HALLOWEEN HORROR: Hatchet (2007)

Before he made Sexy Nightmare Slayers, Adam Green first became a big name in geeky households through his wonderfully OTT homage to old school slasher horror, Hatchet.

A simple set-up sees a gaggle of potential victims stranded at night in the Louisiana swamps when their "ghost tour" boat runs aground.

Lost, cold and wet they soon discover they are not alone and that the area's mythical bogeyman, Victor Crowley (Kane 'Jason Voorhees' Hodder), is after their blood.

Taking the best of the supernatural slasher genre and blending in some almost Scooby Doo-like humour - along with the requisite quotient of boobs and blood - Green drowns his audience in Grand Guignol levels of gore and mutilation that are so far fetched as to be shockingly humorous.

As much a comedy as a horror film, Hatchet is pure entertainment for horror groupies. It has no deep message or hidden subtext; it just aims to shock and amuse in equal measure by balancing each moment of graphic violence with a cheesy joke, witty one-liner or amusing pratfall.

Emphasising the movie's role as a loving, but light-hearted, homage to movies like Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th, Halloween, Candyman etc we are teased with all too brief cameos by the iconic Tony Todd and Robert Englund.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans (well, the males anyway) will also be delighted to know that Mercedes McNab (aka Harmony Kendall) not only has a large role in this as aspiring softcore porn actress Misty, but also spends at least a third of her time on camera topless.

Yes, it's that sort of film!

There's not enough originality in the personality of Victor Crowley - a Jason Voorhees-like mutant child bullied by his peers then accidentally set alight during a Halloween prank (viz. The Burning), who comes back "from the dead" (Freddy et al) with the powers of superhuman strength and indestructibility (Jason again) and a desire for revenge against mankind - but I don't think that's the point.

For me Green is simply trying to reclaim the genre, take it back to a halcyon age - but with a 21st Century budget and effects - to prevent its continued Twilightification. He's making "horror" truly "horrible" again, reclaiming the genre prerogative of  making the antagonist the audience draw, but without sinking to the sickening depths of the torture porn sub-genre.

Even the ending, while by no means original, is still perfectly in-keeping with the old school vibe of the piece... and obviously left the barn door open for Hatchet 2!

Sweet Revenge (2025)

Sweet Revenge, officially released today on YouTube, is the first live-action appearance - now all the legal wrangling has, hopefully, been ironed out - of the 'new' Jason Voorhees (the unstoppable killer from the Friday The 13th franchise).

Much brouhaha was made of the fact that this 13-minute short is sponsored by a cider company, but, to be honest, the product placement is minimal and subtle. Had I not read about it before hand, I wouldn't have noticed the label on the bottle Ally Ioannides carries around for a minute or so.

It so happens that Ioannides is probably the best thing about this "vignette", her Eve morphing into an interesting twist on the classic Final Girl trope.

Otherwise, Sweet Revenge pretty much retreads classic Friday The 13th territory in a very condensed format.

My good friend Justin 'Pun' Isaac put it best in his review: "...it boiled down the classic slasher formula and just cut out the filler".

Eve and her fiancé Kyle (Toussaint Morrison), and a couple of friends, appear to have AirBnB-ed a holiday cottage from pervy Harold (Chris Carlson), unaware that it's on the site of the former Camp Crystal Lake... the primary hunting ground of the supernatural slasher Jason Voorhees (Schuyler White).

As everyone is settling in, Eve takes a canoe out on the lake in broad daylight - only to be dragged under the water, seemingly by Jason. Inexplicably when she surfaces it's now night time, and Jason has started butchering people.

Why didn't Jason kill Eve when he dragged her under the water? Just how long did she hold her breath? Perhaps Eve did die and is now a deadite zombie? Who knows? 

While I have no issue with Jason's hockey mask design (which seems to be a hot button topic in the online community), the first thing that struck me when the masked killer appeared was how thin and scrawny he appeared. Stuntman Schuyler White is no Kane Hodder, that's for sure.

Written and directed by Wrong Turn's Mike P Nelson, there's a smattering of gore in Sweet Revenge, although the bulk of the kills occur off screen, and a healthy amount of 'strong language' for something thought to be a drinks' advertisement.

With minimal time to fit in an expansive story, Eve is the only character that changes and develops, which makes me hope that she has some future role to play in the resurrected franchise.

However, what, if anything, this short film has to do with the grander Jason mythology going forward, I can't even imagine. Will we see Eve again in an upcoming movie? And if so will it replay her origin story as well?

• Sweet Revenge can be viewed here on YouTube.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

Annabelle Comes Home is a masterclass in teen horror movie making.

While, on one hand, not much scarier than the best episodes of Supernatural, nor even as gory, on the other writer/director Gary Dauberman concentrated on escalating tension, menace, and atmosphere.

You always suspected a jump scare was coming, but, in truth, there were only a couple in the film, the majority were red herrings, but you never know which were which until the final 'boo!'.

The film opens with the backstory of how Annabelle came into the possession of The Conjuring's protagonists, Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) and a succinct explanation of the doll's powers (she isn't possessed, as demons don't possess objects, instead she acts as a beacon and a conduit for dark forces).

Then the story jumps forward a year, to 1972, and Annabelle is safely squirrelled away in the Warrens' locked room of evil artifacts.

The Warrens are heading out on another case, leaving their young daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) in the care of Brady Bunch-like babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman).

At first I felt a bit cheated when I realised that the Warrens themselves would just be bookending the story of Annabelle Comes Home, but as it turns out I should have trusted Gary Dauberman to know what he was doing.

Having learned what the Warrens do for a living, Mary Ellen's best friend, Daniela Rios (Katie Sarife) drops in to surreptitiously check out the "room of cursed objects".

She is wracked with guilt over the recent death of her father, and is hoping to find a way to contact his spirit.

Instead, she is tricked into releasing Annabelle, who, in turn, unleashes as many of the trapped entities in the Warrens' secure room as she can.

The variety of spooky objects that come into play reminded me of a cross between the Friday the 13th TV series (nothing to do with Jason Voorhees) and the wonderful Warehouse 13, with the predictive television set being a particular visual highlight.

The climax, which draws in May Ellen's would-be boyfriend, Bob Palmeri (Michael Cimino), is a funfair thrill ride of spooks, monsters, and mind-trickery as a demon uses Annabelle to try and steal one of the young women's souls.

Ultimately, Annabelle Comes Home is Buffy The Vampire Slayer level teen drama and urban fantasy scares, but on a bigger budget, with enough atmosphere and misdirection to keep the audience on the edge of its seat throughout.

As always with this franchise, the film capitalises on its period setting to heighten the verisimilitude, making the jeopardy and threat wholly convincing for both the audience and the teenagers trapped inside the haunted house.

Balancing out the jump scares, there's also some laugh out loud moments, and Dauberman has a great knack of making full use of the screen, so you always have to keep half-an-eye on what's going on in the background.

Beyond question, Annabelle Comes Home is delightfully creepy and simultaneously thrilling and unnerving, making it one of my favourite entries in the ever-expanding Conjuring Universe.

While Universal may have failed to launch its Dark Universe, reinventing their classic characters for 21st Century audiences, Warner Bros and New Line Cinema were quietly building an impressive, interconnected, universe around the mythology of The Conjuring movies.

They're not all hits, but the winners outweigh the duds. Long may it last.

Jason's Back At Work!

Peter Santa-Maria's Mondo Poster for Sweet Revenge

A group of teenagers arrives in Crystal Lake Camp but one thing they don't know about this place is they were being stalked and mysteriously killed by a mysterious serial killer who's out there for revenge.

Jason Voorhees is back next month in Sweet Revenge, a 13-minute "vignette" premiering on the Jason Universe YouTube channel on August 13 (a Wednesday not a Friday).

This is not a fan film. Directed by Wrong Turn's Mike P Nelson, this short marks Jason's first official live-action appearance since the 2009 reboot and will play a pivotal role in the resurrected franchise's 45th anniversary celebrations.

Rather oddly though it's also an advertisement for some American cider company, so is this how the "new" Jason is welcomed into the world? Check out this 11 minute dissection of the situation from RealLifeRyan, who has a better handle on the state of the Jason Universe than I do. 

Sweet Revenge is presumably a precursor to the forthcoming prequel A24/Peacock series Crystal Lake as well. This TV show is due to arrive next year and stars the wonderful Linda Cardellini as Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhees.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

It's 1985 and a drug smuggler's plane is heading for a crash landing, so he dumps his satchels of cocaine over the Chattahoochee National Forest, Georgia, with the idea that his colleagues can retrieve them later.

The only hiccup in this cunning plan is a 500lb black bear that devours way too much of the drug and goes on a murderous rampage, in pursuit of more of the valuable white powder.

An ensemble of oddball characters are drawn to the mountain where the bear is active, some by design and some by accident, including a mum (Rise of Skywalker's Keri Russell) looking for her runaway kid; a couple of drug dealers (Solo's Alden Ehrenreich and Obi-Wan Kenobi's O'Shea Jackson Jr.) sent to retrieve the stash; an aged police officer (The Wire's Isiah Whitlock Jr.) on their trail; a park ranger and a wildlife inspector (Person of Interest's Margo Martindale and Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson); a trio of delinquents who try and mug the wrong guy; and an unfortunate ambulance crew.

Inspired by a true story (and unlike all those ghost stories that claim the same, this actually happened), it soon becomes clear that this hilariously over-the-top affair, masterfully directed by Elizabeth Banks from a script by The Babysitter: Killer Queen's Jimmy Warden, is as much a caper fiasco as it is a gory horror flick.

Banks and Warden have taken the nugget of truth that is the real "cocaine bear" story and pumped it up to eleven, turning the bear into a furry Jason Voorhees, Cujo with a drug habit, stalking - and slaughtering - at random.

As the various parties cross paths with the coked-up bear, plans go to pieces (as do people) as the madcap carnage - and the belly laughs - escalate.

However, unlike that mother of all "when animals attack" movies Jaws, when the true monster of the piece, Ray Liotta's heartless drug boss Syd White, enters the picture, the "cocaine bear" becomes a force for justice and we can't help but find ourselves rooting for her.

Lizzie Borden Took An Axe (2014)

Lizzie Borden took an axe
She gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden got away
For her crime she did not pay.

- children's skipping rope song

First, a confession. Somehow, somewhen, during my nearly six decades of life and absorbing random elements of pop culture, I managed to conflate alleged axe murderer Lizzie Borden with the deaf and blind, pioneering disability activist Helen Keller. 

Somewhere along the way I'd latched onto a self-invented reason for why Borden had become so infamous: not only did she murder her own parents, but she was deaf and blind as well.

Imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch Christina Ricci's portrayal of Borden and realised that the character wasn't actually blind or deaf! 

Turns out her notoriety arose from the simple fact she was a woman accused of these heinous crimes.

Lizzie Borden Took An Axe is the 2014 TV movie that opened the door for the bonkers and wildly fictionalised Lizzie Borden Chronicles, an eight-episode, limited series (contradicting the end of the movie where it states the sisters never saw each other again).

This show, set in the wake of Lizzie's trial, had Ricci and Clea DuVall return as the Borden Sisters in and around Fall River, Massachusetts, in late 19th Century America, the Gilded Age.

In this parade of glorious Grand Guignol, Lizzie has become a coldly, calculating serial killer who could give Hannibal Lecter or Jason Voorhees a run for their money.

Compared to the campy mini-series it spawned, Lizzie Borden Took An Axe plays things much straighter, focussing on the initial murders of Lizzie's father, Andrew (Pontypool's Stephen McHattie) and stepmother, Abby (Sara Botsford).

After establishing that Lizzie and her older sister, Emma (Clea DuVall) don't exactly live in a happy home - their father is controlling and disappointed in them (as they haven't found husbands yet), while their stepmother (apparently) cares more for her own relatives than Lizzie and Emma - the film adds to Lizzie 's criminal profile by depicting her as a habitual liar, thief, societal rebel, and shoplifter.

Random bits of potential obfuscation are thrown in to Stephen Kay's script (such as a lurking soldier, who may - or may not - have been a lover of Lizzie), but he and director Nick Gomez are quite adamant that there is no mystery here: they want you to know Lizzie did it.

There are frequent dream-like sequences and brief flashbacks to the murders, not really showing Lizzie committing them, but strongly suggesting that is the case.

The police are also convinced that Lizzie did the deed, while - once the case comes to trial - her lawyer Andrew Jennings (Billy Campbell) plays up her innocent nature, the fact that she's a Sunday School teacher, and pulls out the old "how could a woman do this?" defence.

At point, the court learns of another random murder of a woman in her home that has just occurred, mimicking the style of the Borden murders, but then this is dismissed - without investigation - and never mentioned again. 

Eventually the jury find Lizzie not guilty and she is freed.

However, the film's denouement, where Lizzie whispers her "confession" to Emma (intercut with more gruesome versions of the earlier flashbacks that leave no doubt as to who was swinging the axe) would have come as more of a surprise twist had the film not spent the previous 80-or-so minutes pointing the finger at Lizzie, saying: "She did it, but don't tell anybody!"

Every so often, it looks as though Lizzie Borden Took An Axe is about to explore such topics as "celebrities on trial" or "trial by media", but then it veers away from those topics just as quickly.

Honestly, I think, taking the two shows together, I feel the original murder, if better framed as a mystery (which it remains in reality), would have been more deserving of the mini-series treatment.

That would have allowed time to explore all the little plot hooks that pop up in the movie and are then forgotten in the next breath.

As wild and, yes, entertaining as The Lizzie Borden Chronicles was, to my mind, nothing was gained by taking a real-life character like Lizzie and transforming her into a serial killer in this manner.

The mystery around the single incident that made her name is enough.

Following it up with pure, over-the-top, fiction is only going to muddy the waters, mixing fact with fiction in this way, so that some viewers will no doubt mistake one for the other.

It's all too easily done.

Never Sleep Again - The Elm Street Legacy (2010)

If you are at all 'into' the Nightmare On Elm Street series of horror films - as I am - then you owe it to yourself to seek out the incredible documentary Never Sleep Again - The Elm Street Legacy.

Although clearly a labour of love, this FOUR HOUR documentary isn't a straight lovefest for the franchise, but a proverbial 'warts-and-all' behind-the-scenes insight into the making of the series, chronicling the highs and lows, the conflicts, the cut corners etc offering an unrivalled insight into the world of low-budget movie making.

Running parallel to the main arc of the documentary is the story of how A Nightmare On Elm Street effectively 'made' New Line Cinema, the company that would eventually bring us Peter Jackson's magnificent Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Each movie - from the original through to Freddy Vs Jason, and embracing the short-lived TV spin-off, Freddy's Nightmares - gets its own chapter, with a wonderful stop-motion animation bumper, and is packed to bursting point with talking heads of the majority of the main actors and movie crew, unseen footage and photographs etc

Unsurprisingly, Johnny Depp and Patricia Arquette (whose careers began in the franchise) are conspicuous by their absence, as is Peter Jackson (who wrote a draft of one of the later movies), but there are so many other - more than 100 - interesting interviewees with great things to say that you don't really mind (and didn't really expect them anyway).

For instance, I'm far more interested in Wes Craven's opinions of the sequels to his classic original or his insights into the post-modern brilliance of Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and Robert Englund (the one and only Freddy Krueger) is always good value for money.

Of particular interest are the revelations that several of the films were effectively 'made-up-as-they-went-along' as directors and crew raced to hit pre-determined release dates with unfinished scripts - which, I guess, explains the "dream-like" quality of some of the stories!

Narrated by Heather Langenkamp (aka Freddy's nemesis Nancy from the movies), the film also examines Freddy's transformation from child-murdering supervillain into cartoon cultural icon, and various attempts to reclaim the character as a genuine figure of fear.

The two-DVD set includes a disc of extras as fascinating as the main feature covering topics such as the Freddy Krueger comics and novels, hardcore fans (Fred Heads) and a tour of the movie locations used in the original Nightmare On Elm Street.

Insightful and entertaining, Never Sleep Again is the ultimate, definitive insight in to one of the truly iconic figures of horror cinema, who now ranks alongside Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy and The Wolfman in the psyche of horror-loving film fans.

Friday The 13th (2009)

This new telling of the story of Jason Voorhees - the indestructible, hockey-masked slayer - begins by subverting the twist ending of the original.

This version makes it clear in the opening flashback that it was Jason's mother who killed the camp counsellors because she thought they had let her deformed son drown in Crystal Lake.

But Jason had survived and made it back in time to see his own mother beheaded before his eyes by the last survivor.

The film then jumps to the present day and a bunch of potheads are going camping in the woods, near Crystal Lake, looking for a legendary field of wild weed... instead they are ambushed by the adult Jason (Derek Mears), who still inhabits the derelict summer camp.

All this in the 25-minutes before the title screen!

Six weeks later and another bunch of obnoxious college students, headed by chief douche bag Trent (Travis Van Winkle), have come to stay at a lodge owned by Travis' parents on the far side of the lake.

Meanwhile, Clay (Supernatural's Jared Padalecki) is in the area looking for his missing sister, Whitney (Amanda Righetti), one of the earlier band of delinquents, and getting nowhere with the unhelpful locals.

Little does he realise that Jason has actually kept her alive because she bears a passing resemblance to his dead mother.

There's even an underlying suggestion that the locals are somehow complicit in Jason's murders (the old woman who says: "He just wants to be left alone" and the total lack of follow-up by the authorities when one victim is impaled on the back of a passing pick-up truck), but this is never explored - to the detriment of originality in this movie.

Trent and his cohorts quickly discover the area's brutal secret though, and Clay is drawn into their nightmare as he tries to rescue his sister from the clutches of the iconic, unstoppable serial killer.

Directed by Marcus Nispel (who also helmed the far superior remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003; not that the original needed remaking), Friday The 13th is very "by-the-numbers" with the requisite amount of female nudity and violent deaths, while, sadly, adding nothing new to the mix.

Where Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre expanded on the characters of the original film and added new layers of subtext, Friday The 13th is just a re-imagining of the old story in a new location, with new disposable victims.

Perhaps we've been spoiled by such imaginative horrors as the Final Destination franchise, but even Jason's most creative attacks are actually quite mundane and there is certainly more luck than judgement involved in many of his killings.

The extended cut DVD gives us 101 minutes of mindless, low-brow entertainment, but totally lacking in lasting impact.

All the characters, even Clay and Whitney, are two-dimensional ciphers that we never get to really know - or care for - and, to be honest, most of the victims pretty much deserve what they get from Jason.

It isn't even made clear why, at the end, having defeated Jason (as the film structure dictated they would), Clay and Whitney roll his body into the lake rather than calling the police (as any sensible, right-thinking person would do), except that it serves the plotline and thus leaves the door open for a (wishful-thinking) sequel.

Friday The 13th is good for what it is: an urban myth-style retelling of a well-known tale for a generation that might only have known of the original second or third hand.

I still would have preferred a sequel to Jason X than this trite reboot, but perhaps I was just too sober (and too old) to fully appreciate the movie's nuances?

Jason X (2001)

And so we come to the end of the Friday the 13th canon with the chapter I have seen the most times, Jason X.

A savage slice of solid pulp sci-fi served with a soupçon of satire.

In the early 21st Century, Jason (Kane Hodder) has been captured (presumably some time after his return in Freddy vs Jason) and is being held at a specially constructed Crystal Lake research centre, where project leader Rowan (Andromeda's Lexa Doig) has been investigating ways to permanently execute the mass-murdering zombie.

Eventually, she realises the only course of action is to cryofreeze him, but then interdepartmental shenanigans - and a misguided desire to monetise Jason's supernatural regnenerative abilities - leads to the monster's escape.

This ends up with both Jason and Rowan being accidentally frozen... and then forgotten about.

Jump ahead to the year 2455, and a student field trip to the wastelands of the dead Earth comes across the two frozen bodies.

Bringing them back to their ship, The Grendel, for study, the researchers use nanotechnology to bring Rowan back... unfortunately, at the same time, they also accidentally reawaken Jason.

It maybe the future, but teens are still horny and that's motivation enough for Jason to start hacking away again.

You can guess what happens next.

Todd Farmer's script, directed by James Isaac, wears its Alien influences on its sleeve, with Jason substituting for that franchise's iconic xenomorphs.

The Grendel has its own cadre of marines, led by Spartacus's Peter Mensah, bargain basement clones of the beloved characters from Aliens, and their hunt for Jason through the bowels of the ship (while the civilians listen in, from relative safety) is an obvious homage (rip-off?) of the sequence in Aliens where the colonial marines first meet the xenomorphs in the tunnels under the colony on LV-426.

It's then left to the civilians - and their android (Andromeda's Lisa Ryder) to escape Jason's machete long enough for the ship to reach safety.

Unfortunately, just when they think they've got him beat, he gets a new lease of life - an upgrade - thanks to the same nanotechnology that brought Rowan back.

Also, the hull of the Grendel is deteriorating and is likely to collapse before the rescue ship Tiamat can reach them.

Silly, thrilling, and inventive, for me Jason X is a perfect example of how you keep a long-running franchise alive.

Through out-of-the-box thinking that takes the overarching narrative in a totally unexpected direction, yet remains true to its core principles, Farmer and Isaac have created a genuinely unique blend of old school slasher and pulp sci-fi.

Sure, it's obviously not the first blending of sci-fi and horror tropes, but as an extension of a franchise like Friday the 13th, it's inspired.

I would have loved to have seen a sequel to this where Jason vents his wrath on the horny teens of Earth Two, but sadly it was not to be.

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

While it was not the next Friday The 13th movie made (that was Jason X, which we will get to later), in my mind 2003's Freddy vs Jason is the next entry chronologically as it ties to final scene of Jason Goes To Hell.

Taking place four years after the dream demon Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) last plagued the residents of Elm Street, the older generation of Springwood have concocted a conspiracy of silence, to erase Freddy from the local mythology.

By forgetting him, they are depriving him of the fear that the feeds him, and so he remains trapped in Hell.

However, Freddy has a plan to escape: remind the residents of Springwood of his existence by releasing Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) from Hell - and pointing him at Elm Street.

The idea being that Jason will stir memories - and fears - of Freddy, eventually giving him enough power to escape Hell himself.

Not only is this is a canny plot device, but Freddy vs Jason doesn't hang around - with Jason butchering his first Elm Street victim within minutes of the story getting on.

For a 16-year-old film, the visual effects are particularly striking in places, such as in the first few "nightmare" sequences, nice touches like the disappearing bloody footprints and the turning heads on the "Missing" posters, and then, later, the imagery of the burning Jason striding through the cornfields.

What makes Damian Shannon and Mark Swift's screenplay really sing though isn't just the brilliant set-up, but also the way it wove in the conflict between the two supernatural antagonists: having released Jason onto his "patch" Freddy gets pissed when he starts losing potential victims to the hockey mask-wearing zombie.

Given Jason's habit - in several of the earlier Friday The 13th films - of jumping in and out of Crystal Lake, I don't really buy the "fear of water" he's been given here (as a heavy-handed polar opposite to Freddy's fear of fire) and the script also plays a bit fast and loose with the specifics of Jason's origin story.

However, I can excuse that as we witness it through the lens of Jason's own dreamscape - nightmare? - and, of course, dreams and, recollections in them, are rarely 100 per cent accurate.

But, even with its narrative flaws, Freddy vs. Jason is a slick, pulpy, clash of two horror icons, that's probably smarter than the casual viewer might even realise.

While Freddy is, obviously, the more vocal of the pair, the film perfectly balances spotlight time for both the villains, so you can't say this is Jason appearing in a Freddy film or vice versa.

As well as interesting dives into what passes for Jason's psyche, there are also some nice touches in the movie that a diehard Fredhead like myself can really appreciate.

We get to see Freddy's world operating on an almost Looney Toons-level of dream logic, that makes a significant change in tone to match the change of setting, and then it's really brought home just how weedy Freddy actually is when pulled through into the "real world".

It's his evil cunning, as much as anything, that allows him to go toe-to-toe with Jason on the dock at Crystal Lake.

With Jason well and truly back at the end of the film - but Freddy certainly not out of contention - Freddy vs Jason actually does a nice job of restoring the status quo to both franchises.

Just a shame that Friday The 13th only managed one more (before its failed reboot) and A Nightmare on Elm Street went straight for the failed reboot option.

As the last few entries in the Friday the 13th series showed (and I'm including Jason X here, but excluding Jason Takes Manhattan), if you're willing to take risks talented writers can always breathe new life into a long-running franchise... if given the chance.

Jason Goes to Hell - The Final Friday (1993)

Okay, time for some brief personal backstory: the only reason I started this Friday the 13th challenge was an incentive to get to Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday.

I wanted to watch them in order, to see if there was any foreshadowing for some of the moments I knew were coming in this entry in the franchise, even though it was one I definitely knew I'd never seen before.

Although it's not available via Sky Cinema or through streaming, Paul had bought me the DVD over a year ago - but I hadn't gotten around to watching it until now.

And, I have to say, I loved it. Primarily for the way it ties in not just to Nightmare On Elm Street (with Freddy's claw grabbing the mask right at the end), but also with the Evil Dead mythology.

I'd known about that link for ages (hence my keenness to see this chapter in Jason's story) but hadn't expected it to be so overt.

I thought it might be a shot of the Necronomicon (which also gives it some Lovecraft flavouring as well) in the background, or some such fleeting Easter Egg. but it's front and centre, when Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay) is exploring the Voorhees home and flicks through the ancient tome:

Completely ignoring Jason's fate at the end of Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes To Hell opens with the FBI setting a trap for the supernatural serial killer in the woods near Crystal Lake, resulting in him being blown to kingdom come.

The pieces of Jason's body are taken to a morgue, where his still beating heart mesmerises the coroner (Deadwood's Richard Gant), sending him off on a murderous rampage.

Meanwhile, Crystal Lake is celebrating the lifting of its 20 year "death curse", with Joey B's Diner offering Jason-themed meals.

But tough guy bounty hunter Creighton Duke (The X-Files' Steven Williams) is having none of this, because he knows that Jason can only be finally killed by destroying his heart, and only someone of the Voorhees bloodline has the power to do that.

Jason's supernatural - Deadite - power is burning up his host body, so he needs to transfer the parasite within him to other bodies on his journey to find someone of his bloodline - not only are they the only ones that can kill him, they are also the only bodies that he is able to transform into his natural form (the zombie slasher we know and love from the later films in the franchise).

Hapless doof  Steven Freeman ends up getting framed for one of Jason's murders, but soon discovers - through a meeting with Duke - who Jason is really targeting and why.

He busts out of jail and sets off to track down the body-hopping killer.

On one hand, Jason Goes To Hell is quite unlike earlier entries in the Friday the 13th series, but it's a real hardcore '80s gonzo trio that extrapolates on the supernatural elements that were woven in Jason Lives and The New Blood, so we already know he's operating in a world where these things are possible.

Jason Goes To Hell is also full of definitive details about the franchise: such as the killer being born of Elias and Pamela Voorhees in 1946, he supposedly drowned when he was 11, he's responsible (prior to this movie) for 83 confirmed kills (and many more unconfirmed), the existence of the Voorhees home (which, surprisingly, we've never seen before) etc

So, as someone who sees movies like this through the eyes of a gamer and comic book reader, I'm totally grokking all these stats, and attempting to headcanon them into my own vision of Jason's mythology (which now embraces Freddy and Ash, of course!).

Friday The 13th Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

If, with a title like Jason Takes Manhattan - and an opening sequence of gritty, violent New York streets - you were expecting a Death Wish/Punisher-style satire of '80s NYC street crime, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

To be honest, whatever you were expecting from this strange entry in the franchise, you're going to be disappointed.

To mark the senior class graduation of pupils from Crystal Lake's Lakeview High School, a party cruise down the coast to New York has been organised.

Unfortunately, before it even gets going, a freak accident resurrects Jason's corpse back to un-life, from its lake bottom resting place after the explosive finale of The New Blood.

Anyway, the MV Lazarus (see what they did there?) sets sail with an almost full complement of horny teens, a couple of teachers, minimal crew, and one superhuman zombie stowaway.

In charge of the school trip is Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman), the teacher you see if you look up the phrase "sanctimonious dick", who also happens to be the uncle of aquaphobic orphan and obvious 'final girl' candidate, Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett).

Rennie's plagued with nightmarish visions, like something from a J-horror, connected with her phobia and her inability to swim, having nearly drowned in Crystal Lake as a youngster.

Eventually, this is ham-fistedly tied in to Jason's early years - but I wouldn't even start trying to figure out the timeline of the Friday The 13th franchise; that way lies madness!

First order of business on the Lazarus, once it's out in the Atlantic, is for Jason to off the captain and pilot.

Luckily for the Lakeview students one of them is the captain's son, Sean Robertson (Scott Reeves), Rennie's boyfriend, who has absorbed a modicum of ship piloting by osmosis.

There promptly follows an all-too-short (because it's exciting, even though it has nothing to do with "taking Manhattan") game of cat-and-mouse as Jason stalks victims around the decks, corridors, and cabins of the ship (my pitch for a future Friday The 13th film in this vein: Jas-On A Plane).

Then, rather bizarrely, the bulk of the class is wiped out off-screen, mentioned in a casual aside with zero emotional resonance for either the survivors or the audience.

Unfortunately, it very quickly becomes clear that Jason Takes Manhattan suffers from similar narrative flaws to A New Beginning, even though it really is Jason doing the killing here.

The killer no longer appears to be following his own unspoken "rules": the victims may, originally, be from Crystal Lake, but they're not on the lake shore anymore (the turf he 'protects') nor do they have any connection to the summer camp where his journey began.

And, yes, they do finally get to New York, about an hour in to this 100-minute movie, but having arrived on dry land, the small group of survivors are promptly mugged.

Then Rennie is kidnapped, drugged, and almost raped... until an unexpected saviour comes along.

After running around the docks for more than 20 minutes, Rennie and Sean make it to the subway, with Jason in pursuit.

Interestingly, and back on brand, Jason concentrates on the Crystal Lake duo, and only kills New Yorkers who get in his way.

The zombie then promptly gets zapped by the third rail, giving his prey time to actually make it onto the streets of the city... before they dive down into the sewers to escape him.

The climax of the film becomes a race against time, as our heroes have to find a way back out of the sewers before a midnight toxic sludge purge (was this a real thing?)

Without wanting to spoil anything (in a 30-year-old movie), the toxic waters somehow melt all Jason's twisted, zombie, persona off of him and transform him back into a (dead) young child.

No, no idea!

Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Taking a leaf out the previous year's A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the Friday the 13th franchise is reinvigorated with an injection of psychic mayhem in Part VII: The New Blood.

After an atmospheric pre-credits exposition and recaps (narrated by Walt Gorney aka Crazy Ralph from the first two Friday The 13th movies) that focuses mainly on Jason Lives, we're introduced to a young Tina Shephard (Jennifer Banko) who accidentally drowns her abusive father (John Otrin) in Crystal Lake, when her nascent psychic powers run out of control.

I can't help thinking that young Tina is somehow a nod to Tia in the original Witch Mountain movies, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, years later, an older Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) and her mother (Susan Blu), are persuaded to return to their summer home by Crystal Lake (the whole renaming exercise from Jason Lives! appears to have been abandoned), by her personal mental health physician, the rather creepy Dr Crews (Terry Kiser).

He's trying to capitalise on her psychic powers, by pushing her to the edge of her wits and convincing her that her 'prophetic visions' are just delusions.

Co-incidentally, the neighbouring house is being used by a group of horny teens (including boob-flashing scream queen Elizabeth Kaitan) to host a surprise birthday party for one of their number (the actual surprise is that he never makes it!).

Railing against Dr Crews rather "in-your-face" therapy, Tina's psycho-kinetic powers end up releasing Jason from his bondage on the lake bed, and the killer rises from the waters, complete with tattered clothes and rib cage showing.

This was horror legend Kane Hodder's first stint behind the hockey mask and he definitely brings a certain character and manner to Jason Voorhees that may have been absent in the earlier films.

It's not that previous iterations of the franchise's antagonist were lacking anything, it's just that Hodder undeniably makes this role his own.

As he starts butchering anyone he finds "on his front lawn", we may think that it fortunate for Jason that one of his first kills was using a large machete to chop wood.

But in the end the slasher doesn't use his trademark weapon that much, instead relying on the many and varied domestic and forestry implements he finds laying around.

Of perverse note, The New Blood was the first of the films where Jason bludgeoned someone to death in a sleeping bag, smashing them against a tree (a scene extrapolated on in my favourite entry in the franchise, the sci-fi Jason X).

One thing I've realised not only do most of Jason's kills lack the finesse - and dark irony - of, say, Freddy Krueger's (being mostly brute force delivered to meat sacks) they're also actually not as gruesome as I either imagined or remembered them to be.

It's all in the suggestive way they are shot, being a combination of tense build-up and then - sometimes, but not always - seeing the gruesome aftermath.

These aren't the mindless torture porn of later years' horror, but following in the footsteps of well-crafted horror like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

And a recurring trope I've slowly picked up on is that every Friday The 13th - after the first, I believe - appears to feature people being thrown through windows: either in through a ground floor one or out of a first floor (or higher) one.

If I was still studying film at university, I'm sure I could come up with some deep meaning for this imagery, but, as it stands, it's just one of those cool, repeated shots that you start to anticipate as new episodes of the franchise drop.

As with Jason Lives, The New Blood is another solid entry in the series that tries to elevate the central conceit beyond "slasher targets horny teens" by expanding its paranormal elements while still keeping the film rooted in its central mythology.

Friday the 13th Part VI - Jason Lives (1986)

Turns out we were lied to in the last film, Jason has not been cremated but is buried in the Crystal Lake - now renamed Forest Green - graveyard.

However, Tommy Jarvis - a couple of years older and played by a different actor (Thom Mathews) - wants to make sure, and plans to dig up the killer's corpse and burn it himself.

Unfortunately, the combination of a thunderstorm, a metal fence post, and Tommy's grave-robbing accidentally end up in bringing Jason (C.J. Graham) back to life... as an unstoppable zombie!

Jason, of course, was already some kind of zombie, having come back from the dead once after Tommy killed him when he was 12-year-old Corey Feldman, but now Jason's supercharged and bullet-proof.

Tommy tries to warn the local police, but Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) is having none of this "Jason has risen from the grave" bullshit, and wants to drive Tommy out of town.

Not only has Crystal Lake changed its name to try and forget its bloody past, but someone thought it would be a great idea to open a new summer camp on the lake shore.

One of the new counsellors is the sheriff's slightly wild daughter, Megan (Jennifer Cooke, the 'Star Child' Elizabeth from the classic series of V), who takes a shine to Tommy and believes his claims about the supernatural slasher.

However, Jason is heading back towards the camp, and as bodies start to fall, the Sheriff reckons Tommy is responsible, that it's part of his Jason-obsessed psychopathy.

Tommy, of course, knows better and, with Megan's help (and occult knowledge gleaned from a paperback book bought at a Forest Green convenience store) hatches a plan to defeat undead Jason once and for all.

After a couple of rather middling movies in the series, this is more like it. Jason Lives is peak Friday The 13th. It's back on brand with the coterie of camp counsellors for Jason to slaughter and the action has returned to Crystal Lake.

Production values have increased from the first swath of movies, making the kills more visceral and horrific, but this is tempered with a better quality script, and even some moments of deadpan humour.

Writer/director Tom McLoughlin's screenplay even includes a nice Nightmare On Elm Street Easter egg, with the the little kid that has nightmares about all-powerful monsters being called Nancy (Courtney Vickery)

Elm Street only came out a couple of years before this, but already it seems as though the seeds were being sown for some kind of connection between the two blockbuster horror franchises.

When the general public talk about Jason, I think this is the era they mean, starting with this great little slasher flick.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is when the mythology really starts to expand, as it draws on supernatural elements, which I'm pretty certain will now become a more prevalent feature in the upcoming entries in the franchise.

Friday the 13th - A New Beginning (1985)

Instead of opening with an expositional flashback, A New Beginning goes all out with new material, an obvious dream sequence where young Tommy Jarvis (a cameo from Corey Feldman) sees Jason rising from the grave to kill again.

When Tommy awakes, he's now an older teenager (John Shepherd) being ferried to a halfway house for troubled kids. Haunted by his encounter with Jason as a young kid, Tommy has anger issues and still suffers from hallucinations (and bad dreams).

Unfortunately, the day Tommy arrives at the secluded property one of the kids murders another with an axe... triggering someone to adopt the Jason persona and start killing random people in the area, getting ever closer to the halfway house.

It's quite obvious from early on that this isn't the real Jason Voorhees as the killer isn't following Jason's "rules" - the victims have no connection with Crystal Lake and some are quite innocent of any of the 'infractions' that drive him to kill.

Also, some of the kills are too complex for the zombie Jason we saw in The Final Chapter.

We're even told, although the veracity of the speaker isn't confirmed, that the real Jason not only died years ago, but was cremated.

So, who is it? The obvious answer is Tommy, of course.

But it could be that arbitrary supporting character director Danny Steinmann keeps framing in "meaningful" and "enigmatic" shots.

And that's the problem with A New Beginning, it's all a bit Scooby-Doo (but with more blood and boobs) once you figure out that Martin Kitrosser, David Cohen, and Danny Steinmann's script is trying to replicate the twist-that-then-wasn't-a-twist from the first Friday The 13th film.

But the culprit they chose (and the revelation that he appears to have adopted the guise of Jason almost at random) makes him just another mass murderer, rather than an iconic horror film slasher.

He has his "reason" but his method doesn't make cinematic sense.

And the proximity of Tommy to all this turns out to be just one freaking huge coincidence. Even the fact that the killer is revealed to be wearing a Scooby-Doo mask and a point is made, early on, about Tommy still making his horror masks... no connection, whatsoever, just a co-inky-dink!

Although, all this does then lead to the denouement, which seems to really be The New Beginning of the title, as it, presumably, sets up 1986's Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

Friday The 13th - The Final Chapter (1984)

Jason was dead, to begin with.

The Final Chapter (which, now, it clearly wasn't) opens with a mega flashback compilation covering all the earlier Friday The 13th films to bring us up to speed

Then the action picks up from end of Part Three with the police taking away the bodies, including Jason, from the farmstead massacre.

Jason (Ted White) is taken to the morgue of the local hospital where he comes under the care of sleazy Axel (Bruce Mahler) the mortuary technician, and before you know, without any explanation, Jason suddenly springs back to life and begins his slaughtering ways again... this time (presumably now) as a zombie, of sorts.

He returns to his old stomping ground of Crystal Lake, homing in on a couple of lakeside properties - one where hot single mum, Mrs Jarvis (Joan Freeman) and her two kids, Trish (Kimberly Beck) and Tommy (Corey Feldman), and their Golden retriever Gordon, are staying, the other being a newly-rented property with its mandatory collection of - surprise, surprise - horny, stereotypical teens (this time including a gloriously scenery-chewing Crispin Glover).

Seemingly taking place just a day (maybe two) after the massacre in Part Three - and we know it's made the headlines in the local newspaper and on television - all the locals seem remarkably blasé about the whole horrorshow in Barney Cohen's script.

I think it probably says something about my age that of all the attractive characters in the cast, the one I find most appealing is the mother, Mrs Jarvis (who doesn't even merit a first name or an onscreen death!)

There's a teensy-weensy more flesh on display in The Final Chapter, as well as (shock, horror) a smattering of f-bombs, but director Joseph Zito drops the ball when it comes to pacing. It really lags in the middle third and you find yourself yearning for Jason and his violent behaviour.

What the hell is going on here???

While the seminal slasher does make some creative use of props as murder weapons, The Final Chapter is most memorable for a couple of really peculiar sequences: namely the Crispin Glover dance scene and then the "clever" way Corey Feldman tricks Jason in the final act.

Goofy young Tommy Jarvis is some kind of child prodigy, at the age of about twelve he's able to fix car engines and house electrics, as well as make B-movie quality horror masks.

And yet none of this really plays into his final trick - which, in a way, emulates Ginny's deception in Part Two (but Tommy is pretending to be "young Jason" while she was being "mother").

Despite this being the first part of the saga where Jason was clearly meant to be more than human, a supernatural killer returned from the grave, I found The Final Chapter the least engaging of the franchise so far, because of the erratic quality of its direction.

The one possibly interesting aspect, that has been a feature of all the films in some shape or form, but is possibly more overt with Tommy is the psychological damage that surviving an encounter with Jason does to people.

All the main, last, survivors of the films have suffered terrifying hallucinations or delusions of one form or another.

Is there some sort of support group they could join?

Friday The 13th - Part Three (1982)

After the first seven minutes of Friday The 13th: Part Three turn out to be the last seven minutes of Part Two (minus the slightly baffling denouement), it quickly becomes clear that this is as much a continuation of the last film as a sequel, picking up Jason's story the day after he gets tricked by the lovely Ginny (Amy Steel).

Having randomly butchered the owners of a roadside café-and-store, Jason turns his attention to a nearby farm on the lakeshore.

It just so happens that Chris (Dana Kimmell), the daughter of the farm's owners, is bringing a stereotypical selection of a her horny teen friends (including the potheads, the doofus etc) up to the empty farm for a dirty weekend.

We later discover that Chris had an encounter in the woods with Jason a couple of years earlier that she somehow survived (which does make me postulate whether she, in fact, imagines everything we see in this film... and she is actually the killer!)

Before the inevitable slaughter of the teens begins, we're introduced to a comedically over-the-top trio of bikers that I kinda hoped would turn out to be the heroes of the piece. But, sadly, no.

While most of the murder-victims-to-be are blandly forgettable, one in particular stands out as deserving his fate.

Although, impressively, he manages to cosplay as "hockey mask Jason" before there even was a "hockey mask Jason", if ever there was a character deserving of evisceration by Jason Voorhees it's Shelly (Larry Zerner) the "practical joker".

To be fair, though, Shelly's not the only character who grates on the nerves here. In truth, the cocktail of cliché characters and corny dialogue is such that there are times when you think you're watching a parody of the franchise.

You can also tell that this was originally shot to make 'best' use of gimmicky 3D, with people pointing - or throwing - a variety of objects at the camera, from juggling balls and a yo-yo to fork handles, a red hot poker, and a couple of eyeballs!

If nothing else, Part Three is a pivotal moment in the franchise, as this is the episode where Jason adopts his iconic mask and the weapon he is most associated with: his machete.

However, he's still very much a human being in this one: albeit a seemingly preternaturally strong one who can heal wounds at a Wolverine-like speed (just yesterday he got a massive cut to his shoulder, right? It appears healed by this outing).

Essentially, Part Three tells the same story as the previous two movies (with a masked killer attacking anyone intruding on "his land"), but succeeds in changing things up by cementing the antagonist's iconic look... and then, seemingly, ending the franchise in the final shots.

But we know better...

Friday The 13th - Part Two (1981)

As with the original movie, Friday The 13th: Part Two appears to be taking us in one direction in its opening scenes, then dramatically pulls the rug from under our feet and sends us off in another direction.

The main action picks up five years after the massacre at Camp Crystal Lake, with the camp still closed off and Jason relegated to a campfire tale told to scare the fresh recruits at a new counsellor training centre that has opened elsewhere on the lake-shore.

In many ways, Part Two is the same film as before, even down to the third act cat-and-mouse battle of wits between Jason (Warrington Gillette) - who really is the slasher this time - and the final girl, Ginny (Amy Steel).

To be honest, the plot is negligible here: a gaggle of weed-smoking, pre-marital sexing teens arrive for camp counsellor training and Jason starts to pick them off (having tied up a few loose ends earlier on).

There's a touch of grubby Texas Chainsaw Massacre chic in Jason's derelict cabin the woods, which is a nice addition to the mythology, but otherwise Part Two is a smartly written but by-the-numbers, old school slasher flick with more suggestion than in-your-face gore.

Steve Miner's direction of Ron Kurz's script also makes 87-minute movie flash by in no time. When it hit the half-way point, I thought the TV had only been on for about 20 minutes.

There's slightly more flesh on display than in the previous flick, but Miner follows the directorial style established previously and doesn't linger on any of the kills in particular (in case you are taken out of the moment by realising it's all fake blood and rubber prosthetics).

It's a shame the ending is a bit of a jumble, as it appears to have been attempting to recapture the original's shit-your-pants shock of Jason erupting from the lake, but gets a bit confused in what the moment is trying to say in the film.

Of course, what you do realise, in hindsight, is that these first films are simply the warm-up act for the gonzo, supernatural, slaughter that is to come later in the franchise - and that people associate with Jason and Friday The 13th.

In Part Two, Jason is still very much human, albeit a deranged, disfigured, and delusional one.

And he hasn't even adopted his iconic hockey mask yet...

Friday The 13th (1980)

I do loves me some long-running, trashy, horror franchise shenanigans, but for some reason - unlike, say, Nightmare On Elm Street and Wrong Turn, where I watched each episode religiously as it came out - I've only seen random parts of the Friday The 13th story.

Although I was well aware of the big twist on the killer's identity (it's not Jason) and the suckerpunch right at the end (it is Jason), the film still holds up after all these years with some clever touches (such as the girl we initially think is being set up to be the Final Girl is actually the first to go), decent acting and palpable tension.

The awkward, occasionally stilted, dialogue comes across as naturalistic, helping to heighten the verisimilitude of this very-grounded (except, of course, for that famous moment at the end) opening salvo in the Friday The 13th franchise.

The film unfolds over a single day and rain-soaked night, with the bulk of the kills falling into the middle third of its 92-minute duration, before third act game of cat-and-mouse between the actual deranged killer and the actual Final Girl.

A half-dozen young councillors (including Kevin Bacon) arrive at Camp Crystal Lake to help prepare for its grand reopening, several  decades after it closed following a drowning, a couple of unsolved murders and some arson attacks.

Unfortunately someone doesn't want the camp to reopen...

Compared to some of today's gorefests, Friday The 13th is quite tame and even the (very brief) sexy time isn't exactly hardcore.

The Psycho-inspired stings and wind score emphasises the power of intelligent, nondiegetic, music to heighten tension and director Sean S. Cunningham wisely doesn't let us see us a fair number of the kills as they happen as I'm not convinced all of Tom Savini's effects stand the test of time.

It's only really in the last half-hour or so that the survivors suddenly twig that something is going on... and start finding the bodies.

Kevin Bacon manages to stay alive for less time than Johnny Depp in the original Nightmare On Elm Street and is best remembered for getting an arrow through his throat.

My only real criticism is the film should have ended with its Carrie-like shock moment, rather than then rambling on to the final scene with Alice (Adrienne King) in hospital.

This adds nothing except to slightly undercut the horror of the shocking scene before.

And as to the 'twist' with the killer's true identity, I guess at the time it wasn't even a twist as no-one knew of the unstoppable zombie that was Jason Voorhees in the later films.

IT'S FRIDAY THE 13th FRIDAY!!!

Photo by Justin Campbell on Unsplash

As today is the only Friday the 13th in 2025, Cowboys, Capes, and Claws will be celebrating the unlife and times of unstoppable slasher Jason Voorhees with regular retro reviews of the Friday The 13th horror movie franchise.