Friday the 13th Spectacular!

Friday the 13^th is supposedly the unluckiest day of the year, but the film series based on this special day is probably the most unlucky of them all. Not only are these movies some of the worst in cinema history, the characters in them are also incredibly unlucky, as almost all of them are horrifically mutilated by a psychotic murderer who roams an abandoned summer camp.

Jason in his iconic outfit, machete and all...

If you are thinking of going to visit a lake on Friday the 13^th, I really wouldn’t advise it, especially if you a) want to reopen a summer camp where a small child recently died, b) want to go to visit this camp because a group of teenagers were recently murdered there, c) know anyone who has anything to do with these murders, d) are in law enforcement near this summer camp or e) just happen to get in the way of a huge hockey wearing machete wielding crazed killer. To be honest, if you ended up being trapped in one of these movies, the odds of you dying are so incredibly high, you might as well just give up and let luck go against you.

So whether or not you are superstitious, just be happy that you have absolutely nothing to do with Jason Voorhees or Camp Crystal Lake, or your ‘unlucky’ day would get considerably worse.

Unluckily enough for me, over the past few years I have actually managed to watch every single Friday the 13^th film. Why am I unlucky, you may wonder? Because out of a total of twelve movies, only four of them are worth watching. That’s a very low mortality rate, as the rest deserve to die horrible deaths and be relegated to the scrap heap. While viewing some of these, I had to suffer more pain than any of the characters did. At least their misery is over quickly- the shoddy cinematic shockers I subjected myself to has caused enough emotional trauma to last a lifetime. The only people not suffering a horrible fate from the multitudes of Friday the 13^thsequels are the greedy producers who continued to churn out diabolical pieces of filth that only losers like me actually end up watching.

Since this article is all about slasher films, my rating system has been temporarily suspended. I will now assess the quality of films as either ‘Horrible Hack’ or ‘Superb Slasher’.

So if you want to make sure that your Friday the 13^th is as lucky as possible, then please do everything possible to avoid watching one of the many terrible Friday the 13^thsequels. However, if you do,: Good Luck. You’re going to need it.

Friday the 13^th (1980)

Plot: 

A killer murders teenagers working at Camp Crystal Lake, where a boy drowned years before.

My Analysis:

• The best early slasher film, Friday the 13^th is genuinely creepy, shocking, gory and still holds up today (unlike the incredibly boring Halloween and ridiculous stupid A Nightmare On Elm Street). The victims really don’t deserve their fates, which is disturbing to watch as most of their deaths are incredibly visceral. It also makes perfect sense that the teenagers are conveniently alone and picked off one by one, because why would they expect to be brutally murdered for no reason at a children’s summer camp?
• It is also very unpredictable. Unless you know who will survive before watching, you probably wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

Notable Moments:

Even though the rest of the film series establishes Jason Voorhees as the deranged killer, he does not appear in this film at all, except as a corpse. His mother Pamela Voorhees is the killer, seeking revenge on the counsellors for the negligent death of her son. This is the question that Casey (Drew Barrymore), gets wrong in Scream, resulting in the murder of her boyfriend. 

Unluckiest Deaths:

• Kevin Bacon gets literally kebabed when a skewer is pushed through his neck. Ouch.
• One horny teen gets axed in the face. She shouldn’t have investigated those strange noises.
• Jason’s mother Pamela, after killing a group of completely innocent teenagers, gets her comeuppance when final girl Alice chops her head off with a machete. She deserves it.

Machete Rating:

Superb Slasher

Friday the 13^th Part 2 (1981)

Final Girl Ginny is clever and cunning, and earns her survival

Plot: 

Jason, who did in fact not drown in Camp Crystal Lake, and who witnessed his mother’s death, is determined to murder anyone who gets in his way.

My Analysis:

Unlike most movie sequels, this one is very good, and manages to live up to the first in terms of gore, terror, unpredictability and suspense. It’s a great watch if you love slasher films, particularly if you liked the original.

Notable Moments:

• Ginny is perhaps one of the best Final Girls in horror movie history. Not only does she manage to inflict some serious damage on Jason, she also uses superior intellect to survive to the final credits. She works hard to live, and so deserves to! It is also notable that she is in fact not a virgin, even having sex during the course of the movie, and still manages to make it out alive!
• Even though this time Jason is the killer, he wears a sack on his head, which is probably scarier than his iconic hockey mask. 

Unluckiest Deaths:

• -It’s not really meant to be funny, but when the poor disabled man in the wheelchair gets a machete in his face and rolls backwards down a very long stairway, you can’t help but laugh.
• Crazy Ralph and Final Girl Alice, the only two survivors from the first film, are the first two characters to be horribly killed off.

Machete Rating:

Superb Slasher

Friday the 13^th Part III (1982)

Plot: 

The next day, following on from the events of Part 2, Jason recovers and goes to a nearby lakeside property to kill a group of vacationing teenagers. 

My Analysis:

The film isn’t scary at all. It’s just stupid. This film is a pretty standard slasher, as a group of random teenagers are predictably killed off one by one.

Notable Moments:

• This film was a ‘3D’ instalment, which means that there are random moments that are thrown in just for the sake of it. Showing a character playing with a yo-yo for several minutes is not interesting, even in 3D.
• Jason finally dons his famous hockey mask, which the filmmakers didn’t originally intend for him to wear.
• This film was intended to be the very last in the Friday the 13^th franchise. It obviously wasn’t.

Unluckiest Deaths: 

• Most of the deaths are done for 3D, the most obvious one being when Jason shoots an arrow through a girl’s head and her eyeball pops out towards the camera.
• Somehow magically summoning superhuman strength, Jason crushes someone’s head until their eyeball explodes out of their skull.
• While doing a handstand, a character is cut in half by Jason with his machete. That’s surely got to hurt!
• In true horror film racism, once the characters arrive at the lake, the first four characters killed are ethnic minorities.

Machete Rating:

Horrible Hack

Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter (1984)

Plot: 

Jason, still alive, returns to Camp Crystal Lake to kill another group of rambunctious teenagers.

My Analysis:

• This is better than the previous movie, but still isn’t that good.
• You may have guessed that this isn’t the final chapter.

Notable Moments: 

The main character and final girl is Trish Jarvis, whose younger brother Tommy (played by a very young Corey Feldman) is severely traumatised by witnessing the murders, and when he and his sister are under attack, he uses the famous machete to hack Jason to death. 

Unluckiest Deaths:

• Just when you think that Rob, the swarthy hunk looking for revenge for the death of his sister (who died in Part 2) will survive to the end, he gets brutally and unpredictably killed halfway through the movie. Oh dear!
• Almost everyone in this movie is impaled with a sharp implement, except for one girl who is thrown out of a window onto a car. If you want a feminist analysis of this (and you can imagine what the implements really represent) then just look up Carol J. Clover, who coined the term ‘Final Girl’.
• The Jarvis’ own mother doesn’t even live (she dies off-screen)!
• Jason is finally killed (for real!) by Tommy Jarvis, who will star in the next two movies.

Machete Rating:

Horrible Hack

Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning (1985)

Plot: 

Tommy Jarvis, the survivor of the forth film, is sent to a halfway house for troubled teenagers, where another massacre occurs. 

My Analysis:

• This is the only other film in the entire series where Jason Voorhees is not the actual killer. For most of the film we are led to believe that it is Tommy, but it is soon revealed to be a paramedic gone insane by the completely random and brutal murder of his own teenage son, which takes place in the halfway house at the beginning of the movie. He dresses up as Jason for no real reason.
• This movie is too awful for words. Everything about it is bad- from the acting to the terrible plot.

Notable Moments:

• Corey Feldman makes a cameo at the beginning of the movie in a dream sequence, where he is terrorized by Jason.
• Final Girl Pam is particularly worthless and annoying, and manages to survive along with a small boy called Reggie, and of course, Tommy.   
• The end of the movie suggests that the sequel will have Tommy as the newest serial killer dressed as Jason, having himself gone completely insane. As it turns out, this isn’t the plot for the sequel.

Unluckiest Deaths:

• The whole plot revolves around the murder of one teenager by another at the beginning. This murder makes little to no sense, is completely unprovoked and completely out of place. It all goes downhill from here.
• Strangely enough, the man who actually kills the paramedic’s son and causes almost everyone else in this small backwater town to die, lives. Now that's lucky!
• Reggie’s brother, a Rick James look-a-like with a jheri curl, is skewered in a portable toilet. It’s fitting that the most memorable murder in the entire movie takes place in a toilet, where this movie should be exiled.

Machete Rating:

Terrible, Awful, Dreadful Horrible Hack. This has to be one of the worst films in the series, and in existence. Or so I thought...

Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Tommy returns, but this time has a love interest, Megan.

Plot: 

Tommy Jarvis, intent on cremating the body of Jason Voorhees, returns to Camp Crystal Lake, where he accidentally brings him back to life by the power of lightning. He then spends the rest of the film trying to stop everyone from being killed.

My Analysis:

• Following on from a complete piece of crap, the series does a complete u-turn, as this entry is intentionally a comedy, poking fun at and parodying itself and the premise, which makes it a great watch. The beginning scene in the graveyard is stupid, but is done tongue-in-cheek, so unlike the rest of the awful sequels, it is actually enjoyable.
•  The actor who portrays Tommy (unlike the previous one) is actually a decent actor, and is also very likeable (as is the female lead).

Notable Moments:

• Even though Tommy is responsible for bringing a supernatural version of Jason into existence, he does try everything he can to warn people, but no one listens to him, except for Final Girl Megan, who has a thing for him.
• The dynamic between Megan, Tommy and her father is funny and involving.
• This is the only movie where children are actually at the campsite, since it has finally been reopened.

Unluckiest Deaths:

• None of the children die. But pretty much everyone else does.
• The first person to die gets his heart ripped right out of his chest. Ouch.
• It’s getting harder to remember the deaths in each film, but I’m pretty sure this is the one where someone gets their face smashed against the side of a camper van. If so, this death is very visceral, extremely horrific and downright disturbing.
• Jason doesn’t die, as he is finally a supernatural entity, but is chained up to a rock to fester at the bottom of the lake. This leads directly into the sequel...

Machete Rating:

A funny and involving Superb Slasher

Friday the 13^th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Plot: 

Tina kills her abusive alcoholic father with her telekinetic powers as a child by drowning him in Camp Crystal Lake, then, ten years later, returns to her old house with her mother and doctor to overcome her trauma, but unintentionally frees Jason Vorhees. He then goes on another murderous rampage.

My Analysis: 

Read that plot synopsis again. A teenager with psychic powers. That’s how low the series sinks. After a great outing in Part VI, everything begins to fall apart. This is the point when they should have just stopped. But they didn’t. 

Notable Moments:

The final girl has telekinetic powers. Need I say anymore??

Unluckiest Deaths:

• Her father is pretty unlucky. How many people do you know who have telekinesis? Not only is he killed by his daughter at the beginning, he is then resurrected at the end so that he can take down Jason.
• By this point, all of the deaths begin to blur into one. We’ve seen them all before. Apart from the psychic powers, this film really lacks any kind of originality.

Machete Rating:

Horrible Hack. This film is awful, and stupid, but still, I watched it. I wish I hadn’t. But after this one, I didn’t think that the series could get any worse. Once again, I was wrong...

Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Plot: 

Jason gets on a boat filled with graduating teenagers heading for New York City.

My Analysis:

• Just when you think it can’t get any worse, along comes this awful incoherent piece of crap. This film’s tagline would have you believe that the movie takes place in New York City. It doesn’t. It is set on a boat. The last fifteen minutes of screen time are based on and around the docks and the sewers of Manhattan.
• The writers clearly hate New York. Everything looks grimy and disgusting, and all the people shown who live there are drug using gangsters. And let’s not forget the barrels and sewers of toxic waste.

Notable Moments:

• Half way through the film, the entire year group of teenagers and their teachers vanish from the boat, leaving only a handful of people left, including the main characters. Where do they disappear to? Are we meant to assume that they were all killed?
• Just like the previous instalment, Final Girl Rennie is also slightly psychic: she keeps having visions of Jason as a child when he drowned (even though Part 2established that he didn’t). This plot point is never explained, and has no actual significance to anything that happens in the entire movie.

Unluckiest Deaths:

• Any of the actors who had any involvement in this movie. Surely it was a figurative death of their careers?
• One character tries to have a fist fight with Jason. He loses. Jason punches his head off in a single blow. Talk about having a bad headache!
• Every single person on the boat (presumably) dies except for the Final Girl, her love interest, and a dog. Stupid dog. Why must animals always survive??
• Jason is killed by toxic waste. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that every evening a river of acidic biochemical sludge floods New York City’s sewage system (this too is never explained- just assumed to be a fact). Unfortunately for Jason, he falls into it and melts into a small child (something else that is completely inane).

Machete Rating:

Horrible, horrible, horrible Hack. Quite possibly, the very worse one. I didn’t think anything could be worse then Part VII or A New Beginning. I was wrong. This movie should have ended the entire franchise. But it didn’t. Just when you thought they couldn’t make movies any worse than this, they made:

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Plot: 

Jason Voorhees body is destroyed, so he begins to possess people, jumping from one person to another, until he finds a relative of his so that he can get his body back for good.

My Analysis:

If the plot synopsis above doesn’t make any sense to you, then it is because the movie didn’t make any sense to me. I think we are supposed to believe that Jason is in fact some sort of demon, as we are told that he must possess his blood relative’s body to then get his own body back... or something. Regardless, it was this movie that finally stopped the franchise in its tracks for the next nine years, and there is a reason why... it’s terrible. It is truly is awful.  There aren’t enough words to explain how bad this movie is. Everything about it is bad. EVERYTHING!

Notable Moments:

• The film begins with the FBI killing Jason, and then a coroner eating his beating heart and becoming possessed by him.
• Final Guy Steven, a pitiful loser who we are supposed to like, stalks the mother of his child and ex-girlfriend Jessica because she is the daughter of Jason’s half sister. Jessica has to be one of the worst Final Girls, and quite possibly one of the worst and most annoying characters in cinema history. You will her to die but, unfortunately, she doesn’t.
• Jessica has to kill Jason with a magical dagger. And yes, it does have magical powers.
• Because the film is so bad, a couple in a tent engage in an incredibly explicit, almost pornographic sex scene to try to make the movie interesting. It doesn’t work.
• Jason crawls out of someone’s body as a small demon creature, and then crawls up the vagina of his half-sister’s corpse to once again transform into the hockey wearing psycho we all recognise. This was, by far and away, the worst part of the entire movie, and quite possibly the lowest point of the entire series.
• Once again, the title of the movie lies. At no point in this film does Jason go to Hell (he gets dragged there at the end, but we don’t see Hell itself as the title suggests), and it is not the final Friday.

Unluckiest Deaths:

• Anyone involved in this movie must be regretting it because they could never get a role in anything ever again. They don’t deserve to.
• The woman in the sex scene is brutally chopped in half with a machete.
• When Jason leaves people’s bodies, they melt. Yes, you read that correctly. They melt.
• At the end of the film, after he is stabbed by a magical dagger, Jason is dragged to Hell by Freddy Krueger for absolutely no reason except to have a movie cross over that is just as bad as this piece of crap.

Machete Rating:

Horrible Hack. Just like its predecessor, this has to be one of the worst movies in the history of the world. But that didn’t stop them from making...

Jason X (2002)

Jason finally becomes... a cyborg.

Plot: 

Set 400 years in the future, Jason, who was cryogenically frozen, is brought back to life on a spaceship.

My Analysis:

This film is the perfect example of a movie so bad it is good. Like Part VI, it is more comical, and the space setting, although ludicrous, makes the film different from the rest, in a surprisingly good way. It’s still awful, but it’s the good kind of awful.

Notable Moments:

• Final Girl Rowan is a scientist with some intelligence and nouce (which makes a change!), and is also cryogenically frozen along with Jason after he is caught by the U.S. Government.
• Jason, who spends most of the film as a tattered corpse, eventually becomes a cyborg. (That’s right!!).
• One of the supporting characters is a robot. She survives (I guess. Can a robot die?).

Unluckiest Deaths:

• One of the nastiest deaths ever has to be when a woman’s face is pushed into liquid nitrogen and is then shattered into pieces when Jason smashes it onto a table.
• Another woman is sucked out of the space ship very gorily, while simultaneously making a terrible pun (‘this sucks!’). Why joke about your own demise?
• This film has a very high, and very grisly, death count.

Machete Rating:

Compared to the ones before it, this is a surprisingly Superb Slasher

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Plot: 

Jason is brought out of Hell by Freddy Krueger, and together, they go on a rampage.

My Analysis:

Horror fans might have wanted to see two iconic slasher characters on the big screen together for many years, but the end result is nothing to be happy about. It’s another dreadful piece of crap: everything about it is terrible. Worse still, it’s boring. The moment a horror franchise reaches boring is the moment when you know you’ve flogged the dead horse to dust. 

Notable Moments:

In terms of continuity, none of the film makes sense. The plot is so wafer thin, and the characters, actors, situations and the world they inhabit so two dimensional, that I don’t think anyone involved knew what was going on. I certainly didn’t. The deaths are so bland, so boring and so crappy, that there seriously aren’t any notable moments for me to remember.

Unluckiest Deaths:

• I genuinely don’t remember anything about this film because it was so cack, except that nearly everyone dies except for a very annoying Final Girl and her boyfriend, who somehow manage to defeat both Freddy and Jason, even though the villains are supernatural entities from Hell that could probably easily kill anyone and everyone they want to successfully.
• I think I remember someone doing drugs and seeing a worm that kills them, or something like that, but that's it.
• Predictably, neither Freddy nor Jason really die, as they want to continue to milk this rotted cash cow for as long as possible. So they of course set up a sequel that will hopefully never happen.

Machete Rating:

I really wish I hadn’t subjected myself to this piece of filth, Horrible Hack. It really, really, should have ended here. But then Hollywood decided it was time for a reboot.

Friday the 13^th (2009)

Plot: 

Thirty years after witnessing his mother go on a murder spree and then be killed by a camp counsellor at Camp Crystal Lake, Jason Voorhees decides to go on a murderous rampage.

My Analysis: 

Borrowing elements from the original and all of its sequels, someone thought it would be a good idea to do a completely unoriginal, bland and tediously dull reboot that has absolutely nothing different or interesting about it. At least Jason X was set in space! 

Notable Moments:

Mix the last eleven movies together, remove the supernatural, psychic and extra terrestrial elements and you have a turgid reboot with no discernibly different notable moments. Everything is copied from the others- the plot details, the characters, the death scenes, the twists...

Unluckiest Deaths:

• To me, it seems like people in this movie just die for the sake of it. You could remove every single death from this film and it would probably not make any difference to the final cut. We know who will live and who will die from the get go, and they are all dispatched so blandly that there is really no point in this even being a slasher movie. It should have just been Jason running around not killing anyone, just chasing the man from Supernatural for an hour and a half, because fans of his are probably the only people who paid to see it anyway, so you might as well give them what they want.
• They do have a false Final Girl, who you are meant to think will survive (like in Part VI) but sadly, if you know horror formula too well, you can figure out that she won’t make it (as we all know that the Final Guy’s sister will instead), but her death is probably the only interesting part of the whole movie.  

Machete Rating:

Horrible, wholly unoriginal, rip-off, Hack.

And finally, we’ve reached the end. Let’s just hope that Friday the 13^th’s luck has run out, for good.

It’s crazy to think that the first movie, which is one of the best slasher movies of all time, spawned so many truly terrible sequels. Now that’s unlucky.