Saint Arnold Janssen YCC

The Last House on the Left

When Wes Craven's debut film arrived in 1972, ads carried the caveat, "To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it's only a movie, only a movie..." His gritty tale of revenge is now being updated this year with Dennis Iliadis at the helm and Rogue Pictures is taking a decidedly different approach to the tagline in their poster art which we're offering you a first look at.

Craven is on board as producer, as is Sean Cunningham and Marianne Maddalena. And in this remake you'll find Garret Dillahunt playing Krug, leader of a quartet of miscreants who target two young girls (Sara Paxton and Martha MacIsaac) and leave them for dead. The murderers bed down for the night in the home of one of their victims; unbeknown to them, the parents are plotting revenge.

opens in theaters on March 13th. Keep an eye on TheLastHouseontheLeft.com for more!

Click below for a hi-res version!

12 Days of Friday, Day 8: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Jason is sent back to the lake at the end of The New Blood and he again fades into legend. After a Jason-skeptical couple accidentally resurrects Jason (through electricity, again!), he stows away on a cruise boat full of graduating high school seniors. As it departs for New York, the killings begins.

The movie opens with shots of Manhattan, a voice narrating, "It's like this: We live in claustrophobia. The land of steel & concrete. Trapped by dark waters. There is no escape. Nor do we want it. We've come to thrive on it and each other. You can't get the adrenaline pumping without the terror, good people. I love this town."

Yeah, a Woody Allen movie, this ain't. Actually, I'd say Jason Takes Manhattan is less a normal movie, and more of an experiment to discover whether audiences can be sustained for two hours on only the rawest Friday the 13^th elements -- sex, violence, and Jason. Typically, Friday movies have an identifiable plot momentum in that they're about Jason journeying back/defending Crystal Lake. Here, there's no plot: Jason goes on the cruise boat and starts chopping peeps up just for the hell of it. It's an endless, pointless, slow-as-molasses slough as the ship putts through the Atlantic.

The movie saves the best for the final act, when five survivors rowboat to New York. (Jason, meanwhile, teleports there; he's like Nightcrawler in this one.) Within minutes, the survivors are mugged, while the hero, Rennie, is injected with heroin and then nearly raped. She spends the rest of the movie in a state of drug-induced hysteria, at one point hijacking a police car with her friends in the backseat. The car hits a wall within seconds, exploding, and killing Rennie's teacher. Rather than reeling from her manslaughter, Rennie stares into a puddle, hallucinates that there's a little boat on it, and then has a stupid flashback. This is a random and aggressively insane movie. It's like the Tim and Eric Awesome Show of horror filmmaking.

The movie does, at least, have one notably famous kill. Julius, the school's champ boxer, challenges Jason to a fist fight, which Jason responds to by knocking his head off with a single strike. Before that, though, Julius wails away at Jason for two hilarious, jaw-dropping minutes. If you ever wondered what it'd be like to see Peter Griffin fight the big chicken in a live-action movie, here you have it.

The action comes to a head down in the sewer, where the two final survivors have taken refuge. A wave of toxic waste bears down on Jason, which devolves him back into a little boy. Uh, okay?

And thus closes Paramount's involvement with Friday the 13^th; the studio sold the series rights after Jason Takes Manhattan failed to reverse the franchise's diminishing box office returns. I hate to blame it on writer/director Rob Hedden because he obviously made a lot of concessions filming this but, come on, the movie ends with Jason Voorhees turning back into a kid. And he's not even scary -looking! He looks like the Star Child in cotton jammies.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan Vital Stats:

• Body Count: 19.
• Survivors: 3. Including Toby, the dog.
• Illegal substances featured: 3. Cocaine, heroin, crack. The last two make their series debut. Pot curiously absent.
• Number of stalled cars: 0. (First time!)
• Number of Jason-approved weapons: 14! Spear gun, spear, electric guitar, mirror piece, sauna rock, harpoon, machete, open electricity box, deck post, axe, heroin syringe, steam pipe, barrel full of sewage, wrench.

Memories of Crystal Lake:

• Luke Y. Thompson of LYTrules: "What a classic case of bait and switch marketing! The irony is that I don't think anyone would have minded if it had been promoted as "Jason on a boat"; that's still a cool change-up of scene. But to promise New York, with great "I Heart NY" posters, then spectacularly fail to deliver (a brief shot of Times Square in the last half hour, and Vancouver subbing in every subsequent shot) was resoundly and deservedly mocked, especially considering that the ending is the dumbest of all time. The sewers fill with toxic waste, and that somehow turns Jason back into a kid? What? Highly notable, though, for being the movie debut of Kelly Hu (Lady Deathstrike in X2)."
• Steve Barton of Dread Central: "Never mind the fact that Jason somehow managed to take a boat from a lake into New York City (and even then he's only there for like 10 minutes). Though ridiculous, that's not the most irritating part of this movie. This flick's cardinal sin is the absolute lack of violence. For instance, a dude gets his throat slashed and we see not a single drop of blood. Are you kidding me? Were they hoping this flick would be tame enough to show on Nickelodeon? It's downright insulting! Then, just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, Jason is unmasked and looks like a friggin' Madball! Who okayed the make-up here? What's with the giant square Flintstone-like teeth? It's infuriating! But wait! There's more! Jason is then overcome by a deluge of toxic waste that turns him back into a little boy? Please ... someone shoot me now. Thanks, I'll wait."

12 Days of Friday, Day 7: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Jason lies at the bottom of Crystal Lake, attached to the same rock Tommy Jarvis tied him to at the end of Jason Lives. At least ten years pass (which would actually set the movie near the end of the millennium, but, ah, who's paying attention?), and Tina Shepard returns to Crystal Lake, where she accidentally killed her father using telekinetic powers. Crystal Lake's death curse manipulates her telekinesis and she accidentally resurrects Jason.

Completely ignoring Part 5 for obvious reasons, The New Blood opens with a recap and narration of the series. I kinda like it when a Friday movie does that: it gives the movie an old-fashioned campfire feel, like it's a bunch of people sitting around outside, drinking, taking turns adding to the Jason Voorhees legend. Soon you have this story about zombies, and 3D, and copycat killers. Then comes the guy who really likes Carrie to tell his story.

As the series' interest in the human characters continues to bottom out, the time was right for Jason to become the "star." Enter Kane Hodder and director John Carl Buechler. Hodder is a fearless B-movie actor/stunt coordinator and Buechler is an experienced gore effects man. Both are interested in giving Jason a physicality beyond repeated forward thrusts with sharp objects and throwing corpses through windows, thus we get a very active Jason, who stood around a lot in Jason Lives. Here, he toys with his victims a bit more, such as in this scene where he mischievously blocks Tina's every move as he slowly corners her:

We also see a lot more of Jason with his head exposed, and, for the first time, it doesn't just look like a big guy with a rubber mask on. Buechler plasters on the makeup and Hodder rises to the challenge: his menacing sneers come clearly through the decaying skin and gore.

The New Blood has more endings than The Return of the king, subjecting its survivors to no less than four he's-not-dead-yet! moments. The real resolution comes with extra cheese: Tina summons her dead dad, who pops out of Crystal Lake with a triumphant roar, and pulls Jason back down into the lake.

But, underrated kill alert! The evil doctor grabs Tina's mom and uses her as a human shield from Jason's spear. That one surprised me; it's the series' first instance of one human essentially "murdering" another. The movie doesn't show or explain how the doctor gets away from Jason there, but, hey, if we're able to accept that the Joker can simply waltz out of a building after throwing Rachel out of a window, I think an exception can be made here.

Though it's rather self-serious, this one's about the same as Jason Lives for me. Jason Lives felt dramatically inert despite starring a character that had survived two Jason encounters, and, though The New Blood isn't exactly steeped in high-quality writing, the action here is much more convincing. Jason jumps in slo-mo through windows, gets electrocuted, and falls through stairs and with Hodder doing all of the stunts, the movie has this consistent visceral quality.

And, yes, this is the one wifth the sleeping bag kill.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood Vital Stats:

• Body Count: 15.
• Survivors: 2.
• Number of sex scenes: 3. (Series high!)
• Number of stalled cars: 2.
• Number of Jason-approved weapons: 9. Tent spike, sleeping bag, axe, scythe, party treat, knife, machete, spear, tree saw.

Memories of Crystal Lake:

• Todd Gilchrist of SCI FI Wire: "Make no mistake: The New Blood is terrible. It feels small and cheap and the 'tortured telekinetic girl' plot is ridiculous, even in a film series about a masked killer who can't die. But it has three really good kills that count as some of the best in the franchise. In the first, Jason takes out a naked camper by bashing her sleeping bag into a tree (probably my favorite Jason kill of all time). Second, a girl frantically attempts to escape Jason as he stalks her in a toolshed, leading to a terrific cat-and-mouse sequence. And third, an unlucky lothario wanders into the kitchen for a post-coital snack and in one truly terrific shot, a quick flash of lightning reveals that Jason is standing in a corner, poised to strike."
• Steve Barton of Dread Central: "Without question Part 7 is home to the most badass Jason we have ever seen. Not only was his look terrifying, but every single nuance of Kane Hodder's performance solidified him as a freight train of violence and terror. There's just no compromising with him. He's like a great white shark on two legs. You get in his way, you end up on the business end of whatever sharp object he has handy."

12 Days of Friday, Day 6: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Tommy Jarvis, recast as a vaguely bland hunk, wants to cremate Jason's corpse. But when lightning strikes his open casket, Jason comes back to life, setting in motion another rampage as Jason stalks back to Crystal Lake. The sheriff doesn't believe Tommy, while the sheriff's daughter and her friends are in danger: they're counselors at a newly re-opened camp on Crystal Lake (like, is the rent cheap there, or what?).

I know this is a fan favorite (it hit 50% on the Tomatometer!) but I can't say I was engaged by a lot of Jason Lives. The movie is noted for its comedic bent but I was baffled by a lot of the jokes, things like a nerd doing goofy calisthenics during a paintball match or a child asleep in his bed with a copy of Sartre on his blanket. They set a tone that doesn't really gel with the rest of Jason Lives.

But I'm glad they got a new actor to play Tommy Jarvis (he was pathetic and irritating in A New Beginning). As a character he still doesn't have much use, though. Besides resurrecting Jason in the beginning and tying him to a rock at the end, he simply spends the movie in various states of incarceration.

The only Friday to be written and directed by the same person, showrunner Tom McLoughlin refuses to be comply with certain slasher tropes (this is the only Friday movie with zero drugs or nudity) and gives his movie the self-referential treatment, stopping short of Wes Craven territory. One character balks incredulously that his car stalls in the face of impending doom. Another states she's seen enough horror movies to know hockey mask-wearing dudes are probably bad news. And at one point, this crazy guy looks into the camera and says, "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment."

This is the first incarnation of Jason the super-zombie and McLoughlin does fashion some interesting character quirks. Whereas Jason usually teleports from place to place, in Jason Lives we have a few eerie shots of Jason traveling alone back to Crystal Lake. Here, he looks like Robert Frost contemplating the woods on an overcast day:

We're also re-introduced to the contemplative Jason head tilt (last seen at the end of Part 2 and The Final Chapter), which comes out whenever he encounters something new, whether it be 80s butt rock:

Or, his new found strength:

Or, little girls:

There's a childish curiosity that emanates from zombie Jason, endearing in its own twisted way, that I think audiences really respond to. That's probably one of the reasons he endures, even if his movies aren't great: there's just enough little imperfections in his backstory that opens the character up to interpretation. He's a maniac. He's a zombie. He's a mama's boy. He's a stupid child, lashing out at the world, as he tries to find home again.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives Vital Stats:

• Body Count: 18.
• Survivors: 2. Plus a bunch of little kids.
• Number of stalled cars: 1
• Average amount of time it takes for characters to get over a friend's death: 2 minutes
• Number of Jason-approved weapons: 5. Alcohol bottle, spear, machete, knife, dart.

Memories of Crystal Lake:

• Luke Y. Thompson of LYTrules: "Part six was the first one I saw, which is perhaps why I have more affection for 'Zombie Jason' as the definitive incarnation than 'Deformed Jason.' The Alice Cooper music video was my first exposure to the franchise, period; and the movie was the first sequel to really embrace the over-the-top nature of the story, with lightning bringing Jason back to life, and the classic "don't come until the song ends" sex scene. The NECA action figures of this Jason are my favorite Jason toys, by a long shot."
• Steve Barton of Dread Central: "Paramount learned really quickly that you couldn't have a Jason film without Jason so as a mea culpa to fans, they brought back the man behind the mask for real. Jason Lives plays like a rock and roll horror comic book with nods to some of the great Universal monster movies of Hollywood's golden age (i.e., raising Jason with electricity a la Frankenstein's monster). Plus we have Arnold Horshack. They should have billed this movie as Jason vs. The Sweathog to attract the Seventies crowd, too!"

12 Days of Friday, Day 5: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

An indiscernible amount of time has passed since The Final Chapter. Tommy Jarvis is haunted by images of Jason and prone to violent outbursts. Now orphaned, he gets shipped to a cheaply designed halfway house, which seems to have no apparent purpose other than to be close to some woods for people to hide in. And, lo and behold, people start getting murdered. Is it random? Is it Jason back from the dead? Or is it Tommy himself? Who cares?

One fun aspect of watching the series again five years later is recognizing how my tastes have changed. For instance, I have different favorite kills. The Friday girls that are attractive to me now are different from the ones years ago. And, apparently, I was able to endure Friday the 13th the new beginning, just fine before. Nowadays, it just fills me with this horrible, headachey rage.

Now I rather like it when a horror series branches away from its monster routine( Hallooween 3), for example, isn't great, but I think it's definitely underrated), but this...this is just awful.

Seriously, was it director Danny Steinmann's goal to fill every frame with characters who, if they weren't reprehensible, were utterly boring? A fat dude who won't shut up with chocolate all over his mouth. A guy with a stutter. A girl who looks like Diane Lane from The Fabulous Stains. Ladies and gentlemen, if these aren't people who belong in mental health institution, I don't know who does.

The action starts when Fat Dude with Chocolate Over his Mouth is chopped to pieces by another house resident. It's an attack so random and unprovoked, and so bizarrely shot (a bunch of extreme close-ups and zooms) that it's more comical than shocking. In fact, I thought it was supposed to be funny. You know, like at the end of Dumb and Dumber when Jim Carrey shoots the husband and then you find out it was just a fantasy? But, no, THIS IS REAL. This is what the whole movie is like. This is Steinmann's idea of horror and, in 1985, he gave reels of this to the studio. They released it, with the idea that it would sell tickets. A generation of people found babysitters, planned their Fridays, got into cars and subways and buses and risked their lives out there in the streets all to get to the movie theater and all 100% wasted their time. THIS IS ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT WATCHING THIS MOVIE.

Anyways.

After the murder, we're introduced to a bunch more idiots, including a stupid caricature of a sheriff, some stupid caricatures of farmers, and then stupid caricatures of tough black thugs living in a trailer park. Look, horror generally works in two ways: you have human characters, so that when they're killed, you can feel the weight of a life lost. Or you can have some fun, make it a bit silly, have some laughs. Obviously, Steinmann liked the second approach. He needed people you wanted to see die. But then at least bother directing some good deaths. What a failure of imagination here! It's virtually just stab, stab, stab, stab, stab.

At the end, you find out the EMT's the killer, copying Jason, hockey mask and all. The sheriff explains why the EMT did it to one of the survivors, pulling random evidence out of his pocket like the crazy derelict who won't leave you alone at the train station. Tommy cuts the psycho killer in a barn and he falls onto some convenient spikes. Whee.

It's unfortunate that the franchise producers couldn't figure out why The Final Chapter was the last Friday movie to make decent money (until Freddy vs. Jason). It's because The Final Chapter came out of a year-and-a-half production break with new talent eager to shoot a tight, effective thriller. And it was a movie that followed three Fridays which, while none particularly great, attempted to engage audiences beyond bloodlettings.

After A New Beginning failed to capture the same box office success, the producers probably said, "Hey, I guess we do need Jason. We'll bring him back and he'll be stronger...and bigger! And, uh, well, he'll have to be dumber, too." And I don't totally knock that. Having a super-zombie anti-hero creates its own kind of kooky fun cinema, and that is the Jason we, as a whole, have come to know and love. I'm glad this movie is over. I look forward to tomorrow's crazy Voorhees in Jason Lives.

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Vital Stats:

• Body Count: 21.
• Survivors: 4.
• Number of stalled cars: 2
• Number of words Tommy Jarvis says: 24
• Number of "Jason"-approved weapons: 7. Road flare, axe, knife, machete, garden shears, leather strap, railroad spike.

Memories of Crystal Lake:

• Luke Y. Thompson of LYTrules: "There's always been a bit of a debate among casual viewers. Did Jason drown as a boy, or not? I for one am not sure consistency can be applied across this franchise, but the general feeling is that he was just a deformed guy in 1-4, such that when it came time to do "AS New Beginning," it never occurred to anyone that they could simply have Jason rise from the dead, so they have the killer be a copycat instead. The most memorable thing about this one, to me, was the lit-flare-inside-the-mouth kill. I remember trying to tell my dad about it right after hearing news of some murder on the TV; he was disturbed by this."
• Steve Barton of Dread Central: "No doubt the sleaziest of all the sequels. Director Danny Steinman came from a background in pornography, and it showed in every single frame of film. There were tit shots just for the sake of having tits onscreen. Plus, having "Jason" take his wrath out on a home full of "special" kids? It's a wonder this even got made. If there's one thing to learn from this flick it's never to offer chocolate to a guy swinging an axe."

12 Days of Friday, Day 4: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

this is set the day following parts 2 and 3. Jason revives in the morgue, revealing his real nature as an unstoppable super-zombie, and returns to Crystal Lake, where a group of teenagers have rented a cabin across the house from a family (a mom, a hot teenage daughter, and Corey Feldman). This entry is most remembered for being special effects master Tom Savini's return to the series, and its original intention as the series' finale.

In my previous entires, I called Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter my favorite and now I remember why: here is a brilliant reversal of all the bad habits and creaky slasher mechanics that the series had picked up across three movies. The Final Chapter is fast, relentless. It's funny, it's scary, it's sexy, it's smart in its execution, and, especially important, it's sad. As people are chopped, maimed, and drowned one by one, the movie is draped with with eerie, unstoppable fatalism.

That's because director Joseph Zito shoots Jason as though he's a specter, a mysterious force barely ever there. Until the final act, we only catch flashes of the man in the hockey mask. Zito is a master of audience manipulation: he barely relies on POV shot or the ki-ki-ki theme music, and forgoes the cheap tension of having characters stupidly wander around; for the most part, everybody stays indoors and Jason's invasion of the home space hit me hard. Zito trusts the audience to simply feel Jason presence's with minimal external cues, to get us questioning whether he's actual there or if it's just our imagination. And then when Jason does strike, it is always sudden, brutal, and shocking. This is the only Friday that I'd call unpredictable.

The cabin teenagers engage in soapy drama, talk about social anxieties, and endure post-party ennui, all of which feels genuine enough to call character development. For once, the teen life is capable of maintaining its own tension. Crispin Glover's performance is appropriately famous: he's awkward without being pathetic, shy and endearing. It's rather upsetting when he gets the cleaver to the face.

Across from the cabin is the family house, where we find unlikely hero Tommy Jarvis, who lives with his single mother and older sister. During the climax, Jarvis cuts his hair to look like a young Jason Voorhees, distracting him just enough to chop him down with a machete while screaming "Die!" over and over. It's a fitting, exhaustive ending.

Zito came to fame with the 1981's THE PROWLER, and from that production he brought over Savini, cinematographer Joao Fernandes (who shoots the wilderness in muted, gloomy colors), and editor Joel Goodman. This was a tight-knit production, unified in its vision to bring terror back to the series. It's paced like a frantic B-movie, and delivers the goods without resorting on Jason's image to drum up scares. A lot of the readers here have done similar Friday marathons, and if The Final Chapter isn't among your favorites of the series, I implore you to go back and give it another look.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter Vital Stats:

• Body Count: 14. Including Gordon, the dog.
• Survivors: 2.
• Number of stalled cars: 1
• Skinny dipper survival rate: 0%
• Famous 80s actor survival rate: 50%
• Amount of time you have to live after losing your virginity: 4 minutes
• Approximate number of times the term "dead f-ck" is mentioned: 8
• Number of Jason-approved weapons: 8. Surgical hacksaw, scalpel, knife, spear, wine corkscrew, cleaver, axe, garden harrow.

Memories of Crystal Lake:

• Todd Gilchrist of SCI FI Wire: "The fact that Crispin Glover dances in this film makes it worth seeing even without Jason Voorhees, but in comparison to the previous films (especially Part III), it's technically proficient with characters who are at least vaguely interesting. Additionally, it introduces Tommy Jarvis, whom Corey Feldman does a great job making seem like a real kid thrown into the movie's messed-up circumstances. But most of all, it's really the last film that has the same, scruffy, unpolished charm as the original; starting with A New Beginning, the Friday the 13^th films adopted more polish, seeming more like the knockoff franchises that the series inspired than the franchise that actually inspired them. The film grain, the naturalistic but definitely period-specific 1980s context, and the gritty, brutal violence all seemed somehow more sincere, which is why its scares continue to work today."
• Steve Barton of Dread Central: "Final chapter, my ass! This was the one fans were clamoring for. I remember standing in line for hours at the local theatre to see it go down. We couldn't wait to see how Jason was finally going to get put down for good. And when he did? Holy sh-t! Still, though -- getting taken out by Corey Feldman? Our dude just couldn't go out like that."

12 Days of Friday, Day 3: Friday the 13th Part III: 3D

At the beginning of this film, Jason wakes up, fully recovered from his machete-in-the-shoulder flesh wound incurred at part 2's climax. Another 24-hour killing frenzy ensues, beginning with two locals at their convenience store, then moving on to a colorful group (including two hippies and a biker gang) of vacationers at Crystal Lake.

I first saw Part III in 2004 and wrote it off as a trifle. Watching it again today (3D at last! I'm having rad racer flashbacks!), I think I was wrong: here is a movie that fully embraces its role as a midnight movie. It's funnier. Jason dons the hockey mask. The theme music is this sublime disco cheese remix. It's in 3D, and with hilariously blatant 3D shots like popcorn flying directly into an overhead camera. And at one point a roach is passed directly to the audience. In 3D! Here is a movie that knows precisely its audience.

Returning director Steve Miner completely strips his movie of the verite-style camerawork of parts 1 and 2, favoring instead flat, direct compositions to work with the 3D format. A lot of the shots emphasize foreground and background layers, creating depth, with elements to jump out at the audience:

This shooting style may have been dictated by the 3D format, but in hindsight, it was the perfect way to fully introduce Jason to the world. Rather than using handheld POV shots or angles of his feet trampling across the wilderness like in the first two, the camera lingers on Jason, building his three-dimensional presence and, in the process, creating the horror icon. (Miner was smart to hire the hulking Richard Brooker to replace the lean country boy Jason of Part II.)

The carnage culminates in a barn, where lone survivor Chris (Dana Kimmell) has lured Jason. Normally, Jason just skulks in, kills a kid, and then the movie cuts to another scene. In this barn sequence, we get uninterrupted shots of Jason furiously tearing the place apart, searching for victims, humanizing him in a way that is truly frightening. Part III's is probably my favorite iteration of Jason. He still has the agility of a wood-raised man, able to dodge, weave, and counterattack, but with a devotion to killing (not to mention a curiously strong healing ability) that is beyond that of a sociopath, belonging instead to the supernatural monster. And variations of the tone established in Part III follows the rest of the series.

Is it noteworthy that Part III's script is the only Friday script to be co-written by a woman? And that this is the first Friday not to jump on the fact that teenagers only think about sex and drugs? The group that converges onto Crystal Lake in Part III isn't a bunch of bland, communal counselors like in the first two, but a disparate group with their own individual conflicts (including the external threat of a rowdy biker gang). Shelly, played by Larry Zerner, is a introverted prankster who pines for his blind date, a Tia Carrere-lookalike named Vera. He's the most sympathetic Friday character yet, if only because he looks like Seth Rogen:

Oh, the Jewfro. Before you were persecuted, relegated to horror cinema, stuck on kids who couldn't get laid and got their throats cut. Now, you can make it with Katherine Heigl. What a long way you've come.

Friday the 13th Part III: 3D Vital Stats:

• Body Count: 14. Including two rabbits.
• Survivors: 1. But she goes insane.
• Number of ethnic characters in the previous movies: 0
• Number of ethnic characters in Part 3: 3
• Does the black guy die first? Yes.
• Number of stalled cars: 2
• Average amount of time you have to live after hitting the can: 8 minutes
• Number of Jason-approved weapons: 9. Butcher knife, sharp pokey thing, pitchfork, hatchet, machete, harpoon gun, fireplace poker, knife, open electrical box.

Memories of Crystal Lake:

• Luke Y. Thompson of LYTrules: "Nobody cares about the female lead's love triangle. No matter how well you think you're playing it, dramatically. Friday 3 gets it...gratuitous yo-yo action, popcorn popping with the lid off, and so forth... Slasher movies already are gimmicks in a way, as people are coming to see the kills, and the way this installment is equally blatant about the 3D gimmick is quite appealing. It's notorious for being the one where Jason gets the hockey mask, so I was expecting some kind of big deal about it, but no...he just takes it from some kid who's trying to be scary. As deformed and retarded as he is, the J-man evinces a sense of irony."
• Steve Barton of Dread Central: "Friday the 13^th Part 3 in 3D saw the body count continue, but now the bodies were falling right into your laps. The only thing that could make this better is if it was actually a 4D experience and someone was hiding under your seat and splashing you with fake blood. Honestly? Out of all of them this was one of the weakest, but man, that 3D gimmick kept it fun!"

12 Days of Friday, Day 1: Friday the 13th

Welcome back, counselors! Crystal Lake re-opens in two weeks with Marcus Nispel's F13th Reboot, returning Jason back to his old haunting grounds after stints in Manhattan, suburbia, and, uh, deep space. As intrepid head counselor, everyone's invited along for my Friday movie marathon, exploring the franchise's transformation from indie shocker to horror icon, one a day up to February 13, 2009.

First, my brief history with the franchise: I bought the Paramount box set in 2004, having not seen any of them, though childhood was thoroughly haunted by the unbeatable NES adaptation. I watched the movies over the course of a month for absolutely nothing more than boobs and blood, because, hey, that's all they offered, right? I've forgotten pretty much everything about them, except that The final Chapter was my favorite and I found jason takes manhattan borderline unwatchable.

So here we are. Crystal Lake. First blood. F`13th isn't necessarily a good movie, but it does seem to develop beyond its origins, at least more than when I last saw it. Grabbing my attention this time is how Friday the 13th is less a slasher and more a giallo flick, that subgenre of horror combining mystery plots and slick kills, popularized by early Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Even from their first movies, the Halloweens and A Nightmare on Elm Streets maintain momentum by forcing audiences to guess who will survive. Friday the 13th's driving question is less who will survive, but rather who is the killer? (Of course, we all know now it's Jason's mother.)

I get the feeling director Sean S. Cunningham resented for a long time that his modest thriller gradually morphed into a monster slasher. He took obvious pride in Friday the 13th, as evidenced by the very first shot:

No production companies. No actors or crew are listed. And the very next shot opens on a moonlit Crystal Lake in 1953, with no further credits until after Pamela Voorhees knifes two horny counselors. And I thought Kubrick went to great lengths to emphasize a movie was "his" during the credits!

Check out Cunningham in the video interviews on the uncut DVD coming out tomorrow: he comes off a bit dismissive or uncurious about why America has latched onto Jason Voorhees as an icon. It was never really his bag. Cunningham's early career displays a fascination with sexuality, whether in drama (1971's Together, which always struck me as America's answer to the i an Curious movies), comedy (the softcore Case of the Full Moon Murders), or horror (he produced The Last house on the left). Friday the 13th represented an accumulation of these interests: beautiful kids running around, screwing, smoking dope, getting killed. No monster necessary.

For a movie famed for being shot on the cheap and quick, there's a tiny abundance of cinematic flourishes, enough I guess to drive a director to "stamp" Friday the 13th with his name. For example, after lone survivor Alice (Adrienne King) finally discovers her friends are dead, she flees to her cabin. As she barricades the door, we're treated to a handheld, three-minute single take, a patient accumulation of dread and choreography rarely seen in slashers, before and after:

Yet for all of Cunningham's machinations to create a mystery out of a slasher, to humanize his teenage bimbo victims, to add texture to his camera shots, they all fall flat. Because Friday the 13th is a mystery without suspects; Pamela Voorhees and her motivation appears at the end, out of nowhere. Cunningham has trouble seeing teens beyond carnal desires, and even one my favorite shots, that single take, is rendered moot: a minute after setting up the barricade, Alice simply knocks it out of the way to go outside. There's a habitual lack of payoff, subtle but jarring, in Cunningham's movie that prevents Friday the 13th from being placed in the same league as, say, Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street.

So we forget about what Cunningham tried and failed to do with his movie, and we remember the more schlocky elements that, while exploitative, were at least effective. Things like Tom Savini's special effects (Kevin Bacon and the post-coital arrow through the neck!) are so visceral and gory that they overpower the movie's quieter elements. We remember, in a gloriously camp performance during the final reel, Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees. We remember the supernatural elements, that a child drowned may raise from the dead.