Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan

"Chiih... chiih... chiih. Aaah... aaah... aaah." Repeat theme ad nauseam – who are we kidding, repeat entire movie ad nauseam (and do we mean nauseam... ). In the decades since the original Friday the 13th's 1980 release, franchise home studio Paramount Pictures (who oversaw the sequels until they were taken over by New Line Cinema) clearly treated the eight Friday films they produced with a notable degree of shame – quick-buck exploitation efforts hastily released to siphon disposable income from teenagers' pockets, but not entertainment worthy of serious consideration, or preservation. Times have changed (though some fans have already complained that certain disappointing aspects of this release further demonstrate Paramount's dismissal of these movies): post-Freddy Vs. Jason success, we now have a deluxe boxed-set edition of all eight Paramount Friday movies, with a wealth of supplementary features. But here's a question bound to upset certain genre fans: really, was Paramount all that off base in their embarrassment over these films? Is there really anything worth appreciating in this largely brain-dead, repetitive, artless series? Well, one's answer will likely depend on a variety of factors – one's age and love of nostalgia being a major issue. Personally, as a genre fan who came of age in the 1980s with a love for the more complex horror cinema of directors like Cronenberg, Romero, and Argento, I used to loathe the Friday films with an almost comically apoplectic rage at the time: the lowest common denominator Big Macs of genre filmmaking, the Friday films represented the auto-pilot nadir of 80s horror cinema in many ways (you should know the drill: after the initial entry, each sequel revolves around the masked Jason Voorhees stalking and slashing another group of hapless and hormonal teens), and I resented the assumption that I would have any fondness for them as an adolescent horror devotee during that decade. Ironically, I now find that it's my age that allows me to have much current fondness for the films, memories of late-night cable viewings and sneaky entries into R-rated screenings with friends providing a nostalgic haze over these films that now permit me to see them for what they were: admittedly empty-headed B-movie programmers of the sort that have always existed in the studio vaults, and titles that can be fondly recalled from one's youth as we grow older (the fact that my generation winds up with slasher movies as opposed to, say, Bowery Boys adventures or Andy Hardy comedies is, however, a more depressing observation).

Oh, the movies? Weirdly, the pattern of the sequels mirrors the rhythm of the (vastly superior) Nightmare on Elm Street series, with a viscerally effective inaugural entry followed by a disappointing rush-job sequel, and then a third film that manages to be almost the most entertaining of the entire series... and then a group of largely redundant sequels repeated to infinity. Note that these are the cut R-rated theatrical versions of each film (hence the fan disappointment), but the wealth of extra features hopefully cushions that blow somewhat (though, sadly, no participation from either Kevin Bacon or Crispin Glover... ).

Travis Crawford