Crystal Lake Countdown Day 11: Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Friday the 13th fans tend to favor the movie that they started off with no matter what. For me, that means loving Friday the 13th is always going to come back to Friday the 13th Part 2. Luckily, this first sequel really is the best of the series. Some view Part 2 as an odd-man-out entry because Jason is sporting his Elephant Man sack here (a look also reminiscent of the hooded killer in The Town That Dreaded Sundown) rather than the iconic hockey mask but that sack has always worked for me. Sack head Jason forever! With Part 2, Steve Miner took over as director from Sean Cunningham after serving as associate producer on the original and in his first feature directing gig he brought his A-game and turned the surprise success of Friday the 13th into a series to be reckoned with.

Well before I saw Part 2, I saw the cover of FANGORIA issue #12 that featured a pic of Mrs. Voorhees' severed head in the refrigerator (this was back when FANGORIA was proudly sold at my local Jane Alden convenience store - those were the days!). That cover blew me away and I couldn't wait to see the movie. At the time I hadn't even seen the first Friday yet but my best friend had just gotten cable installed in his neighborhood and so our day was coming.

Shortly after Part 2 made its pay cable premeire, we chose a weekend to do a sleepover when we knew Part 2 would be airing. Because his parents would know we were up watching something we shouldn't be if we watched the earliest scheduled show of the night, we had to wait till the 1:00 am showing. Around 12:20 or so, our curiosity got the best of us and we decided that we had to take a peek at the ending of the movie. We were paranoid about being heard so we got right up on top of the TV with the volume low. It was the scene towards the end where Ginny and Paul are back in their cabin and they hear a scratching at the door. Ginny holds a pitchfork in front of her, braced for whatever may burst in as Paul whips open the door to reveal an adorable little puppy. Just then Jason explodes through the window behind Ginny. My friend and I leaped back at least ten feet in the air, then scrambled back to the TV to shut it off. It was then that my friend and I started to have serious second thoughts about watching the rest of the movie.

When 1:00 am came and we put the TV back on, we were a little less sure about our decision then we had been earlier in the night. And the opening sequence did nothing to put us at ease. Even knowing ahead of time that Mrs. Voorhees' head would be in the refrigerator, the pre-title sequence had me cowering. I even jumped at the cheap scare of a cat jumping through the window. And the clips from the original Friday were terrifying, too, as we hadn't seen any of that movie yet. By the time the titles came up, we were convinced that if the movie began like this and ended with the scene we saw earlier, then this had to be the scariest movie either of us had ever seen.

By 2:30 or so, as the credits rolled over a freeze frame of Mrs. Voorhees' head, I don't know if we still thought we had seen the scariest movie ever - as it turns out, save for the wheelchair death of Mark, the beginning and the end were by far the best parts of the movie - but we sure as shit had enjoyed ourselves. From that night on, I was a diehard Friday the 13th fan. As much as the series has had its ups and downs over the years, I can't shed my affection for it. As for how Part 2 holds up today, I think that in almost every way, it's an improvement over the original (even though it's impossible to best the climatic decapitation of Mrs. Voorhees and Jason's leap from the lake). Working in Part 2's favor is the fact that Miner's a sharper director than Cunningham, the cast is a little more polished (without being overly slick) and the pace is quicker than that of the original without being as rushed as the later entries of the series would become. Miner also avoids the more overt corniness of the original (no Strip Monopoly here) and his lead actress, Amy Steel, is hands-down the best of the Friday girls. I love Adrienne King as Alice but Steel's Ginny really has it all. She has such a natural appeal - she's tough, beautiful, resourceful, and athletic. Had Steel stuck with the series for another outing (or had done another horror film that was stronger than 1986's April Fool's Day), I think she'd be more widely appreciated as a classic Scream Queen.



While I think Ted White's Jason from The Final Chapter takes the golden machete for Best Jason, I love Steve Dash's Jason too (with his signature lopping run) and Part 2's overall depiction of Jason as a resourceful - but not indestructible - backwoods psycho is my favorite handling of the character. The concept of Jason keeping his mother's head on a candle-lit shrine (surrounded by the bodies of the victims he claimed in her name - including Alice's decayed corpse with the ice pick still in her skull) was perfect and it said all that ever needed to be said about him. I also think that make-up man Carl Fullerton's design for Jason (as worn by Warrington Gillette) remains the best that's been done, looking grotesque without going over the top. Truly a face only a mother could love.

The final chase between Jason and Ginny is still the best in the series. Miner squeezes a lot of excitement out of this long sequence (that begins when Ginny detects the crouched figure of Jason moving towards them in the dark of the main cabin - "Paul, there's someone in this fucking room!"). And Ginny's stand-off with Jason as she uses her child psychology training to get into Jason's head is a classic moment, giving Dash a chance to deliver more of real performance than other Jasons as he bows before the image of his approving 'mother'.

In a perfect world, the MPAA wouldn't have forced Miner to excise the now-legendary FX footage of Sandra and Bill's shish-ka-bob demise but that's just the breaks (and in a slightly more just world, Paramount would've reinstated the footage by now). Part 2 is still solid without it, though, and whatever it's faults Part 2 earns the distinction of being the film that turned Friday the 13th into a successful franchise. Had Miner and co. made different choices with this film - had they not gone with the idea of introducing Jason as the killer, had they abandoned the formula of the first film instead of striving to refine it, then we wouldn't still be going back to Camp Crystal Lake all these years later.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 10: Friday the 13th (1980)

Sometimes you just catch lightening in a bottle and that's what the original Friday the 13th was. The simple story crafted by Victor Miller and Sean Cunningham, with its natural qualities of a campfire tale, was the perfect showcase for Tom Savini's groundbreaking FX work. Savini's own work in 1978's Dawn of the Dead was a benchmark in splatter (in fact, his work in that film led Romero to coin the phrase "splatter movie") but it was more of a midnight movie, rather than a mainstream hit. But Friday the 13th was different. For this grotty little independent film, with its grainy look and grisly FX to be picked up by a major studio like Paramount was a significant deal. It meant that Friday the 13th would receive the kind of wide distribution that a low budget exploitation film normally wouldn't have. And unlike Dawn of the Dead, it was rated R so it would automatically play more venues and be more accessible to a wider range of moviegoers. So while some had already had the pleasure of seeing the top of a zombie's head sliced off by a helicopter blade, for many viewers Friday the 13th was really the start of something new.

It's almost impossible now, almost thirty years later to even remember, much less convey to those who weren't around then, how genuinely shocking the original Friday the 13th was at the time. We weren't such a jaded culture back then. In 1980, just to see a throat slashed on screen was really something. It was horrifying. And Kevin Bacon's arrow through the neck murder was astonishing, jaw-dropping stuff. We weren't blase yet about sights like this. We didn't yet live in world of Re-Animator, or The Evil Dead, or Dead-Alive where seeing gore by the gallons became commonplace. And in the days before most households had VCR's, if you hadn't seen Dawn of the Dead in a theater, you had no other way to see it (and for those few who had VCR's in 1980, I don't even think Dawn of the Dead was on cassette yet).

Given the extremes to which popular culture in general - and horror filmmaking in particular - have gone in the years since Friday the 13th, the original film now carries an old-fashioned appeal to it. Savini's state-of-the-art special effects (which only constitute about a minute or two of screentime in the film) forever changed the expectations of horror fans - and made horror movies a renewed target for moral watchdogs as well. The outrage this film incurred seems hard to believe now, as today what was once considered to be a notorious bloodbath seems positively Hitchcockian.

Although Friday the 13th has long since lost its shock value, I think it still plays very well. And that's because Cunningham didn't set out to make a gore film. This isn't out to hammer the viewer with kill after kill. Cunningham actually expects the audience to stick with the movie when not much appears to be happening. And in tandem with cinematographer Barry Abrams, Cunningham makes Camp Crystal Lake a truly scary place to be. More than with any other film in the series, you really feel that these kids are alone in the middle of the woods. There's a sense of isolation that pervades the film and when night falls on Crystal Lake, it really feels like night - not movie-style night time where everything is still somehow illuminated but real, honest-to-God night. Outside the the limited light of a lantern or a flashlight, you're just looking at blackness. The only other film since that created that same feeling that I can readily think of is The Blair Witch Project.

Some may feel otherwise but for me, Betsy Palmer's performance as Mrs. Voorhees falls on the right side of campiness. Her peformance doesn't hold back and it really gives the third act a boost. Palmer handles the necessary exposition well without letting it stop the film in its tracks and when she has to pursue Alice, she's a convincing threat. You can believe that she was able to take down all these people and that she would be a relentless adversary. And as the first Final Girl of the Friday series, Adrienne King's Alice will always exist in a class by herself. Maybe because I've never seen King in any other film besides this, but she's easily the most wholly believable girl-next-door of any of the Friday actresses. There's a cherub-faced sweetness about her that's been abolished from the world of movies, apparently, because I've never seen another horror heroine quite like her.

Even though Friday the 13th was far from an original creation - preceded by the likes of Twitch of the Death Nerve, Black Christmas, and Halloween - it still feels like a one of a kind movie to me, like a last summer of innocence before horror films had to constantly up the ante on each other and squeeze more slaughter in. It feels like a product of more carefree times and that's always a welcome place to return to.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 9: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

The prospect of the Friday the 13th series coming to an end was a shocking notion in 1984. At least it was for the legions of fans who had come to depend on a yearly fix of summer camp slaughter. Then again, maybe four films that were practically the same should be considered enough. Yeah, I didn’t buy that then or now but regardless, at the time it looked like the final curtain was really falling on Jason’s reign of terror.

Director Joe Zito, of The Prowler fame, was hired to direct and his proven skill at making great slasher cinema would be an asset to The Final Chapter. Along with scripter Barney Cohen and creative input from Boston-based money man Phil Scuderi, Jason’s endgame was mapped out. One thing I admire about The Final Chapter is that there’s no importance placed on explaining whatever lingering mysteries the series offered. This wasn't taken an opportunity to give fans any answers. In fact, it doesn't even seem to have been made by people who were aware that there might have been any questions to begin with. Jason himself is still as inexplicable and implacable as ever. He’s apparently dead when the movie begins – at least dead enough to be taken to the morgue – and then after awhile he gets up and starts killing again. That’s it. And that’s how it should be, damn it. We know Jason’s not really dead and it’s unimportant to the movie how he manages to overcome his final slumber. We don’t need any lightening bolts, we don’t need any occult rituals, we don’t even need any fucking words said about it. If this movie were made today, of course, the screenwriters would be compelled to come up with some mystic, supernatural horseshit or some kind of backstory about the Voorhees bloodline. Thankfully, The Final Chapter was made before fans started demanding that kind of crap and it was made by people who had no patience for nonsense, either. This was the last chance for Jason to do what he did best. Why waste time on anything else?

The only bone The Final Chapter throws towards stoking the larger legend of Jason is with the character of Rob (Erich Anderson), the amateur hunter who thinks that he can kill Jason on his home turf. I always liked this character as it played up Jason’s aura as some kind of modern myth. Given the time line of Friday Parts 2-4, however, Rob’s status as a Jason Hunter Extraordinaire doesn’t make much sense. It’s the murder of his sister Sandra (the bottom half of the shish-a-bob kill in Part 2) that put him on a path of vengeance but while it seems like Rob’s been hunting Jason for years, chronologically his sister died just two weeks ago at best. Sure, in the real world, we’d been watching Jason wasting teens for four years but in the movie world, the events of Parts 2-4 happened virtually on top of each other. But whatever, Rob’s still a helluva guy and I'm glad he's in The Final Chapter.

What’s really great about this character, though, is how utterly useless he ends up being. Here’s a guy who’s whole self-appointed purpose in life is to put Jason down for good. He’s young, he’s fit, he’s armed for big game. Shit, this guy’s prepared. But yet he suffers one of the most epic fails of any character in the series. I’d like to be able to say Rob gave Jason a run for his money, but that’s just not true. Jason butchers him without even breaking a sweat. Rob’s death scene is one of the best of the series – not because of any splatter FX but because it’s just so harsh. Some might find Rob’s cries of “He’s killing me!” as Jason flays him to death with a gardening tool to be corny but I’ve always thought it was one of the most chilling moments in the series. It’s the most human, the most real, reaction of any Friday victim. If only Rob was half the hunter he thought he was, he would've played things a little bit smarter (here's a life-saving tip for future Jason Hunters: dark basements are Jason's friend).

To add insult to (terminal) injury, where macho Rob failed, a lame kid succeeded. Back in the day, when I heard that a kid was going to be the one to kill Jason, I was a little skeptical on how that would play out. It just didn’t sound so cool to me. But Corey Feldman’s Tommy won me over. The obvious homage to Tom Savini was appreciated and from the beginning, Tommy was more bent than he was precocious. I love his attempt to psych out Jason by making himself look like Jason as a kid (a move that echoed back to Ginny’s similar maneuver in Part 2 - apparently Jason’s Achilles’ Heel is mind games). It was a risky stunt but lucky for Tommy, Jason is genius at killing people but incredibly dense in every other way. He’ll catch on to your game eventually but being able to stop Jason just for a few seconds is an accomplishment few can boast about. Take a bow, Tommy!


Jason’s actual death (however temporary it may have been) was depicted by returning FX hero Tom Savini and boy, did he deliver. The slide down the machete as Jason's face twitches is just awesome. This was the first Friday I saw in the theaters and that moment got an enormous reaction that I'll never forget. Savini originally had lobbied to have Jason die by a microwave device of Tommy’s invention that would’ve melted Jason’s head but I think the producers were right in feeling that would’ve been too 'sci-fi' for Friday the 13th. I think in the Final Chapter it had to be shown that those who live by the machete, die by the machete.

As much as I remember the cheers that greeted Jason’s glorious end, I also remember the round of groans and knowing chuckles that met the final scene of Tommy and Trish in the hospital. As soon as the film froze on Tommy’s intense stare, the whole theater knew they’d been had by this "Final Chapter". Not that anyone was complaining about it, though. After all, who ever wants to see a good time end? As good times go, The Final Chapter remains one of the best. Savini’s work here isn’t always exemplary (some effects reflect a rushed effort - Savini was hired late in the production) but it still has his signature touch. And while the previous three films hadn’t been known for letting their characters off easy, The Final Chapter was nothing short of brutal.

But I don't think it's because the kids in this film die in any more sadistic ways than the victims in past Fridays did but it's just the presence Ted White has as Jason that sells these moments so well. When he destroys someone (like when he mashes Peter Barton's face against the back of the shower wall), you really believe it.

Previous Jasons Steve Dash and Richard Brooker were both excellent in their own right but White’s Jason is the one you really don’t want to fuck with. It’s common to hear some people say that the Friday the 13th's were never scary to begin with but I totally disagree. If nothing else, they were a lot scarier in their day then the Saw films are now, that's for sure. Jason may have turned into a more cartoonish figure with Part VI and the subsequent sequels but before that he was menacing to behold and White’s Jason, especially, was a real force to be reckoned with.

If this had been the real Final Chapter, it would’ve been a fitting cap to the series and at four films, the producers could still claim a legendary run. I'm glad they didn't quit as hope always spring eternal that the series will recapture its magic. But as a fan, I have to say that although I continue to love and follow the films, everything since Tommy delivered the final blows to Jason - and the screen faded to white for the last time in the series - has felt anticlimactic.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 8: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

This controversial attempt to continue Friday the 13th after 1984's The Final Chapter didn't win many fans at the time of its 1985 release. And in fact, it hasn't won many more in the twenty-four years since then, either. There's a large contingent of Friday fans who are still beside themselves that this wasn't the 'real' Jason. But I love A New Beginning. In the interest of full disclosure, I also love the much-loathed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which tried to continue the Halloween series without Michael Myers. I guess I must find it interesting when franchises try to break away from what's expected of them. Either that, or I just like being contrary.

In the case of A New Beginning, I believe it was way ahead of its time in its irreverent attitude towards the Friday franchise and towards slasher cinema in general. Whereas Friday the 13th began with a slow burn murder mystery in which a small group of isolated kids were annihilated one by one, A New Beginning is the crackhead version of that. There's a murder mystery here, too, as an unknown assailant is picking off various victims but rather than play up the suspense and atmosphere or invite some involvement with the characters, director Danny Steinmann and writer David Cohen turned A New Beginning into a trashy, hyper-kinetic, coke binge of a slasher film. And before Tom McLoughlin included self-mocking humor in Jason Lives, A New Beginning had already done the same in a much slyer way (such as the inclusion of a Greenpeace poster in one victim's bedroom with the ironic slogan "Stop The Slaughter").

Set in the youth rehabilitation center of Pinehurst, a halfway house for troubled kids, A New Beginning had the largest cast of any Friday film to date. On top of the large cast of kids populating Pinehurst, there's also the home's two head counselors, an eldery cook and his young grandson Reggie. That's more than enough potential victims (and potential red herrings) for any slasher film to handle but then Steinmann and Cohen bring in even more characters to fill out the cast. There's the cigar-chomping sheriff who believes Jason is still alive, the batshit crazy hillbilly bitch along with her wailing man-child of a son, the cokehead van driver who takes patients to and from Pinehurst, a pair of ambulance drivers, and a shady vagrant looking for work. And as if all those characters weren't enough, the first two victims of the film are two young dudes stranded on the side of the road (both inexplicably dressed like Marlon Brando in the The Wild Ones) who have nothing to do with anything else in the film except to be in that single scene to die. With all these people populating the cast of A New Beginning, it's clear that Steinmann and Cohen weren't out to make a moody character piece. This was about saturating the screen with more kills, more nudity, and more humor than any previous Friday.

And whereas the previous Friday's had been all about presenting young characters who were very All-American in their looks, backgrounds, and personality, A New Beginning delivers a much coarser crew. The kids in this film aren't the same wholesome kids (with an innocent taste for pot and sex) coming to camp for the summer or out to party in the woods as we'd seen in other Fridays. These were all damaged kids, with mental and emotional issues. They're either punk-asses, or withdrawn, or dysfunctional in some other way. And outside of the concerned members of the Pinehurst staff, nearly every other character in A New Beginning is portrayed as being either shrill, abrasive, or lewd. Sometimes all of the above. At first glance, it's a jarring approach but it makes A New Beginning stand out. While it's almost impossible to recall the cast members of most of the Friday the 13th's, even characters who have very little screen time in A New Beginning are memorable (my personal favorite being Miguel A. Nunez Jr. as 'Demon', doomed to die after taking an emergency enchilada dump).

Although the previous Friday was The Final Chapter, A New Beginning was a real era-ender as this was the last Friday to be overseen by the late Phil Scuderi, one of the group of Boston theater owners who bankrolled the original Friday and who maintained creative control over the sequels until Part VI when they stepped away from the series. From the testimony of several key players as revealed in Peter M. Bracke's indispensable account of the Friday series, Crystal Lake Memories, Scuderi exercised much more influence over Fridays Parts 2-5 than is widely known. Part 2 screenwriter Ron Kurz gives credit to Scuderi for much of what went into Part 2, such as the wheelchair death of Mark and the famous shish-ka-bob death of Sandra and Jeff (as Kurz told Bracke: "Part 2 was a true collaboration between Phil Scuderi and myself...Phil was a creative force in his own right.") and Final Chapter director Joe Zito discussed how the script that he and Barney Cohen came up with was shaped by Scuderi's input ("Barney and I built the script from the beginning, but it was completely visualized by this guy sitting in Boston.").

With A New Beginning, Scuderi handpicked Steinmann as director and I believe that in making that pick, knowing Steinmann's background in porn and exploitation, Scuderi was out to achieve a more down and dirty, grindhouse vibe from the start. I don't think that was just his commercial instincts talking, I think it was Scuderi's personal taste as well. After Scuderi's departure, the films immediately became weaker and more watered down, leaving A New Beginning to be a swan song for the series' more brutal days. And judging by the grittier style of the early sequels (no supernatural elements, no explanation for Jason's invulnerability) and Scuderi's support of the psychological approach to A New Beginning, I suspect that under his stewardship, Jason would've never become the amped-up super zombie of the later installments. I think Scuderi's instincts were to keep Friday within the real world as much as possible and time has borne this out as being the correct approach to the series. If Jason had to be brought back to life for commercial reasons, I think if Scuderi had stuck around maybe instead of being revived by lightening, the series would've cribbed from the Chuck Norris film Silent Rage (1982) and had Jason be revived by unscrupulous scientists.

Even though the idea of a replacement Jason was roundly hated, I think A New Beginning's attempt to pass the torch to another killer was fine. The resolution here was ridiculous but in theory, it should've worked. Maybe to have Tommy be the killer all along would've been the better way to go. John Shepherd gives an underrated performance with his Tommy coming across as legitimately dangerous and yet sympathetic and tortured. His sudden bursts of violence are 100% kick-ass and if this version of the character ever became the next Jason, it would've been sick. He wouldn't have even had to resort to weapons because he already fucking was a weapon. Somewhere between this film and Jason Lives, though, he must've lost all his skills 'cause if he was still able to do the shit he did here, no cop would've been able to put him in a jail - you would've had a First Blood Rambo situation on your hands. That's a movie I would've loved to have seen - Tommy at war with an outmatched police force. Maybe they could've brought back Shavar Ross as Reggie the Reckless to talk Tommy down. Now that would be a dream Friday the 13th.

As much as it left many followers of the series frustrated, I find A New Beginning to be a work of misunderstood humor (when the severed arm of a hacked up fat kid is laying on top of his own dead body still clutching a chocolate bar, I've got to believe that's intentionally funny) and sleazy charm. It may not be the most favored Friday, but to paraphrase its tagline, if A New Beginning still haunts you...you're not alone.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 7: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

After fandom let out a collective "Nooooo!!" at the notion of a replacement Jason in A New Beginning, the task fell to the filmmakers of Friday the 13th Part VI to restore Jason to the ranks of horror's heavyweights. Writer/director Tom McLoughlin had already established himself as someone with an affinity for fright with his 1983 film One Dark Night, a supernatural shocker about a group of college kids fending off zombies in a mausoleum. But did he have the chops to bring Jason back in style? While the simple answer is "yes", my enthusiasm for this film has always been a little muted. On the one hand, Jason Lives is the slickest, most accomplished film of the original Paramount Fridays (and, really, it outclasses the New Line efforts to date as well - not counting the remake). The pacing is great, with a story that hits the ground running and never pauses for downtime (this was the shortest Friday at the time, clocking in at 86 minutes), the cast is even more attractive than usual (hello, Jennifer Cooke!) and on the whole they show more across the board talent (including an affinity for comedy) than previous Friday thespians. Against all expectations, McLoughlin beat the odds and made the sixth Friday the 13th into a respectable movie.

But honestly, how fun is that?

While I concede that there's a lot to admire about Jason Lives, and I do enjoy it, I've always considered it a little too sanitized for my taste - it's almost the Disney version of a Friday the 13th film (no drugs! no nudity! What the fuck?). The humor is less smart than it is 'cute' (like when a young camper is seen reading Sartre's No Exit) and I'm just not the biggest fan of cute - especially when it involves my favorite slaughter series. Everything's kind of a wink and an elbow to the ribs here (like when the cemetery groundskeeper looks into the camera and says "some people sure got a strange idea of entertainment") and that aspect to Jason Lives has always rubbed me the wrong way.

But as far as getting Jason back on his feet, Jason Lives does get the job done. The pre-title sequence here in which Jason is revived by a bolt of lightening is one of the best of the series and it's a scene so good, the rest of the film has a hard time living up to it. On the whole, McLoughlin makes a good effort with the film rocketing from scene to scene with Tommy Jarvis on a mission to end Jason's rampage. I really like the use of Tommy here, the fact that he's responsible for bringing Jason back to life and that he has to become this action hero to take on Jason. This film has a momentum to it that no other Friday has (even the dialogue is fast-paced). It's no wonder that many fans regard it as their favorite of the series.


As the film that had to bring Jason back from the dead come hell or high water (the mandate from fans - no more scrubs!), the game changing element of Jason Lives is that it officially turned Jason into a supernatural being. Up until Jason Lives, the series had always kept one foot in the real world. Sure Jason kept coming back from a lot of physical harm but never so much that an explanation was needed - the guy was just a tough fuck to kill. Here, though, Jason is unequivocally dead. He's in the ground with a face full of maggots. Coming back from that isn't as simple as brushing off an axe blow to the head. McLoughlin's solution to give Jason a monster movie-style resurrection is fine, it works, but at the same time the series could never be the same after that. Jason as a murdering backwoods cretin was scary; Jason as a lightening-charged super zombie - not so much.

But as lightening-charged super zombies go, however, Jason makes a pretty good one - getting off to a great start by ripping out the heart of one-time Horshack Ron Palillo. C.J. Graham proves to be one of the better Jasons and his lean and mean style fits right in with McLoughlin's film. His Jason is a lot more hands-on with victims than past Jasons with his approach being less about weapons and power tools and more about applying brute strength (as in the film's best kill, the famous back-breaking death of Sheriff Garris). Very little blood is shed during Jason Lives, though, and this is the most splatter-lite Friday of them all. Clean-cut and eager to please, this was the late '80s pop metal arena rocker version of Jason as opposed to the hardcore headbanger that he used to be. It was kind of like seeing Van Halen become the much more vanilla 'Van Haggar' but for what it was, it worked. It's just a shame that filmmakers with the same skill and the same knack for fun as McLoughlin didn't carry on the franchise after Jason Lives, the last good Friday of the '80s.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 6: Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D (1982)

Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D was the first installment of the series where the formula started to show its limitations. What worked so well in the first two films was already starting to seem too familiar. Even though initial discussions on Part 3 involved the idea of continuing the story of Amy Steel character of Ginny from Part 2 as she dealt with her trauma in a mental institution, that new direction never took hold. Instead, a choice was made to stick to the elements that were proven to be popular with audiences. Part 3 would once again see more kids spending time at Crystal Lake and meeting inventive deaths at the hands of Jason.

With so little to differentiate Part 3 from the previous two installments, though, the Friday producers felt they had to look for a hook to draw audiences back for more of the same old, same old (notice that every subsequent Friday always incorporated some gimmick - whether it be promoted as a "Final Chapter", a "New Beginning", or a change in locale, like Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason X). Luckily for the Friday the 13th crew, 3-D was on the rise again and it seemed like the perfect match for a Friday film. I remember the incredible hoopla around this movie when it came out and in the summer of '82, it was definitely the film all the cool kids wanted to see.

This time around, the new batch of kids heading to the slaughter aren't camp counselors but just a bunch of friends looking for a weekend getaway on the rustic grounds of Higgin's Haven. You'd think that these yahoos would've had second thoughts about partying around Crystal Lake as the grisly events of Part 2 have happened just days earlier. But clearly a little mass murder isn't going to stop a bunch of fun-loving kids like these. So with everyone in the van and committed to getting trashed and/or laid, it's off to the woods with no one troubled by the events of the last film. Little do these chumps know that Jason doesn't just go to work on Friday the 13th. If you thought Friday the 13th was hard to survive, look out for Friday the 20th!

Speaking of survival, we learn an important new "don't'" in the Friday the 13th universe in Part 3. Some might find this unnecessary to be explained but when you survive an encounter with Jason, don't test your luck with a rematch. Case in point is the character of Ali (Nick Savage) - the bad-ass black biker dude who isn't going to be satisfied until Jason fucks him up permanently. I loved it when Ali first took on Jason in the barn and got beat down - sure he lost but this was the first character who really tried to get hardcore on Jason so that was something to see. But the best moment of the whole film for me is when he pops up again towards the end, distracting Jason from his attack on Final Girl Chris (Dana Kimmell). When Ali reappears ready to throw down with Jason again, it's like - "Shit, he isn't dead?". I guess that was Jason's reaction, too, because he instantly chops off Ali's right hand, like "This is what I get for only half-fucking you up before. Let me fix that." The reaction of Ali as he looks at the stump where his hand used to be is priceless. It might be this moment where Jason became a superhero of slaughter rather than just a slasher.

Of course, this is also the film where Jason found his signature look with his iconic hockey mask making its debut (RIP Shelly!). Even though we take it for granted now, at the time no one knew what a hit this look would be with fans. The Friday series fell ass-backwards into its own mythology over the course those first few films but this is where it all started to get locked down.

This is also the first Friday to establish the tradition of bringing in random victims outside of the core group of characters just to put up bigger numbers for Jason. If you liked the banana-eating hitchhiker in The Final Chapter, or any of the many 'walk-on' victims that have appeared in the films over the years, thank Part 3. It was with this film that the producers realized that it was always better to fill screen time with someone getting killed - no matter who it was or what part they played in the film. Hence, in Part 3 there's Harold, the luckless shop owner (played by the late Steve Susskind) and his nagging wife as well as the biker gang led by Ali who runs afoul of Jason. Screen time that in the previous films might've been spent on moments of character development with the main cast (Strip Monopoly, Marcie's 'shower dream') was now used to deliver more of the moments that audiences expected from Friday the 13th. No more listening to Bill strum his guitar, or sitting at a bar bullshitting about the legend of Jason - Part 3 changed the pace of the series. This practice of shoe-horning in more and more kills reached its apex in A New Beginning with its staggering body count of seventeen (twenty-one, if you count the death of the bogus Jason along with his son's death and two dream deaths in the pre-title sequence).

As with Part 2, director Steve Miner stages another exciting final chase here with Richard Brooker's Jason pursuing Chris over every inch of Higgins' Haven. With Jason still being portrayed as a backwoods psycho in these early films, rather than some kind of zombie, Brooker gets to display some moments of human rage during this chase - as when he throws a fit when it momentarily looks like Chris has eluded him. It's moments like these that suggested another dimension to Jason that didn't need to be realized with glasses or gimmicks.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 5: Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

From the moment that New Line - the home of Freddy Krueger - gained the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise, there was never any question of if Freddy and Jason would meet on film, it was just a matter of when. In 2003, long years of development on the part of New Line paid off with a horror event first teased to audiences at the end of 1993's Jason Goes To Hell.

After Jason Goes To Hell's release, I remember reading in the pages of FANGORIA about the early attempts to get Freddy vs. Jason rolling and feeling that, well, any day now it'll happen. I mean, it's a movie that a whole generation or two of horror fans were crying out for - how long could they hold it up? But as time rolled on, activity would spark on the project then die off. Finding the proper reason to motivate the melee between Elm Street's dream stalker and Crystal Lake's carnage champion was no simple feat. Eventually, after a reported eighteen drafts by screenwriters including Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga (of Star Trek: New Generation fame) and David J. Schow (Leatherface, The Crow), it was writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift who became the duo to make it happen with rewrites courtesy of David Goyer (Blade, Batman Begins).

Given all the years of waiting, after all the aborted treatments, and all the hands this project passed through (I really wish that this could've been Fx master Rob Bottin's directing debut, as it was almost slated to be at one point), Freddy vs. Jason ended up being about as satisfying as anyone could've reasonably hoped. Coming in 2003, however, long after the prime of both series had passed, Freddy vs. Jason can't help but feel out of its element more than it would've in, say, 1988. Ideally, this needed to be made during the height of Freddy and Jason mania (of course, realistically, it's the kind of project that could only be made when both franchises were so down and out that they needed each other). Even if it had been a botched effort back in the '80s, it would've it would've felt of a piece with the Friday and Nightmare films of the time (and undoubtedly would've boasted a righteous heavy metal soundtrack with contributions from every hair band on heavy rotation on MTV). Freddy vs. Jason however, in tone and style, feels like it exists outside of both series (ironically, even though it was made just six years ago, Freddy vs. Jason somehow feels more dated now than any of the '80s Friday or Nightmare sequels - go figure).

That odd-man-out vibe might've been alleviated by bringing back Kane Hodder as Jason to preserve a sense of continuity. Hodder's films weren't my favorites but even though his Friday films were some of the most disappointing of the series, his presence as Jason gave them a unified feel and this should've been his swan song to the character. At least Robert Englund got to reprise Freddy one last time here (it's undeniably strange, though, to see Englund stalking characters played by actors who, in some cases, weren't even born when the first Nightmare was released). Rather than the beginning of a new franchise, this feels like a last hurrah for the classic versions of these characters and Hodder - who spent more time beneath the mask than any other actor and who kept the character alive with fans on the convention circuit even when the film series was lying stagnant - should've been there for it. The new Jason, Ken Kirzinger, did a decent job but he didn't project the same power that Hodder's Jason did - Hodder's body language would've been a far better fit for this film. At the time I didn't think the switch from Hodder to Kirzinger was such a big deal but looking at Freddy vs. Jason again, it does hinder the film. I know there was talk about how the producers and Yu wanted Kirzinger because he could deliver the empathy factor better, that there was more soulfulness in his eyes or some such nonsense but Hodder's 'star power' is what this Jason needed.

That said, director Ronny Yu works hard to make this a blood-soaked battle royal that pops off the screen and the climatic fight is definitely the knockdown, drag-out, Hall of Fame battle that it should've been. Yu stages the lengthy fight as the brawl to end ‘em all and neither combatant pulls their punches. Every stab goes deep - blood spurts out in geysers and limbs fly across the screen. If you didn’t see this with a full theater cheering on each and every blow, then you missed out. It just isn't the same experience at home.

For Friday fans, the biggest criticism to be made here (outside of the absence of Hodder) is that this is much more slated towards a Nightmare picture than a Friday the 13th. From the start, it feels like Jason is a guest in a Freddy film. Perhaps inevitably, due to the demands of getting both characters together (or just because of Yu's sensibilities as a director), this is way more fantasy-orientated with even the kill scenes given a cartoonish spin. On the upside, it's all grandly gory and most importantly, Jason doesn't punk out against Freddy. Their fight mercifully doesn't come down to a disappointing draw and our boy Jason is the last slasher standing. Freddy may have his wisecracks but Jason lets his machete do the talking and that machete can get awfully loud.

Even though Freddy vs. Jason has it's share of faults (among which is some of the worst performances in the history of either franchise - lead actress Monica Keena is especially atrocious), it does a lot right and it gives more respect to the characters than one might've expected. This could've been done as a quick cash-in but the final product shows more care to both franchises than that. Yu has fun incorporating the iconic imagery of both series while adding a few indelible sights of his own (seeing a demonic Freddy leap from Crystal Lake is just awesome). For fans of a certain age, this film was nothing less than horror history (watching it again, I still found it cool to hear the Nightmare theme segue way into the Friday ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma as a blood red version of the New Line logo appears). And in the pantheon of vs. movies, well, this might be the one that best delivers. As the final appearance of Jason before the reboot, Freddy vs. Jason is like watching a last sunset on Crystal Lake before a new bloody day dawns.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 3: Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

When New Line acquired the rights to the Friday the 13th series, I couldn't have been happier. Paramount never seemed comfortable with the franchise, always looking to distance themselves from it and never quite understanding the following that the films had. New Line, however, was The House That Freddy Built. Their history was all about genre films and franchises and if anyone was going to run with the ball on Friday the 13th, surely it was New Line. That wasn't quite how things panned out, though. At least not initially. Right out of the gate, New Line's first Friday was slated to be the last - The Final Friday.

I doubt if anyone ever believed this would be the real end of the series. After all, we had already been down this road before with The Final Chapter in '84 and here we were, four more films later. Calling this "The Final Friday" was just a way to get audiences to show up after the last few entries in the series had seen waning attendance. New Line definitely had a better handle on how to sell this stuff more than Paramount did. The poster for Jason Goes To Hell is one of my favorites - you just can't beat the sight of that metal hockey mask against a background of flames with the drooling demonic worm wriggling in and out of the eye holes. Right off the bat, the poster signaled that this was going to be a very different from the Friday films of the past.

Written by the young crew of Jay Huguely, Adam Marcus, and Dean Lorey with the twenty-three-year-old Marcus himself assigned first-time directing duties, Jason Goes To Hell reflects - for both good and bad - an entirely new take on the franchise. For the first time, this is a Friday film made by people young enough to have been raised on the series. Marcus was a close friend of Sean Cunningham's son Noel and as a kid, he was present on the set of the original movie. Alone in the series, Jason Goes To Hell feels like a work of fan fiction, an alternate reality take on the character that creates an elaborate new mythology for Jason and the Voorhees clan (a host of random Easter Eggs for the horror crowd are also scattered throughout the film, with the Necronomicon from The Evil Dead and the "Antarctic Expedition" crate from "The Crate" episode of Creepshow making cameo appearances). In some ways, this makes Jason Goes To Hell an interesting film with a sensibility that none of the other films share, in other ways, a maddening one.

At the time, it probably seemed like a great idea to really shake things up with the franchise. The series was dying a protracted death at the box office, and no one really seemed to know what to do with Jason anymore (hence the sale to New Line from Paramount). And maybe at the time, it seemed like the audience might crave some answers as to how Jason is able to survive so much trauma (like, for instance, death) in film after film. In hindsight, however, the new abilities and backstory for Jason that Jason Goes To Hell introduces just points to how far astray from its roots the series had gotten. Jason was now some fantastical creature who not only couldn't die but who's body was just a vessel from which he could transfer his evil essence from one host to the next. Marcus has said that he and his co-writers hadn't seen the 1987 sci-fi thriller The Hidden when they wrote Jason Goes To Hell (which had an alien possessing identical body-hopping abilities to the ones they gave Jason) but whether it was an original idea or a rip-off, it doesn't matter much anyway - history has borne out the fact that this just wasn't the right way to go.

Friday the 13th should stick to telling the same story about a psycho in the woods out to protect his turf. The more you get away from that, the more the series loses itself. What saves Jason Goes To Hell is the enthusiasm behind it and the commitment - no matter how wrongheaded - to taking the series someplace different. There's plenty of weird bits here never seen before or since in the Friday universe - like Jason strapping down a naked prospective male host and shaving him with a straight razor before transferring bodies or the sight of Jason in satantic slug form making his way between Erin Gray's legs. I also liked Steven Williams' character of Creighton Duke - a larger than life bounty hunter who knows everything there is to know about Jason. As a director, Marcus went all out with the visuals in a way that no Friday helmer ever had up to that point and with Jason Goes To Hell featuring more shoot-outs and action-style moments than any other entry in the series, Marcus even offers up some John Woo moments (before Woo's style became trendy in the US - Jason Goes To Hell was in fact released the week before Woo's US debut, Hard Target) with characters firing their guns in slow motion as they dive through the air. Honestly, I'm surprised that Marcus hasn't gone on to do much more in the genre, or with directing in general, as this film showed he had some serious chops.

In the end, I can't help but maintain a fondness for Jason Goes To Hell. It's a nutty entry, to be sure, but I appreciate its audacity. If nothing else, it had the most crowd-pleasing final shot in the series. I don't think I've heard a louder reaction from a theater audience than I did from the opening night audience I saw this with when Freddy's glove bursts from the ground to drag Jason's mask beneath the dirt. Total hysteria. For that moment, at least, a theater full of Friday fans were in horror heaven.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 2: Jason X (2001)

Going into space didn't herald great things for Jason's horror brethren Pinhead or Leprechaun so the idea of sending Jason to slay among the stars didn't seem like a promising next step for the series. The previous Jason entry was the controversial Jason Goes To Hell, which got a mixed response from the fanbase and audiences, so maybe a back-to-basics move might've been more sensible - especially as Jason Goes to Hell was released in 1993, making the gap between that film and Jason X the longest between any Friday entries to date. Maybe audiences were due to be reminded of what originally made the Sultan of Slaughter the brand name that he was. So was it really a prudent move to take him so far from his element - like off the planet altogether?

The answer, as it turns out, is "kind of". From a commercial standpoint, Jason X was a failure, being the smallest earner of the entire Friday series to date. So the 'hook' of putting Jason in space wasn't the draw that the producers might've hoped it to be (although in fairness, due to studio politics, Jason X was held back from release for two years, during which time the movie was widely bootlegged, cutting into potential revenue). But as a film, Jason X exceeded most expectations. Directed by Sean Cunningham protege James Isaac (who also directed the Cunningham-produced The Horror Show) and written by the future scribe of My Bloody Valentine 3-D, Todd Farmer, Jason X is far from the debacle some might've feared it to be. Farmer has stated that he's unhappy with the many rewrites done to his script, and I imagine a better movie was initially in the offing here, but the final product isn't so shabby.

Set for the most part in the far-flung year of 2455, after both Jason and a Final Girl (Lexa Doig as Rowan) frozen in cryogenic suspension back in our time are revived by a team of students on expedition to Earth, Jason X proves that the future offers several new challenges and opportunities for Jason. Challenge-wise, Jason learns that dismemberment isn't as effective with robots as it is with people. He also learns that there's a lot more firepower to contend with in the future. But yet the future science of nanotechnology gives Jason a new, more resilient body. Reborn as a gleaming gladiator of gore, the so-called Uber-Jason is Jason X's lasting claim to fame. I love the look for this costume - it's goofy but in just the right way. It reminds me of specialized action figures where characters like Batman or Spider-Man will be outfitted for some environment that they never actually encounter in the movies or comics, like Scuba Spider-Man or Artic Camouflage Hulk. That's how this Uber-Jason strikes me - like an action figure that they happened to build a movie around.

In his last outing as Jason, Kane Hodder does a great job selling what might've otherwise been been a too-ridiculous alteration to the character. From the start, Hodder always imbued Jason with a little bit of a superhero vibe (it probably helps that his first Friday was a comic book-style thrown down against a telekinetic teen - Hodder's Jason was never from the down n' dirty Friday era, there was always a fantasy element to his installments) so it doesn't seem out of character for his Jason to become an even more exaggerated powerhouse. As for his kills in Jason X, however, they aren't his best. The highlight comes early on when he dunks a victim face first in a sink of liquid nitrogen, then proceeds to shatter their frozen face against a counter. The rest of the movie's body count is more on the lame side of the galaxy. Jason's dispatching of a crew of hardass space troopers (including writer Todd Farmer in a cameo role) is all right (giving Jason a good adversary in the form of Peter Mensah's hard-to-kill Sgt. Brodski) and the virtual reality return to '80s-era Crystal Lake as Hodder reprises his famous sleeping bag kill from Part VII is a funny bit.

By the end of the movie, I believe Jason X has burned through the novelty of its premise to the satisfaction of anyone who might care. I do wish that he claimed a few more victims before the end - the android played by Lisa Ryder really needed to be put down for good and her inventor shouldn't have slipped past Jason, either (you just can't call Jason "Slappy" in a Friday the 13th movie and live) - but it isn't the fiasco some fans feared. Save for The New Blood, I prefer his Earth bound adventures but Jason X wasn't just a case of Jason being lost in space.

Crystal Lake Countdown Day 1: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

In the late '80s, just as the the Nightmare on Elm Street series was exponentially increasing its cultural clout with state-of-the-art FX and MTV-driven visuals, the Friday the 13th franchise proved unable to hold the same currency with audiences. The '80s, sadly, were moving on without Jason. We didn't have the phrase 'jump the shark' in the popular vocabulary back in 1988 when Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was released but in hindsight, this is where it happened for the venerable series. Some might say that 1985's A New Beginning better deserves that dishonor but not only do I think there's some unappreciated qualities to A New Beginning, but the series also rallied from that slight stumble with one of its strongest entries - 1986's Jason Lives - which only made the next step of The New Blood that much more notable of a failure.

Maybe it was the loss of continuing character Tommy Jarvis that left the producers confused as to where to take the series next. After all, Friday Parts IV-VI had been a loosely connected narrative all its own where Jason finally had his first ongoing nemesis to contend with. But with the conclusion of the 'Tommy Trilogy', there didn't seem to be an obvious next direction to take. Originally, The New Blood was going to be the showdown between Jason and Freddy but negotiations between New Line and Paramount fell through, leaving that project to go on the back burner (as much as I enjoyed what eventually became 2003's Freddy vs. Jason, I do wish the project had been done back in the heyday of both characters - even if it had been terrible, it would've had that '80s vibe to it). With no Freddy to fight, Jason was pitted against a telekinetic teen in the form of Lar Park-Lincoln's traumatized Tina Shepard.

As The New Blood opens (after a lame pre-credit recap of the series narrated by Crazy Ralph himself, Walt Gorney), we see the character of Tina as a young girl living on the shores of Crystal Lake with her long-suffering mother and her disappointment of a father. Her dad, apparently, isn't all bad - he just likes to slap Tina's mother around too much. But when her dad gives her mom one whack too many, an angry Tina gets in a rowboat and starts drifting out onto Crystal Lake. When her dad runs out to try and get her back, Tina unwittingly unleashes her psychic fury, sending her dad plummeting into the lake along with the dock that he's standing on. That this might kill a man, I can accept. That no one in the days, weeks, or years after would ever drag the lake to recover this man's body is much more of a stretch. I mean, it isn't as though he was lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a monsoon. The guy fell into a lake - and not even an especially enormous lake - so even if the dude was a total asshole, you'd think that some passing effort would've been made to get his body back. Maybe the filmmakers felt that a precedent had already been established that when someone drowns in Crystal Lake, they just stay there until they come out on their own. After all, if the local authorities couldn't be bothered to retreive the body of a young camper, it's likely that they wouldn't bother to pull anyone else out of the water.

Cutting to the present, Tina is still struggling to deal with her guilt over causing her father's death as well as trying to harness whatever mental powers she has. To do both, she's coming back to her old home on Crystal Lake along with her mother Amanda (Susan Blu) and shady psychiatrist Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser, later to be known as Bernie in the Weekend At Bernie movies), who has his own agenda. Luckily, for those coming to see a Friday the 13th movie, the house next to Tina's place is filled with the usual assortment of horny, drunken teen waste. And when Tina takes a stroll out to the lake's edge to wish her father back to life, guess who she resurrects instead?

Ideally, The New Blood might not have been so lousy (then again, ideally no movie should be so lousy) but this just didn't have the budget needed to effectively realize a psychic assault against Jason. Setting aside the fact that bringing in this type of sci-fi element wasn't the best fit for Friday the 13th in the first place, I think with enough funds to do it right, this could've been a spectacular installment for the series. Unfortunately, Tina's abilities are a little on the low-rent side with Tina coming across as the bargain aisle Jean Gray.

Park-Lincoln herself is fine - although she lacks the natural charisma of the better Friday leading ladies - but as a psychic warrior, she isn't especially formidable. More damaging, in the wake of the likes of Carrie, The Fury, and Scanners, psychic powers had already had been impressively realized on film and The New Blood isn't able to come close to matching or surpassing those efforts. Tina's powers most often manifest themselves by hurling objects across a room - and these objects (including such lethal projectiles as a potted plant) don't even move all that fast. That means that Jason has to stand in place unable to react while a TV or whatever else Tina is using her whammy on slowly bobs through the air towards him. Jason will then be momentarily staggered, step forward a few feet and then have to patiently wait while Tina unleashes her next crushing attack.

I also feel that the makers of The New Blood dropped the ball in showing Jason's ability to cope with a new type of foe. To encounter someone who can do the things that Tina can surely must blow whatever's left of Jason's mind. But rather than see Jason in a scenario where he might be defeated by an adversary, then have to regroup, strategize, and come back with a new approach - he simply meets Tina once, proceeds to take some abuse, then their conflict is over. I would've liked to have seen their battle take place over at least two separate rounds and seen some cunning on Jason's part in a rematch instead of having him simply stand there flat-footed.

On the upside, this was Kane Hodder's debut as Jason and his gung-ho performance enlivens the film somewhat. One of his fan favorite kills is here (the sleeping bag victim - a scene trimmed in all its home video incarnations down to one whack against the tree as opposed to the six that was originally seen in theaters) and the physical look for Jason here is one of the most elaborate and effective of the series, with director and makeup artist John Carl Buechler playing Jason's undead status to the max. For the first and last time, Jason looks truly dead and decaying - even to the point of an exposed spine being seen through his tattered clothes (awesome!). There's also a prolonged fire gag with Jason completely consumed in flames that's one of the most impressive stunts in the series. Unfortunately, this was the most infamously edited of the Fridays, with the MPAA forcing Buechler to neuter the film's potentially stronger moments, like Terry Kiser's should've-been legendary death at the hands of a Weed Wacker.

Where The New Blood really loses it is at the end, where Jason and Tina are facing off on the dock on Crystal Lake and Tina's ace up her sleeve is to bring the body of her father from the depths of his watery grave to drag Jason back down with him. When I saw this in the theaters, that was a deal breaker and it hasn't gotten any better with age. I mean, the movie had been pretty piss poor up to this climatic moment but I hadn't quite hated it. For this to be the big ending, though, was just too much. In all fairness to Buechler, he had wanted to have the father's body be a nasty, decomposing corpse - that, at least, I could of lived with. But the forces that be at Paramount blocked that. That means the father returns from his extended stay at the bottom of Crystal Lake looking as though he drowned just an hour earlier, rather then over a decade ago. I mean, when young Jason came out of the lake at the end of the original, he looked more or less like someone who had believably been at the bottom of a lake for many long years. When Tina's dad comes back at the end of The New Blood, he looks like he just skipped through a lawn sprinkler.

With The New Blood, the Friday franchise had started to go too far from what made it work in the first place. It was mistakenly trying to incorporate the kind of fantasy elements that played perfectly in the context of the Elm Street series but were all wrong for Friday the 13th, which should've held fast to its straight-forward slasher formula. At the same time, however, the splatter FX that was Friday's bread and butter was being curtailed by the MPAA to the point where it was impossible for the series to deliver like it had in the past. The Elm Street films could get away with turning teens into cockroaches but Jason couldn't jam lead piping through someone's skull. In 1988, the game was changing, and it wasn't in Jason's favor. He found himself fighting foes a lot stronger than any psychokinetic teen, and for the first time he was on the ropes.