Ever since 1993 when Freddy’s glove dragged Jason’s hockey mask down to Hell at the end of Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday, dedicated Fred-Heads and die hard Jason fans had been clamoring for this movie.  When it arrived in theaters ten years later, it didn’t disappoint.  Freddy vs. Jason was well worth the wait.

The Elm Street kids are now on drugs that take away their fear.  With nothing to fear, there are no nightmares.  Since there are no nightmares, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) can’t kill anyone.  Freddy “searches the bowels of Hell” to find someone that can start scaring the shit out of the kids until he finds Jason Vorhees (Ken Kirzinger).  Freddy impersonates Jason’s dead mom and convinces him to travel to Elm Street to start hacking up teens.  Once Freddy has enough strength to start murdering kids on his own again, he tries to kill Jason.  Freddy underestimates him though and soon discovers that stopping Jason is a lot tougher than he thought.

You know right off the bat that this movie is going to rock because the music in the opening titles cleverly incorporates Jason’s Chi-Chi-Chi-Ha-Ha-Ha music into Freddy’s theme.  Likewise, the film is a perfect balance of an Elm Street movie and a Friday movie.  It delivers everything a Freddy fan would want and enough excellent Jason action to keep Friday purists entertained. 

Throughout the course of the movie Jason kills teens via machete impaling, decapitation, spearing, 180 degree head twist, flaming machete through the chest, multiple machete slashings, squashing a guy under a door, electrocution, and cutting a dude in half.  His best kill comes when he folds up a bed while a teen is still in it.  J-Man also has an awesome scene where he gets set on fire and walks through a cornfield slashing the shit out of stoners.

Freddy only kills one person in the flick but he did enough crazy cool nightmare chicanery to make up for it.  The most random and bizarre thing he does in this one is appear to a stoner as a hookah smoking caterpillar.  His one-liners are kept nicely in check (the “Got your nose!” scene is the only groaner in the bunch) and Englund yet again essays the role with his usual gusto.

Most importantly, director Ronny Yu does something I didn’t think was possible:  He actually made Freddy scary again.  During the opening sequence, we see a pre-burned Freddy suggestively smoking a cigarette and licking a photo of the child he just killed.  That shit was raw.  This says to the audience that this Freddy isn’t the punster you remember.  He isn’t the Bastard Son of 1000 Maniacs.  He is a fucking child molesting sonofabitch.

Jason is given the underdog/Frankenstein treatment.  He really is just avenging his mother’s death after all.  Freddy only tricks him into killing the Elm Street kids in her name, so we should probably root for old Hockey Face when it comes time for The Main Event.

And what an event it is.  The final brawl between the two titans of terror goes off better than anyone could’ve expected.  There are actually two main battles.  One takes place in the Dream World (Freddy dopes Jason up on tranquilizers so he can take a nap), the other at Crystal Lake.  Both of them are doozies.  What really makes them work is that the screenwriters have a semi-plausible scenario to get them fighting.  It’s not Shakespearian by any means but it’s just reasonable enough that you buy into it.

Freddy vs. Jason was made for the fans and Yu puts in a lot of geek-gasm moments that are worth their weight in gold and compensate for any petty qualms you may have with the movie.  I mean how cool is it when you first see Jason strolling down Elm Street?  Or how about Freddy’s “Oh Shit” face when he realizes that he’s in the Real World and has to fight Jason?  My favorite geeky moment came during Jason’s nightmare where he was a little boy and some cruel kids put the potato sack over his face.  I also dug the part when Freddy tormented Young Jason with his mother’s decapitated head too.

I have to give Yu a lot of credit, he sure knows how to film fight scenes, gore, and titties; three very vital elements to a movie called Freddy vs. Jason.  He brings a lot of kinetic energy to the fight sequences.  These are some of the best scenes of monsters kicking the shit out of each other since King Kong vs. Godzilla.  Yu also has an admirable approach to the bloodshed which is:  The more the merrier.  Seriously, every little cut results in a gushing geyser of plasma.  Plus, the man puts in a good half dozen titties in the flick.  Yu is a guy who really knows how to cover all the bases.

I also have to give a shout out to screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift.  These guys seamlessly blended the two character’s mythologies and found a nice balance of traditional Jason victims (stoners and fornicators) and Freddy fodder (outcasts and weirdoes) too.  They also struck the right tone, combining equal parts of “creepy” scary (like when all the coma patients wake up from their slumber) with “fun” scary (like when one of the chicks has to save Jason by giving him mouth to mouth). 

People’s biggest complaint with the movie was that Kane (Jason 7-10) Hodder didn’t reprise his role as everyone’s favorite hockey masked killer.  Sure, I wish Kane had been Jason but Kirzinger does a smashing job behind the mask and didn’t make me miss Hodder one bit.  Besides, Kane’s built like a Mac truck and could’ve easily snapped Englund over his knee like a twig.  Kirzinger’s svelte frame is a much better match-up for Englund.

Freddy’s best line in this one comes when he sees that chick from Destiny’s Child and says, “How sweet; dark meat!”

The stoner gets the best non-Freddy line of the film:  “Dude that goalie was pissed about something!”

Both Freddy and Jason’s next cinematic outings were Michael Bay perpetrated remakes.

Freddy vs. Jason is on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year for 2003 at the Number 6 spot, sandwiched in between House of 1000 Corpses and Final Destination 2.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:  Freddy’s Revenge>

New Line bought the rights to the Jason franchise so they could pit him against their flagship horror star Freddy Krueger.  Instead of making that film though, they decided to make the “Final” Jason movie first.  To tantalize the audience, they even had a wicked cool shot of Freddy’s glove grabbing Jason’s mask at the end of the film.  That part is awesome.  The rest of the movie is total garbage.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  The opening sequence is a well done stalk n’ slash scenario where Jason chases a chick in a bath towel through the woods.  Then from out of nowhere, the SWAT team shows up and they blow up Jason into a million pieces.  Pretty cool.  Then the movie dives head first into the shitter. 

The coroner (Richard Gant, George Washington Duke from Rocky 5) is sifting through what’s left of Jason until he gets to his heart.  What does this idiot do?  He eats it.  Dumb ass.  He then “becomes” Jason and kills people.  After awhile, the lump of shit that’s supposed to represent Jason’s evil spirit hops mouth-first into somebody else and takes over their body.  Then they kill more people.

Yup, those morons at New Line took a Jason movie and basically turned it into a Hidden remake.  This movie is so soul-crushingly stupid, that it’s almost sad.  I mean why the fuck would you pay mega-bucks to get the rights to make a Jason movie and then NOT EVEN HAVE JASON IN THE DAMN MOVIE! 

Jason doesn’t really kill anyone in this flick since it’s just various possessed individuals doing all the slaying, but I’ll do the obligatory rundown of murders anyway:  probe to the head, slashing, spike through a chick while she’s mid-orgasm, head slammed in a car door, head slammed against another head, wrist snapping, head in the deep fryer, punch in the mouth, the requisite head crushing, and a fatal bear hug.  There’s a fairly decent melting scene too, although that just happens whenever “Jason’s” host body dies.

The few but fleeting nice things I have to say about the movie are barely enough to make a full-fledged paragraph.  There’s a lot of titties on display, which is always a good thing and we get a funny scene where Fake Jason steps on a condom while two horny teens are fucking.  The Necronomicon from Evil Dead makes a cameo too.  That’s about it.

The bad far outweighs the good though.  How about the WTF scene where Fake Jason ties a naked dude up S & M style before puking his Turd Monster “soul” into his mouth?  Or the tasteless scene where said Turd Monster crawls in between the legs of Jason’s sister (Erin Gray from Buck Rogers, still looking mighty fine)?  Or that this movie has the absolute worst “hero” since the invention of the silver screen.

That’s not even the biggest problem with Jason Goes to Hell.  That would be the fact that Real Jason is only in the first ten and last five minutes of the movie.  If that’s your idea of a good time, have at it.  Any other sane horror fan will want to steer clear.

Note:  Add an extra Half-Star if you happen to catch the “Unrated Version” because it’s got a ton of gore the MPAA idiotically cut out.

Second Note:  This is the second time in the series they had a “Final” installment.  Maybe the title just meant that it was the Final Friday of the calendar year and not the franchise.

Suggested Drinking Game:  Take a shot every time “hero” John D. LeMay falls to the ground.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Freddy vs. Jason>

Jason goes to New York and the franchise goes into the toilet. In fact, Jason Takes a Dump might have been more fun to watch than this ungodly mess.  The filmmakers must’ve known they were making something seriously shitty; why else would they have staged the finale in the sewer?

This one doesn’t even feel like a real Jason movie.  There is no opening credits sequence accompanied by the strains of Harry Manfredini’s Kill-Kill-Kill-Ha-Ha-Ha music.  Instead we get red and white titles over shots of New York while headache-inducing spoken-word beatnik poetry is read and soft rock crap plays on the soundtrack.

The plot has Jason getting shocked back to life by a stray power line and rising out of Crystal Lake.  A group of teens are going on a field trip to New York via cruise ship and Jason boards the boat and starts dispatching teens left and right.  When the boat finally docks in New York, Jason chases his prey into the sewer where he gets his comeuppance thanks to some handy toxic waste.

Filmed with too much light and zero atmosphere by an idiot named Rob Hedden who had obviously never seen a Friday the 13^th flick in his life before directing this one, Jason Takes Manhattan is one supremely awful waste of 100 minutes.  Yes, you heard me… 100 minutes.  Why on earth anyone would make a Jason movie that freaking long is beyond human comprehension.  I could see maybe if the movie was actually good, but this one is a non-stop suck fest. 

God, where do I begin to describe the sheer suckitude that is Jason Takes Manhattan?  Let’s start with the fact that Jason doesn’t even get to Manhattan until about the 65 minute mark.  And even then, it’s just Vancouver.  (The cop Jason kills even has an obviously Canadian accent.)  Once in Vancouver, it takes another 20 minutes to get to the REAL New York.  Even once Jason steps into New York, very little is actually done with the concept.  Mostly he just walks down alleyways and docks.  Occasionally, he’ll get on the subway but instead of doing something cool like slaughter everyone on board, he just kinds shuffles along stalking The Final Girl.

Jensen Daggett, who plays The Final Girl in this one, is probably the worst Final Girl in history.  At one point she gets shot up with heroin by some gangbangers but her drugged up blank stare is basically the same as her acting in the rest of the movie.  What’s worse is that she sees a bunch of visions of Young Jason but nothing is ever done with it.  After about her 17^th hallucination involving Jason, you’ll want to bitch slap her into the next county.  Her hallucinations are stupid as Hell because they show Young Jason sporting a full head of hair.  Everybody knows that even as a child Jason was a bald-headed, droopy-eyed mongoloid.  Further proof that this Hedden fuck never watched a damn Jason movie before stepping behind the camera. 

Even if I could forgive the fact that The Final Girl sucks, the fact that half the movie takes place on a boat, and that the real New York is only on screen for about 1% of the running time; you’d still be left with the dumb ending.  If you thought the ending of The New Blood was bad, brother, you ain’t seen shit.  Jason gets drowned in toxic waste and melts down to being a little boy again.  (Complete with a full head of hair and non-mongoloid-ian features.) 

To make matters worse, just before Jason gets deluged with the toxic waste, he actually SPEAKS!!!!  I hadn’t seen this movie since the DVD first came out and I thought I had remembered just about how sucky this movie was, but completely forgot about the part when Jason spoke.  God this movie is terrible. 

The only thing that gives Jason Takes Manhattan it’s ½ * is the deaths.  None of them are particularly good but there are a lot of them, which should count for something.  There’s impalement by spear gun (the gun part, not the spear), spear (minus the gun), guitar to the head, steam room stone through the chest, broken mirror to the whatever (couldn’t tell; it happened off screen), harpoon to the kidney, machete to the throat, strangulation, electrocution, impalement (sideways), axe in the back, hypodermic needle through the chest, slamming a Cholo’s head into a pipe, drowning in a barrel of toxic waste, and a wrench to the head (at least I think it was to the head, I couldn’t tell cuz it was one of those shadow puppet deals).  The novelty death this time around involves a boxer that gets his head punched off by Jason.  This is just so cartoonish and dumb that it’s not even good for a laugh. 

What’s irritating about these deaths is that most of people are introduced simply to be killed off.  This isn’t the worst thing in the world but when the victims are merely victims, and not characters, it takes the fun out of it.  All of the victims are paper thin (I take that back; that remark is an insult to paper).  There’s the film geek nerd that films everything, the Joan Jett look-alike rocker, the jock, the slut, the token Asian chick, the stuffy asshole teacher, the kid who doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, etc.  Jesus, just thinking of these people again pisses me off something fierce.

The obvious joke of the movie is that there is a masked killer stalking and killing people and New Yorkers just ignore him because they are typical New York assholes.  This joke isn’t even all that funny to begin with and Hedden can’t even deliver any good punchlines.  There is one particularly pathetic scene where Jason lifts up his mask to discourage some punks from getting in his way.  Hello Jason, you are a complete badass mongoloid zombie killing machine; you don’t need to resort to stupid shit like that.  Leave the jokey crap to Freddy.  (Jason’s face by the way doesn’t look scary in the least and resembles a jack o’ lantern covered in week-old bubble gum.)

Jason Takes Manhattan is the nadir of the Friday the 13th series.  It’s only slightly more terrible than the next entry, Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday.  That’s like saying syphilis is more fun that gonorrhea. 

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday>

As a kid, Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) had a telekinetic temper tantrum and killed her abusive alcoholic father by drowning him in Crystal Lake.  Ten years later, she goes back to the lake for some therapy with her demented doctor (Terry Kiser from Weekend at Bernie’s) who just wants to exploit her powers.  Shortly into her treatment, she has a meltdown and tries to wish her father back to life from out of the lake.  She doesn’t realize that Jason (Kane Hodder) is also down there and instead of resurrecting dear old daddy; she summons Jason by mistake.  It doesn’t take long for old Hockey Face to start hacking up teens left and right.  Eventually, Tina learns to harness her powers so that she can battle Jason.  In the end, she finally brings her father back to life and he returns Jason to his watery grave.

The New Blood is one of those Jason movies that I have a soft spot in my heart for.  First off, it was the first Jason movie I ever saw in a theater.  It gave me nightmares as a kid, which means it gets high marks in the scary department.  More importantly, it marked the first time Kane Hodder essayed the role of everybody’s favorite hockey mask wearing psychopath.  Hodder would go on to play Jason three more times and he really puts forth an authority and a personality into the character.  This is probably my favorite Kane performance of them all.

Unfortunately The New Blood has one of the worst endings to ever come out of Hollywood.  As good as most of the movie is; the ending is so heart-stoppingly bad that it will literally make you pull your hair out from the roots.  If the movie ended with Tina blowing up Jason in the house, everything would’ve been fine and dandy and the flick would’ve skated by with *** ½.  As it stands, we get 83 minutes of a pretty great Jason movie; then the flick thoroughly shits the bed in record time once the dead dad comes back to life to defeat Jason.  So bad is the denouement of The New Blood that I have to knock an entire Star from the rating. 

Let’s face it folks, this ending is dumb as all get out.  Are we really supposed to believe that Tina’s dad comes back to life and chains up Jason?  Let’s talk logistics here for a second.  Why would her dad’s body still be in the lake after ten years?  Wouldn’t the police have dragged his corpse out of the lake after his death?  And even if they didn’t, why is his corpse perfectly preserved?  This shit is just hurting my brain it’s so damned dumb.

Before he completely botched the ending, director John Carl (Troll) Buechler delivered the goods more often than not.  I particularly liked the atmospheric opening montage of Jason’s greatest hits narrated by Crazy Ralph himself, Walt Gorney.  (“People forget he’s down there… waiting!”)  The Jason sequences are top notch and feature some good kills.  There is:  a spike through the neck, a spike through the back, a hand through the back, an axe to the face, a drowning, the requisite head crushing, a party favor to the eye, a knife in the chest, a machete to the neck, a bimbo thrown out of the second story window, a sickle through the chest, a weed whacker to the stomach, and another axe to the face.  Then of course, we have the immortal sleeping bag kill; one of Jason’s finest moments.

Jason gets as good as he gives.  The extended brawl between the telekinetic Tina and Jason is a doozy and although it has a tendency to get a bit hokey, it’s still loads of fun.  She electrocutes him, throws a sofa (as well as a potted plant) at him with her mind, brings down a porch on his head, tosses a ceiling lamp at him, strangles him, send some nails flying in his face, sets him on fire, and resurrects her dead fath…  Umm… the less said about that, the better.

Buechler also did the special effects for the movie and his work is second only to Tom Savani’s in the series.  Jason’s make-up is simply incredible.  Buechler took Jason’s new zombified look and ran with it.  You can even see his exposed ribcage and spinal cord poking out from his coveralls.  The coolest part is that you can actually see his skeletonized knee joints move when he walks!  His face is also pretty dope too as he looks like a cross between The Colossal Beast and an oatmeal cookie.  The gore for the most part is so-so.  That’s because the MPAA neutered the majority of Buechler’s gore effects in order for the film to get an R rating; so we can’t really be mad at him for cutting away so quickly once Jason starts doing his thing.

Performance-wise, things are fairly generic.  Lincoln does a decent enough as Tina.  She isn’t great or anything but she hits her marks.  If we’re singling out great performances, I’d have to say that Elizabeth Kaitan had the two best perfectly rounded performances of the whole movie. 

When all is said and done, Friday the 13^th Part 7:  The New Blood should’ve been called Carrie vs. Jason.  The stupid ending aside, this was not the worst gimmick they could’ve come up with for poor Jason.  Future gimmicks included Jason in Manhattan, Jason “dying” (although he had already “died” in Part 4), Jason in Space (Leprechaun beat him there though), battling Freddy Krueger, and the ultimate gimmick:  Being remade by Michael Bay.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 8:  Jason Takes Manhattan>

Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) is all grown up and looking to put Jason to rest once and for all.  He heads out to the cemetery with his pal Horshack to cremate Jason’s body but in the process has a bit of a freakout and stabs his carcass with a big metal pole.  Lightning strikes and it naturally brings Old Hockey Face back to life.  (Frankenstein rules are in effect.)  Because Jason is a maggot-faced zombie, he has superhuman strength and can’t be killed.  Tommy’s solution?  Chain that sucker to a big fucking rock and leave his ass floating in Crystal Lake.

Director Tom McLoughlin imbues the movie with a sense of fun that has not been rivaled before or since in a Jason movie.  Some have argued that Jason “jumped the shark” when he became a zombie but in the confines of the movie it works incredibly well.  After not being in the last movie (except for a brief dreamlike cameo), it was good to finally have Jason back.  The fact that he was zombified and possessed superhuman strength amped up the carnage he was able to create.  

I mean hearts get ripped out, metal posts are shoved through the stomachs and faces, arm and legs are ripped off, broken whiskey bottles get put into people’s throats, faces are put through walls, knives get stuck into skulls, heads are twisted off, spikes are thrown into faces, and heads are crushed.  Jason also gets two people at the same time with the same machete while they straddle a motorcycle and beheads three paintball playing jackasses with one swoop of his trusty machete.  My favorite kill was when Jason folded up the sheriff like a lawn chair.  People usually complain that this entry is bloodless but there is enough gruesome stuff here to please any die hard Jason fan.

While I prefer the Mongoloid Jason of Parts 2-4 (I’m not counting Part 5 because that featured JINO, Jason in Name Only), there is nothing wrong with a super-strong Zombie Jason.  Everybody has their favorite version of a beloved character.  No one is “right” or “wrong”; it’s just a matter of preference.  It’s just like when Roger Moore took over for Sean Connery as James Bond.  To some people, Connery will always be Bond while others enjoy the more humorous aspects that Moore brought to the table.  And while we’re on the subject of Bond, the Jason Bond opening is just too awesome for words.

McLoughlin also plays with the conventions of the series a bit.  Like how he cannily shows you what Jason looks like right at the beginning so you don’t have to wait 90 minutes to see his face.  Since we already know what the fool looks like from the get-go, the movie can get down to business.

In addition to foiling our expectations, McLoughlin also tosses more intentional humor into the mix which gives the flick a kind of rollercoaster momentum.  Let’s face it, Jason Lives was self-referential a full decade before Scream made it hip.  When confronted by Jason, one victim remarks, “I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly!”  I think the best line came from the caretaker who looks directly at the camera and says, “Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment!”

The intentional humor works well because it’s never at Jason’s expense.  The exception is the one scene where he rips off a dude’s arm and looks at it funny.  That’s fine though because Jason was still getting used to his superhuman strength at this point so he had every right to be like, “Oh shit, I just ripped this guy’s arm off!  Tight!”  

McLoughlin also does little things no one has ever tried to do in a Jason movie.  For example, this is the only Jason flick where kids actually come to the summer camp!  You already know Jason won’t kill the little kiddies, but it sorta ups the stakes a bit.  I even liked how McLoughlin acknowledged that the town of Crystal Lake would have changed its name to Forest Green to disassociate itself from the Jason legend.  (Although they subsequently went back to calling it Crystal Lake for the remainder of the series.)

Thom Mathews gives a great performance as Tommy and does old Corey Feldman proud.  He’s deadly serious and commands the screen with authority.  This flick is great to watch back-to-back with Return of the Living Dead as a Mathews Meets the Undead Double Feature.  Also worth mentioning is the fact that Darcy DeMoss (who plays the chick who gets her face pushed through the wall) previously appeared in the series in Part 4.  She was one of the chicks in the aerobicise video the coroner watched before he got killed.

Friday the 13^th Part 6:  Jason Lives unfortunately features no boobies.  Now this is something that I’d probably take an Half Star off for under normal circumstances.  There is of course The Video Vacuum rule that states that any movie I’ve seen more than ten times automatically gets Four Stars.  Since I’ve seen this flick well over a dozen times, I can’t bear to give the film any less than Four Stars.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 7:  The New Blood>

Jason wakes up in the morgue after taking an axe to the face in Part 3-D and butchers a coroner and a hot tamale nurse before heading back to Crystal Lake.  Now residing at the lake is a single mom and her two kids, Trish (Kimberly Beck) and Tommy (Corey Feldman), as well as a house full of horny teens.  Jason makes short work of them before coming after Trish.  Fortunately Tommy is a special effects wizard and makes himself look like Young Jason, which thoroughly puzzles the shit out of the killer.  This gives Trish enough time to plant a machete in Jason’s face.  Thank God Jason is dead so the series can now at last be over.  Right?  Right?

I don’t think there was anyone who honestly believed that this was going to be the FINAL chapter of the series.  Hollywood would not let any movie that costs a measly 2 million dollars that makes back 32 million be the “Final” anything as long as they can still wring a buck out of it.  Paramount Pictures is not stupid, so why would they kill off their biggest cash cow?  The studio just called it “The Final Chapter” to lure the audience into the theater.  I’m willing to bet that Paramount probably already had the next flick in the works before they made the decision to call this one The Final Chapter.  In fact, the Friday the 13^th series is the only movie franchise in which the studios used the word “Final” in their sequel’s title TWICE to make audiences believe that it was going to be the last one.  (Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday being the other film.)

The Final Chapter was directed by Joseph Zito, the man who did Missing in Action.  That means he’s really good at the survival portions of the film where Tommy and his sister fend off Jason’s attacks.  Zito also brings a lot more technical know-how to the flick.  There’s a long opening dolly shot that starts out focused on the full moon, then it pans down and follows some ambulances and cops cars to the crime scene, and ends with a close-up of Jason’s body.  This is a pretty great shot.  We’re not talking the restaurant scene in Goodfellas great here, but it’s a lot more stylish than most of the films in the series.  There’s also a cool shot where the camera is mounted on a gurney containing Jason’s body as it makes its way down the halls of the hospital too.

Zito also gives us more time to get to know the victi… err… kids, which is different from the usual approach.  I’m not saying the characters are Shakespearean or anything but they’re all quirky and have distinct personalities.  Lawrence Monoson has some good scenes while high as a kite and watching vintage stag movies and Crispin Glover’s wacky dance moves has already become the stuff of legend.  These kids are definitely not your cookie cutter teenage stereotypes and they really stand out from 99% of the characters in the series. 

I’m not saying that I didn’t want Jason to turn them into walking Jackson Pollack paintings.  Jason does his mama proud in this one and delivers:  a hacksaw to the throat (accompanied by 180 degree head-twist), knife to the chest, knife through the throat, knife through the back, spear gun to the gonads, spear through the back, corkscrew to the hand, cleaver to the face, chick thrown out of a two story window and onto the hood of a car, knife in the head, head smashed through shower tile, axe to the chest, and three-pronged garden hoe to the chest.  Not to be outdone, Tommy and his sister give Jason his just desserts via a hammer to the neck and a TV to the face, plus a few dozen or so whacks from a machete.  The best part is when Trish plants the machete into his head.  Jason falls to the ground face first on the hilt; then he slides ALL THE WAY DOWN THE MACHETE.  I know Jason will still come back from that but… ouch.

Tom Savani yet again did the excellent effects.  They aren’t as impressive or groundbreaking as the FX from the original, but they still pack quite a punch.  Zito knew full well that Savani was the real star of the move and showcases his work nicely.  (The duo had previously worked on The Prowler together.)  I also liked how screenwriter Barney Cohen shrewdly made Feldman’s prepubescent character an FX expert as a special nod to The Master.  (He even named his character “Tommy” after Savani!)

The Final Chapter was my favorite Friday movie when I was a kid I think mostly because of Corey Feldman.  His character was really refreshing because you very rarely saw a kid in a slasher movie.  Plus, I was just a huge Corey fan anyway.  The abundance of titties, the high body count, and the tense finale were also factors which made me love this installment.  As an adult, I think I still prefer 3, 1, and 6 to this one, but it’s still one heck of a great Jason movie.

And I neglected to mention this in my Part 2 review, but what’s up with the title sequences in these movies?  The title almost always explodes!  In The Final Chapter, Jason’s hockey mask blows up before the credits start.  I mean you hardly ever see any explosions in these films so what’s up with all the exploding titles?  Maybe that’s how Zito got the job directing Missing in Action.  Chuck Norris took one look at the exploding hockey mask and said, “Shit, this dude doesn’t fuck around; he’s blowing shit up before the movie even starts!  Hire him!”

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 6:  Jason Lives.>

Jason Vorhees is still upset that a camp counselor chopped off his mother’s head with a machete.  In what can only be described as a case of Extreme Therapy, he begins hacking up a set of counselors who dare to open up a camp across the way from his home of Crystal Lake.  Jason picks them off one by one until Ginny (Amy Steel), The Final Girl is left.  Jason chases her back to his shack in the woods where he keeps his mom’s decapitated head on an altar.  Ginny is able to play mind games with the poor boy long enough to distract him and plant a machete into his shoulder, which puts him down for the count until the next sequel. 

The Jason in Part 2 isn’t quite the Jason we know and love.  He doesn’t wear the hockey mask in this one (that comes in Part 3-D) but a potato sack.  I don’t know about you but I like the potato sack era Jason.  (Hey if your face looked like one of the Oak Ridge Boys crossed with a microwaved eggplant, you’d be wearing a potato sack too.)  As much as I dig his bag head phase, I have to admit that his overalls are stupid looking.  Seriously, who can be menaced by someone wearing Osh Kosh B’Gosh? 

Friday the 13^th Part 2 is a better than average entry in the series.  There are a number of quality kills yet most of them were so neutered by the MPAA that they wind up being rather anticlimactic.  We get an ice pick to the skull, a hammer to the back of the head, throat slashing, a machete to the face and the piece de resistance; the spear through the two humping horndogs.  It’s not quite up to snuff with the similar scene from Twitch of the Death Nerve (in that movie, the lovers kept on fucking while the spear was through them), but it’ll do.

Since a lot of the FX were cut out by the censors, the best special effect in the movie is Kristen (Gas Pump Girls) Baker skinny dipping.  Yowsers.  Kristen, all I have to say is that I am an Animal Rescue Technician and I want to adopt your puppies.

While were on the subject of excellent performances, Amy Steel makes for a feisty and likable heroine.  Re-watching the film, I was surprised that they actually make a point of Ginny’s degree in child psychology.  This no doubt figures into the finale where she makes Jason think she’s the reincarnation of his mom by donning her ratty ass sweater.  Steel isn’t like the prototypical Final Girl because she actually has sex in the movie but her background in child psychology coupled with her fascination with the Jason legend (when she speculates about Jason’s frame of mind while drinking in a bar, her friends just laugh at her) gives her the edge she needs to defeat the masked mongoloid.

Steve Miner’s workmanlike direction enhances the film nicely.  It’s not out and out scary like his next film in the series, Part 3-D but it’s never boring.  The opening pre-title sequence where the first film’s heroine Adrienne King gets Janet Leigh’ed is a good example of how Miner works.  He establishes a threat, gives a false scare (courtesy of a leaping cat), then allows the scene to naturally pay off.  This scene is also important because it also brings the audience up to speed.  (King dreams the last five minutes of Part 1.)  What I found especially creepy about the opening is that Jason actually LEAVES Camp Crystal Lake in order to get revenge on her for killing his mother.  Before Jason went to Manhattan, Elm Street, or even space; this was his first road trip.

Miner is also good at establishing a moody atmosphere.  The campfire tale where John Furey explains Jason’s origins is extremely well done and sets a perfect tone for the movie.  I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that it’s the definitive campfire scene of the genre (that would probably belong to Madman) but it works really well.  Miner does go overboard when it comes to showing Jason’s feet while he’s stalking his victims though.  There are so many fucking close-ups of his feet in this movie to make you wonder if maybe Doris Wishman had a hand in directing it.

Part 2 delivers about half as many scares as the original and has features about half as much blood but it still has a nasty edge to it that I admire.  Like when Jason kills the guy in the wheelchair.  When we first see him, we’re like, “Wait.  They wouldn’t kill the handicapped guy would they?”  Then it’s revealed that his legs are the only thing that doesn’t function and he’s perfectly handi-capable in the Boot Knocking Department, so he’s fair game for Jason’s machete.  There’s also a gnarly scene where Ginny is hiding from Jason under a bed and gets so scared that she pisses herself.  There’s even a close-up of the urine running out from under the bed.  It’s down-and-dirty touches like that that separates Part 2 from some of the lesser entries in the series.

However the flick does reek of some missed opportunities.  Like the introduction of the chainsaw.  This would make an ideal weapon for Jason (hey if it’s good enough for Leatherface, it’s good enough for him) but he never uses it.  After Ginny nicks him with it then conveniently drops it next to his seemingly unconsciously body, Jason never picks the damn thing up!  I was also kind of miffed that he killed Crazy Ralph too.  He was one of the best parts of the original and it was a shame to just seem him written out of the story like that.  I mean you’d think Jason would want a PR man running around telling people all about his legend, but I guess not.  Jason is human after all and being human, he’s entitled to make mistakes.

That’s why I prefer Jason when he’s Mongoloid Jason and not Zombie Jason.  He’s not just some unstoppable killing machine but a real character.  I particularly liked the scene in this one where Ginny kicks Jason in the nuts.  This is a great moment as it shows that Jason can be vulnerable too.  A swift kick to the nads is something Zombie Jason wouldn’t have had to put up with, that’s for damn sure. 

Miner returned the next year with Friday the 13^th Part 3-D, my personal favorite of the series.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 4:  The Final Chapter>

<Folks, I’m back with another movie in the Horror Franchise Marathon.  Not only will this review be the first of many Friday the 13^th movies I’ll be reviewing over the next few days, it also marks the return of the popular ongoing series:>

THE GREATEST MOVIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE

Watching the original Friday the 13^th after over 25 years, 10 sequels, and a remake is still a special experience.  It’s a brutally effective slasher movie; one that set the benchmark for all slashers to come.  Like the seminal Halloween; Friday the 13^th has a prologue where someone got killed years earlier that sets up the murderer’s motive.  It also firmly establishes The Final Girl, the fact that it’s mandatory for The Final Girl to drop a murder weapon whenever she renders her attacker unconscious, the creepy music, the idea that fornication leads to death, the hungry young actor Before They Were Famous, and the customary POV shots of the killer. 

What Friday adds to the mix is the setting.  It took the terror out of small town USA and planted it in the woods of summer camp.  Everybody hates summer camp, so turning a killer loose in the cabins is an inspired touch; one that would go on to be imitated countless times.  It also establishes the need for the town drunk (in this case, Crazy Ralph) to warn the impending victims that they are “Doomed”.  Friday even contains what I think is the first case of the Jokester character who goes around goofing off and isn’t missed when he gets killed.

More than anything, Friday the 13^th is a showcase for Tom Savani’s excellent gore effects.  Savani was hired after the producers saw his great FX work in Dawn of the Dead.  Unlike the effects in that movie, the gore here is more personal because it’s happening to a smaller group of people you actually care about and not to a bunch of zombies.  Savani gives us multiple throat slashings, axes to the face, and arrows to the eyeball, and a decapitation that is truly one of the crowning achievements for FX in the slasher era.

Some of the film’s critics said that director Sean S. Cunningham favored the gore over the suspense but I don’t buy that.  The original Friday the 13^th is extremely suspenseful.  The difference between this and many of the lame sequels is that Cunningham could actually direct the suspense scenes.  Savani’s groundbreaking work does not outshine Cunningham’s suspense; it perfectly compliments it.  Watch the film on broadcast TV after the network censors have cut out all the gore and it’s still effective.  While my favorite Friday is still Part 3-D (this one is a close second), the original still packs one heck of a wallop and the climatic confrontation between The Final Girl Alice and Mrs. Vorhees is dynamite stuff.  Not to mention The Last Scare; which is one of the best in horror history.  This scene fucked me up so bad when I was a kid.  No scene before or since has come close (well, maybe the end of Sleepaway Camp).

Speaking of historical landmarks, how about Harry Manfredini’s score?  The Chi-Chi-Chi-Ha-Ha-Ha music ranks right up there with the DA-dum DA-dum score from Jaws.  It’s part of pop culture now.  Tell me you’ve never been walking with someone in the woods and made the Chi-Chi-Chi-Ha-Ha-Ha sound.

Cunningham’s real inspiration for Friday the 13^th wasn’t Halloween though.  At heart, the movie is a simple twist on Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve with nearly a dozen apparently motiveless murders happening in an isolated area.  The only difference is that the killer is getting revenge for the death of her son and not trying to get their hands on a piece of property.  In fact, Twitch’s signature kill was blatantly ripped off in Friday the 13^th Part 2; further proving that the Friday series would’ve been lacking something had it not been for Bava’s film.

As with Twitch of the Death Nerve, the killer’s identity is almost an afterthought.  There are no typical whodunit scenes where red herrings are introduced.  It’s just a killer killing people.  While some clues are laid out (there’s a brief mention of a boy drowning); Cunningham doesn’t beat the audience over the head with it.  The fact the murders are more or less random (until the end at least) makes it that much scarier to me.  Later installments of the Friday saga are steeped in the mystique of the larger than life legend of Jason, so this one is refreshing because the counselors don’t know who is killing them or why until the very end.

Yep, Jason doesn’t kill people in the movie.  His mother does.  Some fans don’t like that Jason only makes a cameo in this one but I don’t care.  I like Mrs. Vorhees a lot.  What makes the original Friday the 13^th different from its sequels is that Mrs. Vorhees is able to pull tricks on her victims that her son Jason couldn’t even dream of doing.  Jason couldn’t pick up hitchhikers and scare the shit out of them before killing them.  I dig that about her.  And what about the creepy scene in which Mrs. Vorhees lures an unsuspecting chick into the archery range by yelling “Help me” in an eerie childlike voice?  Bet you all forgot about that little ditty.  That’s some freaky stuff.  Then there’s the awesome finale where she’s chasing Alice around the camp speaking in Jason’s voice saying, “Kill her mommy!  Kill her!”  That shit is scary.  They can bring Mrs. Vorhees back to the series any time.

While I’m we’re on the subject of strong willed women, I do have to get something off my chest.  It has to do with all those feminists who condemned the slasher movies of the 80’s.  Now I don’t want to get off on an anti-feminist rant here but it always pissed me off how those broads would get their bras in a bunch (the ones they didn’t burn, that is) and say that slasher movies were misogynistic.  They’d always protest and say things like the filmmakers were all moralistic, depraved lunatics who got off on the suffering of women and systematically butchered them for smoking pot and having sex out of wedlock.  I have nothing against feminists in general (especially the ones that actually LOOK like females), but their claims are thoroughly ridiculous.  Look ladies, I don’t know if any of y’all have actually sat down and watched a horror film, but it’s not the directors of horror films who get off on the suffering of women and systematically butchered them for smoking pot and having sex out of wedlock; its the killers IN the horror films that get off on the suffering of women and systematically butchered them for smoking pot and having sex out of wedlock.  I thought that was obvious. 

It REALLY infuriated me whenever the feminists singled out the Friday the 13^th movies as being the most misogynistic of the bunch.  Actually, nothing can be further from the truth.  Feminists, allow me to now set the record straight once and for all.

Friday the 13^th can’t be misogynistic because there’s a goddamned WOMAN doing all the killing. 

That’s right, before the potato sack, before the hockey mask, before match-up with Freddy Krueger, heck before there even WAS Jason, there was Mrs. Vorhees.  You feminists didn’t know that did you?  That’s because you never bothered watching the first Friday movie; you just condemned it on general principals. 

And I hate to tell you this girls but Mrs. Vorhees was a card carrying FEMINIST!  You can tell she’s a feminist not only by her close-cropped hairdo, ill-fitting sweaters and over-sized combat boots, but because of her convictions.  The best feminists saw a problem with the way the world was and set out to change it.  In the 60’s, they wrote folk songs, protested, and went on talk shows declaring their equality.  In 1980, Mrs. Vorhees did all that with a vengeance.  Except that instead of burning her bra and going on marches, and demanding equal rights, she stabs people through the throat, buries an axe into someone’s face, and shoots an arrow into their eye.  Mrs. Vorhees showed that equality among the sexes wasn’t just a dream; she set out to prove that a woman could be just as fine a killer as any male slasher in the movies.  As it turns out, she was right.  She was one of the best. 

Okay so she was ostensibly murdering people at Camp Crystal Lake for having sex because the counselors were too busy having sex and let her son Jason drown.  But let me break it down even further for you.  We know why she killed the men (scum) but the reason why she killed the women isn’t obvious at first, but it’s downright simple:  THEY WEREN'T FEMINISTS.  They weren’t independent minded females.  They relied too much on their boyfriends to supply them with pot and screw them.  They didn’t have that “You Go Girl” spunk.  Therefore, they had to die.  That’s why during the final reel, Mrs. Vorhees doesn’t kill Alice right away because Alice at first doesn’t seem like all the rest.  Since Alice has a tomboy haircut and wears pants, Mrs. Vorhees initially thinks she’s a feminist too.  Ultimately though, Mrs. V sees through Alice (she must’ve smelled weed on her breath) and decides to try to make veal cutlets out of her. 

And if you can get buy that argument, I beg you to consider the fact that Jason wasn’t a misogynist either as he was merely carrying out the work of his dear departed mama.  If you can believe that, then you have no reason to hate the sequels either.  (Well except for Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes to Hell; they suck.)

I’m telling you feminists, watch the ORIGINAL Friday the 13^th again (not while you’re on your period of course) and see if I’m not right.  Then get back to me.  I’d love to hear from you.

Friday the 13^th is a solid Number 10 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten for the Year 1980, ranking just below The Exterminator.

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Friday the 13^th Part 2>

Daniel Farrands, the man who wrote what is probably the worst Halloween sequel ever made, directed this so-so documentary on the cinematic life and times of Jason Vorhees.  Farrands gathered a decent line-up of people associated with the Friday the 13th movies (from the original producer/director Sean S. Cunningham to the remake director Marcus Nispel) to sit and chat about the series and give their various takes about their experience in making the films as well as what Friday the 13^th means to them.  All of the actors who’ve played Jason over the years also talk a bit about playing everyone’s favorite masked maniac.

As a die hard fan of the Friday the 13^th series this was an OK trip down memory lane.  A lot of the material is regurgitated from Peter Bracke’s excellent book, Crystal Lake Memories and I’d highly suggest you read that instead of watching this doc.  At least that book interviewed Kevin Bacon, Steve Miner, Dana Kimmell, and Corey Feldman.  I could’ve also done without host Tom Savani’s constant mugging and the gratuitous promotion for the new remake.

What makes His Name Was Jason fun to watch though is seeing how well (or in some cases not so well) the females of the series have been preserved.  Adrienne King, Amy Steel, Deborah Vorhees, Lar Park Lincoln, and the two twins from Part IV all still look pretty good if you ask me, although I would’ve loved to see what Kirsten Baker from Part 2 looks like now.  His Name Was Jason isn’t the definitive documentary that fans of the series might’ve hoped for (I really wished Farrands had concentrated more on each individual film instead of painting the series in one broad stroke), but it’s a fun way to kill 90 minutes.  All in all, it’s more of a glorified DVD extra than anything else. 

I know people get their panties in a bunch once they hear a new remake of a horror classic is coming out.  I used to be that way.  Now I just generally accept it as standard Hollywood operating procedure.  I got miffed when Rob Zombie molested the Michael Myers legend for his ‘07 version of Halloween, but in hindsight if you just think about it as less a remake and more as Part 9, it works much better.  Same goes for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.  I think if they had just called the goldurn thing Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5, everybody would’ve been falling all over themselves to praise it as being, “A lot better than that Matthew McConaughey crap!”

But… whereas the original Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies are not only landmarks in the horror genre but classic FILMS in their own right, the original Friday the 13^th is just one Helluva fun horror movie.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a well-oiled scare machine; it’s just that Sean S. Cunningham is no John Carpenter.  Let me put it to you this way:  Halloween is the classy broad you marry.  Friday the 13^th is the slut who lets you hit it in the pooper. 

In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that the new Friday the 13^th isn’t really a remake.  It’s more akin to Casino Royale in that we get to see the origins of Jason Vorhees.  Sure, some stuff is repeated like the death of his mother and him obtaining the hockey mask; but it felt to me like less of a remake and more of a way to make the old masked maniac seem fresh again.  This Friday the 13^th represents a true “New” beginning for Jason.  For too many sequels Jason has been doing that indestructible zombie thing.  By doing a remake, Jason can start from scratch and return to his “scary” roots as a hulking, fast-moving, mongoloid murderer.

The fact that Friday the 13^th was remade by Michael Bay and Co. isn’t really all that surprising.  I mean each flick since Part 3 has been based on some sort of gimmick in one way or another.  Part 3 was filmed in 3-D, Part 4 promised us “The Final Chapter”, then 5 turned around and gave us “A New Beginning”.  6 boasted the return of the REAL Jason, while 7 promoted Jason vs. Carrie.  The next three installments saw Jason leaving Camp Crystal Lake in hopes that a change of scenery would keep things fresh.  In Part 8 he went to Manhattan, 9 took him to Hell, and in 10 he went into outer space.  Part 11 was the ultimate gimmick movie in which Jason fought his biggest rival Freddy Krueger. 

And Jason's death shouldn't prevent him from making a comeback.  In the previous films, Jason’s been killed by drowning, axes to the skull, machetes to the eye, toxic waste, being dragged down to Hell, sexy cyborgs, and Freddy himself.  He’s even survived poor box office returns, so if he came back from that, he can come back from anything.

Okay, enough of my long-winded stalling.  You all are dying to know how it is.  The answer:  It’s no better and no worse than Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.

I won’t lie to you; the first half of this movie is extremely shitty and had me more than a bit worried.  Jason’s origins were clumsily handled (Mama Vorhees gets decapitated two minutes into the flick) and the campfire tale that introduces the Jason mythology seemed rushed; lacking the mystery and resonance of the similar scene from Part 2.  Also, the first couple of kills were mostly bloodless and seemed out of step with Jason’s persona (Jason never had to trap his victims before). 

There’s also an odd new touch to the Jason mystique that just seems plain bizarre.  Apparently Camp Crystal Lake is one big ganja farm.  That’s why everybody comes to the lake… to steal Jason’s weed.  (I’m not making this up.)  Remember in the old trailer for Part 3 when the announcer said that old Hockey Face would kill anybody who trespassed into the camp because “THESE ARE JASON’S WOODS!”  Well, in this one, Jason will kill you because “THESE ARE JASON’S BUDS!”  Also the Token Black Guy is made to be the Tokin’ Black Guy.  Don’t ask.

The flick actually gets better as it goes along though.  Once the second set of teens started to get butchered in mildly inventive and gory ways, I had to admit I was sorta having fun.  We get:  Ear hacking (Ipod headphone still intact), sleeping bag barbequing, machete to the head, throat slashing, arrow through the head, machete through the pier and into the top of the skull (the best kill of the movie), screwdriver through the throat, axe into the back and out the other side, impalement on deer antlers (not up to snuff with Silent Night, Deadly Night; still the pinnacle of antler impalement scenes), spear through the eye, tow truck impalement, and machete through the stomach.  That’s a kill sheet that any Jason fan can be proud of, despite the movie’s many flaws.

Derek (The Hills Have Eyes 2) Mears does a fine job behind the mask as Jason.  Not as good as Hodder, Brooker, or White, but he comes pretty close.  Mears really books when he has to and the scene in which he flung the axe lumberjack style won me over.  Let’s hope he reprises the role if there’s a sequel. 

The rest of the performances?  Well, the teens are idiotic, unlikable, and are all thoroughly biodegradable.  All I’m going to say is thank God Jason recycles.

In short, this new Friday is one half of a great Jason movie.  There were definitely a few things that stuck in my craw but at the end of the day, the movie is all about dumb teens showing off their titties and getting killed and that’s what you really want in a Friday flick.  I think by the time Part 13 comes out, Michael Bay and Co. will have the formula down pat and deliver a flick that’s TRULY worthy of the hockey mask.

Random Thought:  This is actually the twelfth Friday the 13^th movie, which makes me wonder why they didn’t just wait for the thirteenth film to do a remake; that way it would’ve been literally Friday the 13^th.  (Or the 13^th Friday, take your pick.)

The first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland (RIP Forry) I ever bought featured a big spread on Friday the 13^th Part 3 in 3-D and my astonished youngling’s eyes were scared shitless at the sight of Jason Vorhees (Richard Brooker) dispatching stupid teenagers with various weapons.  A few years later, I got to see the flick during Fox’s Afternoon Movie.  (God remember how great THAT used to be?)  I couldn’t have been more than seven or so and the movie lived up to the pictures in the Famous Monsters.  I was riveted to my seat.  Even though it was like two in the afternoon I had every light on in the damn house.  The harrowing last half hour of the flick when our heroine Chris (Dana Kimmell) is relentlessly pursued by Jason, I tell you I nearly shit my pants.  That night I even think I wound up sleeping in my parents’ room I was so traumatized. 

And by traumatized, I mean I loved every second of it.

Now although I saw just about every 3-D movie that came out in the theater during the 80’s (yes, even Spacehunter), I never got to see Friday the 13^th Part 3 in 3-D like God intended.  While most 3-D movies are entirely dependent on the 3-D to tell their story; what makes Part 3 so awesome is that it totally works either in 2-D OR 3-D.  Can you say that about Jaws 3-D or Amityville 3-D?  Didn’t think so.

Basically Jason wakes up after getting a machete to the shoulder in Part 2 (didn’t faze him one bit) and immediately starts killing more people (although I guess this makes the film take place on Saturday the 14^th, but never mind).  More horny teens arrive at Camp Crystal Lake (although they never call it that, but never mind) and get slaughtered by Jason.  We get a cleaver to the chest, a knitting needle to the skull, pitchforking, a spear gun to the eye, a guy that gets split in half, (from the groin up), a knife through the throat, a fire poker through the stomach, and in the film’s standout moment; Jason crushes a guy’s head until his eyeball pops out.

I cannot give director Steve Miner enough credit here.  He did a fine job on Part 2, but he really kicked ass on this one.  The man really knows how to ratchet up the suspense and pay off each kill in a satisfying manner.  Miner also gives us one of the most grueling Final Girl segments in slasher film history as Dana Kimmell goes one on one with Jason for nearly 20 nerve-wracking minutes.

Another great thing about 3 is Jason himself.  Of course, this is the installment where Jason gets his trademark hockey mask.  You got to wait a good hour until he puts it on, but once he does brother, watch out!  I liked how Miner always had Jason lurking on the corners of the screen (Miner really took advantage of the widescreen format) and never once resorted to first-person Jason-Cam like most directors in the series.  Also Jason RUNS like a son of a bitch in this movie, which makes the terror more immediate and threatening.  The way he doggedly pursues Kimmell will have you on the edge of your seat so long you’re liable to get hemorrhoids. 

The only complaint I really have about 3 is that the breasts are pretty sparse.  Tracy Savage has an amazing rack, but Miner always keeps them just below the bottom of the frame.  Occasionally they’ll pop up and for those brief seconds, they look quite lovely.  C’mon Steve, you’re making a 3-D movie here and you got a girl with two enormous talents, why don’t you showcase them in glorious 3-D!?!

That’s OK though.  To me, Part 3 is by far the most suspenseful one in the series.  Most of the Friday films solely exist to show teenagers getting butchered, but precious few of them actually bother with suspense.  The characters are also likeable for the most part and you aren’t just rooting for them to die as you’d later do in the series.  3 also has a funky Disco remix of the patented Harry Manfredini theme song that totally rocks.  Put that shit on your Ipod!

Now I’ve seen this flick over and over since I was seven and always in 2-D.  I never ever thought of it any other way really and always figured that I’d never get to see it in three dimensions.  Now Paramount has finally gotten off their asses and put out a 3-D version on DVD.  All I got to say is:  ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

I know what you’re asking me, is the 3-D DVD worth it?  Okay, I watched the flick TWICE. Once on my 27 inch 4X3 TV and once on my 32 inch LCD 16X9 TV with an up-converting DVD player. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give the 3-D effects on a regular TV about a 4. While the depth-of-field effects look great, the stuff that is supposed to leap out through the screen doesn’t work all that well. On a bigger 16X9 with a couple adjustments (the brighter and sharper the picture, the better), I'd give the effects an 8. The 3-D is very effective during the scenes where stuff SLOWLY moves through the screen (like the TV antennae scene) but there is still a little bit of a doubling effect on the scenes where something abruptly comes out of the screen (like the spear gun).  Since my DVD player up-converts DVDs to near Hi-Def quality, the picture was a lot sharper than on a regular player, so that may have helped the effects work better as well. For optimal picture quality, turn off all the lights too.

Look folks, I'm a HUGE Friday 3 fan.  It's my personal favorite of the series and since I never had the chance to see it in the theater in 3-D, this is a perfectly acceptable substitute and is totally worthy of a purchase.  Besides, how else do you intend to see:

• 3-D Pole.
• 3-D TV antennae.
• 3-D Snake.
• 3-D Baseball bat.
• 3-D Joint.
• 3-D Roadkill.
• 3-D Eyeball.
• 3-D Wallet.
• 3-D Fist.
• 3-D Yo-yo.
• 3-D Jehri Curls.
• 3-D Pitchfork (Handle).
• 3-D Pitchfork (Sharp end).
• 3-D Juggling.
• 3-D Spear gun.
• 3-D Popcorn.
• 3-D Rat.
• 3-D Fire poker.
• 3-D Popping eyeball.
• 3-D Axe.
• 3-D Hands.
• 3-D Canoe.