn’t
supposed to confuse us? This sequel is so ridiculous and over the top, it’s
entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons.
In Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy Krueger resurrects Jason in order to bring
terror to a community so their fear will be strong enough for him to invade
their dreams—it’s kind of stupid, I know, but it's a good enough excuse to get the characters together. Who wins isn’t certain, and overall this made
for an even more ridiculous versus film than Alien vs. Predator, though it's about as entertaining as horror versus movies get.
As for the 2009 remake of the
original, I tried to avoid all the pointless horror remakes
from producer Michael Bay (Texas Chainsaw
Massacre and Amityville Horror to
name a couple) after seeing the Nightmare
on Elm Street remake, which I thought was extremely unnecessary and
downright terrible. But, I did eventually get around to seeing it, and when teens started getting killed by traps Jason had set for them, I started to check out. It's a dull, generic remake that is genuinely the worst movie from the entire series, and it should not have been made.
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