Census Bloodbath: Second Thoughts

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For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 1981

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Amy Steel, John Furey, Betsy Palmer

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

And we have arrived at Jason's first starring vehicle! What a pleasure it is going to be to see this hockey masked buffoon get his time in the limelight!

Wait, what?

Yeah, you got me. The hockey mask doesn't come into play until Part 3, making this another Friday the 13th with a misinformed reputation. Perhaps this is a good time for me to mention how improperly memory has treated this series. You know how all Friday the 13th movies go, right? Ask anyone. Jason Voorhees in a hockey mask kills camp counselors at Crystal Lake.

This combination does not happen one single time in the entire 12 movie franchise. Sorry to burst your bubble. This is getting a little technical, but here's the deal. To start off, camp counselors die in only three of the films (Parts 1, 2, and 6). In the first, as we've already discussed, the killer was his mother. In the second (which we'll approach in more detail very shortly), he has no mask and also they're not even at Crystal Lake. Part 6 is the closest (he has the mask and he mows down counselors) but guess what? The camp has been renamed to Camp Forest Green.

I know that one's a technicality, but isn't that weird to think about?

Nothing anybody knows about this series is even remotely true.

Anyway, that's all in the future. Right now it's 1981. We have Jason in a bag, the hockey mask has never existed and as a matter of fact neither has adult Jason.

The film tries to smooth that narrative wrinkle (having him die as a child in the first film rather complicated sequel opportunities) by saying it only seemed like he drowned and that he saw his mother get beheaded that fateful night and vowed revenge on her killer and any others who intrude upon his territory. Apparently he never saw fit to approach her before then and give her a quick heads up that, you know, he was still alive. Whatever. He was busy. I get it.

So now he's all growed up and the movie opens two months after the original. Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) is trying to put her life together but is still haunted by nightmares (that take the form of five minutes of footage from the last movie crudely grafted onto shots of her not only failing to act but failing to be convincingly asleep).

She is run through a conveyor belt of horror standards as she gets a mysterious phone call where there's nobody on the other line, hears noises, takes the world's fastest shower, and has a cat thrown at her from offscreen by a PA.

Unfortunately her time is up and as she goes to get some milk for her tea, she gets a rather nasty surprise in her fridge, followed by a nasty surprise in her temple (an ice pick).

So that's what head cheese is.

Now it's five years later, her body was never found, and the shore of Crystal Lake is being used for the first time since the campground was condemned after the original murders.

Paul Holt (John Furey) has opened up a counselor training camp not far from the blackened ruins of Camp Blood. The events of half a decade ago have faded in memory and Jason has been reduced to nothing but a campfire story. 

As training begins, a heaping platter of Meat is laid before us in unprecedented amounts. First we meet the obvious analogues for Jack, Marcie, and Ned from the original. There's Jeff (Bill Randolph), the horndog and something of a Walmart brand Brad Pitt; his girlfriend Sandra (Marta Kober) who is adventurous and pushy; and Ted (Stu Charno) the prankster. Apparently the writers couldn't be bothered to even try to hide the fact that he is transparently Ned, just in a different body.

Thus begins the well-worn Friday the 13th standby of "exactly the same, only different." It only serves to underscore the fact that the individual characters don't matter. All that anyone cares about are the infinite variations in the ways that they screw and the ways that they die (Sometimes at the same time. More on that later).

Also on the crew are Terry (Kirsten Baker), who I took to calling "Slutty McSlutNipples" in my notes because of how clear her exact purpose in the script was; 

She gives the franchise its first full frontal! And has some gleefully sleazy innuendos that make me love her.

Scott (Russell Todd, who we'll revisit in Chopping Mall), the stud bucket who relentlessly pursues Terry like a five-year-old, stealing her clothes when she goes skinny dipping and hitting her with rocks from a sling shot; Mark (Tom McBride), a wheelchair-bound counselor with enormous arms; Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor, who we'll also see again in Girls Nite Out if I ever get my hands on the DVD), a clean cut girl who can't help but notice said enormous arms; and Ginny (Amy Steel, also of April Fool's Day and my fantasy dinner parties), Paul's girlfriend and all around spunky queen doing awesome things all over the place like cutting firewood with a chainsaw, winning at chess, and running the fastest (foreshadowing!).

There's also some random extra counselors with no lines, but some of them are ethnic and break stereotypes by not actually dying.

Also a Rock in a Puddle that is onscreen more times than the black counselor.

Not exactly a paradise of diversity.

Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) also makes a brief reappearance to spout more prophecies of doom only to become the first victim of Jason's rampage. And because the movie needed to have more kills to spice things up before the real bloodbath begins.

The first act is breezy and fun as we settle in with the characters. Much like the first film, there's not much plot of import, but it's just enjoyable to watch these teens have a good time. We learn that Slutty McSlutNipples' dog is named Muffin, which is the best thing ever. Jeff and Sandra expand the narrative universe a bit by exploring the condemned Camp Blood which is so dilapidated it might as well be made of cardboard (That was a joke. It is made of carboard).

There is some great use of foreshadowing in this sequence as well, the subtlety of which is balanced out by the bluntness of the expository dialogue. Ginny is a Child Psychology major, a character trait that is introduced with all of the grace of a first time writer who is also a boxing champion. Paul literally says "Why don't you use some of that child psychology you're majoring in?"

This guy.

When half the counselors leave to spend a night out on the town, things start to get hairy.

The counselors that chose to stay behind fall into the typical patterns of Friday the 13th teenagerhood, drinking, smoking, banging, and dying. Although the gore scenes are positively modest in comparison to the original (the MPAA had begun its first of a series of crackdowns on the slasher genre), what is shown is gleefully wicked.

Jeff and Sandra are speared mid-coitus in a bald ripoff of Twitch of the Death Nerve (one of the franchise's favorite victims) that nonetheless is shocking and fun, Vickie sits immobile in fear and watches Jason approach her for about ten seconds with a big knife and thus earning her a spot in my Ten Modern Horror Rules list, and Jason proves once and for all that he is an equal opportunity serial killer.

What a nice guy.

Slutty McSlutNipples goes skinny dipping alone because she's a brave queen. The clincher? Earlier that evening when she decided to stick around and look for her dog she said "I think I'll stay too, Muffin may show." This is seriously my favorite thing that has ever happened. Call me sleazy if you want, but exploitation cinema has never gotten more clever and cheesy and wonderful than that very line. Perfection.

Sooner or later, Ginny is the only one left and boy is she ready. She knees Jason in the crotch, attacks him with a chainsaw, and although she makes the fatal error of failing to double tap, she utilizes her child psychology knowledge to placate Jason by pretending to be his mother.

Jason is macheted by a miraculously alive Paul, and the two limp off into what I would call the most bizarre shock ending ever if I hadn't already seen the next film in the series. Everything is fine, but the door creaks open to reveal... Muffin!

Then Jason bursts through the window.

Then it was all a dream.

Then Paul has vanished.

I don't know anything about what happened here and I don't care about spoiling it because it's so outrageously hackneyed and stupid and sequelly. At least we got the genuinely frightening and cool Final Girl sequence beforehand.

In this gif, Jason is played by Warrington Gillette. Contrary to what he claims, he did not play Jason in any of the other scenes. Boo Warrington Gillette.

Overall, Friday the 13th Part 2 is tremendously fun if less shocking and grubbily powerful than the original. The script is strong enough to shoulder some of the burden left by the diluted gore effects and Amy Steel gives a layered performance as Ginny even if the other actors leave something to be desired. 

You know what? No they don't. I'm too jaded to desire good acting from these things. At least Amy is flawless.

Steve Miner (who was an associate producer on the original film) directs like he actually has a brain, and the movie benefits greatly from it. His scenes of darkness hide objects just enough to render them scary instead of just obscuring everything in sight. He also utilizes some basic deep focus cinematography that frame foreground and background objects in ways that relate to one another. Not exactly rocket science, but it shows more effort than the utterly workmanlike Sean S. Cunningham.

Ginny doesn't like hacks.

Friday the 13th Part 2 has nothing on the campy joy of later entries, but it's a solidly made and occasionally scary slasher film in the Crystal Lake saga (my unofficial name for the first four films before things got weird).

One more thing before I go (I know, I know. I'm almost done.). I mentioned earlier that the mantra of the franchise is "exactly the same, only different" which is perhaps a little unfair. Each Friday the 13th film is comprised of a million little details that are radically different from any other film in the franchise that lend it texture.

This film is no different as our expectations are subverted left and right.

The most obvious example is that Ted the prankster somehow survives the ordeal. Who could have seen that coming? He's happily ensconced in a bar booth miles away during the bloodbath. I already mentioned that the ethnic counselors survive, but that's worth mentioning again and again in an 80's horror film.

Also the clean cut prude looking girl turns out to be the horniest of them all (choice dialogue: "I only need your fingers." "Let's play for position.") and Ginny pretty clearly gets it on with Paul, ripping the Final Girl standard off its hinges.

And my favorite pairing. Slutty McSlutNipples never has sex and the studbucket strikes out. Take a look at him on your way out and don't tell me you're not surprised.

Slingshot. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Killer: Jason Voorhees (Steve Dash), and what a pleasure it is to be writing those words.

Final Girl: Ginny Field (Amy Steel)

Best Kill: Coitus interruptus 

Sign of the Times: Vickie's "sexy outfit" is a bulky sweater with geometric shapes.

Scariest Moment: Jason rips his pitchfork through the canvas roof of Ginny's car.

Weirdest Moment: It is shown that Ginny wears a bra. Take a close look, it's the last one you'll ever see in a Friday the 13th film.

Champion Dialogue: "This place is starting to look like a Burger King."

Body Count: 10; I included Paul even though nobody actually knows what happened to him. Also a dog maybe. The ending is really inconsistent.

1. Alice is stabbed in the temple with an ice pick.
2. Crazy Ralph is strangled to death with barbed wire.
3. The Cop gets the back of a hammer in his skull.
4. Scott's throat is slit with a machete.
5. Terry is killed offscreen.
6. Mark gets a machete in the face, then rolls down a flight of stairs.
7. Jeff is impaled with a spear while boning Sandra.
8. Sandra is impaled with a spear while boning Jeff.
9. Vickie is stabbed in the chest.
10. Paul mysteriously vanishes. 

TL;DR: Friday the 13th Part 2 is more technically proficient than its predecessor but can't fully recapture the grubby magic.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 2174

Reviews In This Series

Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980)

Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981)
Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D (Miner, 1982)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985)
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (McLoughlin, 1986)
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Hedden, 1989)
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993)
Jason X (Isaac, 2001)
Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003)
Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009)

Census Bloodbath: Babes in the Woods

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.
If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Happy Saturday the 14th everybody! Last night Sergio and I were incredibly lucky to go to a special event at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica where we watched the first four Friday the 13th films back to back! Well, I did. Sergio managed to stay awake through about 75% of it, which shows fierce effort considering it ended at around 3 in the morning.

It was a really fantastic experience and I got to meet a lot of LA horror fans, hear two of the laters movies' writers speak, and get a photo with the very first victim (not counting the prologue) of the franchise!

You know how people go to church on Christmas Eve? Well this is my version of that. Every Friday the 13th has been like a religious experience since Jason came into my life.

Year: 1980

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Cast: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Kevin Bacon

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

We're here! We're finally here! The centerpiece of the Census Bloodbath project, the inimitable, trashy, ugly, gorgeous, low-budget screamfest that is the beginning of a twelve leg journey (soon to be 13, if the rumors I've been hearing pan out).

Way back when in the late 70's, an exploitation filmmaker (most famous for working on Last House on the Left and a multitude of softcore pornography) named Mr. Sean S. Cunningham decided to take out a full page ad in International Variety for Friday the 13th, "The most terrifying film ever made!" When nobody sued him over copyright for the name, he decided he should probably actually make the movie.

Parts were cast, crew was hired, and among them was Tom Savini, the 34 year old Vietnam veteran and makeup maestro behind Dawn of the Dead. Savini, composer Harry Manfredini, and to a lesser extent Sean Cunningham formed the Holy Trinity, sending Friday the 13th down to Earth cradled in their tender embrace.

There is no way to verbalize the massive outpouring of nostalgia and emotion that I feel when this frame comes onscreen.

Camp Crystal Lake. 1958.

Two camp counselors sneak away from a bonfire to canoodle in a close-by attic, but are soon interrupted by a stranger wielding a hunting knife. They die fairly bloodlessly (much in the vein of the Psycho imitators from the entire past decade and the classier early slashers like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween), because why should the filmmakers tip their hand so early?

Thus begins the unfairly maligned (more on that later) first installment of a decades-spanning slasher tentpole franchise. It is perhaps fair to explore the reasons why it came to be so. Many films had bigger budgets. Halloween was more masterfully made. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was scarier. Black Christmas was more Canadian.

But none of them had Tom Savini. The make-up and special effects artist behind some of the best films we have yet to come across in Census Bloodbath (The Burning, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Maniac!, The Prowler, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2... This guy has killed more people than Mr. Voorhees himself.). Savini singlehandedly brought the artistry and magic of Italian gore cinema to mainstream American cinema.

And people ate it up. After waves and waves of increasingly flavorless Norman Bates riffs, American audiences were ready for something new.

When Annie (Robbi Morgan), the chipper counselor, catches a ride to Camp Crystal Lake with a mysterious assailant and gets her throat slit in the woods, blood dripping and gurgling down her front, they found it.

That's gonna hurt in the morning.

The high caliber death scenes and unflinching approach rocked cinemas nationwide. Everybody was talking about Friday the 13th. It didn't have a genius behind the camera. It didn't have big name stars onscreen. But it did have baroque Grand Guignol mutilations that appealed to the baser side of moviegoers who needed something to shake them up after years of deathless (pun absolutely intended) cinema.

And if Halloween cemented the rules of the slasher film, Friday the 13th put super glue around the edges. Here be jump scares, sex leading to death, the Final Girl, POV shots galore, pulling back branches, gory death scenes that replace plot, and a heaping platter of Meat.

Our particular focus today is on Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), a rich but misguided man who is refurbishing and reopening Camp Crystal Lake (known colloquially as Camp Blood after the brutal murders in '58 and that boy drowning in '57) and his host of camp counselors, here to help him set up before the campers arrive.

There's Jack (the Kevin Bacon) a macho horndog; Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), his even hornier girlfriend; Ned (Mark Nelson), the requisite prankster (although it wouldn't be requisite yet, this is the first film, after all); Brenda (Laurie Bartram), who is a playful vegetarian; Bill (Harry Crosby), a suspenders-wearing hunk who can play guitar like he was born with a pick in his mouth; and Alice (Adrienne King), a handy and kind girl who's good at drawing and a little apprehensive about staying for the summer.

Because of how many words I had to use to describe her (and her androgynous haircut), she is without a doubt our Final Girl for the evening.

Prepare to get lost in those baby blue eyes.

For the first act, we get to watch these kids play around as they set up the camp and while nothing of real import actually happens, you get the sense that the actors were told to just let loose and have fun, and it really shows. In spite of them having to share a single teaspoon of acting talent between the six of them, they sell little moments that come here and there as the gang fights a snake, Ned pulls pranks, they have a run-in with a weed obsessed cop, play Strip Monopoly, and Bill and Alice flirt a little on the sidelines.

Also for some reason Ned and Marcie like doing impressions more than they like breathing. It happens every other scene. This seemed to happen a lot in 80's slasher movies, so maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe they suffered because they couldn't post "50 Impressions" videos on YouTube so they just lived their lives like that.

This whole sector of the film is permeated with a sense of idle summertime joy only infrequently interrupted by the stalker lurking in the woods. Oh, and Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) hiding in the pantry claiming to be a messenger of God and telling them they're all doomed. What a goof.

But when night falls, so does the rain. And the rain turns to blood.

And the blood gets all over everything and makes a mess.

Things start to go bad when Ned goes into a cabin to investigate a strange shadow.

Things get even worse when Jack and Marcy go into that same cabin to get out of the rain. And into each others' pants.

Friday the 13th has a reputation for two things above all: sex and violence. Violence we get here in spades, but those who were outraged by the sex scene in this film should check out American Pie sometime because even that is raunchier. We get a quick shot of Kevin Bacon's butt (no complaining here) and about two seconds of Marcie's boob. No wonder this film is rated X.

Anyway, back to the violence. Act Two is all about setting up stupendous death scenes like dominoes and knocking them all down one by one. Sean Cunningham seems to show up for the first time in 45 minutes in some surprisingly well-executed sequences like the shadow of an axe rising behind Marcie's head.

My personal favorite moment that I noticed this time around takes place during my favorite death scene (Kevin Bacon's of course). An eviscerated Ned is lying on the top bunk as he and Marcie do their thing. She takes off to pee and he lights up a cigarette. As he's laying there, a few droplets of blood spatter on his forehead. As he wipes it off, our attention is drawn to that area as WHAM! A hand reaches out from underneath the bed and pulls his head back.

It's no Citizen Kane of course (though I'd much rather be watching this movie than Citizen Kane), but that is some truly solid directing right there.

Now, if you care about spoilers for a 33 year old slasher movie, I'd suggest you stop reading at this point. If you're a normal human (unlike myself), please continue after the break.

The Spoiler Squad strikes again!

The great thing about Friday the 13th is that it is perhaps the only film in history to have a retroactive twist ending. People nowadays hear the title and think, "Oh yeah, that Jason movie." But you know what? Jason doesn't hurt a fly in his very first film. He's just the catalyst.

His drowning as a child in 1957 (while the two camp counselors from the beginning were "making love") drove his mother, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer hamming it up like a champion) to insanity. She couldn't let the camp reopen because what if it happened again? She needed to avenge her son.

The thing is, a lot of people who haven't seen the film don't know that, so when this charming middle-aged woman pulls out a knife in the end, it blows everybody's freaking minds. I love it.

Critics of the film often complain that Jason isn't really in it, to which I respond: "How could he be? He wasn't even alive!" This is the first film in the series, Jason as the killer was an unheard of concept at the time this film came out. Stop griping.

And when people as "How could a middle aged woman have done this?" I reply, "Have you seen her?"

She's packin' heat under that cable knit sweater.

When Mrs. Voorhees shows her face, thus begins a rather meandering and dark Final Girl sequence in which it's very hard to locate anything that really happens.

Nonetheless it is valuable as a historical trendsetter and Alice is a halfway decent final girl.

Exactly halfway.

Love Adrienne King though I do, Alice just can't seem to maintain her good decisions. When Bill wants to go off alone to look for the others, she goes with him. Sticking together! Good! But when the generator sputters and dies, she lets him go off alone and falls asleep on the couch. She barricades herself into a cabin (a little overzealously but hey, she's scared) but tears it down at the first glimpse of headlights. And she hits Mrs. Voorhees hard time and time again but never follows up. She just runs to the next place of attack.

Finally she gets tired of it all and chops of Pamela's head with a machete. Good riddance.

And then she floats in the lake in a canoe, as one does.

And now for some spoilers I actually do care about. If you haven't seen this movie and plan on doing so, please don't read this part: [When Jason jumps out of the lake and grabs Alice in the end, it is always just as fresh and terrifying as the very first time. Always. What a brilliant and (at the time) not hackneyed way to send off a movie. The scariest part of the film as well as the weirdest.] 

I've seen Friday the 13th so many times that I've managed to convince myself it is an artistic masterwork, but let us never forget that it really is very shoddily made. There are about six shots that are just darkness with one small point of light in frame. It's impossible to see anything through the muddy gloom. The sound mixing in the truck scene is embarrassing, the lightning looks like a PA going crazy with a flashlight, there are two separate scenes in a bathroom where a girl is wearing just panties and a raincoat, and the policeman hilariously can't ride a motorcycle.

And that's just the basic stuff.

So no, Friday the 13th isn't some massively respectable and arty movie.

But.

We have Tom Savini at his finest.

We have Harry Manfredini's frankly perfect music cues that toe the line exactly in between Jaws and Psycho while still managing to be their own thing.

And of course, that feat of inspired brilliance: the discordant CH CH CH HA HA HA (It's not technically those sounds, but God help me that's what it sounds like) motif that drives this film and its compatriots. It's scary, it's completely original and fascinating, and it's brilliant. 

Friday the 13th is a nostalgic dream come true for slasher buffs. It cemented in the tropes of the genre along with being one of the best of the (admittedly shoddy and sleazy) form.

Killer: Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer)

Final Girl: Alice Hardy (Adrienne King)

Best Kill: Kevin Bacon gets an arrow through the back of his neck.

Sign of the Times: Literally every single outfit any boy wears ever.

Scariest Moment: [Dat ending do]

Weirdest Moment: The way Crazy Ralph rides his bike gets me every time.

Champion Dialogue: "I hate when people call them kids. Sounds like little goats. But when you've had a dream as long as I have, you'll do anything."

Body Count: 10; including the killer but not including Jason or the snake. Sorry, PETA.

1. Barry is stabbed in the stomach. 
2. Claudette is killed offscreen. 
3. Annie's throat is slit.
4. Ned's throat is slit offscreen.
5. Jack gets an arrow through the back of the neck.
6. Marcie gets an axe to the face.
7. Brenda is killed offscreen on the archery range.
8. Steve Christy gets a hunting knife to the stomach.
9. Bill gets his throat slit and is pinned to the door with arrows.
10. Mrs. Voorhees is decapitated with a machete. 

TL;DR: Friday the 13th is not a good movie but it is the seminal slasher film and an outright masterpiece of schlock cinema.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 2349

Reviews In This Series

Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981)
Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D (Miner, 1982)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985)
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (McLoughlin, 1986)
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Hedden, 1989)
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993)
Jason X (Isaac, 2001)
Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003)
Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009)

His Name Was Jason... And Today Is His Birthday

Today is Thursday, June 13th and that can only mean two things.

1) It is Jason Voorhees' 65th birthday! He's getting up there but he's managed to stay in shape.

Still eviscerating teenagers like a 20-year-old.

2) Considering it's a Thursday, we can breathe easy knowing that we're safe to live another day. We're only in danger when it's a...

Well, sh*t.

At any rate, we've got a year left. Make the most of it.

In honor of this Day of Days, as I do every year, I've planned a Friday the 13th event. Now, I won't get around to reviewing the series just about yet, that's a task for my all day marathon next year. But in honor of the day, I have prepared this list for y'all.

Warning: This article contains photos of gore scenes which I generally consider cheesy, but if you're squeamish just be prepared.

The Top 12 Friday the 13th Movies: Ranked Worst to Best

12. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Year: 1993

Jason: Kane Hodder

Final Girl: Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan)

Best Kill: A girl gets vertically SPLIT IN HALF mid-coitus.

Although the patent absurdity of Jason getting blown up by the FBI and becoming a body-controlling demon worm makes this film absolutely worth watching, the fabulous Kane Hodder is underused in one of only four turns as Jason Voorhees and the film ultimately gets bogged down in its own mythology.

11. Friday the 13th (2009)

Year: 2009

Jason: Derek Mears

Final Girl: Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti) [Also, weirdly enough, Jared Padalecki]

Best Death: A girl hiding under a dock gets stabbed from above through the wood - and her skull.

Although this film wasn't a terrible terrible remake like some movies we know (coughcoughNightmareonElmStreetcough), it still didn't quite manage to recapture the glory days of Jason in his prime.

10. Friday the 13th Part 3D

Year: 1982

Jason: Richard Brooker

Final Girl: Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell)

Best Kill: A man's skull gets crushed in eye-popping 3D. Literally.

This movie is historic, because it is the first film in which Jason dons his iconic hockey mask (yes, it took him this long). However, he steals it from an annoying Jew Fro Prankster named Shelly whom most of us would rather forget. Also featured: Female Michael Jackson, Much Too Old For Their Friends Hippy Couple, and Pregnant Girl Who Dies Anyway.

9. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Year: 1989

Jason: Kane Hodder

Final Girl: Rennie Wickham (Jensen Daggett)

Best Kill: A boxer gets his head punched off.

That title alone won me over. This is the first F13 movie I ever owned, and I currently have the poster hanging in my room, so I have a deep, abiding love for this film. But let's face it, this entry was kind of weak. Jason spends most his time on a cruise ship on the way to Manhattan (which, in a bold casting choice, is played by Vancouver) not really doing much of anything. Although he gets bonus points for sinking an entire ship.

8. Jason X

Year: 2002

Jason: Kane Hodder

Final Girl: Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig)

Best Kill: A doctor's head is frozen in liquid nitrogen and smashed on a countertop.

Jason in space! Come on! Get pumped! I also proudly display this poster on my bedroom wall. Jason is taken to the hypermodern Crystal Lake Research Facility, cryogenically frozen, and unearthed by space teens who take him aboard their ship! Jason gets turned into a cyborg and fights a leather clad android! A naughty professor wears giant nipple clamps! Two topless holographic campers proclaim their love for premarital sex and wriggle around in sleeping bags to distract Jason! OK, I love this movie. The only reason it's not higher up is because it really doesn't have the DNA of the down-and-dirty Paramount original franchise. By this point, Jason had been sold off to New Line after Part VIII tanked and things got... a little weird.

7. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Year: 1986

Jason: C. J. Graham

Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), and because a girl always does have to survive, Megan Garris (Jennifer Cooke)

Best Kill: Just... this.

This is the point where the franchise began losing its sh*t. After the Jasonless Part V bombed, producers were desperate to regain audience goodwill (hence the title). Jason went from being cremated to buried in a coffin to struck by lightning and zombified. The butt-kicking Tommy Jarvis is played by the third actor in as many movies and (this had to come up at some point), the movie is a horror comedy. While some reviewers retch in disgust, I have already committed myself to loving this series and also have come to terms with the fact that, intentional or not, the other films in this franchise are already comedies. Also there's a triple decapitation. Mother always says "When three heads come off, you can't go wrong."

6. Freddy vs. Jason

Year: 2003

Jason: Ken Kirzinger

Final Girl: Lori Campbell (Monica Keena)

Best Kill: A kid in a folding bed gets bent backwards, then ruthlessly machete punched to death.

I would never insult this movie by pretending it needs an explanation as to why it is awesome. Moving on.

5. Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

Year: 1985

Jason*: Dick Wieand

Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) feat. Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman)

Best Kill: A man with... intestinal problems sits in an outhouse, flirts with his girlfriend, and gets stabbed with a spear

Following The Final Chapter by only a year, this movie seemed a wee bit insincere. The way the filmmakers got around this was by putting another man behind the mask, which had fans foaming at the mouths. However, I am one of the few defenders of this movie if only for one scene that took me by surprise. I won't say what it is (not that any of you who haven't seen it really want to), but for a movie as routine as the fifth installment in the F13 franchise to surprise anyone even a little bit means that there must have been a creative spark somewhere in the process. Also Tommy Jarvis is a kung fu master and the costume design looks like the 80's had a long night and vomited over the entire set.

4. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Year: 1984

Jason: Ted White

Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) feat. Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck)

Best Kill: Crispin Glover gets corkscrewed.

Now this is more like it. Mid-80's. Original franchise. Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman in a film together. The introduction of Tommy Jarvis, the only person to defeat Jason three times in a row. Skinny dipping! Hot twins! Nerd dancing! Teen parties! Tom Savini (the original makeup artist) is back! 1984 is having a party and you're all invited.

3. Friday the 13th Part 2

Year: 1981

Jason: Warrington Gillette

Final Girl: Ginny Field (Amy Steel)

Best Kill: The infamous sex kebab.

This film, directed by Steve Miner (who was the assistant director on the original), is the closest F13 film to actually being a good movie in its own right, or at least a competent one. This is the first film where Jason is the killer, and our Final Girl for the evening is a child psychologist played by Amy Steel who goes after Jason with all she has. Amy Steel later went on to star as the Final Girl in April Fool's Day which, even though it's only another slasher, is more of a career than any other final girl on this list. Also, the wheelchair kid gets a machete to the face and rolls down the stairs, proving once and for all that Jason is an equal opportunity killer.

2. Friday the 13th (1980)

Year: 1980

Jason: Ari Lehman

Final Girl: Alice Hardy (Adrienne King)

Best Kill: Kevin Bacon gets knifed in the back of the throat.

Where it all began... Directed by ex-softcore porn producer Sean S. Cunningham, Friday the 13th cashed in on the success of John Carpenter's Halloween and ignited the slasher boom of the early 80's. No slasher movie would be so influential until Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. It's one of the only films in the series where camp counselors are the victims (contrary to popular belief), Harry Manfredini's brilliant discordant CH-CH-CH-HA-HA-HA effect is introduced. Tom Savini, the make-up artist of Dawn of the Dead, produces beautiful European style gore scenes the likes of which had never before been seen in American cinemas. Also it retroactively has a twist ending because modern audiences assume Jason is the killer. I watched it with some twelve-year-olds once (don't ask) and it was hilarious to see their faces once the killer was revealed.

1. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Year: 1988

Jason: Kane Hodder

Final Girl: Tina Shepard (Lar Park-Lincoln)

Best Kill: Jason beats a girl in a sleeping bag against a tree - Kane Hodder's favorite kill.

Kane Hodder's first stint in the role of Jason is legendary. He is the fan consensus best actor to play Jason, but his other three times were in films of increasing inanity. Not that this film isn't inane. In fact, it very much is. But the inanity is of such a perfect late-80's desperate-for-cash paranormal slasher decibel that the film is a masterpiece of camp horror. Tina Shepard has telekinetic powers. You read that right. In attempting to resurrect her father who drowned in Crystal Lake when she was a child, she accidentally awakens Jason from the depths. The final girl sequence will go down in history as "the time Jason fought Carrie" and it is awesome. Finally, Jason has met his match, and it helps that this Jason is bigger, better, and more intimidating than any of his predecessors. The Final Girl sequence involves a long chase through the woods, Jason being attacked by plants, a house collapsing on his head, and so much more. Easily the most thoroughly weird and entertaining entry in this long-running (and my favorite) horror franchise.

With that said, I hope everybody has a happy (and safe) Jason day! I know I will.

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