Friday the 13th

It's that time of year again, people!

No, not Halloween already. Friday the 13th! That's right, it's time for a Jason Voorhees marathon! Although, I'm not sure you could really call 2 movies a marathon, considering I only watched parts 2 and 7. Still, they were the beginning and end of my favorite string of Jason Voorhess movies. Let's recap the whole series, just so everyone is with me on this!

Friday the 13th, part 1 - A bunch of camp counselors are murdered by jason's mom, Mrs Voorhees. Jason's mom is all pissed because supposedly, Jason drowned while the counselors were off having sex and smoking dope, setting the stage for the entire series. Pretty much every victim in every Fri 13 movie from here on out gets killed while either having sex, smoking dope, or doing something they shouldn't be doing. I've never really thought about it until now but, Jason actually died before his own series of movies ever started, supposedly drowning as a young boy before this movie even began. Jason's mom, however, dies at the end of this movie, getting her head chopped clean off. jason makes a pseudo-appearance at the end, supposedly scaring the bejeesus out of a young girl in a canoe. But was he really there? Or did she just imagine it? because supposedly he's been dead since before the movie started!

Part 2 - Now here's where things get really confusing. This movie opens with an adult-ish jason stalking and killing the girl who cut off Mrs Voorhees' head in the first movie. But according to the movie itself, the girl disappeared a few weeks after the events of the first movie, and was never heard from again, and supposedly, this movie opens 5 years after the events of the first movie. This raises several questions. One, if jason died as a boy, why is he growing up? Two, if it's only been five years, and jason was a boy, wouldn't he only be in his teens now? Three, if his drowning never actually happened, why was his mom all pissed off in the first movie? Well, aside from all the confusion, this movie was pretty decent. Counselors get together to refresh their counseling skills at crystal lake, and a hooded Jason goes around killing them. Interestingly enough, a huge bunch of the counselors head into town and basically spend the night drinking, while completely avoiding the mass killings at the cabins by the lake. This goes against the normal routine, as everyone who was out all night partying in town actually lived, and everyone who turned in early got slaughtered.

Part 3 - This movie marked the first time jason put on his signature hockey mask. I guess the burlap hood was either getting too restricting visually, or it was hockey season. I haven't seen this movie in ages, so all i can recall about it was that it was in 3D, with lots of eyes popping out of the screen and so on. i once carved a pumpkin for halloween with the jason hockey mask on the front, just punching little holes into it with an ice pick and then carving out the eyes. it was a big hit with all the trick or treaters! But that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.

Part 4 - jason runs into his arch-nemesis, Tommy. While going about killing the drunken revelers as he usually does, jason meets a young boy named Tommy (played by corey feldman) somebody or other, who chops jason into bits with his own machete. This marks the second time jason dies, or perhaps the first time he actually dies, or maybe the 4th or 5th time he's died, I'm not even sure. After this point, he stops growing, so I guess he never really drowned before the first movie, eh?

Part 5 - jason was not actually in this movie. Jason, apparently dead, spends the entire movie taking a dirt nap while an ambulance driver dons his hockey mask and overalls and goes around killing a bunch of mentally disturbed teenagers, blaming the whole thing on the jason legend. Tommy plays the lead role here, apparently taking martial arts to defend himself against any future jason occurrences, or maybe he's just messed up in the head, but he seems fairly badass despite being a mental patient. Eventually the copycat killer is found out, unmasked, and killed. He probably would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids!

Part 6 - An adult Tommy, trying to exorcise the demons from his brain, digs up jason's body in an attempt to finally destroy the body with fire and thus end his nightmares. unfortunately, he digs him up during a lightning storm, and jason's body gets struck by lightning, which actually brings him back to life as a zombie, which i saw coming pretty much from the first 12 seconds into the movie. Zombie-jason seems much stronger than the formerly living version, easily putting his fists through people's brains and ripping their arms off and beating them to death with them. Much more badass than previous incarnations, zombie-jason can no longer be killed, only trapped in crystal lake, which tommy manages to do, dying in the process. Also, tommy somehow manages to forget his martial arts training from part 5, his angry rage from part 4, and is a total pussy for the entire length of this movie. Frankly, I think a badass tommy/zombie jason fight would have been awesome, but it never happens.

part 7 - jason gets brought back from his Limbo-zombie state by a telekinetic chick whose father died in the lake. There's an epic battle between zombie-jason and psycho-kinetic girl, and eventually she revives her dead father from the lake, who takes zombie-jason back down into it's murky depths. this marks the last time crystal lake is featured in the films. no doubt the area is cordoned off, mined, and no one ever goes there again for fear of being bitten by zombie-jason and starting the zombie apocalypse.

Part 8 - jason joins a boatload of rich teens headed to new york city. he follows them around the big apple for awhile, killing them off, until he drowns in radioactive sewer water, or something to that effect, marking the second time he's supposedly drowned. Or maybe the third. You'd think they'd get the idea that it wasn't going to kill him this time either, but no. No, they didn't.

Part 9 - Jason is caught in a sting operation by the FBI, who apparently shoot him so full of lead that he dies of lead poisoning. HAH GET IT? LEAD POISONING??? HAHAHAHAHAA!!!! Erm. yea. anyway, apparently he reawakens at the morgue, takes possession of other people's bodies, and goes around killing again. Not really sure about the whole possession thing for jason. That's more a michael myers schtick, but whatever. When you're on the FBI's most wanted list, you have to be either really really good, or really really bad, and supposedly this movie is really bad.

Part 10 - Jason gets captured and cryo-frozen, since no one can figure out how to kill him permanently. However, he gets thawed out several hundred years in the future, after the earth has been turned into a toxic wasteland, and gets taken into space. After a little killing, he gets infected with nanites, who turn him into cyber-zombie-jason, who's apparently even more badass than zombie jason, who destroys an entire space ship and lands on a whole new planet. With lots of lakes! Wow and I thought part 9 sucked.

Yea, I don't know where you can go with the series after you've destroyed the earth, taken him into space, and turned jason into an undead cyborg. I pretty much think that was it for jason Voorhees except for a short appearance fighting freddy krueger, who's been vainly trying to recapture his popularity since Nightmare on elm street 1. But don't get me started on freddy. It's really hard for me to be scared of a skinny guy in a green and orange sweater with a slightly modified michael jackson glove. I think he even moonwalks someone to death in one of their dreams, or tongues them to death or something. Oh, so scary. (yawn)

And tomorrow, I will watch Saturday the 14th! ON saturday the 14th! I know, I'm living the crazy life! I loved saturday the 14th when I was a kid, but I caught it again years later and it just wasn't as good as I remembered it. Oh well. That one has nothing to do with jason voorhees, which is probably a good thing. Still, Saturday the 14th probably marks one of the first times the creature from the black lagoon became the Creature from the hot older sister's bathtub. Hey, if I was the creature from the black lagoon, and I hadn't had a movie gig since the 50's, I'd settle for a bathtub, too.

Well that's all for tonight! I feel like I been rode hard and put away wet, to quote someone else who hasn't had a movie gig since the 50's.