Fright Night was the first modern horror film I ever watched. I remember painting in my parent’s kitchen and my father telling me not to be afraid and just watch it with him. It’s a great start — combining the Hammer films that I loved that didn’t scare me with new school special effects and metacommentary.

The very first film in the series, this one really speaks to me as I was part of the last generation to grow up with horror movie hosts on UHF channels. Sure, there’s Svengoolie today and some internet shows, but it’s not the same. Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) is one such host, a washed-up actor who was in a few great movies decades ago and now goes from town to town, playing the same old 1960’s Z list horror films, saying the same lines. 

The defining moment for him is that Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale, Mannequin 2: Mannequin on the Move) believes in all his bull. And when Jerry Dandrige (the untrustable Chris Sarandon) moves in next door and shows all the signs of being a vampire, Charley finds he needs Peter Vincent more than ever before.

Plus, you get a pre-Married with Children Amanda Bearse as Charley’s love interest and a pre-gay pornography/976-EVIL Stephen Geoffreys as Charley’s best friend/worst nemesis Evil Ed. And I just love Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark, House II) as Jerry’s thrall.

This is a movie made for those who love horror movies. After all, Peter Vincent is named after horror icons Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. Creator Tom Holland wrote the part for Price, but the acting great had stopped appearing in horror movies at this time in his career. As they made the film — and the sequel together — Holland and McDowall became life-long friends, with McDowall introducing the young director to Price, who was flattered that the part was written to honor him and thought that Fright Night “was wonderful and he thought Roddy did a wonderful job.”

He’s right — this is a movie that taps into the mind and heart of horror fans, as so many of us have wondered, “What if the monster — and the monster hunter — was real?” The lighthearted yet dangerous tone of the film is letter perfect. That scene in the nightclub, where Jerry takes on the security guard? As good as it gets.

Want to watch it now? You can catch it streaming on Hulu.

Also of note: I’m glad the original ending wasn’t used. It was to close with Charley and Amy making out with Peter Vincent coming on the TV to host Fright Night, saying “Tonight’s creepy crawler is Dracula Strikes Again. Obviously about vampires. You know what vampires look like, don’t you? They look like this!” Then, he would transform, look into the camera and say, “Hello, Charley.”

After the unexpected critical and financial success of this film, a sequel was inevitable. Holland and Sarandon were both making the first Child’s Play, so they couldn’t commit to the film, although the actor did visit the set. Stephen Geoffrey’s didn’t like the script, opting to star in 976-EVIL. Ultimately only Ragsdale and McDowall would return.

Three years and plenty of therapy later, Charley Brewster now believes that Jerry Dandrige was a serial killer and that vampires don’t exist. Now a college student with a new girlfriend, Alex Young (Traci Lind, who dated Dodi Fayed before Princess Diana), Charley sadly discovers that Peter Vincent is back to hosting Fright Night. As they leave Peter’s apartment, a new nemesis, Regine steals Charley’s attention. There’s even a new version of Evil Ed, a vampire named Louie (Jon Gries, who is great in everything he’s done from Joysticks and Real Genius to The Monster Squad and TerrorVision) who is making Charley and Alex’s lives hell.

It turns out that she’s Jerry Dandrige’s brother and here for revenge. Now, the tables are turned and Peter Vincent is the one who has to convince Charley that vampires are real. Even worse, she’s turning Charley into a vampire and has stolen the Fright Night hosting job away from Peter! There’s also a transgender rollerskating vampire, putting this movie years ahead of others in presenting LGBT roles (even if Belle is evil).

One small trivia note: the vampire form that Regine transforms into at the end was modeled after 45 Grave lead singer Dinah Cancer. If you don’t know her band, they sang the song “Partytime” from TThe Return of the Living Dead.

There’s no way that this movie could live up to the original, but it tries. It hasn’t really been seen much, as LIVE Entertainment barely released it on home video. Artisan Entertainment released it on DVD in 2003, but it’s been out of print for a long time and commands big bucks. You can often find a bootleg of the high definition TV edition of the film at conventions (that’s where we got it!).

Written by Holland and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the original It, as well as the writer of Amityville II: The Possession, a movie I never cease trying to get people to watch), this movie suffered at the hands of a very real tragedy.

McDowall loved playing Peter Vincent and was eager to bring Holland back to make a third film, so he set up a meeting with the two of them and Carolco Pictures chairman Jose Menendez. Legend has it that the meeting did not go well. Later that night, Menendez and his wife were infamously murdered by their sons, Lyle and Erik. When McDowall learned of the news, he called Wallace and said “Well, I didn’t do it. Did you?”

If you thought Hollywood was done with Fright Night, you’re wrong.

Colin Farrell plays Jerry here as “the shark from Jaws.” Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays Evil Ed as a geeky kid who was once best friends with Charley, who is now one of the popular high schools (remind me to tell you about the child vampire that used to chase me through my grandparent’s backyard someday). And former Dr. Who David Tennant is more Criss Angel than Zacherley.

This is a film that I really tried to get past and enjoy, but I just couldn’t be entertained by it. I’m not the only one. Tom Holland said, “Kudos to them on every level for their professionalism, but they forgot the humor and the heart. They should have called it something other than Fright Night, because it had no more than a passing resemblance to the original. What they did to Jerry Dandrige and Peter Vincent was criminal. Outside of that, it was wonderful.”

That said, there is a nice moment where Chris Sarandon makes a cameo as a victim of the new Jerry. Otherwise, this one is mean-spirited where it should have heart. No part of it feels fun. I was shocked to learn that it was directed by the same person who made I, Tonya and Lars and the Real Girl, Craig Gillespie.

And if you think that one is bad…

This direct-to-video sequel completely ignores the first remake, instead being a simultaneous remake of the first two films. The Gerri Dandridge in this one is a Romanian history and culture professor who teaches Charley, Evil Ed and Amy when they take a class trip to Romania. And this Peter Vincent hosts a reality show where he hunts vampires.

For some reason, Fox greenlit the movie and rushed it into being at a record pace. The first draft was written in a week and it was finished in 23 days. If only it didn’t feel like it went on for 24. This movie is a complete waste of time and the name of this franchise. It was like they heard someone say, “Nobody can make a worse remake than the last Fright Night.” And replied, “Hold my cup of blood and apple.”

Here are some other spinoffs:

NOW Comics released 27 total issues of a Fright Night comic that adapted both movies, as well as starting new stories where Peter and Charley battled a spider boy, squid people, aliens, a minotaur and the Legion of the Endless Night, which eventually brings back Jerry Dandrige to begin a new army of the undead peopled by French prostitutes!

Terror Time put out a new Fright Night comic book this year, Fright Night: The Peter Vincent Chronicles, which explains what happened to Peter between the first two original films. You can grab it — and the Fright Night coloring book and the screenplay too — right here.

In 1988, an Amiga video game was released. Strangely enough, you play as Jerry, trying to make it through your home and transform people into vampires. Everyone from the original Fright Night appears in the game as enemies and potential victims except Billy Cole.

And in 1989, the Indian film Kalpana House was released. It’s a loose remake, with Peter Vincent’s character being a priest and plenty of musical numbers. Yep. Really.

Finally, there’s the exhaustive 3 hour and 37-minute documentary You’re So Cool, Brewster! The Story of Fright Night. In addition to pretty much everything you’d ever want to know about the original two films, the filmmakers also created a series of trailers for the fictional movies The Resurrection of Dracula, Psychedelic Death, I Rip Your Jugular and Werewolf of Moldavia, which starred Peter Vincent (Simon Bamford, Ohnaka from Nightbreed and the Butterball Cenobite from the first two Hellraiser films) and Christopher Cushing (Nicholas Vince, Kinski from Nightbreed and the Chattering Cenobite from the first two Hellraiser films).

Sadly, these trailers are on the hard to find physical release of the documentary. You can watch it on Shudder right here, though!

Last year, Tom Holland announced that he’s writing Fright Night 2 as a book, with the goal of obtaining the rights to the series by 2019 and making a new movie. In the past, he’s talked about continuing the series by having single-father Charley Brewster inherit his mother’s home with his two teenage children learning that something evil is in the house next door — Evil Ed, who is trying to bring Dandrige back.

Whew! Here’s hoping you enjoyed our look at the past, present and hopefully future of a horror classic. And if you haven’t seen the original sequel, hunt it down! It’s pretty good!

In 1990, Universal Studios bought the rights to Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park before it was even published. The idea of dinosaurs being cloned and brought into our modern world just works.

Starting with 1993’s Jurassic Park and across several follow-ups, including 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World 3, announced for 2021, people can’t seem to get enough of these movies. Sure, they’re all about the same thing — you can’t stop dinosaurs from being dinosaurs — but for some reason, people just keep coming back to see these movies.

Steven Spielberg first learned of the novel while working on the pitch for the TV series ER with Crichton. To even get the rights, Universal had to pay $1.5 million and a substantial percentage of the gross to the writer, a fee that he would not negotiate on. Even better, he got $500,000 just to adapt his own book for the screen. They were hungry for a hit and after the film did well, even hungrier for sequels. Well, they got them.

Jurassic Park (1993)

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough, Magic) and his company InGen have figured out how to clone dinosaurs from DNA trapped in blood trapped in bugs trapped in amber. This science is inherently bullshit, but if that’s going to stop you from watching these films, you better just quit now.

He’s created a theme park called Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar that’s packed with several of his cloned dinosaurs. Never mind that one of the raptors has already killed a highly trained handler. The park’s investors demand that dinosaur experts visit the park and certify its safety.

How are there dinosaur experts that know how real live dinosaurs would behave? I mean, putting giant monsters around humans who act like people in a theme park? How can that go wrong? I’m not a dinosaur expert by any means, but I can sit here and tell you that this is amongst the dumbest ideas ever concocted.

Those experts are chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum, who doesn’t just come from Pittsburgh but comes from our neighborhood), paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill, Possession) and paleobotanist Dr. Elliw Sattler (Laura Dern, Wild at Heart).

Everyone is amazed to see real live dinosaurs, which would have to be a dream come true. I mean, once I realized that all the dinosaurs were dead, I didn’t want to be an archaeologist any longer.

That’s when they learn that every dinosaur is female and the park is using select breeding. But Malcolm believes that nature will always find a way to thrive. Spoiler warning: it does, because they used frog DNA to fill in the gaps and frogs will switch gender to keep breeding. I love that they have scientists smart enough to handle creating living creatures from ancient DNA, but they aren’t smart enough to realize that things like this happen. I blame B.D. Wong’s Dr. Henry Wu, who will go on to make every more monumental boners in the series. In fact, he fucks up so much that they are forced to make him a bad guy to explain just how much one man can screw things up.

You know what would be a great idea? To bring kids around these uncontrollable killing machines. That’s exactly why Hammond’s grandkids, Lex and Tim, are flown in. The first trip through the park goes bad, with most of the dinosaurs not showing up, other than a sick triceratops. A tropical storm is on the horizon, so everyone heads back to the base. Hammond is upset, but Samuel Jackson’s Ray Arnold character says that things could have gone worse. Yeah, no shit it could have gone worse. You built a death trap thrill ride in a place with the worst storms on Earth and let your pre-teen grandkids romp around in it.

Meanwhile, Newman from Seinfeld has sold out Hammond and has messed up all of the parks security systems so that he can steal dinosaur embryos and put them in a shaving cream can. Yes, Michael Crichton got paid $2 million dollars for that. Don’t worry — a dilophosaurus sprays Newman, something it never could do, and eats him. He leaves behind chaos, with a T. Rex breaking through its fence and attacking everyone, including eating a lawyer while he takes a fearful dump.

This sets up the basic action of every movie that will follow this one: raptors chase everyone, kids are put in danger and a man that is the worst parent type ever learns to love those children. Along the way, anyone that’s been trained to deal with these creatures gets torn asunder.

In the end, the T. Rex eats the raptors and everyone leaves the island. In the real world, lawsuits would decimate InGen, but this is the world of Crichton and Spielberg. They’re coming back. You know it. I know it. They know it.

My favorite parts of this film are when Sam Neill treats children with utter contempt, including dressing down a rotund tween and explaining how a raptor would tear him into pieces and leave his intestines in the dirt. It’s heartwarming. I also love that William Hurt was offered this role and turned it down, refusing to even read the script.

The special effects in this film blew minds when it came out 25 years ago and they still look good today. You can poke some holes in the CGI but this was groundbreaking special effects back then.

As for me, I was very much in the art school of film when this came out, sure that Spielberg had sold out the promise of early 1970’s Hollywood as he embraced the blockbuster. Watching it years later with the benefit of old man hindsight, it’s a decent summer film, a rollercoaster ride that demands that you probably shouldn’t think about too much, packed with great effects and fun characters.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

There’s another island. Isla Sorna is where the dinosaurs were raised and also where a rich little girl wanders into a compsognathus attack. From this opening, you know that you’re in for a much darker ride. It’s one of those movies where kindly Spielberg decides that he should have made Night Skies instead of E.T. and indulges all the meanness he has festering inside upon his characters.

John Hammond’s nephew, Peter Ludlow is trying to use the island to fix the losses that Jurassic Park incurred. The old man has taken a dramatic change of heart, realizing that he should have never tried to open a theme park all those years ago and that these dinosaurs need to be protected. If you’re kind of taken aback by all of the character flip-flops here, buckle up. You know — because guys in their seventies suddenly stop being capitalists and suddenly start caring for the common man, like Peter on the road to Damascus. It can happen.

Ian Malcolm is the only one that comes back, save for cameos from his grandchildren. Turns out that Julianne Moore is in this, playing Ian’s girlfriend Dr. Sarah Harding, and that she’s already on the island. For the last four years, Ian has been discredited and disbarred for speaking out on Jurassic Park. The last thing he wants to do is go back, but to save the girl he loves, he has to.

Ian joins the team of equipment guy Eddie Carr and documentarian Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), as well as his daughter Kelly who has stowed away. Just as they catch up with Dr. Sarah, a whole new InGen squad shows up, made up of mercs and hunters. Chief amongst them are Pete Postlethwaite as Roland Tembo, a big game hunter who dreams of bagging a T. Rex, Fargo‘s Peter Stormare as Dieter Stark and Dr. Robert Burke, a dinosaur expert played by Thomas F. Duffy (the demeted Charles Wilson from Death Wish 2!).

Tembo’s plan is to tie up a baby T. Rex and use it to lure in the mother or father. And InGen wants to get as many dinosaurs as possible so they can open a new Jurassic Park in San Diego. None of these ideas are good and they blow up in everyone’s face.

There’s a great moment in here where all of Malcolm’s team’s vehicles plunge off a cliff and some nifty action pieces, but it all feels rather disjointed. By the time everyone teams up and gets off the island, I was kind of hoping the film was over, only to learn there was so much more movie left. It’s a very late 90’s style of blockbuster — give it more running time and more story versus more thinking.

At the end, the dinosaurs are placed in an animal preserve free from human interference. Hammond steals Malcolm’s line, saying that “Life will find a way.”

Spielberg eventually said that he didn’t enjoy making this film. It kind of shows. He stated, “I beat myself up… growing more and more impatient with myself… It made me wistful about doing a talking picture because sometimes I got the feeling I was just making this big silent-roar movie… I found myself saying, ‘Is that all there is? It’s not enough for me.'”

That said, the movie did big numbers, so of course, it was time for another one. This time, Joe Johnson (Captain America: The First Avenger and The Rocketeer) would direct.

Jurassic Park 3 (2001)

The first film in the series to not be based on a Crichton book or directed by Spielberg, who saw the films as “a big Advil headache.”

I hate watched this movie, to be perfectly honest. Why would anyone go near this park? Why would anyone be dumb enough to parasail with pterodactyls? That’s what we call thinning the herd. Come on, people.

It all starts when Ben Hildebrand takes his girlfriend’s kid, Eric Kirby, parasailing with the dinosaurs, as mentioned above. However, they are pulled toward Isla Sorna and Eric’s parents, Paul and Amanda (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) con Dr. Alan Grant into coming back to the island.

We learn early on that Dr. Grant screwed things up with Dr. Sattler and that she’s married to someone else. He’s a man alone, back on digs with an assistant that barely listens to him, Billy Brennan.

All the Kirbys say they want to do is fly over the island. However, the mercs on board knock out Grant and then it’s time to find Eric, who is actually the most resourceful of everyone.

Seriously, this movie felt like it went on forever, as they walked over the same ground trod upon by the other films. That said — the scene where Dr. Grant has the dream on the plane and the raptor talks to him? I could watch that over and over again.

There’s also a scene where everyone has to dig through dinosaur shit to find a satellite phone. That’s a first for the series and really the high point of this entire movie.

Jurassic World (2015)

14 years later and we have another sequel, planned as part of a trilogy. Set 22 years after the first movie, the theme park has now been open for ten years, but when a newly cloned dinosaur breaks loose everything comes full circle.

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard, Lady in the Water), the park’s operations manager, has brought her nephews to the park. She’s too busy to keep an eye on them as the pterodactyl shit hits the fan. There’s also her boyfriend, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy), who has been able to train the velociraptors.

Meanwhile, there’s an InGen security asshole (as always), this time played by Vincent D’Onofrio, who wants to use those dinosaurs for military use.

Then there’s that big bad indominus rex, which uses DNA from all sorts of horrifying beasts instead of frogs, like raptors. Who made this thing? Our old friend Dr. Henry Wu.

The best part of this film is the end and I don’t mean that in a mean way. I loved how the original T. Rex comes back and all of the dinosaurs have reclaimed their island, having defeated the new beast. There’s even a gigantic mosasaurus that gets a crowd-pleasing moment right before the conclusion.

I love that one of the plans for this movie was to prove that humans descended from dinosaurs. That sounds like more my kind of movie. However, the last Jurassic Park film may be the best. Until the new one comes out this week. And of course, I’ll be there, ready to wade through the brontosaurus shit.

Yes. We reviewed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Did you have any doubt?

There are no human beings worse than those that confront the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or the Gill-man, as he is sometimes called. All the creature wants to do is swim around, eat flamingos and lounge. Yet humanity wants to impose their will on him and only tragedy ensues.

Our clammy pal was the brainchild of producer William Alland, who was attending a 1941 dinner party during the filming of Citizen Kane (he plays the reporter Thompson in that classic) when Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa told him all about a mythic Amazonian race of half-fish, half-men. A decade later, Alland wrote the Beauty and the Beast-inspired The Sea Monster, which was expanded upon by Maurice Zimm, Harry Essex and Arthur Ross.

There’s some controversy over who designed the creature, as some say Disney animator Milicent Patrick drew the original look, but according to Andrea Ferrari’s book Il Cinema Dei Mostri. her role was “deliberately downplayed by make-up artist Bud Westmore, who for half a century would receive sole credit for the creature’s conception.” The bodysuit was created by Jack Kevan, while Chris Mueller Jr. sculpted the head.

When you see the merman on land, he’s played by Ben Chapman. When we see him swim, it’s Ricou Browning. The costume was rough to be in for an entire day, so we should really be thankful to these actors for enduring painful fourteen hour shooting days.

The first movie in the series, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), opens on an Amazon expedition. A fossilized hand that shows webbed fingers points to a missing link between land and sea animals, so Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno, one-time rival to Rudolph Valentino during the Silent Era) leads an expedition to find a complete skeleton, which includes Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson, It Came from Outer Space, Hold That Ghost) and financial backer Dr. Mark Williams (Richard Denning, An Affair to Remember).

The first appearance of the Gill-man, as he frightens two assistants who then attack him, is startling. Even more so is how quickly he dispatches both men.

Soon, the expedition on the tramp steamer Rita is underway, with Lucas (Nestor Paiva, who also appears in the sequel) as the stereotypically coarse sea captain, joined by the aforementioned crew plus Dr. Edwin Thompson (Whit Bissell, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Time Machine and many more) and Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams in an iconic role), the girlfriend of Dr. Reed. 

Despite the fact that no one has ever returned from the paradise the natives call the Black Lagoon, the crew decides to go deeper into the Amazon. They’re stalked by the Gill-man, who takes notices of Kay and is caught in a dragline, escaping but leaving a claw behind.

Like Jason Vorhees with gills, our antagonist wipes out the members of the crew. Only fire seems to harm the creature, who is smart enough to block the exit of the ship with fallen logs. Mark becomes obsessed with capturing or killing it, leading to him trying to fight the creature barehanded and getting his money having ass handed to him. The creature then takes Kay to his underwater lair, where David, Lucas and Carl hunt him down and shoot him multiple times.

The movie ends with the creature slowly sinking, possibly dead. This will not be the last depressing close in this series, trust me. There’s a real undercurrent of longing from the monster in this film, of which Adams said, “There always is that feeling of compassion for the monster. I think maybe it touches something in ourselves, maybe the darker parts of ourselves, that long to be loved and think they really can’t ever be loved. It strikes a chord within us.” This same emotional tie to the creature was expressed by Marilyn Monroe’s character in The Seven Year Itch, who remarks that the Gill-man “just wanted to be loved.”

While we value today’s props and love horror, to show you exactly how much Universal Pictures cared for their real stars, Forrest J. Ackerman bought the mask and claws of the Creature’s costume from a young man. And how did that man get them? It turns out that after production wrapped on the three films in this series, they threw everything away. A janitor — the boy’s father — rescued the claws and mask, as he felt that they would make a great Halloween costume for his son.  thought the ensemble would make a good Halloween costume for his son. Other costume pieces were recently sold at auction by Bud, who was an assistant to Milicent Patrick, the original designer of the costume.

Originally shot in 3-D (although it played smaller theaters in 2-D), the original film was successful enough to merit a sequel, 1955’s Revenge of the Creature.

Somehow, the monster has survived and a new expedition — oh hey, there’s Lucas again — captures the Gill-man and brings him to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium — thank SeaWorld — in Florida, where Professor Clete Ferguson (John Agar, Shirley Temple’s first husband, who appeared in tons of science fiction films along with many appearances alongside John Wayne) and ichthyology student Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson, who reprised the role in 2005’s The Naked Monster). Of course, Helen and Clete fall in love. Of course, the Gill-man falls for her, too.

The Gill-man eventually escapes, but he can’t stop thinking about Helen, even abducting her from a party. Clete and the police chase him down and, as is customary, gun our amphibian antagonist down. A slave to love, trapped until the end!

Despite being the screen debut of Clint Eastwood (in a blink and you’ll miss him appearance as a lab technician who misplaces a rat) and being shot in 3-D, Revenge of the Creature isn’t quite as good as the original. But it made the most money of the three, so that led to 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us.

Jack Arnold, the director of the two previous films, graduated to Universal’s A-list and John Sherwood, a long-time assistant director, took over. It’s the only film of the three not to be shot in 3-D.

Despite how we saw the Gill-man get shot to death, he somehow survived and is somewhere in the Everglades. Dr. William Barton (Jeff Morrow, This Island Earth, Octaman) is pretty much insane, a man driven to capture the merman and abuse his wife Marcia (Leigh Snowden, who was in the same Universal acting classes as Clint Eastwood, James Garner and John Saxon). The dude loses his mind any time she is near their guide, Jed Grant (Gregg Palmer, who appeared in many of John Wayne’s films).

For some reason, Marcia joins Jed and Dr. Tom Morgan (Rex Reason, who has a name like a pro wrestler or a Stan Lee character, but he was an actor who appeared in films like This Island Earth and TV’s The Roaring 20’s) on a dive, but she somehow goes crazy and overcome with the “raptures of the deep.” Also known as nitrogen narcosis, this creates a mental state similar to doing nitrous oxide. It causes Marcia to take off all her scuba gear and the guys have to rescue her.

Of course, the Gill-man follows her and he gets shot with a spear gun, to which he looks right at the crew and seems to want to say, “Come on, dude.” Then, they set him on fire!

This all leads to our underwater pal being in need of surgery from Dr. Borg and Dr. Johnson. And why do they do all this? They want to see if the Creature can help people survive in space! Well, all their work costs the monster his gills and now, he has lungs that can breathe our air. He also has more human skin, so he has to wear clothes.

The doctors try and get the Gill-Man to live among humans, but he gradually becomes depressed, staring at the ocean. He even tries to dive into it and swim back home, but he can no longer breathe as he once did. It’s horrible. Seriously, this movie makes me so upset, as they take everything from him and he gets nothing back in return. Even when he saves some animals from a lion or tries to attack Barton when he kills Jed in a jealous rage, everyone thinks the worst of our undersea friend.

At the end, he finally makes it back to the beach and just stares at the water, unsure what world he finally belongs in. It’s the most unsettling and upsetting of endings, on par with Son of Kong. There are no easy answers — man has put the Creature in this place and nothing can return him back to the home he misses so much.

Following his appearances in these three films, The Creature showed up as Uncle Gilbert on TV’s The Munsters in 1964.

Of course, a version of our clammy friend shows up in The Monster Squad. And there was also a stage musical at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park. But there have been remakes in the works for years that have never made it to production.

Let’s start with the effort made by John Landis in 1982. He commissioned Nigel Kneale (who of course, wrote Quartermass and the Pit but also scripted Halloween III: Season of the Witch) to write a script that original director Jack Arnold would return to helm. According to Andy Murray’s Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale, the script had a pair of creatures — one destructive and one calm — battling the U.S. Navy. As the film was to be shot in 3-D, Universal worried about its budget and that it would compete with their release of Jaws 3-D, so the movie was canceled.

In the 90’s, John Carpenter, Peter Jackson and Ivan Reitman were all attached to a remake. And in the 2000’s, Gary Ross (Pleasantville, The Hunger Games) nearly got on board, which is interesting as his father, Arthur Ross, was one of the original film’s writers. 

Guillermo del Toro was also attached to the film for some time and wanted the movie to be seen from the Creature’s perspective and for him to finally have some romantic success. While the actual film never happened due to Universal’s rejection of these themes, del Toro saved these ideas to create The Shape of Water. Oh Universal. You had no idea what you had.

Breck Eisner (who directed the remake of The Crazies and was set to be crowned as Hollywood’s remaker, as he was due at one point or the other to direct new vesions of Flash Gordon, The Brood and Escape from New York) was also attached for some time to an eco-horror version about the rainforest being exploited. The 2007-2008 writer’s strike halted this effort.

There was another movie called The Black Lagoon that was to come out in 2014, but that also failed to surface. And while the Dark Universe reboot of the classic Universal characters is in some doubt, one would think that the Creature from the Black Lagoon would show up if that ever gets any more traction. The appearance of a hand of our finny friend in the remake of The Mummy was just too much! Come on! Stop with the teasing!

What I didn’t know was that there was an Abbott and Costello Meet the Creature from the Black Lagoon TV show, created to promote the first film!

There were also two memorable appearances by the Creature from the Black Lagoon in arcades, thanks to Bally Midway’s Creature from the Black Lagoon and Monster Bash pinball games.

The former of those two machine has a startling hologram of the merman that pops up throughout gameplay.

In case it doens’t come through, I love the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I even had this Remco figure as a kid and would carry it everywhere with me.

I vividly recall the 3D reshowing of the films in the early 1980’s, too!

Our amphibian hero never gets the girl. Never gets the love he deserves. And never even gets a remake! But here’s to him! Long may he swim!

Based on the novel Airport by Arthur Hailey (whose novel Flight into Danger was adapted into Zero Hour! (as well as a later TV movie using the original title) which was later remade as Airplane!, which is also a parody of these films, but more about that later), these four films go from class to cash-in. And the worse they get, the more I love them.

The only constant throughout the series is Joseph Patroni, played by George Kennedy. His career improbably goes from a chief mechanic with a license to taxi planes to vice president of operations to consultant to pilot, surely a lateral and perhaps even regressive career path.

Despite having a big budget and high pedigree cast, Burt Lancaster, who starred in the original, claimed that the film was “the biggest piece of junk ever made.” He should have waited a few movies in to say that!

Airport (1970)

George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) directed the initial installment, which originated the entire big budget disaster genre that ruled the 1970’s. The actual story is simple — there’s a big snowstorm in Chicago and a flight to Rome is in danger, thanks to a down on his luck demolition expert (Van Heflin in his last role) looking to blow up the plane so that his wife (Maureen Stapleton, who won a Golden Globe for her work) can cash in. Along the way, we meet airport manager Mel Bakersfield (Burt Lancaster), whose is married to the airport over his wife (Dana Wynter from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) while a co-worker (Jean Seberg, the gorgeous star of the original Breathless whose support of the Black Panthers led to the FBI COINTELPRO hounding her for the rest of her short life) pines for him. Then there’s Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), who is married to Bakersfield’s sister (Barbara Hale, mother of William Katt) but is having an affair with a stewardess (Jacqueline Bisset, The Mephisto Waltz). Then there’s Mrs. Quonsett (Helen Hayes, who won an Oscar for the role), an elderly woman who sneaks her way onto planes.

This big cast all interplays with one another, ending up on the seemingly doomed flight or aiding in its rescue. Will love win out? Will anyone who works in the airline industry get along with their spouses? Can Patroni shovel out a plane in time after being called in while he’s trying to enjoy a night of passion with his wife? Sure. Yes. Of course.

To get big stars like Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin, the producers gave that 10% of the profits after the film reached $50 million. With a US gross of over $100 million, the stars did more than fine making this one.

Airport 1975 (1974)

A small airplane crashes into a 747, taking out nearly the entire crew of flight 409, and only the stewardess can land the plane! Such is the plot of Airplane 1975, but that thin story doesn’t matter. You’re coming here for starpower and you’re gonna get it, baby!

Charlton Heston (the undisputed 1960’s and 1970’s king of the post-apocalyptic film, between Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man) is Captain Alan Murdock and he’s the only person who can save the day, with heroics that include being dropped into a plane that’s actually in flight! Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror, Burnt Offerings) is his girlfriend and the air hostess charged with keeping the plane aloft.

The doomed flight crew is played by Efram Zimbalist, Jr., Roy Thinnes from TV’s The Invaders and Erik Estrada. It’s shocking just how sexist they are with the rest of the in-flight crew and even more shocking just how much the ladies like it. The 1970’s were a doomed time when women just had to take the sexual harassment and like it, or return it back in kind.

Then there’s Gloria Swanson playing herself (Greta Garbo was the original plan) with Linda Harrison from Planet of the Apes as her assistant. Strangely, Harrison renamed herself Augusta Summerland for this movie.

And then there’s Myrna Loy as an alcoholic actress in the role originally meant for Joan Crawford! Three drunk guys (Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell and Conrad Janis) who would go on to be dads in sitcoms! Sid Caesar as a guy who can’t keep his fucking mouth shut! Linda Blair as a sick girl who just wants to listen to Helen Reddy perform as a singing nun! And Patroni’s wife (Susan Clark from TV’s Webster, who was spotted by the eagle eyed Becca) and son are on the flight, too!

Airport 1975 is big, bombastic and stupid. And it’s also awesome. It’s pure escapism and is devoted to entertaining you. It’s also a film packed with men patronizing women, calling them honey and yelling at them when they can’t get their shit together.

Airport ’77 (1977)

Jerry Jameson, the director of The Bat People, is in the director’s chair for the third installment of the franchise, which takes a turn into the fantastic. A private 747, filled with the rich and powerful, is hijacked and crashes into the Bermuda Triangle where it slowly fills with water.

This one boasts Jack Lemmon in the lead as Captain Don Gallagher and he pals around with Darren McGavin as they work to save everyone. Lee Grant and Christopher Lee (!) play a bickering married couple. Joseph Cotten appears, leading me to wonder when Dr. Phibes will strike. TV’s Buck Rogers, Gil Gerard, shows up. And hey look, there are Jimmy Stweart and Olivia de Havilland (replacing Joan Crawford yet again, just as she did in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Lady in a Cage). And I bet Bill from Groovy Doom would never forgive me if I didn’t mention that Michael Pataki appears, too.

This one is…well, it’s certainly a lot more ridiculous than the previous entries. And if you think the next one is going to be better, have I got some news for you!

The Concorde … Airport ’79 (1979)

A few minutes into this movie, Becca turned to me and said, “There isn’t anyone good in this one like the others.” I disagreed. This film is filled with some of my favorite people and while it’s the worst film in the series, it’s also my favorite. If they ever make a blu ray of it, I demand to do a commentary track for it!

Directed by David Lowell Rich (Satan’s School for Girls, Eye of the Cat), this film is quite relevant today, as it’s rife with corrupt corporations, drone planes and media scandals. You’ve got Robert Wagner playing a corrupt arms dealer who is in love with Susan Blakely, yet he keeps trying to kill her.

For the ladies, there’s Alain Delon as the dashing captain. And for the men, there’s Sylvia Kristel as the gorgeous airline hostess. And for the fans of The Omen, there’s David Warner as a henpecked flight officer.

There may never be a movie as sexist as this one. Just look at the way the character of Patroni has changed. He’s no longer a ground crew guy who will kick a pilot out of his own plane. Now, he’s flying the plane while making sexist jokes at every opportunity To wit:

Isabelle: You pilots are such… men.

Capt. Joe Patroni: They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing, honey.

Or when he asks Delon’s character about Vietnam:

Capt. Joe Patroni: Gee, I remember this Eurasian gal. She had these great big blue eyes. They called her the tarantula. You ever run into her?

Capt. Paul Metrand: No, I don’t think so.

Capt. Joe Patroni: You’d remember if you did. She was a real ball breaker!

That makes me wonder — how was Patroni in Vietnam? Wasn’t he already working in the Chicago airport back in the original? Well, now his wife is dead, his son is in college and he’s ready to party. In fact, when they get to Paris, he gets set up with a prostitute and has the night of his life. Is he mad when the ruse is revealed? Hell no! It makes him overjoyed as he slaps his pal’s back!

Then there’s Eddie Albert as a rich businessman and Sybil Danning as his wife, to which Patroni comments “She’s his fourth wife. He always was a horny bastard. There’s this story that back in the 20’s when he was barnstorming he made a bet that he could put it to this good lookin’ wing walker. He boffed her right out on the wing a thousand miles above El Paso. His ass got so sunburned he couldn’t sit down a week!”

What is happening with this film? I literally yelled at loud several times during it, shocked at how raw it seems in the world of political correctness. But this isn’t Blazing Saddles, a film that uses non-PC language for comic effect. This is a scummy cash-in, the final film of a once high prestige franchise. And I loved every minute of this strange bird!

Martha Raye gets locked in a bathroom as a plane faces turbulence! Jimmie “Dynomite” Walker smokes up and carries his saxophone everywhere! Cicely Tyson just wants to get her son a new heart! John Davidson performs his own marriage ceremony to a Russian gymnast! Mercedes McCambridge, the voice of Pazuzu, is in this! And oh shit, Charo is in the credits and has around thirty seconds of screen time, thirty seconds which had me screaming in pure joy!

Have you realized yet how much I adore this movie? How can you not love a film where a heat sinking missile is defeated by rolling down the window of a supersonic airplane and shooting a flare gun out the window? And after the plane went through such chaos between New York and Paris, why would anyone allow it to fly again the next day? Why wouldn’t security be increased? And why not crash land the Concorde in the alps? Why would they even get on the plane in the first place?

Even better, there’s a news report earlier in the film that sounds like it came straight out of The Simpsons, a strange piece of comedy in a film that has been serious so far. That’s because that voice belongs to Harry Shearer!

Obviously, we wouldn’t have Airplane! without these films. But after watching the last two films, it’s pretty hard to parody what has become a parody.

I lucked into finding the Airport Terminal Pack, a collection of all four films, for just $6. It’s literally the best purchase I’ve ever made in my life. If anyone reading this ever wants to come over and have me scream and yell through any of these films — please pick the last one — consider this a standing offer!

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 Hair director 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.

Or is it?

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 Movies right 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 Night and 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 Hole and 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!