For the first film in what would come to be the Sartana series, star Gianni Garko wanted a character whose motivation was more than just vengeance. After turning down script after script, Renato Izzi’s take on the character — a man free from sentiment who pits rivals against one another — Sartana was born.
What breaks the character away from the mold is both his air of mystery and his love of gadgets, which many attribute to director Gianfranco Parolini (God’s Gun) love of James Bond films. His first line of dialogue says all you need to know about him. When faced with an entire gang of killers, led by Morgan (Klaus Kinski, Death Smiles on a Murderer), one of them says, “You look just like a scarecrow.” Sartana coldly replies, “I am your pallbearer,” before ruthlessly killing everyone but the gang’s leader.
The first few scenes of this movie set up that everyone is looking for coffins filled with gold, from Morgan’s gang to a Mexican army led by General Jose Manuel Mendoza (Fernando Sancho, Return of the Blind Dead), who says, “How many times I tell you… that my name is Don José Manuel Francisco Mendoza Montezuma de la Plata Perez Rodriguez… but you can call me General Tampico!” Then there’s another group led by Lasky (William Berger, a frequent actor in Jesus Franco films), who uses a gatling gun to wipe out his rivals. He’s working with/blackmailing Stewal (Sydney Chaplin, son of Charlie, who also appeared in Satan’s Cheerleaders) and Alman, a politician and banker.
Sartana remains the fly in Lasky’s ointment, taking his money in a card game and defeating Morgan, who is sent to kill him. He even wipes out Lasky’s entire gang. But then Stewal and Alman turn him in to Mendoza, who goes after both Lasky and Sartana.
What follows is an elaborate series of double-crosses, with Stewal trying to escape with the gold but being killed by Mendoza to Lasky killing Mendoza and his men and Alman’s wife killing him and taking Lasky to the gold before he kills her. Finally, Lasky and Sartana have a duel, which ends with our hero riding out of town with the coffin filled with gold.
This film sets up the character of Sartana quite well — no one is sure why he does what he does, appearing with the sound of a dead man’s watch, being able to seemingly disappear at will. He’s always a few steps ahead of his enemies and always appears unflappable in the face of sure death.
After all, I wouldn’t be spending an entire week discussing a hero who is anything less than awesome, right?
Want to learn more about Spaghetti Westerns? You can find no better site than the Spaghetti Western Database. It was so helpful as we put these reviews together all week long!
In 1967, Gianni Garko played a character named Sartana in the film Blood at Sundown. While not the hero we’ll come to know and love this week, this character proved incredibly popular, particularly in Germany. Producers contacted Garko about a new series with a hero with the same name, but he wanted to create a protagonist concerned more with himself than vengeance.
Original series director Gianfranco Parolini loved James Bond, so his gadgets were added. An additional inspiration was Mandrake the Magician, which explains Sartana’s black cloak and seemingly supernatural abilities.
Often, when confronting Sartana, villains will hear his theme, the song of a dead man, and answer the door to find just his clothes or nothing at all. Then, he’ll appear and kill them. He uses trick weapons, like his signature four-barrel derringer. And as time goes on, Sartana begins to employ elaborate death traps, ala Dr. Phibes. He even has a robot assistant in the final of these five films!
So why are we spending an entire week on the character? Because he’s so cool, that’s why! Who else would adjust his tie in the middle of a gunfight? I’ve been always wanting to enjoy more Italian westerns, as I love the fact that they take an American archetype and put their own spin on it. The Sartana series is a veritable goulash of genres and inspirations.
This week, we’ll be covering the four official Sartana movies and the fifth spiritual sequel:
Light the Fuse…Sartana is Coming!: Millions of dollars in gold and counterfeit money lead everyone in a town to turn on one another, leaving Sartana and his improbable arsenal of weaponry in the middle.
Sure, there are plenty of other films with Sartana in the title, but these are considered the official canon films. The final one on our list is actually the third released, but the last film. And George Hilton takes over for Garko, so many don’t consider it official.
All of these films owe a debt to Sergio Leone’s films, particularly A Fistful of Dollars. There were over six hundred Italian westerns made between 1960 and 1978, so the fact that this character endures — much less spawned plenty of imitators — will be explored this week. Plus, the films are just plain fun, with outrageous gun battles and numerous double-crosses. I can’t wait to share them with you.
PS – Arrow is releasing a huge box set of these soon — including limited edition blu-rays of all five official Sartana films! The Complete Sartana comes out on May 26 and you can get it from Diabolik DVD!
Real-life husband and wife Richard Benjamin (Catch-22 and the original Westworld) and Paula Prentiss (The Stepford Wives) play John and Mary, who have inherited his uncle’s house in Eerie, PA. If that line made you laugh, then Saturday the 14th is for you.
Along with their kids Debbie and Billie, they try and fix the house up. But they’re opposed by Waldemar (Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development) and Yolanda, two vampires who want the book of evil within the house. Billy finds the book and with each turn of the page, he unleashes monster after monster into the house.
Soon, the TV can only get The Twilight Zone, sandwiches, dishes and nosy neighbors all disappear and eyeballs show up in John’s coffee cup. It’s nothing out of the ordinary to our heroes, who seem blind to the supernatural going on all around them.
Waldemar gets into the house as a bat, so they hire an exterminator (Severn Darden, Kolp from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) who turns out to be Van Helsing.
After a housewarming party where the monsters kill every guest, we learn that the vampires are the good guys and Van Helsing just wants the book so he can rule the world. The good guys — now who include the vamps — win and Jon and Mary get an upscale home while Waldemar and Yolanda settle into the cursed home.
Director Howard R. Cohen also wrote Unholy Rollers, Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen before choosing this as his first film. He also directed Space Raiders, Time Trackers and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back.
Some trivia — every time you see Prentiss, look closely. She’s hiding the cast on her arm, as she broke it before filming began.
Also, this is Benjamin’s last feature film as an actor, as he started directing with 1982’s My Favorite Year.
While sold as a parody of slasher films, this movie more accurately makes light of monster movies as a whole. If you’re looking for other funnier horror films of a similar bent, I’d recommend Wacko, Pandemonium, Student Bodies or Class Reunion.
I remember this movie running on HBO quite often in my youth. It’s a pleasant enough diversion, almost an Airplane! version of horror or a Mad Magazine come to life. The monsters are way better than you’d think they’d be, too!
In 2020, most of Earth has been destroyed by sightless aliens that hunt via sound. But they aren’t the real danger that humanity faces. No, they’re facing nails. Upset pre-teens. And toys that make way too much noise.
But seriously…
Outside of Quest for Fire, this is the quietest, near dialogue-free movie that’s been released in mainstream U.S. cinemas. It’s interesting to me that John Krasinski wrote, directed and starred in this (he even is one of the monsters, doing some of the motion capture acting), as his star-making turn as Jim on the American version of The Office was marked by more of his silent reactions to events and longing for Pam than any words that he had to say. Along with real-life wife Emily Blunt, they form the emotional core of the tale, two parents trying to figure out how to raise children in a world where nearly everyone is dead and communication is impossible.
Millicent Simmonds from Wonderstruck is great as the daughter, whose deafness has helped her family, as their knowledge of American Sign Language has become an integral part of how they survive.
Originally, this film was intended to be a crossover or part of the Cloverfield universe. I’m glad that it was allowed to stand on its own merits. While some of the scares feel like Alien, there is still an originality to a movie that depends so much on sound design and subtle cues to bring out maximum suspense.
That said — as for originality, there’s a movie coming out in September called The Silence, where a family comes up against “a deadly, primeval species who have bred for decades in the pitch darkness of a vast underground cave system, hunting only with their acute hearing. As the family seeks refuge in a remote haven where they can wait out the invasion, they start to wonder what kind of world will remain when they’re ready to emerge.” Which is even weirder is that the movie stars Stanley Tucci, who is married to Emily Blunt’s sister Felicity.
This felt a bit slow to me, but I think that’s just the build here. For someone who wasn’t a horror fan growing up, Krasinski has a good feel for the genre. It’s intriguing to me that two of the biggest hits of the last few years, this and Get Out, came not from genre veterans but for creatives known mainly for comedy. Which is, after all, tragedy plus time.
PS – The scenes with the nail sticking out of the steps had me more upset than anything I’ve seen in a film in some time. This is from someone who can eat Chinese takeout while watching Fulci. Sometimes, the most real horrors are the most frightening of all!
9 years after The Strangers first came out, the sequel emerges. It started with actual hype, trailers and posters announcing its release and then it felt like the actual film came and went. Luckily, we caught it as a second feature at the drive-in. It’s a hard role for a second film to live up to the first, particularly when you love a movie so much that you get a tattoo of one of its characters like Becca has. So does the sequel live up to its predecessor?
We open in a trailer park, where The Strangers park their truck, enter a home and proceed to kill off everyone inside. Roll credits. Show based on a true story super.
Mike, Cindy (Christina Hendricks from TV’s Mad Men), Luke (Lewis Pullman, son of Bill) and Kinsey (Bailee Madison, the 2010 remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark) are on the road to Kinsey’s boarding school when they stop to stay with Cindy’s Uncle Marvin’s trailer camp along the way.
Arriving late, they are barely settled in when a knock comes at the door and we hear the familiar question: “Is Tamara home?” If you’ve seen the original, you know what happens next. And if you haven’t…
Family drama leads to everyone leaving their phones on the table and Kinsey storming off. Luke follows and as they wander the park, they discover the bodies of their uncle and aunt. They also just randomly let their relatives’ dog run away into the night like it’s not a big deal, which kind of makes me not care what happens to them.
As they run away in fear, they find their parents and decide to get out. But first, Mike wants to see the bodies. You know what? Just go. Just walk away. But nope, he goes and does that while Dollface stabs his wife and Kinsey barely escapes.
Mike and Luke find the body and start searching for Kinsey when Man in the Mask crashes his truck into them. As Luke runs off to get help, the killer gets in the car, cranks the stereo and kills dad with an ice pick. It’s the first welcome bit of true weirdness in what’s been up until now a relatively staid affair.
A massive chase ensues, ending with Like stabbing Pin Up Girl to death and battling Man in the Mask to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Music choice wise, this movie is great. And I find it really interesting that the two most devious, inventive and bloody scenes in the film, this pool sequence and later when Man in the Mask chases Kinsey in a flaming truck, are both scored to Jim Steinman-penned songs (the second is Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing at All.” Both songs were originally written for Meat Loaf’s album “Midnight at the Lost and Found,” but the record label would not pay Steinman for his work. Hence, he turned them into hits for two other artists and thematically, they are so similar that it can’t be a coincidence they were used in this way).
Seriously, it’s not until the pool fight between Luke and Man in the Mask that this movie finds its footing. What follows is pure suspense, as if the film finally felt like anyone left at the party were its true friends and that it was time to embrace the crazy.
The only downside to all this is that Dollface’s answer to the question of why pales in comparison to the original film. And that the ending is pretty much a shot for shot remake of the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But how many kids on opening weekend are going to know that? How many have sat through slasher after slasher and miss the early 1980’s summers, knowing that they could be rewarded with a new murder-packed film every Friday?
This was directed by Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Other Side of the Door) from a script by original writer and director Bryan Bertino. Also of note is that none of The Strangers are portrayed by the original actors. As for that based on true events legend, the movie was inspired by the Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate and her friends, the Keddie Cabin Murders and a series of break-ins that happened in Bertino’s neighborhood while he was growing up.
Some trivia: Before script rewrites, Liv Tyler’s character would return, only to be killed in the beginning. It’s better that she didn’t, as it allows the film to try and stand on its own. That said — if suffers in comparison. The original was a darker, dingier, more deranged affair. We kind of knew from the trailers that we weren’t getting what we wanted from this film, but it does deliver two great scenes, which is probably more than you can ask for these days. Also, as stated above, there are some really great music cues, which shows that at least the filmmakers were thinking! Which, I guess, is more than I can say for the folks that made some of my favorite bottom of the barrel 80’s slashers.
Friday the 13th has appeared in more than just movies. Here are some of the media appearances that I’ve found interesting and want to share with you.
Books
Six of the twelve films have been turned into books, with Part 3 written twice! Plus, the Jason Lives book introduced Elias Voorhees, Jason’s father, who paid to have his son buried.
In 1994, four young adult novels were released under the Friday the 13th banner. Written by author Eric Morse, these books are more about Jason’s masks possessing people than the killer himself.
In the 2000’s, Black Flame published four Jason X books that continued the future timeline storyline created in the film. They also published another series entitled Friday the 13th where Jason was resurrected by a religious cult, befriended by a serial killer in Hell, searched for by two religious serial killers, placed into a Survivor game show with death row convicts while his DNA creates zombies (man, that sounds better than any of the movies!) and finally, his mother rises from the grave and searches for her son, who has become a circus strongman. I’d watch all of these!
Comic books
Topps Comics published several Friday the 13th comics, including one where he befriended and then battled Leatherface. Avatar also published several comics, including a Jason vs. Jason X battle. Wildstorm got the license in 2006 and published several mini-series, including Friday the 13th: Pamela’s Tale, which gave plenty of backstory, and two Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash series.
Documentaries
Daniel Farrands has created two documentaries, His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th and Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, which you can watch on Shudder. It’s about six and a half hours and packed with plenty of information (and narrated by Corey Feldman). It’s pretty amazing how many people they got to show up and it doesn’t pull punches, even mentioning the second film’s Jason look being so close to The Town That Dreaded Sundownand the kills that are taken from Bay of Blood.
Video games
There have been a few games, but the two that everyone knows are the near-impossible to defeat Nintendo game and the new Friday the 13th: The Game, which was originally entitled Slasher Vol. 1: Summer Camp.
Eight versions of Jason are available to play, including costumes from the second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth films, plus the Nintendo version a new Jason created by Tom Savini. You can also play as Roy Burns, the copycat Jason from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
While the counselors in the game are all new characters, they’ve added Shelly Finklestein and Fox from Part 3, as well as Tommy Jarvis, the only character who can kill Jason. Plus there are maps for Camp Crystal Lake, Packanack Lodge, Higgins Haven, Jarvis House, Pinehurst and they have even hinted at including Grendel, the ship from Jason X.
I’ve never played the game, as I’m waiting for the single player version to get finished. But I’m excited that it exists!
TV
Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. But he broke the pact, and it cost him his soul. Now, his niece Micki, and her cousin Ryan have inherited the store… and with it, the curse. Now they must get everything back, and the real terror begins.
Back in the days of syndicated TV, Friday the 13th: The Series aired for three seasons. It’s all about Micki, Ryan and Jack, who try to recover cursed antiques. Originally called The 13th Hour, Jason never appeared on the program, but there was a rumor that the final item the team would have to get was his mask.
I remember wanting to hate this show, yet secretly loving it. I think the fact that Robey was on it and I was 15 had something to do with it.
Can you blame me? Haha — man, the 80’s, right?
The end?
The rights to the franchise are slated to revert to New Line/Warner Brothers this year, which would be a good thing. After all, these films are a license to make money and no one can get one off the ground.
However, Victor Miller, who wrote the original Friday the 13th screenplay, has been suing for the rights, as he claims that the transfer of rights meant that Sean Cunningham never had the authority to sell the intellectual property. Ah, lawyers. That said — Blumhouse has hinted that they want to make a film in the series.
Damian Shannon & Mark Swift shared the cover of their script for the canceled sequel and got cease and desisted pretty quickly. I’d love to see what their ideas for this winter set sequel were!
There was also a plan in 2003 to make Crystal Lake Chronicles, which I’d describe as Dawson’s Creek with Jason looming in the background while kids went through life and love. It obviously never happened, nor did a proposed CW series that would have dealt with young adults dealing with living in Crystal Lake.
Whew! That’s a lot of Jason in one day, huh? What are your feelings on these films? Do you have a favorite? Let us know!
With Freddy vs. Jason stuck in development hell (what, no one just wanted to make money?), New Line didn’t want people to forget Jason. So they sent him into the future. They sent him into virtual reality. And they sent him into space.
Jason X (2001)
In 2010 — 9 years in the future! — Jason is captured by the U.S. government but can’t be killed, so government scientist Rowan LaFontaine decides to place the killer is suspended animation. Of course, a bunch of soldiers screws the whole thing up and Jason kills everyone in his path before he stabs Rowan and freezing both of them.
445 years later, Earth is ruined so everyone moves to Earth 2. So why not send some students back to the old Earth on a field trip? Why not send their professor and an android, too? While exploring the Crystal Lake facility where Jason was experimented on? And why not put the still frozen bodies of Jason and Rowan on the Grendel, their ship? Nothing bad can happen, right?
Well, it turns out that Jason is dead and his body could be worth plenty. The Professor calls his money man, Dieter Perez (Robert A. Silverman, who has been in five Cronenberg* movies and the two episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series that he directed, too) and they discuss how Jason’s body could be worth something to collectors. Luckily — or maybe not — they bring Rowan back to life.
Of course, kids keep having sex around Jason, which brings the maniac back to life. He wipes out nearly everyone on the ship, including all of the soldiers that are on board. He even takes out an entire space station!
The teens upgrade their android, KM-14, who wipes out Jason. Or so everyone thinks — a medical station brings him back as Uber Jason, filled with cybernetics so powerful that he can punch the android’s head off. Not even a holographic simulation or a shuttle crash can slow him down! It takes flying him through re-entry and burning him up to take him out.
That said — two teens see his mask land on Earth 2, so he could always come back. He can come back, right?
This was written by Todd Farmer (Drive Angry, the remake of My Bloody Valentine) and directed by James Isaac (House 3). I have a real weakness for this film as it really goes places none of the others did. It’s the Abbott and Costello school of running out of ideas and just doing something completely off the wall.
*Cronenberg shows up in a cameo as Dr. Wimmer, too!
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Finally, after years of development stops and starts, arguably the two biggest horror icons of the 1980s would fight. Helmed by The Bride with White Hairdirector Ronny Yu, this would be the last film in both villain’s series before they were rebooted.
Freddy is stuck in Hell, powerless because the children of Springwood have forgotten about him. He disguises himself as Pamela Vorhees and sends a message to Jason, begging him to kill the teens he can no longer reach.
The adults cover it up, just as they have for years. They don’t want Freddy ever coming back, so they even send his victims to a sanitarium and give them Hypnocil to suppress their dreams. Freddy starts coming back with each kill, but then he realizes that Jason cannot be contained and that his mayhem will only cost him victims.
Our protagonists try to pull Freddy from the dream world into our world, but Freddy catches Jason in his dream world, using his fear over drowning to defeat him. At the last moment, Jason actually saves everyone by returning to our world.
By the end, Freddy is decapitated and Jason is dead. Or is he? Of course, he raises from the lake, holding his machete and Freddy’s head as the bastard son of a thousand maniacs winks to the audience.
Sadly, Kane Hodder was replaced by the even larger Ken Kirzinger. The director wanted a bigger, bulkier Jason. Oh well. Also, Kelly Rowland from Destiny’s Child is in this.
While sequels were planned (rumored battles were to include Ash from Evil Dead, Pinhead from Hellraiser and Michael Myers from Halloween), nothing ever happened. There was a comic series that did this — more on that later.
The movie figures out a nice way to connect the characters, but they went even further in the original script. One idea was that Freddy either raped or had a consensual sexual encounter with Jason’s mother, and as a result, was Jason’s dad. Or maybe Freddy had worked at Camp Crystal Lake and was the reason behind Jason’s death. These ideas felt too contrived and were dropped.
There was nowhere else to go after this movie. It was time for a reboot.
Friday the 13th (2009)
Marcus Nispel directed the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, so why shouldn’t he get a shot at Jason? This film is more than just a remake of the first film. It’s really a bit of the first four all in one.
We watch Jason as he watches his mother get killed by a camp counselor. Thirty years later, he kills every single teen who has comes to Crystal Lake looking for marijuana, except for Whitney, who reminds him of his mother.
Weeks later, some rich kids come to stay at a fancy cabin. They’re all fodder, too. Only Clay, Whitney’s brother, can save her. Finally, Whitney acts like Jason’s mother and stabs him, but he comes back at the end, rising from the lake.
This is a slick, CGI animated take on the Jason mythos. I’m more into the Savini school of gore, so there’s a lot of this that didn’t work for me. It’s not a horrible film by any means. But it’s not the best of the series. And while it did well at the box office, it was also the end of the series.
After years of hating the franchise, Paramount finally decided to give the Friday the 13th series a higher quality of budget and directors. Hey — it only took six movies!
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
Associate producer Barbara Sachs helped dream up several concepts for this film and according to writer Daryl Haney, “She wanted it to be unlike any other Friday the 13th movie. She wanted it to win an Academy Award.” GQ ran a great article on this film.
Originally intended as a crossover with Freddy Krueger, the logline for this film was, “What if Carrie fought Jason?” What ended up happening was one of Becca’s favorite films in the series.
Directed by John Carl Buechler (Troll, The Dungeonmaster), who also contributed to the special effects, this film establishes the definitive Jason. This is also because it’s the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role.
Jason is still at the bottom of Crystal Lake, but as Tina Shepard watches her alcoholic father abuse her mother, her mental powers emerge and she drowns her father.
Fast forward and she’s a teenager (Lar Park Lincoln, House II) whose mother (voiceover artist Susan Blu) and Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser, Bernie from Weekend at Bernie’s!) have taken her back to that house to study (exploit) her powers.
Dr. Crews bedside manner is, in a word, the shits. He screams at Tina until her powers start working. She gets upset and runs outside, wishing that she could bring her father back from the dead. The only problem? She brings Jason back instead.
There is also — can you even be surprised at this point — a house of teens throwing a party for Michael (William Butler, 1990s Night of the Living Dead). They include Russell, Sandra (Heidi Kozak, Slumber Party Massacre 2), Kate, Ben, Eddie (Jeff Bennett, the voice of Johnny Bravo), David, Maddy, Robin (Elizabeth Kaitan, who was in the Vice Academy movies), Nick and Melissa.
Tina can foresee that they will all die and Jason lives up to her visions. She’s the Final Girl and has to lose everything, even her mother. As she fights back with her powers, she pulls the mask off his face, revealing it to be decayed and near demonic. Finally, her father rises from the dead and drags Jason back underwater. Yet even after all of that, we can still hear the theme song as someone finds the killer’s mask.
The working title for this film was Birthday Bash, but the original script was even titled Jason’s Destroyer. There were 9 different cuts sent to the MPAA to avoid an X rating, which is still amazing to me. Even more upsetting is that Paramount threw away all of the cut footage, so there’s little to no chance that an uncut version will ever be seen. I still think that the rumored 1989 Dutch release on VHS, which includes all the gore, is an urban legend.
A cool bit of trivia for Friday the 13th fans: the narration in the beginning of the film is by Walt Gorney, who played Crazy Ralph in the first two films.
Kane Hodder really proves why he should be Jason here, as he almost died in a stunt where he fell through the stairs and achieved the record for the longest uninterrupted on-screen controlled burn in Hollywood history at 40 seconds.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Just like a band that continually says that they are going to retire, this was also intended to be the final film in the series. It takes Jason out of his element and features probably one of the greatest horror movie trailers ever:
It’s just so ridiculous that you have to see the film, you know?
Well, it’s not the last film in the series, but it’s the last one that Paramount would produce until 2009, as New Line Cinema would take over after this. And the working title? Another Bowie song, Ashes to Ashes.
The movie starts with a teenager playing a prank on his girlfriend, dressing like Jason. But the boat they are on reanimates him and he kills them both.
Soon, the SS Lazarus is setting sail from Crystal Lake to New York City to celebrate the graduation of the senior class. Along for the ride are biology teacher Dr. McCulloch and his niece Rennie, English teacher Colleen Van Deusen, J.J. (Saffron Henderson, the voice of Kid Goku and Kid Gohan on Dragonball Z), boxer Julius Gaw, popular girls Tamara and Eva (Kelly Hu, The Scorpion King) and video student Wayne. Oh yeah! And Toby the dog!
Everyone but McCulloch, Van Deusen, Rennie, Julius, Toby and Sean are killed, so they escape aboard a life raft to New York City, where Jason stalks them in the Big Apple.
This movie is packed with some audience pleasing moments, like J.J. getting killed by her own guitar, Julius’ head getting punched into orbit after trying to outbox Jason, a gang that gets Rennie high and makes her even more freaked out by Jason, her uncle getting killed after it’s revealed that he tried to drown her as a child…oh man, this one is packed with greatness. And then Jason drowns in a sewer.
Due to the box office results of this film, Paramount sold the series to New Line. We’d have to wait 4 years for the results. That said — this movie made $14,343,976 with a budget of $5,000,000. That’s not horrible numbers.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
At Camp Crystal Lake, an undercover government agent lures Jason into a trap, blowing him up real good. I saw this scene in a movie theater in Youngstown, OH (former murder capitol of the US!) and the crowd cheered their name being mentioned as a place Jason had been seen.
Soon after, the body is being examined by a coroner who is moved to eat the heart and ingest the spirit of Jason. He goes right back to Crystal Lake and right back to killing him. And now comes the part of the story that no one has ever figured out until now, making the story just like Halloween(again!): Creighton Duke (Steven Williams, Dr. Detroit) is a bounty hunter who learns that only members of Jason’s bloodline can truly kill him. Even worse, if he can possess a member of his family, he’ll become invincible.
The only living relatives of Jason are his half-sister Diana Kimble (Erin Gray!), her daughter Jessica, and Stephanie, the infant daughter of Jessica and Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay, who played Ryan Dallion on the otherwise unrelated Friday the 13th: The Series).
Jessica is now dating tabloid TV reporter Robert Campbell (Steven Culp, Rex Van de Kamp from Desperate Housewives), yet it is Steven that saves her from Jason. He gets blamed for her mother’s death and just Robert is about to take advantage, Jason goes into his body, all with the goal of impregnating his half-sister and making a perfect Jason baby. Oh incest, we were waiting for you to show up.
Meanwhile, Jason wipes out most of the police in town. But then Duke the bounty hunter steals the baby and demands that Jessica meet him at the Vorhees house alone, so that he can give her the mystical dagger that can kill Jason. Now this film has become The Omen.
Despite all this, the heart that is Jason grows into a demonic infant and then crawls into a dead woman’s vagina and is reborn. Yes, you just read that sentence correctly. And man, I said that 5 was the scummiest entry in the series!
It all works out — the dagger releases all of the souls that Jason has accumulated and demonic forces drag him into hell. At the end of the movie, a dog finds Jason’s mask and of all things, Freddy’s gloved hand pulls it into the ground!
Mike McBeardo McPadden wrote about watching this scene on 42nd Street, where the crowd went wilder than any he’d ever experienced and that a man screamed to no one in particular, in the dark, “Freddy wants somebody to play with … IN HELL!!!!” Man, I wish I was there for that. You should also totally grab his Heavy Metal Moviesright here at Bazillion Points Books.
Finally, after all these years, Freddy and Jason were set to battle. But guess what? We’d have to wait ten years for it to happen. Because after all, Jason had to go to space first.
By 1984, Jason wasn’t going anywhere, even if every single sequel promised his final kill or the final chapter or the end of the series. As they say in pro wrestling, red means green. And Jason was bringing in plenty of both. (PS – We have an article on Jason in wrestling right here!)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Paramount — and producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. — were both aware that people were growing tired of slashers. In fact, Mancuso, Jr. began to hate the series because no one respected him for making the films, despite how much money they made. So the order was made: let’s kill Jason.
Directed by Joseph Zito, who also made the slasher classic The Prowler (a much bloodier, much more interesting move than this), an interesting attempt was made to get you to actually care about some of the characters. But not all, of course. There’s always going to be cannon fodder in these films.
The evening after the last film, Jason comes back to life and kills a coroner and a nurse before making his way back to Crystal Lake. And, de rigueur, more teenagers show up — Paul, Sara, Sam (Judie Aronson, American Ninja), Jimmy (Crispin Glover!), Doug (Peter Barton, Hell Nightand TV’s The Powers of Matthew Star) and Ted. They even pass Pamela Vorhees’ tombstone along the way.
Oh yeah — then there’s Trish (Kimberly Beck, Marnie), Tommy (Corey Feldman!), their mom (Joan Freeman, Panic in the Year Zero!) and their dog Gordon. And there are the skinny dipping teens, Tina and Terri. Oh yeah — and a young drifter named Rob with a secret.
Tommy’s family are the sympathetic characters mentioned earlier, with the kid being a stand-in for the beloved Tom Savini. He shows off his collection of special FX early and often.
Of course, those teenagers all do drugs, have sex and die horribly. We’re used to those things. But the murder of Tommy’s mom has some emotion. And then we learn that Rob is the brother of Sandra from Friday the 13th Part 2 and has been obsessed with finding and killing Jason. Oh, he finds him, and dies like a complete bitch, screaming “He’s killing me!”
The close, where Trish cuts off Jason’s mask to reveal his face and Tommy has to flip out to hack Jason to death, was the stuff of legend in my pre-teen days, oft-discussed at lunches and study halls.
Tom Savini returned here for the chance to kill off Jason, but come on, everyone. We all knew what was coming next.
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
Presenting the scummiest, vilest Friday of them all — a film packed with more kills (22!), more nudity and more drugs behind the scenes than several of the other films combined!
Years after killing off Jason, Tommy Jarvis has nightmares that the man he killed has returned. That’s why he’s in Pinehurst Halfway House, where Pam Roberts and Dr. Matt Letter (Richard Young, who gives young Indy his fedora in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) are trying to help him to get over his violent past and the death of his mother.
But are there a bunch of teens to get killed? Sure there are. There’s Reggie, Tommy’s roommate whose grandfather George works there as a cook. Plus, we have Robin (Juliette Cummins, Slumber Party Massacre 2), Violet (Tiffany Helm, O.C. & Stiggs, Reform School Girls), Jake, Vic (Suicide from Return of the Living Dead), Joey, Eddie and Tina (Debi Sue Voorhees, no relation). There’s also rich neighbors Ethel Hubbard and Junior, who want the halfway house closed down.
What follows is a bit of a mystery movie, at least for a bit. Is one of the kids the killer, like Vic, or has Jason come back from the dead? Even the end of the movie leaves that up in the air, to be honest. It’s kind of a mess, but along the way there’s a ton of blood and gore.
Danny Steinmann is the director here, perhaps better known for The Unseen and Savage Streets. Well, maybe not by most people, but by me? Of course. He also broke into movies by directing and writing the adult film High Rise and probably would have created more films in the Friday the 13th saga, but a bicycling accident and long recovery meant that this would be the last film that he would direct. The working title for this film was Repetition.
So what happens after this? Well, what do you think?
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Directed by Tom McLoughlin, a veteran of plenty of made for TV movies and Sometimes They Come Back, as well as playing the robot S.T.A.R. in The Black Holeand Katahdin in Prophecy, this is the film where Jason became fully supernatural and it’s also one of the few films in the series to get good reviews, probably due to the amount of humor throughout.
The original plan was for Tommy Jarvis to become Jason, but audiences were pretty unhappy with that hint at the end of the last film. So this one begins with Tommy (Thom Matthews, Return of the Living Dead) heading to Jason’s grave to destroy his body so that he can never come back. But of course, as soon as he stabs the murderer with a metal fence post, lighting strikes him and he’s back from the dead — and kills Tommy’s friend Alan (Ron Palillo, Horshack from TV’s Welcome Back, Kotter) right away.
Tommy freaks out and heads to Sheriff Garris’ office and the lawman locks him up, thinking that this is all in his head. The truth is that Jason is back and he is on a rampage, killing camp counselors Darren (Tony Goldwyn, Carl from Ghost) and Lizabeth. A whole new crew of kids go looking for them and despite Tommy’s warnings, they think of Jason as only an urban legend.
This time, Jason is stopped by being chained underwater, but even at the end, his eyes are wide open and he’s obviously ready for more.
Again, this movie was a major big deal in my teenage years, particularly because it had a music video for it! “He’s Back (the Man Behind the Mask)” by Alice Cooper announced that Jason had survived the final chapter.
The working title for this installment was Aladdin Sane. I really enjoyed this installment, which even has a nod to James Bond in the beginning. In our movie hallway, we have several versions of the poster for this one. It’s nearly a comedy in parts, but still has a great plot.
Of course, Jason was ready for more. But were the kids? We’ll be back in a few hours with our next chapter!
At this point, this is the longest that we’ve ever gone without a Friday the 13th film since the break between Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X in 1993 and 2001. But at one point, these movies owned the box office, with one nearly every summer from 1980-1989. Why did people love them so much? And what were they all about? That’s why we’re here.
Friday the 13th (1980)
After the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween, every studio wanted a piece of the horror pie, which to this point had been exploitation fodder. Paramount Pictures was first. Sure, critics salvaged the film, but after $40 million in profit, no one really cared.
Produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham (Last House on the Left), this movie was envisioned as a roller coaster ride. The script came from Victor Miller, a soap opera scribe. And spoilers — but this movie doesn’t even really have Jason in it!
The movie starts in the summer of 1958 at Camp Crystal Lake, where two counselors sneak off and have sex before being killed. This sets up one of the many rules of slasher films: never fuck in the woods.
The camp closes for 21 years, but on Friday, June 13, 1979, that’s all about to change. That said, no one in the town wants it to happen. When Annie Phillips arrives in town, everyone treats her strangely or acts like Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney, who shows up in the next film and was the narrator for Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). She lasts for about five minutes, as she gets killed after her third hitchhike of the day. I’d say this is more of a warning against hitching in the late 1970s than I would serial killers in the woods.
The other counselors — Jack (Kevin Bacon!), Ned, Bill (Harry Crosby III, son of Bing), Marcie, Alice and Brenda (Laurie Bartram, The House of Seven Corpses) — and owner Steve Christy all show up to get the camp ready. This is where you’ll notice just how different fashion is. Becca and I have seen this live several times in a theater now and everyone laughs as soon as Steve shows up in his short shorts and bandana.
Ned is killed pretty quickly, then Jack is killed with an arrow and Marcie takes an axe to the face. Brenda is murdered as she responds to the voice of a child. Steve gets killed on the way to camp. Before you know it, Alice and Bill are the only ones left, but Bill lasts pretty much seconds. Then we have another future slasher trope: every body is discovered, hung like trophies.
Now, we have our Final Girl: Alice, who ends up meeting Mrs. Vorhees, who tells the tale of how her son Jason drowned and the horrible counselors who allowed it to happen. Much like the giallo/pre-slasher film Torso, the movie now focuses on the battle between Alice and the real killer. Alice ends up beheading her and sleeping in a canoe. As the police arrive, she has a dream that Jason rises from the water to kill her. This scene wasn’t in the script, but special effects king Tom Savini thought a Carrie-like ending would be more powerful.
Another way that the film pays sort of homage to Italian filmmaking is in the snake scene. It was another Savini idea after an experience he had in his own cabin during filming. The snake in the scene? Totally real, including its on-screen death — someone alert Bruno Mattei!
Some trivia: the film was shot just outside Lou Reed’s farm. The rock star performed for the cast and even hung out with them! Sweet Jason?
To me, the film works because of how great Betsy Palmer is as Jason’s mom. It’s a fine film, but nowhere near the excesses that the series would grow into. This was also the start of critics really hating on slasher films. Gene Siskel was so upset about Betsy Palmer being in the film that he published her address in his column and encouraged people to write her and protest. Of course, he published the wrong address.
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981()
Of course, there was going to be a sequel. Sean S. Cunningham refused to direct it because he was against the studio plan to bring Jason back from the dead. He said that it was too stupid and would never work. Hmm.
Beyond a plan to be an anthology of stories on Friday the 13th (which sounds a lot like the plans for Halloween), another thought was that Alice would be a reoccurring hero in this series, continually facing off against Jason again and again in sequel after sequel (again, think Halloween and Laurie Strode). Sadly, after was stalked by a fan, she said she wanted out (she even stayed out of acting for a long time).
That’s why this movie starts with her death. I always wondered why this happens, because it invalidates all of the emotional investment that you put into the last film!
So of course, everyone decides that re-opening Crystal Lake would be a great idea. We’ve got Ginny (Amy Steel, April Fool’s Day), Sandra, Jeff, Scott, Terry, Mark, Vickie and Ted, who sit around a campfire and listen to the legend of Jason. Even Crazy Ralph from the last movie shows up to warn everyone before getting killed.
Here’s my problem with this sequel: it rips a lot off. Jason doesn’t have his trademark hockey mask, so he steals the look of the Phantom of The Town that Dreaded Sundown. And then there’s the issue of taking two murders shot for shot from Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. A machete to the face and a couple stabbed together by a spear? Attention director Steve Miner: Bava did it first and better. Miner would go on to direct Halloween H20, so his sins are many.
Just like Shakespeare, everyone dies. Except Ginny. She discovers Jason’s altar to his dead mother and ends up stabbing him in the should with a machete. And then the movie does another shock ending, making you think Jason survived. He, of course, did not. Or he did. You know how these things go.
My question is: Did Jason rise from the dead? Or was he alive in the forest all these years? And how did he learn how to use a telephone? Let’s just stop asking questions.
Friday the 13th Part III 3D (1982)
With Amy Steel uninterested in returning to the series, the filmmakers had to reboot and figure out what made Jason tick. And that ticking was a hockey mask — three movies into the series. The original plan was that Ginny would be confined to a psychiatric hospital and he would track her down, then murder the staff and other patients at the hospital. If this sounds kind of like Halloween 2 to you, well surprise. This is not a movie series known for its originality.
He starts the film by killing a store owner and his wife just for clothes. Then, he goes after the friends of Chris Higgins: Debbie (Tracie Savage, who played the younger Lizzie in the awesome made-for-TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden), Andy, Shelley, Vera (Catherine Parks, Weekend at Bernie’s), Rick, Chuck and Chili. They run afoul of bikers Ali, Fox and Loco, who follow them back to their vacation home.
Jason starts killing quick, but he’s already mentally scarred Chris, as she survived an attack from him two years ago. This has left her with serious trauma and an inability to enjoy intimacy (which, come to think of it, comes in handy in these movies).
Jason takes the mask from the dead body of prankster Shelley and it’s on, with speargun bolts to the eye, heads chopped in half with machetes, knives through chests, electrocutions, hot pokers impaling stoners and even someone’s skull getting crushed by Jason’s supernaturally powerful hands.
Of course, it ends up with Final Girl Chris against Jason, who she kills by hitting him in the head with an ax before falling asleep on a canoe and having a nightmare of Jason killing her. It’s OK. Don’t worry. We see that all is right in the world and the killer’s body is at the bottom of the lake.
Here’s some trivia: To prevent the film’s plot being leaked (I could tell you the plot in less than a sentence, so this seems like bullshit), the production used the David Bowie song “Crystal Japan” as the title of the movie. They’d use Bowie songs as working titles during several of the other films.
There is a ton of footage that was cut from the film so that it didn’t get an X rating. And there’s an alternate ending where Chris dreams that Jason decapitates her. None of these things make this a better movie.
Whew! We made it through three Friday the 13th movies. Let’s take a little break and then we’ll be back in a bit with three more!
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