Monthly Archive: October 2018

Well I’ve talked about so many found footage movies that no one cares about that I guess it is time to discuss one that people actually might want to hear my thoughts on. The Blair Witch Project is a widely regarded masterpiece in the found footage horror genre and I’m not going to pretend that I have some new hot take on it that will generate controversy or interest. It’s a really good movie and I would suggest watching it to anyone interested in found footage movies and/or horror movies. I actually saw this pretty late in the game for when I started watching found footage movies and it kind of changed my view on the genre when I did. Everything Blair Witch Project did was so influential on many filmmakers that followed and I realized only on my initial viewing how many movies I had seen that took concepts, premises, even entire sequences from the movie and just repackaged them. It was almost more interesting as a historical piece of film than as one you would watch for entertainment. Luckily I have been able to watch the first movie a couple more times since then and I am happy to share my thoughts about it with you! Also I will be dropping spoilers. Read at your own risk.

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After finishing the series it is so funny to look back on where we started and where it ended. At the beginning Friday the 13th was at its core a simple whodunit that became a revenge story that seemed to resonate with people. In the final movie of the series Uber Jason is about to begin his quest of eradicating all human life on Earth 2.

                                                          Mrs. Voorhees killing Kevin Bacon because her son drowned  seems so quaint in comparison.

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Friday the 13th Retrospective Part 2

Time to continue the tale of Tommy Jarvis and check out the middle of the series! This is where everything starts to change, for good and bad, and is definitely the most interesting part of Friday the 13th. After this point no two movies are the same and premises start to get, well, weird.  As with Part 1 this review contains spoilers so beware!

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Friday the 13th Retrospective Part 1

So this is a big mix of reviews of each of the original series movies and a retrospective on the whole series. To make it a bit easier to read I’m splitting this up, first there will be the first four movies, then on Wednesday the next four and then the final two on Friday with an added discussion of the entire series as a whole.

Jason Vorhees is one of the most iconic slasher villains in cinematic history, and, while he isn’t my favorite slasher villain, I have a ton of love for the series he came from, Friday the 13th. On the whole I really enjoy this series and I’ll give my thoughts on where it came from and where it went at the end, but until then I’ll go through each movie individually to give a better sense of context to what I’m discussing.  Watching these all in a row was really interesting and if you like this I may make more retrospectives like these in the future! But that’s then and this is now so it is time to get into the Friday the 13th series, starting with the unassuming original!

Please be warned that from here on out I will be getting into spoilers!

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Halloween (1978)

Directed by John Carpenter

Viewed on Shudder

Just watch the movie. I know it’s good. You know it’s good. Surely everyone has to know about how great the original is, even if they’re not aware of the cultural and historical significance of it. Halloween wasn’t the first slasher movie, as Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out a few years earlier, but it did serve to solidify many of the tropes that would appear in slasher films for years to come. Things like masked killers stalking young women at home or using a kitchen knife as a murder implement would emerge as common traits for newer slashers. I can’t say with confidence that Halloween was the FIRST to do those things, but the film’s financial success and popularity certainly helped to popularize these things amongst filmmakers who were influenced by Halloween, whether to create an original idea that borrowed elements of the film or just to create ripoffs, of which there were many. I could go on all day talking about how influential this movie is, but instead let’s examine what it was that made Halloween so successful and see if it still holds up today!

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Prom Night (1980)

Directed by Paul Lynch

Viewed on Amazon Prime

While we’re still in Spooktober, now is a great time to look at one of the movies that put Jamie Lee Curtis on the map as a “Scream Queen.” No, not Halloween, not yet anyway. Today I’ll be taking a look at the schoolyard slasher, Prom Night! I don’t know very much about this movie actually, except that it stars Jamie Lee Curtis fresh off her success as Laurie Strode of Halloween. And it also has Leslie Nielsen for some reason. That sounds like such a strange combination, but does it pay off?

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