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!

Friday the 13th (1980)

Directed by Sean S. Cunningham

 

It All Starts Here And The Original Is Competent But A Little Simplistic.

The classic start of the franchise, with a very basic setup of camp counselors getting murdered by an unknown killer. The gore is pretty good, especially considering the budget of the movie. I really liked the first act about a new counselor trying to get to Crystal Lake. She asks about a bus at a local diner and learns about the local superstition saying that the campgrounds are cursed or haunted or something. I am a sucker for urban legends of all kinds, so this idea really worked for me. What defines this movie though is the mystery at its core, which is who is murdering all these counselors? Several sequences are shot from the perspective of the killer and those are pretty creepy, while also giving a lot of information about who the killer could be in a subtle way.

The climax where Mrs. Voorhees reveals herself as the killer (who murders because her son, Jason, drowned at the camp years earlier while the counselors were having sex instead of watching him) is both fun and frustrating. Fun because Mrs. Voorhees is really intense and over the top and I enjoy that kind of hammy performance but frustrating because during the inevitable fight between Mrs. Voorhees and the last surviving counselor, Alice, Alice manages to incapacitate Voorhees and then run away until Voorhees corners her again. That happens three times. It felt a bit silly. The real ending is a fun little twist where Alice is in a canoe just taking in everything that happened when she is attacked by a deformed child jumping out of the water. It’s a really iconic shot. The very end of the movie has Alice recovering in the hospital and talking to the police, who don’t believe her story about the boy in the lake. Horrified, Alice realizes that must mean he is still out there. Perfect sequel bait.

 

Friday the 13th Part II (1981)

Directed by  Steve Miner & Sean S. Cunningham

 

Pretty Much Just A Remake of Part I. Still Very Serviceable.

 

After the amazing financial results of the original they quickly put a sequel into production. A lot of things get smoothed over in this one to make the transition from Part I, where Jason is inexplicably unchanged and in the lake to Part II where Jason is a large strong deformed man with a sack covering his face. Jason uses mostly the same MO as his mom, going on a killing spree at a different camp that was set up on Crystal Lake opposite of where the camp from the first film was set. In a lot of ways, this feels like a bit of a rehash of the first movie, but there are enough new ideas to keep things interesting and give this sequel its own sense of identity. There’s one really great scene where new urban legends are discussed about Jason’s life and what he’s been doing since he, apparently, survived the drowning incident.

It’s a big retcon and it makes the timeline kind of fuzzy, but it does enough to establish concrete reasons for why Jason wants to kill teenagers, and camp counselors in particular. The easy explanation is that it is revenge for the death of his mother, and the more interesting implied reason is that his isolated upbringing (his mother didn’t let him go to school or meet other children) resulted in him having an intense loathing for and jealousy of well adjusted teenagers enjoying the life that he was never able to have. Also this is the only movie where I think Jason is actually scary, because he doesn’t wear his hockey mask, he wears a burlap sack over his head. It was weird and off-putting and I liked it. A lot of what makes this movie works is the likeable group of counselors in training at the camp. Their interactions are sensible and fun and they have a good group dynamic. This movie is also surprisingly tense with a great ending and some really memorable kills. Ranks pretty close to the original in terms of quality.

 

Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

Directed by Steve Miner

 

Even Though A Lot Of Things Are Introduced Here, This Movie Hurt Me.

This is where everything went wrong. It’s a little funny that the movie that starts so many iconic elements of the Friday the 13th franchise is also just a terrible movie. To start with, that old chestnut about slasher movies having characters you want to see die? Yeah, this is the first Friday the 13th to really have characters like that. There were one or two before who were awful but here EVERYONE in the cast is just immensely unlikeable. Everyone we meet is a moron, a jackass, an incredibly bad actor or a Cheech Marin cosplayer.

There is a lot more humor in this one but it all falls completely flat because the writing is so bad. It also doesn’t help that the movie tried to have a 3D gimmick, which just resulted in there being dozens of scenes with characters randomly poking sticks at the screen or juggling at the screen or pointing at the screen. Every time this happened I grimaced so hard I thought my jaw would break. This movie is just made of silly, gimmicky characters, like the biker gang that our loveable goofball runs afoul of at the convenience store, the two hippie stoners, and a young lady who was vaguely assaulted by Jason at some point in her past. What did Jason do to her? She doesn’t remember, all she knows is that Jason attacked her in the forest and the next time she woke up was in her own bed. I suspect I know what they were implying, but I really don’t want to acknowledge it.

The only real notable things here are that Jason gets his iconic hockey mask in this movie and that the worst kill of the series happens. I sometimes jot down when a kill is memorable or fun, and this one was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Not-Cheech is making popcorn (which pops up at the viewer) and then the power shuts off. He goes downstairs to investigate and Jason throws him at a fuse box. Two sparks fly out and then he’s dead. It was as exciting as it sounds. The only other interesting tidbit is that this is the first movie to end with Jason “dying.” During the final confrontation, the lady who was assaulted by Jason manages to hang him outside the nearby barn. As far as we know at this point, Jason is just dead.

 

Friday the 13th Part IV The Final Chapter (1984)

Directed by Joseph Zito

 

One Of The Best Of The Series And Introduces Great Characters & Themes.

 

After the truly terrible previous installment, it is incredibly shocking that the fourth film in the series would wind up being one of the best it has to offer. Picking up right where the previous film ended, Jason is shipped to a morgue to be processed. While there we meet some really hammy characters, whose hamminess I actually enjoyed and found endearing, and saw a few memorable deaths as Jason either returned to life or was never really dead at all. As Jason makes his way back to Crystal Lake he comes across two groups of people, the Jarvis family, who lives there, and a group of teenagers spending a weekend partying at a rented house. Jason, as per usual, begins picking people off one by one. What makes this movie special though is the interesting way in which the character of Jason is paralleled with several people in these groups.

The entire film is about sexuality and that is reflected through the characters. It’s a pretty clever callback to the explanations from Part II about how Jason’s social isolation helped to mold him into the psychopathic murder that we all know and love, and nowhere is his stunted growth more evident than when it is compared to a cadre of sexually active young folk. And these aren’t just a bunch of kids who like having sex, these are fully realized sexual beings with their own desires, fears and anxieties regarding sexuality. Jason can be easily compared to Jimmy, a young man incredibly aware of his own perceived shortcomings regarding sexual matters, and Ted, a jovial young man who becomes less and less jovial as he begins to experience the sexual frustrations that he mocked Jimmy about at the beginning of the film. But the most important analogue is that of young Tommy Jarvis, a prepubescent child whose interest in sexuality is matched by his innocence. Tommy is in some ways an odd child, he makes horror movie masks that he enjoys wearing (Wow, who else likes wearing masks?!?) and is isolated from peers, because he lives in the woods, and we never see Tommy interact with someone his own age.

These parallels make this the first movie in the series to show us the real tragedy of what happened with Jason, Tommy as who Jason once was, isolated but with the possibility of growth, Jimmy an anxious man who overcomes that to enjoy life, who Jason wanted to be, and Ted, a bitter isolated man rejected by his peers, who Jason is. It’s pretty cool that this story was able to be told without making it a prequel.

So the plot is that Tommy Jarvis’ sister, Trish, who is awesome, starts noticing that things are kind of weird and goes to check on the partying teens. Finding their bodies there she is attacked by Jason, who corners her upstairs and takes his sweet time going after her. Seeing no other option Trish jumps out the window, forward rolls off the roof and lands outside, injured but momentarily safe from Jason, Trish manages to get home and warn Tommy of what is going on, telling him to flee while Trish will distract Jason and buy some time. Tommy comes up with a different plan, shaving his head and removing his glasses in order to look like Jason as a child in order to trick him. The plan works surprisingly well, with Jason seemingly hypnotized by Tommy, allowing Tommy to get close to him and, with Trish’s help by momentarily distracting him, grab his machete and attack the defenseless Jason. Tommy continues hacking away at Jason, needing to be sure he is dead, with the last shot of the movie being Tommy striking Jason over and over with the machete screaming, “DIE DIE DIE DIE.”

It’s a really shocking and kind of upsetting end to the movie, seeing young Tommy so viciously, but understandably, attacking Jason like this. In the same way that Jason lost his innocence, so did Tommy, and this dynamic lasts until the end of Friday the 13th Part VI as being the most interesting storyline to go through multiple Friday the 13th films. Along with having one of the more interesting storylines this one also has some of the better characters and some really good deaths. This really transcends being a good slasher movie and is just a pretty good movie.