Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

Jason X: Planet of The Beast - by Nancy Kilpatrick

I read and reviewed Jason X: The Experiment, the second of five tie-in novels that were based on the futurist Friday the 13th series entry Jason X - the movie that not only shot Jason Voorhees into space, but that also turned him into a bad ass looking cyborg - almost five years ago.  

Five years is a very long time.  So my telling you that I remember very little of the book should come as no surprise whatsoever.  All I remember about The Experiment is that it read like two different books that had been cut and pasted together in the most clumsy manner possible and that the book ended with the cyborg Jason being shot off into deep space.

Nancy Kilpatrick's Planet of the Beast, the third of the five Jason X books, pretty much starts there.  I say "pretty much" because it is hinted that Jason has been drifting through space for a very long time.  The crew of a deep space exploration vehicle, fittingly named the Black Star 13, discovers and salvages the ancient ship.  An act that awakens the dormant cyborg Jason and - nope, nothing new here - he slaughters the entire crew.

The Black Star 13, now a blood drenched ghost ship, shoots through space on a collision course with another deep space exploration space station, the G7, which is orbiting the barren Planet #666, the Planet of the Beast.  (No, I am not making this up to be sarcastic, honest.)  The G7 is hosting a visiting ship called The Revival, another deep space explorer, that goes out to investigate the Black Star 13 and search for survivors.  Jason slaughters the rescue team and the entire crew of The Revival and both ships crash onto the surface of Planet #666.

And that is just the book's Prologue!

The rest of the book is just as silly as the Prologue, albeit not as fast paced.  The man in charge of G7 is an arrogant, and quite mad, scientist that knows the history of the unkillable "Jason X".  Said scientist wants to clone Jason and create a "Master Race" of "enhanced" human beings.  Yes, he is very much aware of the disaster that befell the fool that tried that very same thing in The Experiment.  But, being both arrogant and insane, this new guy thinks he is smarter and better than the doofus that goofed up it all up last time.  Yeah, right.

On the plus side, author Nancy Kilpatrick keeps the pace somewhat brisk and she even comes up with a rather ingenious method of "livening up" the Jason free sections of the book.  One of the characters (and I do use the description "character" loosely) is a storyteller who tells holodeck campfire yarns about Jason's past exploits.  So, long before Jason shows up to dispatch the listeners with his trademark finesse, the reader gets one or two carnage filled vignettes to wet the appetite.  Kilpatrick also knows how silly this all is and, despite maintaining a straight narrative face throughout the book, it is quite clear she has her storytelling tongue lodged firmly inside of her cheek.

On the negative side, the book is a tad bloated and repetitious.  It takes far too long for Jason to get off of the Planet of the Beast and onto G7, and far too many scenes feel needlessly dragged out.  (Again, the blame for this falls on the publisher, not the author.)

Nonetheless, Planet of the Beast was one of the more entertaining entries in this short-lived tie-in series. 

Friday the 13th: Bad Land #1 & 2 (of 2)

Two stories, separated by both time and circumstance, or so it seems, unfold with ironic similarity in the tainted region that is Crystal Lake.

"It was this place, something wrong with this place..."

Story 1 tells the tale of three frontier hunters that have become trapped by a fierce blizzard and find shelter (but take far more than that) in the warmth of a Native American family's hut.

"We never should have come here...this is a bad place..."

Story 2 tells the tale of three contemporary hikers that have become trapped by a snowstorm and find shelter in the deserted cabin of what looks to be an abandoned summer camp.

Bad Land lets the reader know that its story is going to be doing something a tad bit different with the Friday the 13th formula in the very first panel.  All Friday the 13th movies have a violent storm in them, but it has always been a rainstorm filled with copious amounts of flashing lightning and booming thunder.  Bad Land, however, has its various characters becoming trapped by snowstorms, making it the first (and, to date, the last) Friday the 13th story ever to do so.  

The snowstorm is an interesting change in the series visual style that gives Mike Huddleston (art) and Darlene Royer (colors) unique opportunities to create some stark and potent atmospheric imagery.  The interior of the Native American hut is colored in golds, yellows and reds, which gives the images a warm and almost comforting quality, at first.  Later, when two of the frontiersmen rape the woman they find inside the cabin, the color gives the setting a suitably hellish appearance.

The coloring for the interiors of the second story is far cooler and softer, as the emotional dynamic between the characters is rooted in a secret affair.  There is something akin to a lover's triangle going on, only the love is supposedly unrequited toward one of the doomed trio.  (Come on, this is a Friday the 13th story taking place in a blizzard, do you really think any one of them are going to be able to survive both Jason and a freezing snowstorm?)  Although I did think that the caught-in-the-act girl protested way too much for someone that only thought of the wounded party as "just a friend".  Since a secret betrayal of a perceived trust is the emotional anchor of this story, the colors are all blues and greys.  There is a chilliness to the images that gets across the anger and resentment of the betrayed party long before the betrayal is even discovered.

But everything is discovered, of course.  By the husband of the raped and murdered Native American woman in the past, and by Jason Voorhees in the present.  Events pretty much unfold the way you would expect them to after the two characters arrive on the scene.

At first the events in the two stories do not seem to have all that much in common with one another.  Other than their setting and the repetition of certain key visual images, that is.  But as the two tales unfold, and the expansion of Crystal Lake's notorious "Death Curse" reaches back far beyond the genesis of the Voorhees Mythology, it becomes clear that the "Bad Land" around (and beneath) Crystal Lake may very well have been searching for someone to manifest itself in, and that it finally found that someone in Jason Voorhees.

If my memory is correct, Bad Land was the last story in Wildstorm's Friday the 13th comic book series.  If my memory is serving me correctly, then Bad Land ends that comic book series on a very high note.

Making Friday The 13th: The Legend Of Camp Blood - by David Grove

Having already read Peter Bracke's exhaustive oral history of the Friday the 13th franchise, Crystal Lake Memories, several years ago, I cracked open David Grove's Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood wondering if the book would be able to tell me anything that I had not already learned from reading Bracke's book.

The answer turned out to be yes and no.  On the yes side I learned that, prior to making his directing debut with Friday the 13th Part 2, Steve Miner had been developing, with Wes Craven, a jungle set action-thriller titled Marimba.  The discarded project was later picked up by none other than Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, The Barbarians, etc.) and made as the jungle "adventure thriller" Cut and Run.  That was news to me.

Something else that was news to me was Tom Savini's pal and right hand man Taso Stavrakis (Day of the Dead, etc.) being asked to play Jason in Friday the 13th Part 2, but turning the part down for some reason.  A professional mistake that he seems to regret making to this very day.  Can't really blame him.

Those were the two facts that really stuck in my mind.  The only other fresh to me facts came via the comments of the late Michael Avallone (shared by the man's son, David) and Simon Hawke, the two men who wrote novelizations of several films in the Friday the 13th franchise.  Avallone's son's remembrance of his father's struggle to turn the sow's ear that was the Friday the 13th Part 3 script into something that could pass for a faux silk purse, of a sort, was greatly appreciated by me.  Because I bought and read Avallone's novelization of the film when Part 3 came out.  I managed to hold onto the book for quite a few years, but my copy was, sad to say, eventually lost.  

I also bought and read Simon Hawke's seven to eight years late novelizations of the first two Friday the 13th movies, as well as his almost comically overwritten novelization of Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part 6.  While Hawke did an adequate job of translating all three films into modestly entertaining guilty pleasures, I would not go quite as far as Grove does in praising the man's work.  "Stellar" is not something that I would ever think to call the novelization of Friday the 13th Part 2.  I never found or read Hawke's novelization of Friday the 13th Part 3.  I also found it interesting that Grove, after praising and making comments about Hawke's other franchise novelizations, makes no mention of the oddity of Friday the 13th Part 3 having two novelizations, not does he bother to compare the two.  I would have loved to have read that.

On the no side, Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood is, far more often than not, just a somewhat subjective recap of the facts and stories not only recounted in Bracke's encyclopedic coffee table book, but also sprinkled throughout the countless production articles and cast and crew interviews that have been conducted over the years.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, though.  Grove's subjective commentary gives the stories a rather unique twist and flavor.  Some of his offhand comments are interesting, others defensive, and some, especially of later series entries, contemptuously dismissive.  

Some of those comments, especially of the later films, were also a tad questionable.  Grove not only gets a death or two wrong, he also gets a few plot details wrong when recapping the stories for latter films, and, the one that really stuck in my mind, he completely misrepresents Peter Mark Richman's character Charles McCullouch in Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  Richman's character was not a degenerate that like teen-aged girls, he was the uptight asshole Principal that one snotty teen character tried to blackmail into allowing her to graduate by faking a seduction.  Big difference.

Despite those small complaints, I really can't say that a Friday the 13th fan should pass on buying or reading the book.  I found it an entertaining and informative enough book and I don't think that there would be all that many Friday the 13th fans that would disagree with me.

Friday the 13th: How I Spent my Summer Vacation #1 & 2 (of 2)

"You're always hounded and feared and despised... and you never meet anyone else who understands."

Until now, that is...

Little Davie Falkner suffers from a bone disorder called Craniodiaphyseal Dysplasia.  This condition causes deformities to Davie's face and head that bear a striking resemble to those that Jason Voorhees had as a young child.  Although his deformity has made his short life (by his own estimates Davie will be dead by the time he is supposed to turn 18) something akin to a living Hell, it saves his life when he is forced to attend Summer Camp by his well intentioned mother.

For when Jason comes along to dispatch both counselors and campers, Davie's face strikes a memory cord buried somewhere deep inside of Voorhees's living dead brain.  Summer Camp may have come to a violent and bloody end, but little Davie Falkner's Summer Vacation has only just begun.

Wildstorm's Friday the 13th series hops on the Black Comedy Train and the ride is an uneven and unsatisfying one.  The part that focuses on Davie Falkner and the eventual joy he finds during his nine days as Jason Voorhees's "captive" is quite good, as is the reveal of where Jason had intended to take young Davie.  What hobbles the story is the appearance of a whacked out on methamphetamine country bumpkin sheriff named Elroy P. Tanneyhill.  Great googly-moogly, can a fictional person have a more redneck sounding name than that?

Because Davie, who narrates his section of the story, catches a hefty does of the Stockholm Syndrome while being carted through the woods by Jason, Voorhees becomes something akin to a sympathetic figure in the book.  That means the book needs another bad guy to hate and the motor-mouthed and tweaked out of his gourd Sheriff Tanneyhill is supposed to fill that role with, I'm guessing here, comedic gusto.  Tanneyhill's character was so twitchy and obviously mentally unstable from panel one that, when he first appeared, I thought he was a psycho in a stolen police car that had mistakenly wandered in from some other book.  (Wildstorm's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, to be exact.)  But that was not the case.  Tanneyhill is supposed to be an actual Sheriff and, because he is tweaked out of what little mind he has, when he shows up on the scene he does a whole lot of harm and no actual good.  

The moment Tanneyhill arrives, shooting off his mouth about some "Crazy methhead sonuvbitch", he pulls out his gun and shoots at anything that moves.  What is moving, unfortunately, are the last two surviving counselors trying to escape from Jason and save little Davie's life.  After Tanneyhill kills them, Jason captures Davie and vanishes into the woods to kill others, leaving the Sheriff with two gunshot dead bodies that will be in need of explaining.

Or maybe not...

Tanneyhill devises a sloppy way to cover his crime and tries to figure out a way to get rid of the only other witness to his tweaked out murder spree: Davie Falkner.

The result, as I said, is really uneven and unsatisfying.  Tanneyhill isn't all that funny or interesting.  His drug addiction and erratic behavior add nothing to the story and, even worse, come across as needlessly silly.  The rest of the story is pretty solid, though, and, if the Tanneyhill stuff had been cut, it might have made for a far more interesting (and considerably darker) one shot. 

Friday the 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat - by Jason Arnopp

At long last, someone has finally gotten a Friday the 13th tie-in novel right.  Hate-Kill-Repeat reads like an honest-to-badness Friday the 13th movie.  The novel does both Jason Voorhees and the established series mythology of the Paramount era proud.

Dare I claim any surprise at all that the author's first name is JASON?

Beginning at an unspecified time after the events of The New Blood, the survivors of which are referenced numerous times in the book, Hate-Kill-Repeat unleashes the undead Jason on a new group of victims.  While Pamela Voorhees' beloved only son is hacking and ripping people apart, serial killers Norwood and Penelope Thawn (which my mind kept insisting was spelled Thrawn) are bringing their morality fueled cross-country killing spree to Crystal Lake.  

Norwood and his wife think that they share some kind of moral bond with Jason Voorhees.  Since they both hate and kill those that dare to indulge in the society corroding evils of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, they want Voorhees to join them in their cleansing killing spree.  I guess they don't read, since this is the exact same mistake made by the every bit as insane, albeit in an entirely different manner, Father Long in Church of the Divine Psychopath.  What the Thawns, and the FBI agents pursuing them, soon learn is that Voorhees has no morality fueled point of view.  He just kills everyone that either enters "his" woods, or that is simply unlucky enough to have crossed his path.

Author Jason Arnopp clearly had no pretensions about the kind of book that he was writing.  Every character that is introduced (save for the easy to spot Final Girl and her love interest) serves as cannon fodder for either Jason Voorhees or the Thawns.  Needless sub-plot digressions are practically non-existent and, should any begin to develop past a few meager pages,  Jason or the Thawns show up to cut them from the book, which is refreshing change of pace.

Hate-Kill-Repeat is just a 415 page killing spree.  The book's body count has to be somewhere in the mid one hundreds, although that is just a guess.  By the time that Jason reaches the ironically named Phoenix Heights Hotel and starts slicing through whole crowds of victims, I had lost count.

If you ever want to read a Friday the 13th book that feels like it could be an actual Friday the 13th movie, then this is the book to read.

Freddy vs Jason vs Ash: The Nightmare Warriors #1 - 6 (of 6)

Round two of the battle between the forces of evil (Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees) and the force for good (Ashley Williams) teams the Chosen One (Ash) with the Nightmare Warriors (the numerous survivors from the entirety of the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises).

The Nightmare Warriors story starts in the depths of Crystal Lake and ends in a blood drenched White House.  Whether or not the first family actually survives the attack from the forces of evil (the Congress is not so lucky) is never revealed, but Freddy Krueger does do a mean imitation (figuratively as well as literally) of former President George W. Bush while sitting in the Oval Office.

As you can tell from the above descriptions the second Freddy vs Jason vs Ash story is truly epic in both scope and cast.  It takes place (literally) all over the map and is cluttered with a survivors cast that, at first, is a tad hard to identify.  (It has been quite awhile since I last watched an entry in any of the trio of series that The Nightmare Warriors draws its inspiration from.)  Some of them didn't even survive their second run in with either Freddy or Jason before I had the chance figure out who was who and before the inevitable gathering where everybody introduces themselves to each other takes place.  The fact that none of them look all that much like the actors that portrayed their characters in the films, a matter of legality, I am sure, certainly does not help.

It is probably needless to say, but The Nightmare Warriors is silly and so over-the-top that it drifts in and out of self-parody on several occasions.  Nonetheless the story also has a meanstreak to it that will remind the reader that, regardless of Ash's snarky comments and the broad camp of Krueger's persona, this is part of a horror series.  One that, despite the "definitive" ending, is more than capable of continuing if the book sales so demand it.  

I am sure that they will.

Friday the 13th: Pamela's Tale #1 & 2 (of 2)

Using the opening minutes of the original Friday the 13th as its narrative foundation, Pamela's Tale gives readers and Friday the 13th series fans (which would be one and the same when it comes to any and all that would be picking up this two shot) the back story that the maligned remake chose to ignore outright.  Pamela's Tale tells us, in Mrs. Voorhees very own words, what brought her to Crystal Lake, how she came to work for the Christy's, and it recreates the tragic accident that led to the (supposed) death of her beloved son, Jason.  Important stuff that Friday the 13th fans want to know!

What most impressed me about this book was just how well writer Marc Andreyko fit his expanded universe back story not only into the narrative of the original film, which is recreated word for word in this book, but also into the back story dream sequence in Freddy vs. Jason.

The story begins with the doomed Annie arriving at the diner and getting a ride to the crossroads from Enos, the truck driver.  Andreyko even includes their run-in with Crazy Ralph, but skips over Enos's telling Annie of all the bad luck that has befallen Camp Blood over the years.  Annie is then picked up by Mrs. Voorhees, something that was not revealed in the original film, but here acts as the springboard into her back story.  The two talk about children and Mrs. Voorhees begins to tell Annie a highly sanitized version of her life.  

We learn that Pamela has always heard Jason's voice in her head, and we see how Jason "encouraged" his mother to kill her abusive husband, even though the future mass murderer was still developing in her womb at the time.  We also learn that Jason was far from the healthiest of children.  Most, if not all, of the missing pets in the neighborhood are probably buried in the Voorhees's backyard.  Then there is the sweet, geeky thrill of seeing several iconic (or at least memorable) scenes from the first film recreated from the perspective of Pamela Voorhees.

It's a fun two-parter that doesn't reinvent, or simply ignore, the Friday the 13th mythos (unlike the maligned remake).  Instead it expands upon it in a way that only a Friday fanboy like myself could truly appreciate.  Great stuff.

Friday the 13th (#2): Hell Lake - by Paul A. Woods

After he is executed, the serial killer Wayne Sanchez - a.k.a. the Devil Boy, so-called for his penchant for carving pentagrams into his numerous victims - finds that Hell IS a bad place to be.  The corner of the Underworld he has been consigned to is crowded with countless psychotics and perverts, all of which seem happy to take their boundless frustrations out on one another at a moment's notice.  The only good thing that could be said about Hell is that Sanchez finally gets to meet one of his beloved idols, Jason Voorhees.  Sanchez's other idol, the Big D itself, is noticeably absent.

Sanchez and Voorhees manage to bond and, before the boredom of eternal damnation can drive the former Devil Boy mad, Sanchez convinces Jason to lead a revolt to escape Hell.  They are successful and, on Friday, January 13th, 2006, the damned souls of innumerable serial killers, rapists and perverts erupt from the once placid waters of Crystal Lake.

Okay, what can I say about Friday The 13th #2: Hell Lake that I haven't already said about each and every other Friday the 13th / Jason X tie-in novel published by Black Flame?

While the novel's central idea is certainly an interesting one brimming with potential, it does not marry all that well with the established Friday the 13th mythology.  Also not helping is how Jason disappears for large chunks of the story and when he does appear, he does not behave all that much like Jason.

After starting off the story and getting the revolt of the damned underway, Wayne Sanchez also disappears from the story.  He does not resurface until the end, when he and several other characters can have their "just desserts" moments of poetic justice.  Why go to all the trouble of introducing and developing a strong character, only to have that character vanish and NOT interact with the protagonists?  It makes for a weak and fragmented story.  The various plot threads should come together into a tight little know of tension, not continue to slither off in opposite directions.

Then there is another, quite different problem with the story.  Jason has routinely returned from the dead since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Why does he need a go nowhere friendship with Wayne Sanchez to motivate him?  Hell, the simple fact that there is a sex, drug and rock n' roll fueled rave being held on the shore of Crystal Lake on his birthday would be more than enough to get the murdering behemoth stomping back to his killing grounds.

Oh, and why is his mother absent?  Shouldn't she also be in Hell, considering the body count she racked up?

Then there is the fact that this book just drags on and on and on...which brings me to my previous criticisms of these Black Flame tie-ins.  They're just too damn long and overwritten.  Paul A. Woods spends way too much time over developing characters and over describing details because there is a completely uncalled for 90,000 plus word count to be met.  Yet again a potentially fun story (and this story could have been a Hell of a lot of action packed fun, all that was missing was a wise cracking demon, or two) is drug out to a maddening snapping point.  This book not only over stays its welcome, it eventually dies from the morbid obesity of its excessive word count and then begins to rot.  Eventually the only thing it managed to accomplish was to stink up my inner Reading Place.

Friday the 13th (2009)

June 13th, 1980.  Pamela Voorhees (Nana Visitor, of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame) goes on a killing spree, murdering the camp counselors she blames for the drowning death of her beloved and rather "special" son, Jason.  The soul surviving counselor (Stephanie Rhodes) manages to fight back and kill Mrs. Voorhees by beheading the woman with a machete.  What Mrs. Voorhees did not know is that her beloved Jason is still alive and he witnesses the killing of his mother.  As the surviving counselor wanders off, Jason gathers some of his mother's things - a locket with their pictures inside it, her head, which commands him to continue on with the dirty work of vengeance, and, I believe, her machete - and disappears into the night.  (Why didn't he chase down and kill the counselor just like he did in the first sequel?  Why didn't he tell his beloved mother that he was still alive?  More on that later....)

Present Day (AKA 29 years later).

When his sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti) goes missing at Crystal Lake, Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki) goes looking for her.  Meanwhile Trent (Travis Van Winkle) and his girlfriend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) take a bunch of friends to his parents' cabin at Crystal Lake for a wild weekend of drunken partying.

But these are Jason's woods and it's Friday the 13th...

It wasn't broke.

They didn't "fix it."

I think that most of the people who will be disliking this new Friday the 13th, and it is becoming quite clear that there will be a lot of them, word of mouth on this movie seems to be of the love it or hate it variety, will be rooting their various criticisms in the latter point of view, rather than the former.

Long term readers of this blog should know that I am an Old School Friday the 13th fanboy.  But just because I love me some Voorhees Machete Swinging Mayhem does not mean that I harbor any delusions about the "artistic quality" or "merit" of the eleven or so Friday the 13th movies that predate this series reboot.  A lot of the negative criticisms I have read, and they are all quite valid ones, could be leveled at just about any other film in the series.  This film basically has all of the same logistical problems that plagued Friday the 13th Part 2 and it deals with them pretty much the same way.  It just flat out ignores them.  I'll just point to my opening remark about the screenwriters and director not "fixing" the Friday the 13th formula (or mythos) and leave it at that.  If they had attempted to make sense of what is, and always has been, a nonsensical exploitation movie "thrill ride," then it wouldn't have been a Friday the 13th movie at heart.

When I read one review that lambasted the film for not creating an "Iconic Moment" for when Jason finds his hockey mask, I could only chuckle and think of the moment in Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D when Jason just showed up wearing the damn thing.  I don't know, I kind of liked the whole "looking in the mirror" moment and, although Jason is never seen with...um...crystal clarity, it looked like his visage was based on the bag headed  "Elephant Man" Jason of Friday the 13th Part 2.

Lacking in memorable kills?  Nah, can't agree with that, either.  Both my son and I hooted and hollered, along with the rest of the audience we saw it with, during certain kills (in true Friday the 13th fashion, I was wondering where the hell the bow and arrow came from, just like I had wondered where the hell the inflatable raft, the spear gun, and the harpoon came from in Friday the 13th The Final Chapter).

So I can't find it my heart to decry it for being a rather generic Friday the 13th movie, which is all it is, really.  My son loved it and I enjoyed it for what it was...an Old School Friday the 13th movie.  One that does have the best and most frightening "living Jason" I have seen since, well, Friday the 13th The Final Chapter.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to go watch another one...and then try and finish the Friday The 13th novel I started reading yesterday.  Told you I was a Friday the 13th fanboy.

Freddy vs Jason vs Ash #1-6 (of 6)

Five years after the events of Freddy vs. Jason.

Christmastime is here and the town of Crystal Lake is not only preparing for the holiday, but for the ceremony that will officially change the name of their community to Forest Green.  (But haven't they already done that?)  Will and Laurie, survivors of the bloody brawl between Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, return to the battleground - now dubbed Crystal Cottages at Forest Green - to double-triple-quadruple-check that the two titans of terror are if fact truly dead.

They aren't, but - in true slasher sequel fashion - both Will and Laurie soon are...

It's a good thing that the customer service in the Housewares department at the brand new warehouse sized Super Mega Ultra-S-Mart in Crystal Lake is terrible.  This means that S-Mart's top rated Senior Housewares Domestic Engineer is coming all the way from Detroit to set things right.  His name is Ashley J. Williams and he is the Chosen One...

Ah, the Freddy vs. Jason sequel that never was.  Damn you, Sam Raimi!  (Of course, some of you out there just might be thanking him for pulling the plug on the project...hope y'all enjoy that bad ass Evil Dead 4 he's always talking about but never, ever seems to get around to actually making.)  At least we have this goofy, bloody and oh-so-awesome comic book adapted from that shelved project.  Judging by what I read, I have to risk a guess that Freddy and Jason's round two would have been a bigger, better and, depending on who was behind the camera, bloodier smackdown than their first.

It would also be funnier...because this is a story that knows better than to take itself too seriously, if at all.  Neither Freddy or Jason have been all that frightening for the last 25 or so years (Jesus H. Christ, have they been around for that long?  I am getting old!) and The Evil Dead series (what with its barrage of Three Stooges homages) was never all that frightening to begin with.  But I was having too much fun reading the book to waste time whining about how not serious it was.  We're pretty deep into King Kong Vs Godzilla territory by this time, folks.  As long as you are okay with that kind of thing, then I think that you should be okay with this book.

One thing in particular that I was very okay with was just how deeply rooted the story is in the various mythos of each of the series.  Best of all was the call backs to each of the series films that came before this particular outing.  Remember how the Book of the Dead and various props from the Evil Dead movies were scattered around the old Voorhees place in Jason Goes to Hell?  So did the team of writers for Freddy vs Jason vs Ash and that is the thread they use to weave together the different storylines.  The Necromonicon Ex Mortis is still buried in the basement of the old Voorhees place (The team of artists did some decent research, because when I saw the first drawing of the old Voorhees place, my first thought was, "Hey that's the old Voorhees house from Jason Goes to Hell!") and Freddy wants it so he can harness its power and bust out of his dream world prison and warp reality to suit his insatiably evil desires.  Who better to trick into getting the old tome than Mrs. Voorhees favorite son, Jason?  That is where Ash comes into the battle, for wherever the Necromonicon Ex Mortis is, Ashley J. Williams, Chosen One, is sure to follow.

The addition of the character of Ash is where the most of the humor comes from, because the Chosen One sure does love to shoot off his mouth.  His presence also keeps the story from padding itself with unnecessary running in circles (a narrative trap that Freddy vs. Jason fell into) because it allows for more varied showdown carnage.  Jason fights Ash, then Freddy fights Jason, then Ash fights Freddy, then Jason fights Freddy, and then Ash fights Freddy and Jason, then Freddy and Jason go at it again, then Ash joins to make sure both stay down for the count...until the number of tickets sold (or books, in this particular instance) create a demand for yet another rematch.

But there were one or two things I was not okay with.  First was a glaring continuity error in issue four, wherein a Necromonicon possessing Freddy Krueger demands that Ash fetch the Necromonicon for him.  Uh, you already have it, Freddy.  So why are you demanding it?  If anything, Ash should be demanding that you turn it over to him.  Then there was the all new, all powerful Freddy whining on at less two separate occasions about how he would rather be someplace else instead of fighting with Jason and Ash.  If he can now move freely from dimension to dimension, why bother hanging around?  Just leave and return at a later date to dispatch with whoever has managed to survive the battle.

But these kinds of entertainments were never known for their strict adherence to the rules of logic.  In fact, my definition of horror has been boiled down to a very simple and to the point description:  The intrusion of the irrational into the rational.  The nature of the irrational, be it rooted in the supernatural or the simply natural, is irrelevant.  All that matters is how the characters in the story react and interact with the intrusion, that is where the drama, or some plain old fashioned fun, is found.  While there is certainly a lot of fun to be found in Ash's reaction to and interaction with Jason and Freddy, the cast of supporting characters that Ash interacts in between those, uh, interactions are a rather bland and one dimensional lot.  With the exception of a clipboard wielding S-Mart Night Manager that takes his job way too seriously and the requisite love interest for Ash, it was impossible for me to figure out who was who.  Their sole reason for existing seemed to be as grist for the slasher mill.  Then again, that same criticism could be leveled at just about any film in the Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or Evil Dead series.  So one could very well ask what the hell was I expecting when I cracked this book open?  Something akin to Shakespeare?  Mamet?  Albee?

No, all I was expecting (and hoping for) was a "fun read" and that is exactly what I got.  I had so much fun reading it that my inner child almost threw a temper tantrum over the fact that would never, ever be a Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash movie to watch on any given evening.

At least there's this book and for that I am truly grateful.

Freddy vs Jason (2003)

"Welcome to my world, bitch!"

The adults of Springfield, Illinois have finally managed to get rid of the nightmare that was Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) by making the children of Springfield forget about him entirely.  (Although the kids having no knowledge of Freddy whatsoever didn't stop him from attacking them in previous movies, but I digress with my needless attention to that foolish thing called "logic.")  Down but by no means out, Freddy hatches a unique attempt at a comeback.  He dispatches Camp Crystal Lake killer Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) to Elm Street with the hope that a few gruesome kills will stir up some unpleasant memories, and thus give Freddy a portal through which he can return.

Trouble is, once Jason starts, he doesn't stop and Freddy doesn't want some brain dead Momma's Boy hacking through his kills...

"This is a meat and potatoes movie," I told my son last night, while rewatching Freddy vs. Jason for the sake of writing this review.  "There's no veggies in it whatsoever."  That's right, forget all about things like characterization and plot.  This movie is all about watching two of the most popular (if not the most popular) 80s horror icons tear into each other like the vicious dogs that they are.  That Freddy vs. Jason is so unapologetically what it is, and that it does what it does with a tremendous amount of gusto, is probably the nicest thing I can say about the movie.  When it comes to Freddy fighting Jason, the movie delivers the goods and, whenever Freddy or Jason are on screen doing what it is that they do best (which is slaughtering one dimensional stereotypes), the movie holds the forgiving viewer's attention quite well.  But when either of the two characters are not around, oh boy.  Even the most forgiving viewer will be counting the minutes until they do show up to either thin down the cast or smack each other around a bit.  Then again, what other reason would there be for watching a movie called Freddy vs. Jason?

Jason X: The Experiment - by Pat Cadigan

My entry in the Final Girl Friday the 13th Blog-A-Thon:

Jason Voorhees has crashed onto Earth II and sunk to the bottom of Veronica Lake.  (Yes, I know.)  But his miraculous healing capabilities, combined with the remaining nano mechanisms in what is left of his charred body, quickly begin to rebuild the bigger, stronger and deadlier Uber-Jason.

When restored to full health, the Uber-Jason strides out of Veronica Lake (sigh) and immediately goes on another killing spree that wipes out a brand new nuclear power plant.  However the radiation from the plant's core causes an overload in the nano mechanisms filling Uber-Jason's body and renders him immobile.  The military, seeing the defensive potential in this strange mutant, ships Uber-Jason off to a secret research facility so that his healing capabilities might be harnessed and used to create unstoppable, unkillable soldiers.  But all the military has really done is lock future victims in with an unstoppable, unkillable killing machine that is about to wake up...

The old saying "The more things change, the more they stay the same" is proven true once again as novelist Pat Cadigan wastes no time restoring the tired-and-true Friday the 13th status quo to the supposedly futuristic world of Jason X.  Although it is some 450 years in the future, and humanity has had contact with alien life forms, the way of life, and technology and slang, of Earth II is no different from that of 21st century Earth I.  Talk about arrested development.  Considering all the new directions that could, and should, have been taken, this book is just a big, lumbering step backward that utterly wastes the pulpy fun potential that was laid out in the source film and Cadigan's own novelization of it.

The Experiment also falls victim to the same problem that befell Church of the Divine Psychopath (an entry in the publisher's Friday the 13th spin-off series), in that it is just too freaking long.  The narrative strolls when it should be sprinting, and its sub-plots - due in large part to the overall nature of the source material - meander needlessly before terminating in an anti-climatic dead end.  Even worse, the overly padded story reads like two stories (the first being the events at the nuclear power plant, the second the experiment of the title and its inevitable aftermath) that were stapled together to fill up the utterly unnecessary 90,000 word count.  What these books need more than anything is for an editor to go Jason Voorhees on the word count and get them down to the quick n' dirty fun style read they're meant to be.

Friday the 13th #s 5 & 6 (of 6)

"This is not happening...this is not happening...this is not happening...this is not happening..."

At this stage the story synopsis becomes a single, straight forward sentence: Jason thins the survivor herd.  That's about it, but that "it" is what brings us Friday the 13th fan boys (and girls) coming back for more.  There is just something that is almost mythically pure in watching the gory spectacle that is Mrs. Voorhees beloved son slaughtering any and all foolish enough to step into his territory.  You would think that people would learn.  But if they did, then there wouldn't be anymore Friday the 13th stories and, well, I guess I shouldn't complain about it too much.

Now that the flashback events (you remember that these events are all a flashback, right?) are drawing close to the where the book began the "here and now" segment of lone survivor Sally's story is used as a framing device to cut the over-the-top gory murder set pieces (unrated all the way) into reasonably tidy little chapters of monstrous mayhem.  Poor Sally has slipped into catatonia (maybe) and now has to suffer the suspicious theories of the Crystal Lake police officer who is "questioning" her.  That he doesn't believe in zombified serial murderers isn't helping him in buying her outlandish tale.  (I'm guessing that this doofus has to be new to the Crystal Lake area, or maybe he's just a really piss poor student of local history.) 

Who met which fate and how lone survivor Sally came to be in her condition is all revealed in an action packed spectacle of gruesome mayhem that will delight just about any fan of Friday the 13th.

"The perfect killing machine, cursed to die and rise from the grave again and again."

The source of Jason's unstoppable, unkillable power is finally revealed and Sally learns how difficult it is to escape Jason Voorhees.

Jason reinvented as the embodiment of an ancient Native American curse (at least it's a better explanation than the far goofier theory offered up in Jason Goes to Hell - The Final Friday) and a plot twist that looks like it could have been torn out of Avatar's Friday the 13th: Fearbook one-shot were the eyebrow lifting offerings of issue six in what may or may not be the final issue of Wildstorm's Friday the 13th series.  While I hope it isn't the final issue, I also hope that the next story arc does something just a little bit more original than giving the reader yet another Native American curse topped off with yet another "You thought you were safe...you thought wrong" gotcha ending.

But there was plenty of stuff that had me grinning and chuckling with geekbastic fan boy delight:  Adam Archer and Peter Guzman's lovely renderings of Jason's surprise attack on Alice (from the very first Friday the 13th) and Mrs. Voorhees severed head in the refrigerator (from Friday the 13th Part 2), Officer Asshole's much deserved comeuppance at the hand (or is that machete) of the zombified serial killer he was convinced did not exist, and the "They really do never learn" denouement that leaves the door wide open for further bloodshed and mayhem.

Please, please, please let there be more forthcoming.

Friday the 13th #s 3 & 4

"I don't care what anybody says, he can't be killed because...he's not human."

Nate and Jerry are missing, so Mike and Sally head off to search for them while the rest of the group stays at Camp Crystal Lake to begin the much needed repair work.

But Jason Voorhees is close by, and far from over.

If you have seen any one of the ten Friday the 13th movies, then you will know what to expect on the pages of this comic book, and boy does it ever deliver on that front.  It turns out that my PG-13 rated book concerns (expressed way back in my review of issue one) were very ill founded.  Jason Voorhees (or is he?) hasn't lost any of his edge in the jump from Avatar to Wildstorm, the book delivers the gruesome goods with glee.

But writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti are smart enough to not forget the characters they have been developing in the previous issues.  As the situation unfolds, secrets are revealed that threaten to turn most of the group against each other.  This not only makes for easier hunting for rotted old Mr. Voorhees, but it keeps the stuff between the murder set pieces dramatically interesting.  Over all, the book continues to be a solidly constructed and very energetic return to the "Classic (a.k.a. Paramount) Era" style of the Friday the 13th series, and I seriously doubt that any Friday fanboy (and I'm a pretty big one) will put the book down disappointed.

Friday the 13th #2

"Don't die."

Sally is rescued and resuscitated, but she has little, if any, apparent memory of happened to her while under the water.  Not that it matters, for Sally's friend Sasha also experiences something otherworldly on the shores of Crystal Lake.

Jason Voorhees isn't the only restless spirit hidden beneath the still waters.

Do you remember those concerns I mentioned in my review of issue one, about how the new Friday the 13th comic book series seemed to be a toned down affair?  Well, it turns out they were completely unfounded.  The new Friday the 13th comic delivers all the necessary R-rated elements that a Friday fanboy expects from something that carries the series name.  (Or it delivered what I expect from one, at least.)

The book also has a decent amount of comedy that is actually funny.  Some of the gags had me throwing back my head and laughing out loud, however your laugh mileage might vary.  But it isn't all fun and games.  Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti give their characters a fairly decent amount of depth, setting up some dramatic conflict and dropping some hints of conflicts to come.  While it is made clear that something other than Jason Voorhees lurks beneath the surface of Crystal Lake, Gray and Palmiotti do not forget that it's Jason Voorhees readers want.  So Mama Voorhees's beloved son makes a memorable appearance, the aftermath of which will probably play an important part in the next issue.

Classic Moment of Cinema: Friday the 13th (1980)

Goodbye, Marcie

Classic Moment of Cinema: Jason X (2001)

One of Jason X's best kills (the sleeping bag homage doesn't really count, because it was in the Virtual Reality chamber).

Friday the 13th #1

"Well...maybe they ought to close that fucked-up place for good."

Sally Thomas, beaten, blood-soaked, and only a step or two ahead of Jason Voorhees, stumbles out of the Crystal Lake woods and onto the highway, where an elderly couple comes to her rescue.  The torturous path that led Sally to this moment started two weeks ago, when she and a group of her friends arrived at Camp Crystal Lake in order to prepare it for yet another reopening.

I'm thinking that somebody, somewhere asked "Why is Avatar doing the New Line Cinema's House of Horror comics, when we have a comic book publisher in our own company?"  So the Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises have moved to a new house (DC) and, while "the more things change, the more they stay the same rule" remains true, I cannot stop from feeling that I am going to miss Avatar's gleefully unrated take on the franchises.  This outing is really dry, as it has no nudity and zero kills.  Then again, the build-up to the good stuff was rather slow in the early Friday the 13th movies.  The book could payoff nicely in that regard in an upcoming issue, but I'm doubtful.

Cut for an R-rating look and feel aside, this new Friday the 13th book does a good job of covering the familiar ground.  I don't think that there will be a Friday the 13th fan out there that won't smile at the photocopy like recreation of Blairstown, New Jersey in the opening pages.  There are also several other winks, nods, and nudges to the series sprinkled throughout.  Writers Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti and artists Adam Archer & Peter Guzman clearly know and love Friday the 13th.  The book also slips in some hints that interesting twists and turns in the story template might be forthcoming, especially in regards to the nature of Camp Crystal Lake and its history.  As far as this new Friday the 13th comic is concerned, I'm still a happy camper.

Jason X (2001)

"He's been modified."

The unstoppable Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, in his fourth and final time - to date, that is - playing the role) has finally been stopped, thanks to cryogenic technology.  But the procedure is not accomplished without more than a few casualties, the last being Rowan (Lexa Doig) who winds up getting frozen alongside Crystal Lake's most famous resident.  Four hundred years later, when the original Earth is no longer habitable, a group of students on a field trip discover the frozen remains of Rowan and Voorhees.  Not long after Rowan is successfully thawed and revived, Jason awakes, eager to pick up  exactly where he left off, four hundred plus years ago...

The Friday the 13th movies aren't well known for their originality, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that the tenth film in the series, despite being set in both the distant future and outer space, would only be more of the same-old-same:  Jason striding along, swinging his machete (or whatever else is handily nearby) and killing any and all that cross his path.  While there are brief flashes of humor amongst all the blink and you'll miss it carnage, most of the jokes fall flat.  Rowan assuming that the future would have some kind of Star Trekian transporter device and Sgt. Brodski telling Jason, "It'll take more than a poke in the ribs..." are the only two that worked for me and held up to repeat viewings.  The only other part I really like is when the upgraded android Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder) shows up and pours out a can of whoop ass on Jason.  That bit always gets a chuckle from me.  The rest of Jason X plays no differently than Friday the 13th parts 1 through 8, with a look that is no different from the dozens, if not hundreds, of Alien/Aliens clones that have filled the market in the last thirty years.  (Has it already been thirty years?  Damn, I am getting old.)  It's a passable time waster for the forgiving Friday fan, and I can be very forgiving, but those thinking that a switch in era and setting would give Jason X an energetic boost will come away very disappointed.

Friday the 13th: Fearbook (One Shot)

"The No Trespasser/No Escape clause, if you will."

Violet and Rich, the only survivors of a disastrous attempt to capture the undead multiple murderer Jason Voorhees, find that their escape from Camp Crystal Lake is a rather short lived one.  The ruthless corporation still wants Jason, they have invested far too much money and man power to stop now.

The question of whether or not it is at all possible to avoid the clutches of the dread Jason Voorhees is answered in the blood drenched pages of Fearbook, Mike Wolfer's one shot sequel to Brian Pulido's three issue story, Bloodbath.  Saint and sinner alike find themselves in the destructive path of the unstoppable Jason Voorhees.  But Jason doesn't care who's been naughty or nice, he wants to kill each and every last one of them.  While Wolfer's story is swift and brutal, Sebastian Fiumara's artwork and Max Fiumara's ink assists are breathtaking.  Violet is smoking hot in camouflage (I'm going to need a moment alone, okay?) and Jason is kept cloaked in moody shadows and fog, making him look like a specter haunting someone's worst nightmare.

One question, however, that hasn't been answered yet:  How is it that Avatar's Friday the 13th comic book has had the best stories of all the titles in its New Line Cinema's House of Horror imprint?  I mean, it's FRIDAY THE 13TH for goodness sake!  Perhaps it is a case of lowered expectations.  While I have been a Friday the 13th fanboy for well over twenty-five years - has it really been that long - I have no problem admitting that not one of the eleven movies in the series (if Freddy vs. Jason is included in the count) can be singled out for having a compelling story or insightful characters.  Every movie is pretty much the same as the other.  A big dude in a hockey mask (or a simple burlap sack) slaughters teens, and that's all.  Yeah, I know his mom started it all, but it's Mrs. Voorhees beloved son that has the bigger fanbase.  I don't think she would want to have it any other way.

I just answered my own question.  With such a simple and easy to build upon formula, all that is really needed for the Friday the 13th series to soar is a "let's just have fun here" attitude.  It is easy to see that the book's current creative team has that attitude.

Friday the 13th: Jason vs Jason X #2

"Before departure, did Ethealth recommend you get the anti-dementia booster?"

While Jason and Jason X try their best to rip each other to pieces, Melda attempts to escape their battle's bloody path of destruction.  The other passengers aboard the SS Fun Club aren't so lucky...

Jason and Jason X beat the tar, piss, snot, blood, guts, and brains out of each other in this machete wielding serial killer slugfest royale.  Ten pages of dialog free carnage, baby.  Yes, this issue was worth every minute I spent waiting for it.

Not that the issue is all action and no plot, (okay, it is all action and no plot) writer/artist Mike Wolfer does mange to have the events dovetail into a conclusion that is both touching and creepy as hell.  It also makes a weird kind of sense, within the nonsensical universe of Jason X, that is.  But don't let the fun stop here Avatar, now is the perfect time to bring in the androids and aliens!

Jason X - by Pat Cadigan - Based on the Motion Picture written by Todd Farmer

Jason Voorhees has finally been captured, but executing the fearsome mass murder proves to be more than a little difficult.  There seems to be nothing capable of killing him.  So a plan is made to put the Voorhees problem on hold, literally, by freezing him in a cryogenic chamber.  Things don't go quite as planned and Rowan LaFontaine, a young and attractive scientist working on the project, is frozen along with the vicious killer from Camp Crystal Lake.  The two remain frozen for 450 years...until 2455.  That is when a group of students from New Harvard University discover the cryogenic chamber beneath the storm scarred surface of the now dead Old Earth.  Hoping to capitalize on retrieving two valuable pieces of history, Professor Lowe has them brought aboard his ship, where he hopes to resuscitate the female subject.  The hulking corpse with the hockey mask is deemed a lost cause and placed in another lab so it can be cataloged and put back in cold storage.

But Jason Voorhees is already getting warmed up enough to pick up where he left off 450 years ago...

In the days before saturation distribution, not to mention home video and cable television, made watching and re-watching movies pretty much a ubiquitous form of entertainment, film novelizations were fairly routine.  Just about every major studio, and even low to modest budgeted independent efforts, had a novel version of their movie sitting in book racks "wherever paperbacks were sold."  Being a movie buff that was, and is, a voracious reader, novelizations of movies that I wanted to see, or had already seen, were a large part of my youthful entertainment diet.  After all, other than making recordings of my favorite movies on audio tape, which I did, there was no other way for me to easily revisit and enjoy a movie that I had liked.  Having it in book form was the closest I could get to actually owning the movie itself, in those pre-video era days, that is.  All that changed with the home video explosion in the 80s which, coupled with the gradual death of regional film distribution and the growing rental trade, made film novelizations unnecessary and they quickly became a marketing thing of the past.  The novelizations of today are sporadic and, more often than not, are only done for a select few films with ties to a pre-existing genre readership.  Novelizations of comic book films, say, or science-fiction epics with robust media novel spin-off series, like Star Wars or Star Trek.  While there will be a novelization of Snakes on a Plane, back in the day there would also have been novelizations of When a Stranger Calls, Slither, The Hills Have Eyes, and Silent Hill sitting in book store racks as well.

But enough with the dewy eyed nostalgia for days gone by, what about Pat Cadigan's novelization of Jason X?  What is up with that, yo?  Because of the publisher's odd decision to have all of their media novel spin-offs of the Friday the 13th, Jason X, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Final Destination series run a cumbersome 90,000 words, Pat Cadigan has plenty of room in which to both deepen the slim characterizations and expand upon the future world in which the story takes place.  She does a pretty good job of it.  The subtle tinkering with the characters personalities, along with their world building back stories, makes Jason X read more like an original novel than one based on a film script.  However, in the early portions of the book, some scenes are bloated with what reads as an excessive amount of description and character detail.  Cadigan takes two or three paragraphs to describe something that would have worked better with just a sentence or two.  This was the same problem that befell Scott Philip's Church of the Divine Psychopath, which served as the first book in Black Flame's traditional Friday the 13th line.  It is also the same problem that has befallen this review.

Cadigan not only wrote the Jason X novelization, she also penned a follow-up spin-off entitled The Experiment, which is the first original novel in the futurist Jason X line.  After doing such a nice job of world building, going as far as to introduce routine contact with alien life forms into the mix, which gives the Uber-Jason a potentially fertile playground in which to do his thing, I am looking forward to cracking it open.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

"Jason Voorhees, the true Jason Voorhees, is something you and I have never seen before, Mr. Campbell."

A SWAT team manages to catch the dreaded Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, in his third time behind the hockey mask) in a trap that leaves the killer of nearly one hundred in almost as many pieces.  Jason Voorhees must be dead now, right?

Wrong.  His blackened heart still beats.  Jumping from host body to host body, the evil essence of Jason Voorhees returns to Crystal Lake, and his sole surviving relative, so that he can be resurrected in a new body.

It took four years and a new studio, but a ninth Friday the 13th movie finally got made.  While I can't really say that Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is the worst film in the series, I think that crown of thorns adorns the final film of the Paramount Pictures era, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, I can say that it is my least favorite film in the series.  The reason for this is probably the very same one many who dislike most, if not all, of the Friday the 13th movies use to explain why they think this one is moderately better than the rest of them.  Jason Goes to Hell is utterly unlike any of the Friday the 13th movies that came before or after it.  It's a Friday the 13th movie for people that don't like Friday the 13th movies. 

When Sean Cunningham, who directed the first Friday the 13th, returned to produce this entry, he wanted to do something other than make yet another carbon copy of the movie he had made thirteen years ago.  Paramount Pictures had already done that, seven times.  Cunningham felt that it was time to try something different.  The problem with the final result is two fold.  First, the something new he came up with wasn't all that new to begin with, the body hopping parasite story had been done before in the action laced cult hit The Hidden.  Two, the change of pace is less like a breath of fresh air and more like a disorienting slap in the face.  Jason has a sister? ...the hell?  Am I alone in thinking that this body hopping parasite of evil thing might have done better if this had been an entry in the Halloween series instead of Friday the 13th?  Both the unknown until now sister twist and the comically convoluted supernatural aspects seems to be a better fit for Michael Myers than it does for Jason Voorhees.  In fact, it doesn't fit the Voorhees mythos at all.

Nonetheless, the movie is energetically mounted, contains a few choice kills, several rousing action scenes, the best of them involving a sleazy tabloid TV show host turned host body, as well as a tongue-in-cheek performance from Steven Williams, who almost walks away with the movie.  Not that he'd want this smelly old thing hanging around his house and irritating the neighbors.

Friday the 13th: Jason vs Jason X #1

"Oh, cool!  We're gonna see some fucked up shit, now!"

The year is 2455 A.D.  After 500 years of being cryogenically frozen, the serial killer Jason Voorhees "spontaneously reanimates" and immediately begins killing the science students and elite squad of Marines trapped with him aboard the space vessel Grendel.  Jason is almost destroyed in a fierce battle with an android named Kay-Em, but the Grendel's malfunctioning nanotech med-unit infuses his corpse with inorganic, metallic material.  This creates an unstoppable cybernetic killing machine: Jason X.

But there were still bits and pieces of the old Jason left on the Grendel.

While Jason X is still on the killing spree that concluded the Jason X one-shot, a salvage crew boards what little is left of the Grendel.  Their poking around lands a piece of Jason in the med unit and those pesky nanos get to work.  Only this time they use the corpses of the marines to rebuild Jason Voorhees organically.  (DO NOT PESTER ME WITH THIS FOOLISH THING YOU CALL LOGIC!!!)  Before you can whisper ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma, the Titanic Tussle of the Terror Titans begins!

As stupid as this particular comic book's story premise is, writer/artist Mike Wolfer has done a commendable job of giving a Friday the 13th fan exactly what s/he wants...Jason, in both versions, whipping that machete of his around and sending various body parts flying.  To shamelessly steal a term from noted Drive-In movie critic Joe-Bob Briggs, "There is absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story."  Not that something titled Jason vs Jason X needs to bother with one.  The title clearly states all that needs to be said about the plot, just like Snakes on a Plane does.

Making the book even more fun is the obvious fanboy delight Mike Wolfer is having with this story.  He even tosses in a verbatim quote of Betsy Palmer's famous "A little boy drowned..." speech from the first Friday the 13th.  Through that contrived science-fictiony miracle of those nanotech medical thingies, both Jason and Jason X are blessed with a connection to the "spirit" of his (or is it now their?) mother.  One particularly nice composition has side by side illustrations of both Jasons standing with their head tilted to the side, as if they are sensing one another, although they are in two different locations and have yet to actually meet.  When they finally do meet, it sets up what looks to be a vicious and ugly battle to be Mama Voorhees's Number One son.

Issue two of Friday the 13th: Jason vs Jason X looks to be an epic battle on a par with, say, Godzilla vs Gamera or, uh, Aliens vs Predator.  (Just a version that doesn't suck as bad as the one Paul W.S. Anderson made.)

Friday the 13th: Bloodbath #3

"We're screwed man, I don't want to go out like this."

Kevin/McClintock's helpers flash freeze Jason Voorhees by dousing the unstoppable killing machine in a spray of liquid nitrogen.  Now that Voorhees has been contained, it is time to hand him over to "The Organization," so they can research the military and medical applications (I'm guessing with emphasis on the former, not the latter) to be found in Jason's accelerated healing ability.  All that's left for the team to do is capture and kill the last of the orphan bait, Violet and Rich.  Easier planned than done...

The final issue of the Bloodbath story arc is jam packed with humor, action, and that old-fashioned Voorhees mayhem fans like me know and love.  Some of the action is a tad chaotic in the lay out area, which made it difficult to follow at times, but the issue is far from boring.  Writer Brian Pulido has a good sense of when it's best to keep the narrative tongue firmly in cheek, when to wink and nudge the reader with post modern jabs at the cliches this kind of over the top story is filled with, and, most important of all, when it's best for the gruesome action to be played straight.  Which isn't all that often.  Come on, when a story has a machete slinging, hockey mask wearing, indestructible zombified killing machine as its primary threat, then more than a little self conscious humor is called for.  At least the comic isn't making fun of itself, it's having fun with itself.  So it and I were pretty much on the same page.  Taken on its own goofy terms, Friday the 13th: Bloodbath is more fun than I expected and hoped it would be.  Jason lives!

Friday the 13th #1: Church of the Divine Psychopath - by Scott Phillips

Father Long has brought his Ministry of the Heavenly Vessel and its fanatical followers to Camp Crystal Lake to start a communal life of religious purity.  He also hopes to resurrect the "Hand of God" that is Jason Voorhees, so that all deserving sinners are punished.  For some strange reason Long erroneously believes that Jason Voorhees only kills sinners.  Walter Hobb is a disgraced Tactical Squad Leader for the "Agency."  After a bungled assault on a meth lab, Hobb is demoted and sent out on a peculiar mission with a team that seems to be made up of the Agency's worst of the worst.  The mission?  Find and destroy Jason Voorhees.  The resurrected Voorhees is determined to kill them all, and let God sort them out.

Church of the Divine Psychopath is the first in Black Flame's "New Line Cinema's House of Horror" line of Friday the 13th spin-off novels.  (Other lines include novels based on Jason X, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Final Destination series.)  While it could have been worse, it could also have been a whole lot better.  Author Scott Phillips, who cut his teeth writing the low-budget schlockers Horrorvision and Cryptz, as well as writing and directing The Stink of Flesh, tries hard to marry the nearly plotless Friday the 13th narrative formula to a format that requires not only plot, but some degree of characterization.  For the most part he is successful, but the novel is hampered by its unnecessary length of 403 pages.  This book could have been cut by 50 to 100 pages and no reader would have been the wiser, and it would have made the book a faster, more entertaining read.  The main characters, and several supporting ones, (namely Lauren, Walter Hobb's wife, who all but vanishes from the story after Walter goes off on his suicide mission) are all over developed, while others never get past the one dimensional stereotype that long time Friday fans, and detractors, are overly familiar with.  This also makes it pretty easy to see who will survive to the final pages, though it also gives some of the deaths a bit of an emotional sting (if sympathetic) or a cathartic release (if not).  The cumbersome amount of padding also requires that Jason, in his "unstoppable force" persona from Jason Lives, be kept out of the action for long stretches of time, so the book shuffles when it should gallop.

When this line of books was announced last year, I was pretty excited (being a Friday the 13th fanboy) and more than just a little bit curious.  Could the Friday the 13th series really be translated to the media novel format?  (In all honesty, both the Elm Street and Final Destination movies are far better suited to the media novel format than Friday the 13th.) Church of the Divine Psychopath says: Yes and No.  So my inner jury is pretty well hung for the moment, until I crack open Friday The 13th #2: Hell Lake, that is.

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

"This voyage is doomed."

When the graduating class of Lakeview High (Crystal Lake) takes a celebration cruise to New York City, Crystal Lake's resident serial killer (Kane Hodder) awakens from his sodden slumber to tag along.

The box office grosses for the Friday the 13th movies had been shrinking since the release of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning in 1985.  While the movies remained profitable, because they were so cheap, they were no longer drawing in the huge numbers that the earlier films had.  (The top grosses were Friday the 13th, with 39 million, Friday the 13th Part III, with 36 million, and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, with 32 million.)  From Part V on, each of the Friday the 13th movies had made less and less money at the box office.  So it is no surprise that the last movie of the Paramount Era would attempt either the lamest or most inspired (depending entirely upon you mood) gimmick of the entire series.  (Until Jason X shot the indestructible killer into both the future and outer space, that is.)  Taking Jason Voorhees out of Camp Crystal Lake and dropping him down in New York City.

But first he had to get there and that is where the movie falters.  This isn't Jason Takes Manhattan, it's Jason Takes a Boat!  Even worse, most of the film (i.e. the portion on the boat) has all the energy of one of Jason's victims after he's finished dispatching them.  Other than a murder in a bathroom (which is surprisingly vicious) and a gag involving a video camera, a cameraman with poor eyesight, and a case of mistaken identity, writer/director Rob Hedden doesn't even seem to bother trying to build suspense.  Jason just magically teleports to wherever he is needed at a given moment (what ever happened to playing cat and mouse?) and bloodlessly dispatches his victims.  Which showcases the other problem the series was having.  The Friday the 13th movies were both loved (by fans) and reviled (by critics) for its creative and gruesome murder sequences.  But MPAA mandated cuts (so the film would receive an R rating) had rendered the kills in the last few films bloodless.  Their biggest draw had been removed.

Luckily actor/stuntman Kane Hodder returned to the role of the series other big draw, Jason Voorhees.  His second turn as Jason (much was made of his being the first person to play the role twice at the time of the film's original release) is a much better one than it was in The New Blood (though that film is slightly better than Takes Manhattan).  He manages to be threatening even when he is just standing still and staring at a victim.

When the survivors finally arrive, via lifeboat, in Manhattan, the much anticipated visit is more than a bit anticlimactic.  Hedden makes the mistake of slowing the pace down for a brief and distasteful sequence involving the group getting mugged and Rennie (Jensen Dagget) abducted, shot up with drugs (which seem to be the weakest in the world, considering how quickly she overcomes them) and, even more sickening, almost raped.  By this time I was begging for Jason to go Charles Bronson on these creeps.  I'm sure that was Hedden's intention, but it was an utterly needless plot digression nonetheless.  After that it is basically one chase down a dirty alley after another, enlivened briefly by a New York cop with a Canadian accent, a chase through the subway, and, finally, one through Times Square before the final showdown in the sewers of New York.  I was hoping that an alligator would show up, but that didn't happen.  Perhaps if one did I wouldn't have noticed that New York's sewer system seems to come equipped with hanging lights.  Jason should have gone down with the ship.

With a premise that didn't deliver what its poster promised (Jason in New York), lackluster kill scenes, and a soggy build-up to an underwhelming conclusion, Jason Takes Manhattan (which had gone over budget during filming) barely managed to break even during its theatrical run.  Jason's decade long reign of terror had officially come to an end, as far as Paramount Pictures were concerned, and the series was shelved.

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

"You people give me the creeps."

Young Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln) finally lashes out at her alcoholic father, with the power of her mind.  Her repressed rage unleashes a destructive telekinetic ability and she kills him.  Years later Tina is made to return to the family cabin on Crystal Lake, where the horrible incident took place, by her mother (Susan Blu) and Doctor (Terry Kiser).  What Tina and Mrs. Shephard don't know is that Dr. Crews isn't all that interested in helping Tina recover.  He wants to study and harness Tina's potent psychic powers.  An emotionally distraught Tina focuses all of her power on her desire to bring her father back, but all she does is resurrect Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) from his sodden slumber beneath the waters of Crystal Lake.  Jason is soon striding through the woods, killing everyone he comes across.  But when he comes face to face with Tina, she is able to mount a defense that is every bit as powerful as he is deadly.

While Jason Lives was a refreshing change of pace, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is a return to the well trodden path of the Friday the 13th formula.  It's too bad that, despite the exciting idea of a telekinetic girl battling it out with Jason, director John Carl Buechler couldn't make the movie seem more fresh.  The murder scenes are mundane, a sequence inexplicably set inside a barn being the only one that managed to generate a modicum of tension.  Buechler has repeatedly stated that MPAA mandated cuts (so The New Blood would receive an R rating) had "eviscerated" his film, but I am doubtful that increased gore would have made for a more suspenseful or engaging movie.  Those elements require an interesting story and characters that the viewer can care about.  The New Blood doesn't have either of those.  Other than Tina's telekinesis (and her scenes with the slimy Dr. Crews), there was nothing that held my interest during the movie's 90 minute running time.  I kept waiting for the entry's new blood to start flowing.

I'm still waiting and the movie is over.

One interesting thing I noticed, after the refreshing change that was Jason Lives, returning to the standard Friday the 13th format made the stuff seem all the more tiresome.  Yet again we have thunder and lightning, Jason bursting through windows and doors, and Tina finding corpse after corpse as a prelude to the third act confrontation.  What was really irksome was the clumsy way in which Tina finds said corpses.  First they are nowhere, then they magically appear in an area that was just shown to be corpse free.  Man, they weren't even trying this time around.

For all the hype Kane Hodder gets for playing Jason more times than any other actor/stuntman, his debut performance is, well, more of the same.  It isn't until Tina starts using her telekinetic powers that Hodder's Jason becomes an imposing figure.

As stated before, a Friday the 13th movie really lives and dies by its third act, it is here that The New Blood comes alive.  In the final fifteen to twenty minutes Tina throws everything but the kitchen sink (she uses a couch, instead) at Jason and, when that proves to be ineffective, she literally brings the house down on top of him - and the battle is only getting warmed up, there are a few more goodies yet to come.  The film also contains the most impressive zombified Jason make-up of the series.  It's a visage so horrible that it literally made me jump in my seat the first time I saw it back in 1988, during The New Blood's theatrical run.  But a slam bang finale and a great make-up effect still can't hide the simple fact that, after seven movies, the Friday the 13th series was starting to run out of steam.

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

"Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment."

Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) still suffers from hallucinations that stem from the emotional trauma of having killed Jason Voorhees years before.  With his friend Hawes (Ron Palillo) in tow, Tommy drives out to the cemetery where Jason is buried.  There he plans to dig up the killer's corpse and cremate it himself.  Things do not go according to plan and, via a stroke of lightning, Jason (C.J. Graham) is resurrected.  While Tommy pleads for help from the disbelieving Sheriff Garris (David Kagen), Jason starts killing any and all he comes across as he makes his way back to the former Camp Crystal Lake, now called Camp Forest Green.

Watching all of the Friday the 13th movies sequentially and so close together, it is even more apparent just how much of a change of pace writer/director Tom McLoughlin's movie is.  The most noticeable thing is the comedy, Jason Lives has its rotted tongue placed firmly in its decayed cheek. (The laughs are pretty much intentional this time around.)  Another, more subtle change is how the third act has been restructured.  In the previous five movies, the third act revolved around a Final Girl who, after discovering the corpses of her dead friends, spends about ten or twenty minutes alternately running from or fighting with the killer.  (During Part V's third act my son turned to me and asked, "Why is it always a girl at the end?"  Dad's brilliant response?  "That's how they work."  I should be teaching college!)  By Friday the 13th: A New Beginning I could recognize all the standard elements of a Friday the 13th third act showdown.  There would be a storm (pretty much from movie one), the Final Girl would find the dead bodies one after the other (ditto), a dead body would be thrown through a window (this started with Part 3), and Jason would burst through a door.  The only "traditional" element in Jason Lives' third act is Jason busting though a door.  (Or it might have been a wall, I'm not sure and it isn't worth a fact check.)  The rest is dropped in favor of a sequence where Sheriff Garris and his deputies search for and find Jason.  Then the Sheriff's rebellious daughter Megan (Jennifer Cooke) shows up with Tommy and its pretty much Tommy's fight from then on.  I kept waiting for Megan to get chased around the camp by Jason, it didn't happen.  A dead body does get tossed through a window, but it occurs at the close of the second act and, unlike the other films, the body is not thrown into a room where a character is either cowering or searching for the person whose body is about to come flying through the window.  Ah, the pleasant changes a little imagination can bring.

The third, and final, difference is how the characters are, for the most part, likable and well written, as far as their dialog goes, that is.  The characterizations themselves are still paper thin.  Come to think of it, there is precious little real story in between all the kills and car chasing and crashing.  There is also no real reason for Megan to believe/help Tommy, other than she thinks that he is cute and it is necessary for her to do so for the movie to continue.  But the audience didn't show up for the story, they showed up to watch Jason kill.  Kill Jason does, sometimes in the most spectacular of ways.  The best of the bunch involves a Motorhome.  McLoughlin ends the sequence with a money shot that will warm the heart of even the most hard to please horror fan.  That shot alone is worth seeing the movie at least once.  (Of course, having built it up like that, somebody is going to watch Jason Lives and go "That is supposed to make this piece of crap worth watching?  That idiot really is clueless!")

Jason Lives is no classic, but it's my favorite Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

"My Momma's gonna chop you into itty-bitty pieces, my friend!"

Although it has been years since Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) violently killed Jason Voorhees in self-defense, he still has trouble living with the emotional scars.  Tommy is transferred to Pinehurst, a halfway house of a sort for troubled youths, in the hope that the change will better prepare him for life "outside."  Before Tommy can start to benefit, one of Pinehurst's other residents, Joey (Dominick Brascia), is brutally murdered.  Shortly thereafter history begins to repeat itself.  With Jason Voorhees dead and cremated (according to the Mayor, that is) who is doing the killing now?  Has Tommy's trauma driven him over the edge?

When Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter made a ton of money at the box office, Paramount demanded another vigorous milking of their favorite low budget cash cow.  The Friday the 13th movies were now well on their way to becoming a genuine franchise.  But they had killed Jason Voorhees and the machete swinging/hockey mask wearing behemoth, after being featured in three movies, had become branded as the series major star.  Then again, he wasn't the first Camp Crystal Lake killer...what if somebody decided to copy his Modus Operandi?

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning attempts to do just that.  (The Part V, uh, part of the title seems to have only been used for the movie's advertising.)  I say attempts because, while all the various components of the Friday the 13th formula are present and accounted for (Big Dude in hockey mask - check, heavy rain with plenty of thunder and lightning - check, dead body getting thrown through a window - check) none of them seem to have much life in them this time around.  Director Danny Steinmann tries to distract the viewer from this lack of energy by applying the sex and violence with far too generous a hand.  There is a very noticeable increase in the nudity and Part V is acknowledged as having the highest body count of the series, over twenty kills.  But the overkill (no pun intended) doesn't distract from the fact that the movie isn't all that interesting, suspenseful, or exciting.  The best scenes involve the comic relief white trash neighbors, the Hubbards (Carol Locatell and Ron Sloan, respectively).  While John Shepherd gives an excellent performance as the emotionally troubled  Tommy Jarvis (one of the few good decisions made by Danny Steinmann was to cut most of Tommy's dialog), his work exists in a vacuum, because the movie does not care enough to really become involved with the more interesting aspects of its potential story.

As Peter Bracke pointed out in the superb Crystal Lake Memories, a Friday the 13th movie lives or dies by its third act.  That is precisely where Friday the 13th: A New Beginning dies.  Steinmann sets most of the action inside of a barn, so it recalls the energetic final showdown in Friday the 13th Part III.  But unlike that film, Part V just plays out its showdown as if the Jason impostor were ready to take a nap.  I have seen more violent games of patty-cake at my son's day care than in the supposedly "to the death" battle royale that caps Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.  Even worse, when the identity of the impostor is revealed, you can't recognize him!  The movie does somewhat redeem itself with an interesting twist on the Final Scare, but first the viewer has to swallow a clumsy explanation of why the impostor went on his spree.  This movie's script needed a lot more work put into it than it wound up getting.

Exposition?  Ba!  Who needs it, just put some more tits and machetes on the screen and the kids will go away happy.  That seems to be the approach Danny Steinmann took, it is not surprising that he didn't make another movie after this one.  It is also no big surprise that, in the next movie, Jason Voorhees would make a rousing comeback.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

"DIE!  DIE!  DIE!"

The Crystal Lake police department works well into the night cleaning up the mass murder at Higgins Haven.  The body of Jason Voorhees (Ted White, uncredited) is bagged, along with his ten victims, and taken to the local morgue.  But the Camp Blood Killer is far from dead, his killing spree far from finished.  He awakens and returns to the region, just as a group of care free youths arrive for a weekend of fun.  (Doesn't anybody bother to watch the news, there were two mass murders in the area in a matter of days!)  Next door is the Jarvis family, who put out a welcome mat for both their short term neighbors and a mysterious camper named Rob (Erich Anderson).  When night falls and a violent storm rolls in, Jason gets back to his bloody work.

With the previous entries making in excess of 60 million at the box office, the makers of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter knew that the familiar formula wasn't in need of fixing, but a little fine tuning couldn't hurt.  The resulting movie is, flaws withstanding, one of my favorites of the series.

It reintroduces Jason, via the campfire story told by Paul Holt (John Furey) in Friday the 13th Part 2, in full mythic force.  In two short and repetitive movies he had gone from burlap sack wearing B-grade villain to a literal icon of 80s horror, and he is introduced as such.  Screenwriter Barney Cohen and Director Joseph Zito wisely chose not to have Jason bounce back in the first five minutes (like he had at the beginning of Friday the 13th Part 3), instead they begin with the police doing the unpleasant job of cleaning up the eleven dead bodies scattered around the Higgins' cabin.  Jason is taken to the hospital morgue and it is there he wakes up.  The event is wonderfully underplayed.  An attendant shoves Jason's body into a cooler and, as he turns away, a plume of Jason's breath can be seen.  I always liked that shot.  (Though it begs the question as to why no one bothered to check Voorhees' vital signs before sticking him in a body bag.)

From there the movie sinks into the standard killing spree.  The deaths are very well done, thanks in large part to the masterful work of special effects make-up guru Tom Savini, and Jason is far more intimidating than he was in the previous entry.  Although I do find myself wondering where exactly he got that rubber raft and harpoon gun.  At the time it was made Part 4 was thought to be the final Friday the 13th movie, so its cast, and the performances, are better than average.  Crispin Glover deserves a special nod for his hilarious dance scene.

The other selling point of the movie was Jason's death scene.  Twenty-one years later it remains a jaw dropper of an effect (as well as a series highpoint) and Savini's grown-up Jason design is also, arguably, the best of the series.  The movie is worth seeing at least once for that sequence alone.

Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th - by Peter M. Bracke

Peter M. Bracke's Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th is precisely what its title states it to be.  The complete history of one of the 80s most well known (and critically reviled) slasher series, Friday the 13th.

Via interviews with the cast and crew of all eleven films, Bracke follows the series from its humble start as a quickie exploitation film that, thanks in large part to a major studio's decision to aggressively distribute cheaply made independent films to generate quick revenue, became a surprise hit that led to several money making sequels that eventually spawned a franchise that birthed one of the most recognizable, and popular, of modern age monsters: The hockey masked wearing, virtually indestructible and definitely unkillable (as long as his movies made a profit, that is) Jason Voorhees.

But Bracke is not some fawning Friday fanboy (and neither am I) and he lets his subjects freely share their thoughts and feelings about working in one of the most disreputable of genres.  More than one actor states that making a Friday the 13th movie felt akin to making a porn film.  In the case of the series most maligned entry Friday the 13th Part V - A New Beginning, many felt that is exactly what was made.  "It amazes me that people actually have an affection for this piece of crap," Friday V star Dick Wieand says of his brushes with the series rather sizable, and forgiving, fan base.  Bracke also does not shy away from the acrimonious fueds that arose during what were mostly fast n' cheap film shoots.  It seems that, more often than not, a Friday the 13th film set was not the happiest place to be.  The filming of Parts 3, 4, and 5 seemed to birth the most ill will between certain cast and crew members.  Sadly the series move to New Line Cinema did not see a change in that trend, as the filming of Jason Goes to Hell - The Final Friday and Jason X were both plagued by similar issues.

This huge (figuratively and literally, I'm having a hard time finding a bookshelf large enough to put it on) book is filled with enough information and behind-the-scenes photos to satiate even the most demanding of Friday the 13th fan.  It also gives readers a completely unvarnished and detailed look at both independent filmmaking and the creation of a seemingly unstoppable franchise out of nothing more than desperation and greed.  Although 2006 has just begun, I seriously doubt that I will read a better non-fiction book than Crystal Lake Memories this year.  Essential stuff for any horror fan.

Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

"It's you!"

Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell) returns to her family's cabin on Crystal Lake to face her personal demons.  Two years before she barely survived a devastating attack from a deranged man in the woods.  For moral support she has her horn-dog country boyfriend Rick (Paul Kratka) and several of her friends to keep her company.  What Chris doesn't know is that Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) recently slaughtered a group of people on the other side of the lake and is now looking for fresh blood to spill.

Of all of the Friday the 13th movies Part III (roman numerals are used in the film itself) is the one that I have seen the most.  Not because it is one of the better ones (it isn't, not by a long stretch), it was just the only one I had on video for quite some time.

Being a second sequel, Friday the 13th Part III needed a stronger hook than just being a mere follow-up to a popular horror film.  There was already on of those, it was called Friday the 13th Part 2.  When the action-comedy Comin' At Ya! proved a surprise hit when it resurrected the antiquated novelty of 3-D, the powers that be decided that giving Jason the ability to reach out and touch someone in the audience would be a terrific way to hook and reel in ticket buyers.  It worked.  Friday the 13th Part III is the series second highest grossing entry, raking in 36 million at the domestic box office.  It's being in 3-D is the only thing that differentiates it from the previous movies.  (Well, that and it's being the first one in the series to be shot in California and not New Jersey or Connecticut.)

Calling a Friday the 13th movie creatively bankrupt is, for the most part, a glaring statement of the obvious.  Friday the 13th Part III, despite a few cosmetic touches, is a carbon copy of the first two films, right down to an illogical re-staging of the first film's legendary Final Scare.  (So boldfaced is the copying that my son Christopher said, "Now she's going to wake up in the hospital" when he saw it.)  Screenwriters Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson (with an uncredited assist from writer Petru Popescu) don't give their characters any chance to suitably develop before being gruesomely killed off.  They remain stereotypes (the stoner, the horn-dog, the nerd who craves attention, and gets it in the most irritating of ways) from first introduction until moment of death.  Sad to say, but director Steve Miner is far too distracted by the technical demands of filming in 3-D to pay attention to the uneven performances of his cast.

Then again, Friday the 13th Part III does have its moments.

The best scene in the film does not revolve around Jason at all, but around a trio of bikers that harass the attention hungry nerd Shelley (Larry Zerner) and his reluctant blind date Vera (Catherine Parks) at a local store.  The scene builds to a nifty payoff that is both humorous and dramatic.  Too bad that the subplot the scene sets up is snuffed out before it even gets a chance to develop beyond giving Jason some bonus bodies.  (Although it does create a credible reason for Chris being trapped during the climatic battle.)  The least effective scene is Chris telling Rick of her run-in with the deranged man in the woods, who is obviously Jason.  Considering that Jason kills whoever is unlucky enough to cross his path, the event is out of character.  According to Peter Bracke's excellent Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, Chris Higgins character was originally meant to be a returning Ginny Field (Amy Steel), from Friday the 13th Part 2.  That makes a heck of a lot more sense than what the script wound up doing. 

The only other bonus I can think of is the final chase/showdown between Chris and Jason.  It is a well paced and staged sequence that, unlike Part 2, does not lapse into incoherence or, as was the case of the first film, feels padded.  The third time was definitely the charmed one.  It also allows Dana Kimmell to show her acting chops to good effect.  When she tears out of that closet, swinging that bloody knife at Jason with all she's got, for a moment she's just as intimidating as the hockey masked fiend trying to slay her.  It's little moments like that, when the movie that Friday the 13th Part III could have been peeks through, that elevate it from tiresome sequel up to passable time waster.

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

 "We're the first to return here."

Five years after Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) slaughtered the counselors at the soon to be reopened Camp Crystal Lake, Paul Holt (John Furey) and his assistant/girlfriend Ginny Field (Amy Steel) have opened a Counselors Training Center nearby.  Considering that Mrs. Voorhees was beheaded by potential victim Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), Holt figures that the chances of history repeating itself are non-existent.  But Alice disappeared a mere two months after that horrible Friday the 13th night and was never seen again.  The locals are convinced that the allegedly drowned Jason Voorhees (Warrington Gillette) had something to do with it.  If Jason is still alive, they say, he will not take kindly to a new group of counselors taking up residence near "Camp Blood."

When the first Friday the 13th turned out to be a huge hit for Paramount, a sequel was demanded and rushed into production.  Sean Cunningham, the producer/director of the first film, thought it might be interesting to do an entirely different kind of movie, instead of simply repeating the first.  That concept was jettisoned by the producers, who wanted to replicate the first film in every way possible.  A disinterested Cunningham left the production and his associate, Steve Miner, stepped in to produce and direct.  Screenwriter Ron Kurz, who had rewritten Victor Miller's screenplay for the first film, was called in to create a story that could both follow the events of the first film while recreating them at the same time.  It also had to give the audience even more of the same.

On a strictly technical level, Kurz and Miner were quite successful.

Friday the 13th Part 2 was the first Friday the 13th movie that I ever saw, so I have a nostalgic affection for it.  As was the case of the first film, it has been several years since I had last seen it and, after re-watching the original and finding it lacking, I wondered if this movie would prove the same.  It didn't.  The movie still holds up pretty well for what it is, an 80s slasher film.

Clocking in at a scant 87 minutes Friday the 13th Part 2 is the shortest movie in the series.  Compared to the somewhat leisurely pacing of the first installment and the lethargic pacing of the one that followed (more on that one tomorrow) Part 2 seems to gallop along.  It sprinkles the kills throughout the movie, rather than clustering them all in its second half, as the first one did.  It has a few good jump scares and even manages to bring back the surviving cast members of the first film, namely Alice and Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) for brief, yet memorable appearances.  Mrs. Voorhees herself shows up for a cameo that is nothing but inspired.  Even if the idea of Jason somehow surviving his supposed drowning and growing into an adult in the woods off of Crystal Lake is a deeply flawed one (to say the least), screenwriter Ron Kurz at least bothered to give it some real thought and managed to sell the idea fairly well.  For a slasher movie, that is.  The rest of the script suffers from the thin plotting and ultra shallow characterizations that the first one did.  (I will leave it up to other film scholars and amateur critics to argue whether the "characters" are just stereotypes or are really archetypes.)

On the down side, there is the acting that ranges from amateurish to just this side of professional.  Steve Miner's directing is a tad sloppy at times, especially in the third act where Ginny's alternating battle with and fleeing from Jason slides into spatial incoherence.  Another flub is the attack on the wheelchair bound Mark (Tom McBride).  Jason is supposedly sneaking up on him, but Miner does not show the killer advancing on the unsuspecting Mark, thus robbing the sequence of the ability to generate real suspense.  I do acknowledge that this movie was Steve Miner's first directing job and, as is the case with most of the film's in the series, the very first acting job of a young and inexperienced cast.  The crew also used non-professional locals in some scenes as well.  All I can say is that the rough edges and mistakes fall within an acceptable number for a rushed into production and made on the cheap low budget slasher movie.  Friday the 13th Part 2 delivers.

Friday the 13th (1980)

"He neglected to mention that, back in town, they call this place Camp Blood."

Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) is reopening the trouble plagued family business, Camp Crystal Lake.  Six new counselors arrive, on Friday the 13th, to help Christy set the camp up for the first batch of kids, who will be showing up in two weeks.  But a mysterious someone in the woods wants "Camp Blood" (so called for the murders that occurred there in 1958) to stay closed, and is willing to kill to make sure that it does so.

The first thing that struck me about Friday the 13th after watching it for the first time in I don't know how many years, was that the movie, despite spawning, at current count, eleven sequels, isn't nearly as good as I want to remember it being.  Maybe, nearing the age producer/director Sean Cunningham was when he made the movie, I'm too old for it to work for me like it once did.

Or maybe it just wasn't that good to begin with.

The first Friday the 13th is every bit as simple and to the point as the numerous sequels that followed it.  A group of "kids" congregates in an isolated area and, one by one, they are gruesomely murdered until the Final Girl goes toe-to-toe with the killer in a protracted sequence that plays like a cross between a foot chase and a fist fight.  That's it.  There are no stylistic flourishes in the film and the characterization has all the depth of a dried puddle.  The only thing surprising about the movie, other than the out of left field and sloppy as hell revelation of who the killer is (Jason shows up in Part 2), is how this plain and unvarnished piece of trash managed to birth an entire series with a mythos of its very own - a mythos that has somehow managed to remain firmly rooted in the sketchy back story of Victor Miller's script.  (An uncredited Ron Kurz, who would write Friday the 13th Part 2, also worked on the script.) 

Unintentional mythos birthing aside, the first Friday the 13th, like its eleven sequels, is a rigidly formulaic collection of cheap n' easy scares sprinkled with a healthy dose of grue, the direct opposite of John Carpenter's stylish and suspense filled Halloween.  But that is okay, Friday the 13th wasn't meant to reinvent the horror movie wheel.  It was made to spin it just long enough to generate some cash.  Twenty-five years later that wheel is still spinning, generating plenty of cash, and shows no signs of stopping.

For some strange reason, I take a nostalgic comfort in that.

Jason X #1 (of 1)

"Jason Voorhees, or whatever he's become, is eternal.  Unbeatable."

The Jason X comic picks up right where the Jason X movie ended, with whatever remains of the reentry fried Uber-Jason crashing to Earth II in an area not unlike that of the Crystal Lake of so long ago.  Thanks to his nanobot upgrade, Uber-Jason regenerates faster than ever and commences to do what he does best.  Killing everyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.  But a nearby scientist has a plan to capture Uber-Jason, because she wants to learn the secret of the unstoppable killer's incredible regenerative power and put it to use.

Writer Brian Pulido has, yet again, done a wonderful job of transferring a New Line Cinema horror franchise to the comic book format.  While his Friday the 13th book stays close to the tone and story lines of the earthbound Classic Era, his work on Jason X takes a completely different path.  The story includes all of the movie's science-fiction elements, nano-bots, androids, and spaceships, while managing to keep the traditional setting of the Camp Crystal Lake around for all of the slaughter.  It's not as easy as it looks, but Pulido manages it quite nicely.  He also brings in another character from the original series to spice things up. 

Sebastian Fiumara's art and Mark Sweeney's colors recapture the visual tone of the movie for the book.  There is some beautiful Gothic imagery, such as the Uber-Jason standing at his mother's grave in a lightning storm, blended in with the colder and more metallic sci-fi environments.  Fiumara also remembers the rather skimpy clothing the female scientists of the distant future like to wear to the lab.

Needless to say, the one-shot's ending opens the door for many more Uber-Jason adventures.  Bring 'em on, I say.

Friday the 13th: Bloodbath #2

"If they met mister tall, dark and undead, they're toast."

Violet and Rich narrowly escape Jason, but the others caught between the scheming Mr. McClintock and the murdering Jason Voorhees aren't so lucky.  Violent, Rich and the others want to leave, but "Kevin" (McClintock) is rather insistent that they stay and wait for the police to arrive.  Meanwhile, the mysterious investors behind this little outing are demanding a return on that investment.

What exactly is it that they have invested in?

I don't know what the "risk variance" McClintock and the Business Interests agreed upon, but it is clear that they do not hold human life in any great value.  What I do know is that this book is a lot more fun than it has any right to be.  Being a walking zombie, one would figure that Jason wouldn't exactly be the best smelling serial killer in the woods.  At least one sexually distracted character manages to notice the Eau de Jason as the killer stealthily approaches, saying to her partner, "Yuck.  Did you fart?"  That has to be my favorite comic book line for December 2005, which tells you a lot about my taste in entertainment.

Brian Pulido and Mike Wolfer continue to deliver a Friday the 13th story that is both a familiar standard (Jason giving forty machete whacks to sex committing "teenagers" and those that dare to observe them doing so) and a little something different.  I'm guessing that the "purpose" the former foster kids were meant to serve was as a simple distraction for Jason, while McClintock brought in the big guns.  Then again, I could be wrong.  It has been known to happen.  No matter, though, I can't wait to see what happens, and who survives, in issue three.

Friday the 13th: Bloodbath #1

"Rumor was, there was a killer named Jason Voorhees.  As a kid, he drowned while the camp counselors ignored him.  They say he returned from the dead and murdered them in revenge."

A group of ten college aged men and women (four men, six women) have been hired by a man named Kevin Carny to clean up Camp Tomorrow, to make it presentable to the hundreds of under privileged children who will be arriving later on.  Or so he says...

Needless to say, a certain hockey mask wearing individual comes stomping out of the woods to bring an end to this little rehabilitation project.

When I reviewed Avatar's Friday the 13th one-shot issue, I wondered how the slasher series formula could be sustained over a multiple issue arc, considering how it is not particularly well know for its character development or complex storylines.  Well I am happy to report that writer Brian Pulido understands this and Friday the 13th: Bloodbath makes a game effort to toy with it.  At first the set-up appears to be yet another rehash of the first film's storyline, a group of horny and disposable "kids" arrive at a summer camp to get it ready for business.  They proceed to get murdered in a variety of gruesome ways.  The only thing new is that Camp Tomorrow has a wet bar and a hot tub.  "Booze and a hot tub?  Half naked teens?  I feel like I've been cast on MTV's Real World, not hired to clean up this shit hole," Violet, who seems to be the story's Final Girl (but I dare not assume it to be so) comments at one point during the festivities.

Everybody seems to hit it off real well (even the token lesbian finds that the extra girl is bi-curious, how convenient) which is something the characters take notice of as the story progresses.  Oh, and each of them is an orphan.  While Jason stays in the background, trimming the cast down to its more interesting characters, Violet becomes suspicious.  "No, it feels wrong.  All of us orphans, all of us compatible, two couples gone.  We should go looking for them."  Not really Violet, your Spider Sense is correct, but you should be beating feet getting as far away from Crystal Lake as possible instead of wasting valuable escape time looking for those missing couples.  Anybody who has seen a Friday the 13th movie knows what has already happened to them.

Friday the 13th: Bloodbath's multiple issue story arc has gotten off to an entertaining start, though I reserve the right to declare it just as much fun as the one-shot until the entire story plays out.  I will say that Mike Wolfer's art is, as always, top notch.  The issue's first page is beautifully cinematic, showing a cute little deer wandering around the fog shrouded woods at night.  Jason's arrival into this pastoral scene revealed only by the gleam of his machete in the moonlight and a shadow on the ground.  This is followed immediately by a couple of carousing hunters literally running into the machete wielding behemoth with their truck.  Again, it is a wonderfully cinematic series of panels that gets the issue started on the right visual note.  But I will admit that the humor of the scene rubbed me the wrong way, at first.  ("What are you?  A member if PETA?" one doomed hunter shouts at Jason as he approaches.)  But that was before I "got" what the issue was up to.  Now that I do, I'm eager to see what happens in the next.  Avatar's New Line Cinema's House of Horror series seems to have been put in good and knowledgeable hands, for know.

Soundtrack Review: The Best of Friday the 13th - Music by Harry Manfredini & Fred Mollin

It has been well over twenty years since a soundtrack album of Harry Manfredini's music for the Friday the 13th series has seen any kind of commercial release, which is pretty sad.  Manfredini's score is every bit has well known, and highly regarded among horror film fans, as John Carpenter's music for Halloween and John Williams' theme for Jaws.  The music deserves a soundtrack release of some kind.

In 1982 a compilation of suites of the music for Parts 1, 2 and 3 was released to tie-in with the then current theatrical release of Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D.  The album cover, featuring a hockey mask wearing Jason shattering a window with an axe, was in 3-D, as was the poster of that same artwork included inside, with the necessary glasses, of course.  Track #1, Friday the 13th Part III - Main Title, is the complete disco styled theme that played over Part 3's opening and closing credits.  Track #2, Intro to Horror, starts with the first Friday the 13th's impressive main title theme, then settles down into ten minutes of suspense and action cues.  The album's second side contains two suites of music from Friday the 13th Parts 2 and 3.  Track #3, Excerpts in Terror, starts with Friday the 13th Part 2's some what rougher theme and it closes with a soft and spooky string arrangement of Friday the 13th Part 3's main title melody.  Track #4, Moments of Madness, begins and ends in the same way, but the string arrangement of the Part 3 melody plays as it is heard at the end of the film, a gentle plink disrupting the melody for when a single bubble ripples the placid surface of Crystal Lake.  Madness also features the music in Part 2's famous scene where Ginny (Amy Steel) puts on Mrs. Vorhees's sweater and almost convinces the killer that his mother has finally returned.   Although I was unable to get the album for myself, a friend of mine did and I recorded several tracks off it and proceeded to wear my tape out listening to it over and over.

Finding a CD of Friday the 13th film music (dubbed a "A Limited Archive Edition") at a soundtrack dealer table at the 2005 Wonder Con was a thrill, to say the least.  I recognized the first four tracks as being from the 1982 album, but the disc also contained samplings of Manfredini's music from Friday the 13th Parts 4, 5, 6, and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.  The additional tracks appear to be recorded directly from the films themselves, as some contain sound effects.  Each track also shows the subtle differences in structure and theme Manfredini brought to each score.  (I am disappointed that the first Friday the 13th's gentle jazz end credit theme was not included on this disc.)  Less impressive is Manfredini's work on Jason Goes to Hell, evidently taken from the Varese Sarabande soundtrack album, which is predominantly an electronic score and, being such, lacks the distinctive character of Manfredini's orchestral work for parts one through six.

Rounding out the disc are Alice Cooper's kitsch classic The Man Behind the Mask and, in an odd but welcome inclusion, the equally kitschy Peter Fredette song Darker Side of the Night that played over the opening and ending credits of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  Since the song was not included on the recently released limited edition album of Fred Mollin's scores for Friday the 13th parts seven and eight I am glad to have it here.  It makes my library feel more complete.  The disc ends with the completely needless theme for the Friday the 13th: The Series television show, composed by Fred Mollin.

While I am glad to have this disc, I do wish that some company would get around to releasing a mainstream one of Manfredini's music, giving it the respect that it deserves.  Until that happens, at least I have this disc to keep me happy.

Soundtrack Review: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) & Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) - Music Composed and Performed by Fred Mollin

With the exception of its percussive opening title theme, I did not recall all that much of Fred Mollin's contribution to Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.  "Co-composer" Harry Manfredini's scores for the previous six entries had provided a large enough library of music to cut and paste into about half of The New Blood.  Mollin, who was scoring the first season of the Friday the 13th: The Series television show at the time, was called in to fill the gaps.  Mollin's liner notes describe his work as a "melange of synthetic and sampled sounds to work with the Manfredini orchestral score."  Accurate description, with the exception of a childlike staccato theme, there is nothing about the score that sticks in the memory, even while listening to it.

Writer/director Rob Hedden completely jettisoned the Manfredini score library and asked Mollin, now at work on Friday the 13th: The Series season two, to score the entirety of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes a Boat...uh...Takes Manhattan, I mean.  Working with a tight budget, Mollin delivered another all electronic score, if you can call it that.  Mollin's notes describe the Takes Manhattan score as "a dense foliage of sound that seemed to do the trick," again an accurate description, because it is just a bunch of sound, not music.  Sadly the J-J-J-Jasonjasonjason that plays over the Paramount logo at the beginning of the movie is absent, as is the kitschy pop song "Darker Side Of the Night" that plays over Part VIII's opening and closing credits.

The album itself is just a collection of electronic hums and clangs with a touch of melody creeping in here and there in The New Blood segment.  This is of interest only to Friday the 13th fans, or a horror film music collecting completest.  Being just such a completest, I'm eventually going to get Mollin's music for Friday the 13th: The Series for that very reason, getting this disc was a given.  But it is no replacement for Manfredini's classic scores, which I'm still waiting to see released on CD.

Friday the 13th Special #1 (One Shot)

The developers of Lake Crystal Resorts, the construction site for which was the setting of the climatic battle in Freddy Vs Jason, are frustrated, not to mention near bankruptcy. Crystal Lake’s resident supernatural killing machine is ruining their chances for finally making a buck off the cursed property by continually destroying the construction site. So the developers send in a team of mercenaries to kill Jason. While this is going on, a couple parked in the woods nearby struggle with the heebie-jeebies (the female half, at least) as they try to engage in some back seat love-making. Copious bloodshed ensues.

Writer Brian Pulido gets what Friday the 13th is all about. Unlike the other titles in Avatar’s recently launched New Line Cinema’s House of Horror line, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and A Nightmare on Elm Street, each of them also scripted by Pulido, the Friday the 13th Special does not seemed rushed or somewhat abbreviated. This is probably due in large part to the nature of the material.  Friday the 13th movies have never been known for the depth of their characterizations or the complexity of their stories. What Friday the 13th movies are about is a big rotting zombie dude in a hockey mask whacking people with a machete, or whatever else proves handy. On this level the comic book certainly delivers.  The slaughter is quick and inventive and not at all hampered by all that story and character stuff.  As the renowned drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs would have put it, “There is very little plot getting in the way of the story.”  Pulido gives just enough background and motivation for the mercenary story to work, and having the developers be the children of the man who built the original Camp Crystal Lake (a.k.a. "Camp Blood") was a nice touch.  It gives the comic not only a link to New Line's Freddy Vs Jason, but to the Paramount Era movies as well.  Good stuff. 

Of the three New Line Cinema’s House of Horror comics, Friday the 13th was the one I was most looking forward to.  The reasons were twofold.  One, I am an unapologetic and longtime Friday the 13th fanboy.  Two, I have loved Mike Wolfer’s artwork since first discovering his mutant cutie Widow, the revenge seeking frankenslut Ragdoll, and the mercenary magician Strange Kiss/Killing series.  Wolfer did not disappoint here, the artwork is cinematically smooth and the carnage has just the right amount of humor to it.  I could almost hear Harry Manfredini’s classic music playing as my eyes took in some of the panels, great stuff.

I don’t know how this series will play out in the forth coming three or four issue story arcs (a format far better suited for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street lines than Jason is), but this one shot was precisely what this Friday the 13th fanboy hoped it would be.  A Friday the 13th movie on paper.