0. I'm not necessarily a fan of the slasher genre, though I've seen an adequate horror-lover's share of them. With many, many hours to fill under COVID, and the franchise almost entirely available on the streaming platforms I'd just started watching regularly, I figured what the hell, I'll watch the Friday the 13th movies. This would be a chance to finally see the first two movies in the series (as well as some others I'd only seen in parts on television). I don't presume to make A Definitive Statement On The Series And Its Relationship To The Larger Culture (Or Even To Horror Cinema). I've watched the movies, done some (though not all) reading of background*, and recorded my impressions. My rankings of the series and other data bits are at the end; I've loved none of them but appreciate some more than others.
* = Stacie Ponder has written up all of the films over on her still-indispensable blog Final Girl - I'm grateful to her particularly for calling my attention to the often-berserk logos the movies threw at us. Such off-the-wall gestures are often where a low-budget movie's spirit truly lies, and more than anything it's those gestures that kept me engaged with the series even as one dead teenager began to resemble all the others.
1. the First
At the start there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to take from this seeing it for the first time 40 years on - you know who the killer will be revealed to be, and you know who's going to jump out of the lake in the epilogue, so finally seeing it is really just a chance to finally say you saw it, to check it off a list. So you recalibrate a bit, and try to be open - I know the basic story (which can be summarized very, very easily), so I look to the margins as openly as I can to see what else is there.
There's some (not a whole lot, but some) sensitive work by the cast, one or two memorable character turns, and a richly atmospheric setting. It all happens in less than 24 hours, during which clouds gather and then a rainstorm rages and subsides (and I like how the storm registers as an event in the movie, bringing an open quiet within which the tension builds nicely). Henry Manfredini's famous score feels sketchy, a few synthesizer and vocal noises put together as horror miniatures, but it works. Watching it forty years on it's odd how the gore effects, which were so scandalous in 1980, are barely lingered on. The violence isn't thrown in our faces long enough to really disturb us, though perhaps forty years later this series' true legacy is how it has desensitized us to this kind of violence. (Ballard's prophecy that we'd be ruled by elected psychopaths has come true.)
It does wear its influence of Bava's BAY OF BLOOD on its sleeve, mainly in the quiet and emptiness that surrounds its murder sequences. There are some unsettlingly fleet touches as well (the quick dart of a hand behind a curtain is the bit I remember most keenly). Movies hold one's interest with a lot less; franchises, though, you'd hope would be built on a base less flimsy.
2. the Best
The first film was trying something new but wasn't sure what; it built from the influence of a quietly atmospheric Bava film, but some of the spaces in the movie feel accidental. This one has a model to build on - we've done this before, let's expand on what worked - and is stronger. Better realized and delineated characters (including a few you actually come to care about), wild stylistic flourishes (Jason's reveal is sublime - Terry screaming and unleashing her shit right into the camera is bravura),
more elaborate kill scenes (including a great bit where a chair breaks under Jason's weight - we don't see onscreen psychos get tripped up by accidents enough). Even Manfredini's score is better resourced, his electronics boosted by some confidently-laid string arrangements that
don't rip off Herrmann's PSYCHO themes. Bloody summer fun, if you can overlook the wild gaps in logic. I imagine Amy Steel's performance will remain one of the series' best leads. (EDIT: Indeed it did.)
3. Comin' At Ya
The creative team take a couple of steps back here - in part 2 they knew they were making a genre movie but that genre movie let its characters breathe and had strong connection between the set pieces. Here all the attention has been paid to the 3-D pop-outs with no care or detail put into anything else - Steve Miner made a more-than-coherent movie with 2 but seems handcuffed by the demands of the 3-D (and, no doubt, a studio that suddenly realized this franchise was a money-maker), and for all the eye-popping effects (right there on the title card!) the result is dramatically inert. Can't believe it took TWO people to write this, the most dull and rote script in the series (so far). Richard Brooks' Jason moves around like somebody's sprightly grandpa. The final barn fight gives it some oomph, with a lovely interior Louma crane shot that's more thrilling than any of the in-your-face effects.
4. the "Final" Chapter
A lot of the fans seem to love this one, and I understand why. Offbeat actors like Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman are brought in and given bits to do; I'm not as taken with Glover's dancing as some, but it's a solid step toward the flourishes that I value in genre programmers. The characters across the board have a spark that was missing in part 3 (the Jarvises are particularly likeable - the film would have benefited from a few more minutes with them), Jason's bulkier and more formidable, the killings become even more elaborate (Tina's slo-mo defenestration in the rain is GORGEOUS). Director Joseph Zito seems to have given this one a bit more zip, though it appears that's because everyone in the cast was totally unified in absolutely despising him.
INTERLUDE. THE LAKE.
If we assume that these movies are all in continuity with one another, oddities quickly emerge: we see Mrs. Voorhees driven mad enough by her son's drowning to terrorize Camp Crystal Lake for two decades. And yet her son survived and was close enough to witness her murder and thus get fired up to embark on his own rampages (and how the hell did he get to Alice's apartment and back?). The sprawling geography of 2-4 (which take place over about four consecutive days) suggests that the environs surrounding Crystal Lake are fairly vast, which might explain (
might) how Mrs. Voorhees never saw the makeshift shack her son built within walking distance of the camp. I'm not surprised the video game took it all in - the designers must have had a field day with such evocative and expansive territory to map out.
5. A New Beginning
And here I part with the slasher orthodoxy - this widely-reviled entry has (as I make these notes) given me the most entertainment so far. It doesn't have jokes but it's nonetheless very funny: the smash-cut from Joey's axe murder to the POLICE SQUAD! shot of the arriving siren makes me laugh just thinking about it. Part 3 had actors struggling with a nothing script and as a result had no energy; this one has actors full-tilt embracing a nothing script and is a lot more fun. It keeps looking for something else to cram into the formula; what character bits can we explore, what skills did an actor say they had on their resume that we can have them do on camera. The characters feel...not real, exactly (the bickering greasers are straight out of a Sha Na Na skit - you can either shut down and hate the movie or roll with it and giggle, like I did) but it's fun to spend time with them (Violet's robot-dancing to Pseudo Echo's "His Eyes" is a particular highlight; Reggie, Demon, and Anita in the van is another).
6. He Is Risen
A whole mess of strong performances in this one: Thom Mathews is rootably determined as by-now-the-series-protagonist Tommy Jarvis, and Jennifer Cooke is more than likeable enough to sell her bewildering turn as his besotted co-hero; David Kagen plays a fine meat-and-potatoes arc as her lawman dad. Well-embodied by enthusiastically jobbing CJ Graham, Jason's supernatural rebirth starts its own continuity (which is smart), and the thing is surprisingly light-footed and pleasant-spirited. Tonally consistent (and Imma credit Tom McLoughlin, the series' first ever "written and directed by" credit) and downright silly at times (with Manfredini actually creating POLICE ACADEMY-style comedy score for the paintball sequence), but much of the comedy comes from actual jokes. In an odd first we actually see the camp counselors counseling campers at the renamed Camp Forest Green (hilariously, McLoughlin lingers on the shot below longer than a who-we-are-and-what-we-do Powerpoint presentation).
7. The New Blood
There's the series' best story here: the story of a girl beset by abilities she doesn't understand and a guilt she'll never shake, of the shadowy lake that seeded her talents and still holds her close, of the energies that still manifest around her upon her return to the lake, of the unspeakable evil she accidentally frees from the depths of the lake, of the doctor who says he's trying to help her but seems to be guiding her via his own agenda, of her escalating fear as she tries desperately to embrace the human comforts around her, her anguish at losing everything, her terror turning to anger as she finally becomes who she is, becomes strong enough to contain and destroy the horror she unleashed, of her finally seeing the love that was always there, in the lake, of her leaving her past behind, her old world burned down as she confidently steps forward toward the new.
Paramount was given all these elements (assembled by the wildly ambitious producer Barbara Sachs), as well as a stunt team leader who took so seriously the iconography of the villain he was asked to play that he set a record for being on fire. With a team poised to deliver something next-level, Paramount instead asked for the same idiot teenagers, more of the same gratuitous nudity, the same shallow formula. Few involved saw it as anything more than a job, and a job is what we got.
Tina Shepard deserved better.
8. Takes A Boat Ride, And Then Manhattan
The lower budgets of the earlier efforts made for sleazy viewing, but also allowed for genuine strangeness and off-kilter moments. The good news in 8 is the production values are higher: this one has some of the series' best camera work, and the characters are an improvement on the previous, feeling lived-in and semi-motivated (indeed, Saffron Henderson and Martin Cummins sell a shaded and tangible friendship between rockergirl J.J. and video student Wayne - you can imagine her crushing out on him thanks to his resemblance to David Sylvian). But the interesting ideas don't breathe and get glossed over, the spontaneity has been choked out of the series (even the endearing daftness of the title logos is gone - this thing has a generic Manhattan-in-the-80s title sequence that could have played before any movie set in Manhattan in the 80s), and it lingers on the suffering of its characters past the point of entertainment. It is firmly and unmistakably the product of capitalists at this point, which might be the scariest thing about it.
9. aw, hell.
It took Jason longer to get to Hell than it did for him to get to Manhattan. Paramount just threw their hands up and gave the franchise to New Line, and New Line resumed the ongoing battle to turn this thing into something. This one plays like the second part of a movie for which the first part doesn't exist - suddenly Jason's a worm that jumps from body to body and there are various agents after him. It's crazily mixed and gets a coupla points for some engaging character bits and inspired lunacy (a diner gets attacked and the entire counter staff take arms up in defense). To be damn sure it ain't lazy, but it gives us way too much to just take on faith, and there's nothing on screen to really give a shit about. Even Manfredini's just randomly stabbing at his new digital keyboard at this point, which mirrors the scattershot, throw-it-all-at-it approach of the movie as a whole. A movie this insane should be more fun.
X.
Couldn't find this one, and at this point in the series-thru I was getting punchy and contrary so damned if I was gonna buy it. My memories of this thing are good, with Kane Hodder as implacable as ever in both classic and future mode; Lexa Doig and Lisa Ryder effectively swapping their ANDROMEDA roles; David Cronenberg in a fine turn, during the movie's prologue, as an asshole scientist. I recall this being breezier than the others, more consistent and sure of itself - it feels like director Jim Isaac was given a solid script and a decent effects budget and left to it. (And how dismaying it was to find, while reading up on this movie, that Isaac died in 2012 - I wasn't the world's biggest PIG HUNT fan, but I would have been curious enough to watch another film from him.)
11. vs. Freddy...
Some of the luster has worn off, yet it's still my favorite movie in the Friday the 13th franchise. With director Ronny Yu (veteran of a mess of wuxia films and BRIDE OF CHUCKY) helming the thing the deck's stacked in its favor. The characters are richer (and even mourn the deaths taking place around them), and Jason becomes a semi-realized character rather than a cinematic device that exists solely to eviscerate teenagers (Yu's decision to recast Ken Kirzinger in the role since he had more soulful eyes than Kane Hodder pays off). The story leans hard into fantasy (and harder into a Universal horror influence than even McLoughlin did in part 6) and is better for it, with a nice balance between the milieux of the title characters (artfully color-coded). Freddy's quips make him unpleasant and gross as opposed to evil; Kelly Rowland's sassing of Freddy is an unmotivated low point that nearly derails the thing. TIMELY BONUS: the treatment of Freddy's rampage as a public health crisis. And the climactic battle delivers.
12. 09
Jared Padalecki and Danielle Panabaker lead a cast who could have done a lot more than they were asked to; their sympathetic work, some solid camerawork, and a tight contraction of years of continuity are undone by ugly sadism, under-baked supporting roles, derivations from other movies, and just too much bullshit (I can buy that Jason built a shack in the woods; I can buy the crawlspace underneath; I can buy neither the vast network of tunnels nor the rusty school bus within them). I'm really glad to have finished a damn-near-full series view-through.
13. TL;DR
I rank'em FvsJ; 2, 6, 5, X, 1, 4, 7, 9, 8, '09, 3-D. Favorite kills: the rain defenestration in 4; the face-thru-metal in 6; the liquid nitrogen in X.
Though banned for its graphic violence, and long a hidden gem sought only by the most savvy and brave cult filmographers, this bleak and brutal film speaks way past the Video Nasty audience. It is tense, disgusting, scrupulously honest, and morally sound. It is also subtle but unflinching in capturing the vast gulf between a would-be murderer's narcissistic delusions and his abjectly pathetic reality. Erwin Leder is marvelous as the nameless antagonist, so far gone in his psychosis that he is at times too comically incompetent to realize the grandness of his psychotic visions, the cool and calculating sadism of his ongoing internal monologue constantly undercut by his external struggles with the dead weight of his victims, his hapless premature ejaculations, his complete and utter inability to even pass for normal at a glance. 
