Depending on where you live, Friday the 13th is either over or nearly over! And, if you’re reading this, you survived!!!!!
Obviously, you listened to Crazy Ralph and you did not have sex, smoke weed, skinny dip, go out at night, take a boat trip to Manhattan, go into space, go to sleep, go out for firewood, ask any strange people if they needed help, go looking for your friends, strip down to your underwear so you could go run around in the rain, or have any fun whatsoever!
In other words, today was a boring day for you! But you survived!
In honor of your survival, here’s the end theme from Friday the 13th. This was composed by Harry Manfredini and, believe it or not, it’s actually a rather beautiful piece of music. So, celebrate your survival by listening.
And be prepared to make up for lost time on Saturday the 14th! Be bad…be very bad….
As proof that any movie — regardless of genre, storyline, or budget — has room for a dance number, check out this dance scene that I love from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter!
Here’s hoping that everyone’s having a wonderful Crazy Ralph Day!
Today is Friday the 13th, which is basically an unofficial holiday. But you know what? Instead of celebrating Jason Voorhees today, maybe we should celebrate Crazy Ralph. For countless years, Crazy Old Ralph warned everyone, “You’re doomed!” He told them that Camp Crystal Lake had a death curse. He warned them that Jason was still out there…
And nobody listened to Ralph. People accused Ralph of being drunk. (Of course, he was.) They called him crazy. (Of course, he was.) The police harassed him. The local truckers laughed at him. The waitresses in the diner all said, “Oh, that’s just old Ralph being crazy and drunk!” The camp counselors ignored him.
But you know what?
Crazy Old Ralph was right!
Sadly, Ralph wasn’t that smart or maybe he was just too drunk and/or crazy to take his own advice because, for some reason, he always seemed to be hanging out around Camp Crystal Lake. Sure, maybe he was just coming by to remind everyone that they were doomed and, if that’s the case, that was nice of him to do.
But fear not! The actor who played Ralph survived. Walt Gorney was mostly a stage actor. He appeared in a handful of films and he typically played characters with names like “Homeless guy” and “Drunk man.” According to the book Crystal Lake Memories, Gorney was a nice man and a dedicated actor who insisted on “staying in character” whenever he played Crazy Old Ralph.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Happy Thursday the 12th! Guess what tomorrow is? That’s right, it’s Friday the 13th, my favorite day of the year!
These 4 Shots From 4 Films will help you get into the spirit!
4 Shots From 4 Films
Friday the 13th (1980, directed by Sean S. Cunningham)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981, dir by Steve Miner)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985, dir by Danny Steinmann)
Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood (1988, dir by John Carl Buechler)
Back in 2012, I reviewed every single film in the Friday the 13th film franchise! It was a lot of fun!
Over the previous two weeks, I reviewed all 11 films in the Friday the 13th franchise. I reviewed the final film, appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th. Now that I’ve sat through all 11 of these films, I’d like to provide just ten thoughts in conclusion:
1) Have you seen Cabin In The Woods yet? While that brilliant film is obviously influenced by a lot of films, the Friday the 13th influence was especially obvious, right down to the crazy old man trying to let everyone know that they were doomed.
2) As for the Friday the 13th franchise itself, what is left to be said? I think my interest in these films comes from the fact that even though their critically reviled and utterly dismissed by many, they’ve managed to survive and they’re still being watched by viewers (like me) who weren’t even born and/or weren’t old enough to see the majority of them when they were first released in theaters. Like it or not — and again, this is a point that should be obvious to anyone who truly appreciated Cabin In The Woods — these films appeal to something primal in human nature.
3) The most frequent complaint made against the Friday the 13th franchise is that the films are anti-female. I don’t agree. I think that, unfortunately, a lot of people who watch these films are anti-female but I don’t think that the same can be said of the films themselves. Quite frankly, if I was ever cast in Friday the 13th, I would rather play a victim than a survivor because the victims are the ones that are remembered afterwards.
4) Instead of seeing the Friday the 13th films as some sort of attempt to punish women, I see them as simply being updated bits of American folklore. Those famous urban legends — the escaped mental patient with the hook hand, the vanishing hitchhiker — are about as close as America can get to having its own mythology and the Friday the 13th franchise (and similar horror films) are a reflection of that mythology.
5) Much like the scary story told at slumber party or around a campfire (not that I’ve been near a campfire though I have been to a few thousand slumber parties), Friday the 13th is meant to be a communal experience. It’s a chance to admit that we’re all scared of the dark. We scream and jump because, ultimately, it’s fun to do that in the safety of a theater or your own home.
6) Friday the 13th, as a franchise, was at its best when it kept things simple. As you may have noticed from my reviews, I struggled more with the gimmicky later films in the series than I did with the originals.
7) The first two Friday the 13th scenes are both excellent examples of how to use a low budget and a largely unknown cast to your best advantage. There is a lesson there for all aspiring filmmakers.
8) Having now rewatched the 11 films in the franchise, I have to say that I think that Part 4 is the best, followed by Part 2. Part 3 remains the worst while Jason Takes Manhattan is perhaps the most pointless. Ted White was the best Jason but Kane Hodder is a close second.
9) When I was reviewing these films, Peter M. Bracke’s book Crystal Lake Memoriesproved to be an invaluable resource. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in film, horror, or both.
10) Finally, did you all enjoy me devoting two weeks to reviewing one film franchise or were you thinking to yourself, “Oh my God, Lisa, give it a rest already!” I enjoyed writing them but, to be honest, I’m really in the mood for a romantic comedy now.
Well, that does it for Friday the 13th. Again, I hope everyone enjoyed revisiting this franchise with me and I hope that everyone will enjoy revisiting the James Bond films with me in October. As always, stay supple!
Last night, Jeff and I watched the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th.
Why Was I Watching It?
For the past two weeks, I’ve been reviewing the 12 films that make up the Friday the 13th franchise. This is the last installment so far and, appropriately enough, I’m reviewing it on Friday the 13th. (No, that’s not just a coincidence.)
What’s It About?
It’s a reboot! That’s right — forget about every other Friday the 13th film because, apparently, they never happened. Instead of trying to figure out some new gimmick to try to get audiences to watch Jason Voorhees kill yet more teenagers, producer Michael Bay and director Marcus Nisepl have simply gone back to the beginning and started all over again. (I think I saw something similar in an episode of Futurama once.)
Basically, this is the first four films all rolled into one. The film starts with a young Jason Voorhees watching as his murderous mother (Nana Visitor) gets beheaded by a camp counselor. 30 years later, Jason (now played by Derek Mears) is living in the woods around Camp Crystal Lake. A bunch of obnoxious campers come up to the Lake because they’re looking for a marijuana crop and Jason, being the culture warrior that he is, responds by killing all of them except for Whitney (played by Amanda Righetti), who he just kidnaps.
A month later, Whitney’s brother Clay (Jared Padalecki) arrives at Crystal Lake to search for his sister. Upon arriving, he runs into yet another group of obnoxious campers who have decided to take a vacation up at Crystal Lake. Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) agrees to help Clay look for Whitney and while the two of them are off searching, Jason shows up and starts killing everyone else.
What Worked?
One reason that I’m using the What Lisa Watched Last Night format to review this film is because, to a large extent, it’s pointless to get all nitpicky while reviewing a film like the reboot of Friday the 13th. This is not a film you watch because you’re looking to see something that’s going to redefine cinema. This is a film you watch so that you can scream, laugh, and grab your boyfriend. And, on all those fronts, Friday the 13th succeeds well enough. Director Marcus Nispel obviously understands the slasher genre and he provides everything that we’ve come to expect from a film like this.
Also, I have to admit, I always scream at the end of the film even though I know what’s going to happen.
The victims are all very disposable and forgettable but Aaron Yoo is funny as the token stoner.
What Did Not Work?
With this film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Conan The Barbarian, Nispel shows that while he may understand how to make a genre film, he also doesn’t seem to be capable of adding anything new to them. This isn’t a problem if you’re just looking to be entertained but, for true fans of the original films that have been rebooted by Nispel and producer Michael Bay, it’s hard not to wonder just why exactly these franchises needed a reboot as opposed to a sequel. Watching a film like Friday the 13th reboot, it’s hard not to feel as if the filmmakers simply gave up trying to bring anything new to the equation and instead rather cynically decided to just capitalize on the earlier work of filmmakers who, as opposed to Nispel and Bay, aren’t in the current mainstream of the Hollywood establishment.
The main difference between a reboot like Friday the 13th and the original films in the franchise is that the reboot cost a lot more to make. It’s a lot slicker (and therefore, you never really buy into the reality of the horror) and, with a few exceptions like Aaron Yoo, it’s full of bland actors who are recognizable from TV and who seem to be going out of their way to “act like characters in a slasher film” as opposed to at least trying to give actual performances. It almost feels as if Nispel, Bay, and the cast are specifically going out of their way to wink at us and tell us, “We’re so much better than the movie that you just paid money to see.” It feels incredibly condescending.
The film’s attempt to shoehorn the original first four films of the franchise into one 97 minute movie results in a film that often feels rather rushed.
“OMG! Just Like Me!” Moments
Oh, a lot. I would be so dead if I ever wandered into a slasher film.
Lessons Learned
From rewatching the entire Friday the 13th franchise, I learned several lessons: Don’t have premarital sex (or probably not even marital sex for that matter, Jason has got some issues), don’t drink beer, don’t smoke weed, don’t snort cocaine, don’t skinny dip, don’t go commando, don’t go in the wood, don’t go camping, don’t walking into a dark room, don’t say, “Is there anyone here?,” don’t shower, don’t sleep in abandoned cabins, don’t help out strangers, don’t hitchhike, don’t flirt, and … well, don’t do anything and you should be just fine.
However, what fun would that be?
Well, this concludes my series on the Friday the 13th franchise. I’ll be posting a few final thoughts on the franchise as a whole later tonight or on Sunday but for now, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these reviews as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. Stay supple and don’t go wandering around in the dark. Happy Friday the 13th!
(This review probably contains what some people would consider to be spoilers.)
Today, as part of my continuing series reviewing the films of the Friday the 13th franchise, I take a look at Freddy Vs. Jason.
After spending 15 years in development Hell, the film Freddy Vs. Jason was finally released in 2003. With this film, New Line Cinema brought together the stars of their two best-known horror franchises, Jason Voorhees (played here not by Kane Hodder but by Ken Kirzinger) and Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund.)
During the time that Freddy Vs. Jason was languishing in development Hell, a huge number of potential storylines were pursued and a lot of scripts were written. Some of those scripts are surprisingly good and one of them (the one with the enviromental message) is hilariously self-important. Most of them are just terrible and can be found online via a google search. The main problem was how to convincingly bring both Jason and Freddy together when the two of them essentially epitomized two radically different subsets of the slasher genre. Especially when compared to some of the other ideas that were considered, the concept behind FreddyVs. Jason is actually pretty clever.
As the film starts, Freddy is trapped in Hell because he’s been forgotten by the teenagers of the world. They’re no longer scared of him and, as such, they’re not having nightmares about him. Freddy’s solution? He tracks down Jason (also hanging out in Hell and having dreams that neatly parody his whole image of being a murderous defender of purity) and, by disguising himself as Pamela Voorhees, he convinces Jason to resurrect himself in Freddy’s old hometown. Jason promptly starts killing teenagers and Freddy is blamed. Soon, people are having nightmares and Freddy has his gateway back into the real world. Unfortunately for Freddy, Jason keeps killing everyone before Freddy can get to them. Freddy sets out to kill Jason and it all leads to one “final” battle between the two of them.
I have to admit that when I first saw Freddy Vs. Jason, I didn’t care much for it. Of course, at that point in my life, my view of whether or not a film was good or bad was largely based on the type of night I was having when I saw it. I saw Freddy Vs. Jason with a guy who 1) thought proper date attire was shorts, a t-shirt, and a baseball cap and 2) who apparently thought my right breast was just an armrest there for him to lean on whenever he got bored. Bleh. Beyond the company that I saw the film with, I was also upset that the character I most related to, Katharine Isabelle’s Gibb, was rather brutally killed off while boring old Monica Keena was allowed to survive. My initial response to Freddy Vs. Jason was that it had to be bad film because I had a bad time while I was watching it.
However, I recently rewatched it again with my BFF Evelyn (who always dresses up and is pretty good about not feeling me up every three minutes) and I actually enjoyed Freddy Vs. Jason a bit more the second time around. I think it also helped that, in between the two viewings, I got a chance to see all the other Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films along with a lot of other horror films and was now able to see how scenes that seemed pointless the first time around were actually meant to comment on the history and the conventions of both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises. The 2nd time around, I could better appreciate the perverse parody at the center of Robert Englund’s performance as Freddy Krueger. While the human characters are never all that interesting, the “final” battle between Jason and Freddy is genuinely exciting. When I first saw it, I thought that the film’s final scene (with Freddy’s decapitated head winking at the camera before laughing) was incredibly stupid but now I appreciate it for what it is — a deliberately campy homage to the over the top exploitation films of the 70s and 80s.
As opposed to the previous few films in the Friday the 13th franchise, Freddy vs. Jason was a huge box office success. It was the first (and, come to think of it, only Friday the 13th film) that I saw in an actual theater and it actually did give me nightmares (mostly because I foolishly chose to relate to the obviously doomed Katharine Isabelle). With that type of success, it was inevitable that there would be another film in both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises. Those two films, however, would not be sequels. Instead, they would be (bleh) reboots. We’ll take a look at the reboot of Friday 13th (and finish off this series of reviews) tomorrow.
Last night, my friend Evelyn and I stayed up way too late and we watched the 10th film in the Friday the 13th franchise, 2002’s Jason X. I was watching it for a second time because I’ve been reviewing the Friday the 13th films for this site. Evelyn was watching it for the first time because she’s my BFF, we were having ourselves a girl’s night in, and she’s willing to watch anything with me because she has complete faith in my taste in movies .*
Anyway, after the end credits rolled, we both immediately agreed on one thing: Jason X sucks. Seriously.
Jason X is yet another one of the Friday the 13th gimmick films. This time the gimmick is (all together now): JASON. IN. SPAAAAAAAAACE! However, before we get into space, the film opens in the “near future” of 2010. Apparently, there is now some sort of underground, government controlled lab underneath Lake Crystal Lake and being held prisoner there is Jason Voorhees (played, for the last time, by Kane Hodder). Apparently, the government has spent the last two years trying to figure out a way to kill the bound Jason but his cells keep regenerating. (No mention of demonic slugs for this film!) Government scientist Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) wants to freeze Jason but another scientist, Dr. Wimmer, wants to use Jason as a weapon. We know Dr. Wimmer is evil because he’s played by David Cronenberg.
Anyway, while Dr. Wimmer and Rowan are arguing about the ethics of exploiting an undead serial killer, Jason manages to escape and kills everyone in the underground lab except for Rowan. She manages to freeze him in a cryogenic pod but gets frozen herself in the process.
Nearly 500 years later, Earth has been abandoned because Al Gore was right (yawn!) and the planet is now too polluted to live on. Humanity had relocated to Another Earth. However, students occasionally conduct field trips to the old Earth and one of those field trips comes across Jason and Rowan, still in deep freeze. The students take the two of them back to their spaceship, thaw them out, and — needless to say — things don’t end well for the majority of them.
Jason X was made, of course, because Jason Vs. Freddy had spent the previous 9 years languishing in development Hell. Jason X was New Line’s way of reminding people that they owned the Friday the 13th franchise and it certainly managed to do that, though it didn’t bring that many people to the theaters. (Jason X is the second-lowest grossing film in the series.) The reviews, at the time, were scathing and it’s easy to see why: the special effects looked incredibly cheap, everything about the film’s vision of the future (from the garish set design to the ugly costuming choices) felt tacky, and the acting was terrible. Lisa Ryder, who played the perpetually cheerful robot KM 14, had a role that should have been actor-proof but she still managed to give a memorably bad performance, the worst moment being when she let out a weak-sounding “Yeah,” after it was incorrectly felt that she had killed Jason.)
The one exception: Kane Hodder. In this unworthy little film, Hodder probably gives his best performance in the role of Jason. Here, Jason is less an undead serial killer and more just an old man who is sick of kids wandering across his lawn. He kills less because he’s evil and more because he’s just frustrated at being surrounded by so many stupid people.
And after watching Jason X, ever though you still can’t sympathize with him, it’s harder to blame him.
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* Evelyn has requested that I make it clear that the main reason she ended up watching Jason X with me was because she was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
