I Don't Know About You, But I'm Feeling 22

Year: 2014

Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Dynamic duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller are tearing up Hollywood at the moment, having already turned three terrible ideas into immensely entertaining films with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie.

Cloudy, an adaptation of a children's book with a modicum of plot, became a pun-filled adventure comedy. 21 Jump Street, a film reboot of a classic late-80's television show, had surprisingly fresh humor and heart. And The Lego Movie turned what should have just been a cheap cash-in shill into one of the best animated comedies of the decade with a central moral about the nature of creativity.

So the pressure was on them when it came time to do the unthinkable - plan a sequel to a comedy reboot of a classic late-80's television show. 22 Jump Street might just be the weakest of their endeavors, but it still delivers what one has come to expect from one of their films - a delightful comedy wrapped around a startlingly firm central core.

And for once I'm not referring to Channing Tatum's abs.

22 Jump Street follows youthful undercover agents Schmidt (Jonah Hill, looking admittedly slightly too old to play the part, even with the film's comedic emphasis on his age) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) to college after their undercover high school antics in the first film. Their mission is to discover the source of the dangerous Whyphy drug that is circulating the local campus. Once again the two agents find their own niche - Jenko with the football-playing frat boys and Schmidt with the hipster art crowd.

But things begin to fall apart when Jenko befriends frat leader and potential suspect Zook (Wyatt Russell) and Schmidt fears that it will ruin their investigation as well as their friendship. There's also some business with potential love interest Maya (Amber Stevens), but that never coalesces into anything more than a series of gags that - though funny - tend not to have anything to do with the matter at hand. She has about as much effect on the plot as the bean bag chair, which - come to think of it - might actually get more screen time.

Hill and Tatum reprise their roles with gusto and in fact, I maintain with absolutely no trace of irony that Jenko is the best role Channing Tatum has ever played. Better even than comedy superstar Hill's slightly wan Schmidt, Tatum embraces the blind jocky enthusiasm of Jenko with verve and skill, proving that he might fare much better in the business should he decide to stick with comedy rather than wan romance or popcorn action flicks.

The boys at the center impress, although they are no longer surrounded by the stellar supporting ensemble of the first film, something which really tamps down on the effervescent humor. Russell and Stevens have their share of moments, but they are nothing compared to what came before. In fact, Rob Riggle and Dave Franco's brief cameos immediately outshine any of these newcomers' output. Only Jillian Bell as Maya's put-upon roommate Mercedes does anything of interest, bubbling relentlessly forth from the screen like a force of nature.

An adorable blonde force of nature.

So no, it doesn't capture the newness and utter joy of 21 Jump Street, but that was never going to happen. And the slick music video sensibility of the production design and cinematography tends to bring you out of the film somewhat, especially when the soundtrack overwhelms the dialogue to such a point it becomes clear that the Hot New Track is more important than what jokes are being told (one such track, "Turn Down For What" having the unfortunate potential to instantly date the film when it fizzles out of its 2.7 seconds of popularity).

This is an unfortunate new trend in Hollywood comedies (last seen by Yours Truly in the remarkably unbearable That Awkward Moment) and likely has more to do with studio tampering than the work of the two directors, who I hold in too much esteem to think they stood for the idea of burying their jokes. Anyway, I hope it goes away soon and think it best not to spend too much time dwelling on it, lest they catch on.

What 22 Jump Street does have in spades is electrifying meta humor. Nearly every single joke is geared toward one level of self-awareness or another, whether it's the fact that the characters are nearly always on the cusp of being aware they're in a movie, the more cloying "this is a sequel" jokes that are beaten into the ground with a baseball bat, then pile-drived into the planet's core, erupting in a volcano of meta that showers the entire universe, or the subtle and infinitely clever gags like the one concerning Tatum's previous role in White House Down.

See above: "Popcorn action flicks"

In short, some of it works, some of it doesn't. Fortunately the jokes featured most frequently and at the forefront are the kind that work. And it wouldn't be a Lord and Miller film without a totally unexpected and cleverly thematic philosophical manifesto buried within the comedy, and this film is no different. In fact, it's utterly brilliant - elevating the repeated meta gag of "sameness" as the centerpiece for the entire film.

What starts it off is a cheesy joke Ron Swanson makes about how important it is to do the exact same thing as last time. Yes, it's just a meta joke about being a sequel, but that idea branches out throughout the film into a startlingly dense web. It's Miller and Lord's way of dealing with the pressure of handling a sequel to a highly successful film and it's genius.

(THEME SPOILERS? ARE THOSE A THING?) When Jenko makes friends with Zook, a man exactly similar to himself, he begins to act upon that theme in earnest. Sure doing the same thing can be comforting and desirable, but he soon discovers how empty it is to just mindlessly repeat the same things over and over again. A central tenet of the film is that it is perfectly acceptable to repeat oneself, but a twist to the formula is absolutely necessary. It's the only way to grow and change as a person and to stop from dragging yourself and others down. 

Leave it to our boys to turn their funny meta sequel for a TV reboot into a musing about the nature of mindless repetition. So there's the twist that justifies the entire thing. Seriously, the pieces all click together like an episode of Arrested Development on the fourth rewatch. It's an impressive endeavor emphasized within the film at every turn, sometimes quite strongly and obviously (like the characters that constantly reprimand the agents for not doing the same thing) and sometimes with delicate subtlety (like the sets of twins that pepper the film in various supporting roles.).

Hell, the film even features twin statues.

Because of the dedicated efforts of the directing team, they have once again achieved a resounding success. 22 Jump Street is not a Kubrickian puzzle box of a film, but it's a dreadfully smart sequel that, while never quite as funny as the original, is definitely worth a watch. If you loved 21 and want more of the same, you'll get it, but with that oh so delicious twist of lemon.

TL;DR: 22 Jump Street is an astoundingly clever film but ultimately isn't quite funny enough to obviate its more intrusive elements.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Honestly, no. Wait for RedBox and do a double feature at home sometime. But definitely check it out before the year is over.

Word Count: 1300

Census Bloodbath: It Ain't Easy Being Forest Green

Year: 1986

Director: Tom McLoughlin

Cast: Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1985's Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was a pile of crap that outraged and alienated its core audience when the hockey masked killer turned out to be a particularly idiotic copycat (the utterly forgettable Roy the Paramedic). But, hey. It still made Paramount a solid 900% profit on its insultingly low budget, and they weren't about to throw that money machine away again. 

So Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives was given a slightly improved budget and a juicy summer release date. The one thing left to do was get that disgruntled audience back - hence the hilariously insistent title, Jason Lives.

"IT'S ME, JASON. JASON VOORHEES. I, JASON, AM ALIVE. WHO IS ROY?"

In fact, the entirety of A New Beginning is whisked away with some particularly vigorous retconning. Pam Roberts, enchilada poop, and the Ballad of Ethel and Junior are swept under the rug. And that ending where it's revealed that a grown-up Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) has become the new Jason? You must be thinking of some other Tommy Jarvis, because our sexy flannel-wearing hero could never hurt a fly.

Budget well spent.

Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) has ditched the institution (to which he has been committed since age 12 for some serious "being Corey Feldman" issues) and returned to the town of Crystal Lake - newly rechristened as Forest Green to help citizens and visitors forget all that nasty business with that pissed off goalie.

Tommy brings his friend Allen (Ron Palillo, one of the main characters on Welcome Back, Kotter) along for the field trip of a brief lifetime when he decides to visit the grave of Jason Voorhees (C. J. Graham) to make sure he's actually dead. You'd think chopping him in the head forty times with a machete would do the trick, but he's bounced back from worse. As indeed he does again when Tommy's ill-advised attempts to impale the corpse on an iron fencepost attract the unwanted attention of some lighting, electrocuting the steadfast serial killer out of his dirt nap.

Allen bites the dust with predictable swiftness in a gore effect (namely, his heart being punched out) that will make the gorehound in you sigh with relief after the uninspiring work in A New Beginning. Overall, Jason is much more ruthless this time around, dispatching his victims with wanton alacrity (including, in one memorable sequence, a notorious triple decapitation), as if hurrying to make up for lost time.

This same scene also showcases the other main characterizing feature of the film, which is also its most divisive - the humor. You see, after Jason kicks off his murder spree and Tommy disappears into the night, the camera zooms in on his eye, revealing a machete-weilding Jason inside reenacting the famous "barrel of a gun" intro from James Bond. This is perhaps the most on-the-nose pop culture moment in the film, but by far not the only moment that absolutely intends to elicit laughter.

At least I hope so.

Some fans take issue with this, not wanting their horror to be sullied by a camp sensibility (pun not intended, but absolutely welcome). I however, accept this turn of events with open arms, largely because the humorous glint in the script was the brainchild of writer-director Tom McLoughlin, the closest the Friday the 13th franchise ever had to an "auteur."

With such a solid unifying concept and a driving passion behind it, McLoughlin brings a level of effort to the film that the series sorely needed, lest it stop dead in its tracks. His carefully constructed gags (the self-awareness of which may be a turn-off to some, but least of all me) give the film a level of craftsmanship that, while certainly not nearly historically noteworthy, make this entry much more cinematic than many of its predecessors. This couldn't have happened without being McLoughlin's baby and he takes care of it with the respect and grace it deserves.

Which isn't a ton, admittedly.

So. With McLoughlin's humor comes a remarkable visual style and a deftness with plot that makes Part V look like a fool with its pants on the ground. You see, Jason Lives juggles not one but two simultaneous plotlines! Maybe that's not worth breaking out the champagne, but after the last film's revolving meat tray, any even mildly involving plot is like an oasis in the desert.

The two interweaving parts are as such:

1) Tommy Jarvis does his best to convince Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) of the return of the now mythical Mr. Voorhees, but ends up on the lam as the decreasingly bemused officer is convinced that Tommy is a crackpot roustabout.

2) The counselors at Camp Forest Green pull pranks, have sex, and most shockingly deal with actual campers. The presence of children provides an edge to the horror like no film before it, but obviously the focus is on our dear counselors. Shall we Meet the Meat?

We shall.

First off, there's Paula (Kerry Noonan) who defied my initial expectations by not actually being the Final Girl, although in retrospect she makes far too many dumb decisions to deserve that distinction; then there's Sissy (Renée Jones, who has since been in - holy crap - 1,288 episodes of Days of Our Lives), the playful Not Quite Token minority, of which the Friday franchise has a surprising amount in these middle sequels; Cort (Tom Fridley, later of Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, one of the most excitingly titled 1989 slashers), our designated 80's ambassador with feathered mullet hair, a single ear piercing, holes in his jeans large enough to fit the entire Duran Duran discography, and who dies listening to Alice Cooper; and Megan Garris (Jennifer Cooke), the resourceful and fearless daughter of the Sheriff who has developed something of a thing for one Tommy Jarvis.

She also knows what to do with a laser scope. My kinda woman.

What's this? A last name, more than one character trait, and a relationship with both key members of the other storyline? Ladies and gentlemen, we have met our Final Girl. In fact, Megan will prove to be one of the better Final Girls in the franchise with her cleverness, bravery, and sense of fun. She's also the only person with enough narrative momentum to move fluidly between the two mostly separated plot branches, fitting in perfectly to the action adventure mold of Tommy Jarvis' flight from the cops and the spritely teen slasher that is occupying some other realm entirely up at Camp Crystal Lake Forest Green.

And she doesn't have sex during the film (which is wise, because she has far more important things to do), but she's a young woman with a clear libido who ends up surviving Jason's wrath, which is a huge step forward for gender representation in the franchise.

No wonder Tommy likes her - hey, I think I used to own that coat.

Jason Lives is one of the most idiosyncratic and special entries in the entire franchise, a delightful blend of post-Nightmare supernatural horror (Jason is quite decisively a zombie this time around) and pre-Scream meta humor.

The visual spectrum is 100 times wider than A New Beginning, the first entry in the second phase of the franchise, ever could have dreamed of with multiple shots that would be considered among the most graceful in the entire 12 film series. Most notable among these shots are one where Jason stalks a girl from outside the window of the cabin she's in and an early centered shot when he is menacing his first new set of victims after his resurrection. Again, I can't stress enough how that, in any other Hollywood film, this kind of visual effort would be totally commonplace, but here in the Fridayverse it stands out like Hitchcockian caliber perfection.

Jason = This movie. The RV = A New Beginning.

The acting here is also of a higher caliber than normal with even bit parts like the offed-early Lizabeth (played by the director's wife Nancy Mc Loughlin) bringing a warmth and easygoing charm to their roles. Mathews and Cooke especially have a lighthearted chemistry that complements the film's good humor tremendously.

At the end of it all, Jason Lives isn't quite a scary film - slasher films are never scary - but it is an immensely charming and well put-together sequel that could even be considered a slightly "good" film in a franchise known for overt badness. It's not quite as gory as the Savini-fueled original and Final Chapter and it doesn't boast the hilarious insipidity of entries like The New Blood or Jason Takes Manhattan, but it is certainly a top tier Jason flick that deserves a lot more respect than it typically gets.

Killer: Jason Voorhees (C. J. Graham)

Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (Thom Matthews) feat. Megan Garris (Jennifer Cooke)

Best Kill: I'm a big fan of that smiley face one, which occurs when Jason smashes Burt into a tree.

Sign of the Times: Everybody, I'd like you to meet Cort.

Scariest Moment: Jason stalks a counselor while she's walking among the children in the cabin.

Weirdest Moment: Two fully clothed people have sex in an RV.

Champion Dialogue: "He can't come to the phone right now. He's in the can draining his lizard."

Body Count: 18

1. Allen has his heart punched out.
2. Darren speared to death.
3. Lizabeth is speared and drowned. 
4. Burt has his arm ripped off and is thrown into a tree.
5. Stan is decapitated.
6. Larry is decapitated.
7. Katie is decapitated.
8. Martin has a broken bottle shoved in his throat. 
9. Steven is impaled to his fiancée.
10. Annette is impaled to her fiancé. 
11. Nikki's face is crushed against an RV restroom wall.
12. Cort is stabbed in the head with a hunting knife.
13. Roy is chopped into pieces.
14. Sissy has her head ripped off.
15. Paula's insides repaint the cabin walls.
16. Officer Thornton gets a dart in the forehead.
17. Officer Pappas gets his skull crushed. 
18. Sherriff Garris is bent in half backwards.

TL;DR: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is funny, clever, and visually cohesive, an excellent addition to the franchise.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1703

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: This Is The Part Where The Supposedly Dead Franchise Comes Back To Life

Year: 1985

Director: Danny Steinmann

Cast: John Shepherd, Melanie Kinnaman, Shavar Ross

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The year was 1984. After increasing moral outrage and MPAA sterilization, Paramount decided that a stake was going to be put in the Friday the 13th franchise's heart with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. That promise of pulling out all the stops for the last ever Jason movie caused that little film to bring in a box office 13 times larger than its budget. Whoops.

What was a savvy studio to do, having sent one of their biggest cash cows out to pasture? Well, a mere 11 months later Friday the 13th: A New Beginning plopped into theaters, so it's easy to guess what decision they made.

This is the least permanent setpiece in all of cinema.

For the record, in a review like this, with a movie this old and of this quality, spoilers don't exist. So if you truly and deeply care about not knowing the ending of a much maligned slasher sequel, please go watch it immediately so you can come back and see how remarkably astute and sharp-witted I am in my analysis. 

Luckily for Paramount, The Final Chapter afforded them a quick and dirty entry point into a sequel: the character of Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), who went a little bonkers in the end of the last entry and got machete happy on the hockey masked serial killer that murdered his mother. Unfortunately Corey Feldman was in the middle of shooting a little-known adventure movie called The Goonies and was unavailable for most of the infinitely brief shooting schedule.

In response to this, director Danny Steinmann (of the 1980 proto-slasher The Unseen) stuck Feldman in a brief dream sequence in the film's opening, then launched the film into the future as teenage Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd, who would later become a born again Christian, denounce the franchise, and take a bit part in The Hunt for Red October) is being taken to Pinehurst, a rehabilitation center for troubled youths located in the Crystal Lake township.

A place where he can acid wash his hair in peace.

Tommy is a skittish, untalkative boy who has a tendency to Kung Fu Grip the hell out of anybody who tries to sneak up on him. In short, somebody who actually needs psychological treatment and help from a halfway home like this.

Although he clearly doesn't need a personal trainer.

The other kids, though? Aside from Vic (Mark Venturini), who has some pretty deep-set rage issues, and Joey (Dominick Brascia, who would complete a Census Bloodbath hat trick with 1984's They're Playing With Fire and 1986's Evil Laugh in which he played Evil Laugher) who has some sort of coded form of Asperger's, all the teens in the home are just as sane as any other character in the Friday the 13th franchise. Which isn't saying a lot, I suppose, because they all suffer from sex addiction, Ill-Advised 80's Hair Disorder, and Temporary Deafness when there's a killer shanking someone with a railroad spike in the next room, but there's certainly no indication that they need to be in a treatment facility like this.

But for whatever reason, this teen Meat exists and for that we gotta Meet them. There's Tina (Debisue Voorhees, also of Innocent Prey and Appointment with Fear, who was almost certainly cast for her surname, although her willingness to go topless probably helped), the resident sex fiend; Eddie (John Robert Dixon), Tina's other half and wearer of hilariously low cut shirts, one of which goes almost all the way to his belt; Jake (Jerry Pavlon), who has a stutter; Violet (Tiffany Helm), who is the movie's appointed 80's Ambassador and looks like the love child of Madonna and a keytar; and Robin (Juliette Cummins, who went on to become a veritable Scream Queen in Psycho III, Deadly Dreams, and Slumber Party Massacre II), who is a human female, an empty shell who exists only to be punctured by machete.

As if that wasn't enough to swallow, there's also Dr. Letter (Richard Young), the director of Pinehurst; Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman), the assistant director; Reggie (Shavar Ross, later a recurring actor on Diff'rent Strokes), the hilariously overwritten minority and grandson of the caretaker; and Ethel (Carol Locatell) and Junior (Ron Sloan), the hillbilly garbage mom and son that live next door and arrive every now and then to provide their own very special (read: absolutely noxious) brand of comic relief.

You can practically smell them through the screen.

So that's quite the impressive cast (in terms of size and nothing else). And we're not even through with it, although I will stop the laundry listing. You see, this is the film that began the Friday the 13th bad habit of introducing side characters that are totally unconnected to the plot so they can perform one scene and then get bumped off. It's the worst kind of body count padding, because it's hard to care about the fate of some random hick who washed up onscreen during the middle of the second act.

Because of the sheer number of these types of scenes, it's nigh on impossible for A New Beginning to maintain a cohesive plot with any means of propulsion whatsoever. But, for what it's worth (not a lot), there is in fact a story buried in here.

After the angry Vic kills the supremely annoying Joey - one could say he's the Olaf of slasher characters - with an axe while he's chopping wood (the one and only moment in a later Friday the 13th sequel to truly surprise me, so kudos), Tommy is on edge and sees visions of Jason around every corner. When people around the center end up missing or dead, Tommy wonders if the man he hacked to death with a machete so many years ago could possibly have returned to exact his revenge.

Unfortunately Tommy just isn't nearly as interesting this time around as he was in The Final Chapter and would be again in Jason Lives. This is partially due to a bland performance from Mr. Shepherd, who can't even find the joy in getting to do cool karate moves (which he promptly forgets once it comes time to battle Jason - another bad habit of the franchise is people forgetting or not utilizing learned skills when it's crunch time.) and partially due to the fact that his character just straight-up vanishes for the bulk of the third act in support of a half-assed "is Tommy the killer?" mystery plotline.

Spoiler #1: Tommy is not the killer. Spoiler #2: His maskmaking skills also have no applicable use in this film.

The time has come. Do you want to know who the killer is? DO YOU?! WHO IS WEARING JASON'S MASK?! It's Jason, right? ...right?

Naw, it's Roy.

Who? Exactly.

Go ahead and control-F to search for any mention of Roy before this paragraph. Did you find anything? That's because Roy is an inconsequential minor character. A paramedic with two brief scenes. It turns out that he's the father of Joey, the boy who was killed by Vic in the beginning, and seeing his son's dead body sent him into a rage spiral and he decided to copycat Jason Voorhees in order to exact bloody vengeance.

Oops, there goes the can of worms.

First of all, audiences hated that it wasn't Jason behind the mask. There was a general outrage the likes of which had never been seen before in the horror community. It was like if George Lucas had put Hello Kitty stickers on Darth Vader's helmet in The Empire Strikes Back. Let me be the first to say that I personally have no qualms with Jason not being the killer. He wasn't the killer in the original movie, so it's not like there's no precedent. And it's still a fun bad movie about a guy in a hockey mask killing promiscuous teens, so it doesn't really matter what the dude's name is.

What does matter, however, is narrative logic, of which this film has not one iota. There's the fact that the killer is such a random side character, only the most sharp-eyed viewers will actually be able to remember his face when it's time for the big reveal. There's the fact that his revenge motive is utter hogwash because many of his numerous victims had nothing to do with Pinehurst at all and were in fact miles away from the property when they were murdered. There's the fact that he gets so in character as Jason, he apparently remembers Tommy Jarvis' attack and responds to him like an old enemy. There's the fact that Vic, the boy who killed his son, is never even killed.

And why the Jason thing in the first place? I mean, obviously they wanted to make another Friday the 13th movie, so that's why. But seriously. The filmmakers try to get around the bait-and-switch by making the mask's markings powder blue instead of the traditional red (which can be seen in Tommy's fantasy version of Jason), but there's only so far I'm willing to follow that idea down the rabbit hole.

See for yourself - Roy Jason

"Real" Jason

I am impressed that the film managed the internal continuity to separate the fake and real Jason, especially considering this is also the movie in which Jason tightens a strap by turning it both clockwise and counter-clockwise and a dead body appears in a bed in the space of a cut. But, moving on.

I don't ask a lot from these movies in terms of realistic psychology, but is that really the best copycat motive anyone could come up with? I know you had a month, but come on! I'd rather have Tommy Jarvis be the killer. I'd rather have it be Violet, turned to violence by her sinful rock n' roll music. Heck, I'd rather have it be Pamela Anderson, tired of being viewed as a sex object and ready to embark upon a new career path.

I would watch the hell out of that movie.

So while I'm totally fine with a non-Jason killer, this movie could have used a couple hundred more rewrites before its release, and it is certainly not helped by the deficit of decent gore effects. The film was too thrown together and cheap to afford the lovely designs of a master like Tom Savini and was one of the most neutered by the MPAA in the series thus far. The final nail in the coffin is Pam, the de facto Final Girl, one of the most ineffectual female characters to ever grace the silver screen, tripping her way across the flat forest floor, and generally turning into a useless, quivering heap whenever "Jason" is around.

So without a solid killer, a memorable heroine, or great grue, A New Beginning shouldn't have a leg to stand on. However, the film is so terrible and so firmly entrenched in the 80's that it's fabulously ripe to be mocked.

Every outfit and song comes from a time where the insides of people's closets could sear a cornea if you weren't wearing the proper eyewear. One of the early false scares involves a cat falling onto somebody from the ceiling of a restaurant. 

And the acting is the worst in the series - not exactly one known for Oscar-caliber talent in the first place. Mark Venturini approaches his character with all the delicacy, grace, and misplaced venom of Chris R from The Room, one of the greaser characters is played by a timid and effete man who exudes the awkwardness of a fifth grader in a turkey costume, and Melanie Kinnaman, our very own Final Girl, overacts like the worst of the silent film actresses of yesteryear, over-extending every limb like she's about to be tied to a railroad track.

Pictured: Pam in a more low key moment.

Luckily, one of the hallmarks that keeps the slasher-exploitation genre totally engaging is present in full force - awkwardly shoved in topless scenes. One, a teen sex scene, fits in perfectly with the genre and the franchise. The one where a waitress flashes herself in the bathroom proclaiming "It's showtime"? Not so much. And the scene where a bare-breasted Robin gets in bed, carefully positioning her blanket so as to not cover her nipples? Classic. Even Pam gets in on the fun, running around in a soaking wet see-through top for a solid ten minutes toward the end. 

A New Beginning takes place in a universe where bras have never been invented, possibly having been sucked into the wormhole created when it was announced that The Final Chapter would have a sequel. It's so misguidedly sleazy that it's impossible not to laugh.

Throw in the tacked on "Tommy is the bad guy" shock ending that would immediately be forgotten and you've got yourself a prime cocktail of awful. It's no good as a sequel to the beloved Part IV and it's just plum dumb, but at least it's got a lock on being one of the best bad pictures around.

Killer: Roy (Dick Wieand) as Jason Voorhees (Tom Morga)

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

Best Kill: Violet is killed while doing the robot in her room to this song.

Sign of the Times: Literally anything Violet ever says, wears, or does.

Scariest Moment: Corey Feldman's "scared" face in the dream sequence looks uncomfortably pleasure-filled.

Weirdest Moment: Demon and Anita flirt through the wall of an outhouse while he poops out his enchilada.

Champion Dialogue: "Crap, my ass!"

Body Count: 21; including the killer, 2 in a dream, and one person killed by somebody other than "Jason." Any way you slice it, it's the highest body count in the series so far.

1. Neil is stabbed in the gut with a machete in a dream.
2. Les gets a spike to the neck in a dream.
3. Joey is axed to death by Vic.
4. Vinnie gets a flare in the mouth.
5. Pete gets his throat slashed.
6. Billy gets axed in the head. 
7. Lana is axed in the tummy.
8. Raymond the Drifter is stabbed in the stomach.
9. Tina gets her eyes clipped with garden shears.
10. Eddie's head is crushed against a tree with a leather strap. 
11. Anita's throat is slit.
12. Demon is speared through an outhouse wall.
13. Junior is decapitated on his motorcycle.
14. Ethel is cleavered in the face and drowned in her stew.
15. Jake is cleavered in the face.
16. Robin is macheted in the chest through her bed.
17. Violet is macheted in the stomach. 
18. Duke the paramedic has his throat slit.
19. Matt gets a railroad spike through the head, pinning him to a tree.
20. George aka Gramps has his eyes gouged out.
21. Roy falls onto a bed of spikes. 

TL;DR: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is hilariously awful, no two ways about it.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 2494

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)

Out Of The Closet, Into The Fire

Year: 2014

Director: Ryan Murphy

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Julia Roberts

Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes

When Sergio first told me about wanting to see the HBO film The Normal Heart I thought "Oh yippee, another dreary gay movie about AIDS." You see, as a gay man it is always nice to see movies about people who think like you, act like you, whatever, instead of the boring heteronormative poobah you get everyday. But the use of AIDS has become such a tired trope that it has become a running joke that you can't watch a movie with LGBT characters without it becoming a tragedy.

So I was understandably wary. Especially considering that director and executive producer Ryan Murphy has a history of headlining ambitious but messy productions *cough* Glee *cough*. But The Normal Heart, a story of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980's based on a play of the same name by Larry Kramer, despite being almost exactly what one might expect in terms of frothy period drama, is also one of the most harrowing portrayals of the disease put onscreen to date.

This ain't no "straight man learns to love the queers" story like The Dallas Buyers Club or Philadelphia, nor is it a quasi-romanticized Bohemian art piece like Rent. The Normal Heart is a straight up medical horror film, depicting the queasy reality of life for gay men in the early years of the decade as they were being cut down in record numbers by a disease that nobody understood and struggling to find anybody willing to help them.

It's gonna be pretty hard to be funny in the captions on this one.

Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) is a gay reporter/activist who, along with several of his close friends, begins the Gay Men's Health Crisis organization to try to spread awareness and promote AIDS research after the death of his friend Craig (Jonathan Groff). With the help of the scrappy wheelchair-bound Dr. Emma Brookner (Julia Roberts), he and the board of the organization work tirelessly to right the wrongs committed by the American government, who seem to be content simply allowing the gays to die in record numbers.

As more and more of his friends and acquaintances end up dead, Ned's anger grows until he is constantly lashing out at the establishment on the air and in person, always shouting, never pulling a punch where he can help it. He can't stand the inequality of a world where a plague that is killing hundreds of people can simply be ignored by their own leaders because they don't want to get their hands dirty with LGBT policy. Perhaps his approach is tiresome and alienating, but it is the exact response a crisis of this level deserves.

When he falls in love with the debonair LA Times reporter Felix Turner (Matt Bomer), he begins to soften until the fateful day that Felix begins showing symptoms. The film turns into a race against the clock as Ned pushes harder and harder for adequate research, drug importing, and social recognition in a world where dead gay men are given no autopsy and stuffed into garbage bags. He's shouting into a void, trying vainly to save everybody he loves from near total annihilation in the face of a new plague.

If that doesn't sound like a horror film, then you clearly haven't seen as many as I have (which, in all likelihood, is probably the case even if you agree). An alienated man with friends and loved ones dying all around him while people in positions of authority are either helpless or unwilling to give aid (pun absolutely not intended)? That could be any slasher movie. That could be any number of haunted house pictures. That IS Jaws.

Two scenes in particular, a wild beach party on Fire Island where Craig's healthy exterior begins to falter and a subway ride where a symptomatic Matt Bomer sees the impact of his condition, literalize that horror undercurrent in a strikingly obvious and resolutely impactful way through jarring editing and stunning cinematography, two of the most (and some of the only) visually impactful moments in a film that derives most of its power from dialogue and performance rather than framing and color.

Unless you count skin tone.

Ned is met with opposition from both sides. Hey, you try telling an entire population of gay men who have fought their entire lives for the right to be physical with one another that maybe they should cool it on the whole "having sex" thing for a while while we wait for funding.

I rarely stick with movies over two hours long, especially ones that depict the political process in as much detail as this one, but The Normal Heart has an edge on those other films. It is an absolutely true story, a mind-blowing outrage that 1) Happened just barely over a decade before I was born - that's pretty modern if you ask me and 2) Has gotten nowhere near the amount of press that it deserved.

Sure, people will say that it's sensationalist, that there's two sides to every story. Maybe some straight people wanted to help. Whoop dee doo. They didn't. Not really. And it's hard to ignore the importance of the gay side of the story in the HIV epidemic, but that is exactly what has been happening for decades.

Which is clearly a mistake because: fabulous.

The film itself is haphazard, but strong. Ryan Murphy tips his hand somewhat with a lengthy series of bombastic and on-the-nose Awards Bait speeches and those surreptitious shifts in character that he is so known for. And the film, especially toward the end, has very little in terms of narrative thrust or momentum. The film can be aimless in terms of storytelling more often than it hits the mark. But man, can Mr. Murphy wield an emotional sledgehammer.

The sheer tortuous reality of The Normal Heart is an emotional wringer, operated by winning performances from A-list actors. Julia Roberts and The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons especially bring the film an emotional core that shakes your bones and keeps you thinking about the film, even days later. And Mark Ruffalo is a fine actor who turns in a terrific performance, but he pales in comparison to the actually gay actors bringing their all around every corner - most of them, like Parsons and Bomer, drawing upon recent coming out experiences to fuel their rage and alienation.

Even the minor characters bring it all to the table. In fact I'd argue that the little known Danielle Ferland, who doesn't even have a picture on her IMDb page, turns in the most harrowing and committed performance in a cast full of tremendous talents turning it up to 11. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was crying in the car the morning after thinking about her scene. And I'm emotionally sturdy enough to handle LA traffic every day on my way to work.

I really should be getting an award for that.

The Normal Heart is an utterly necessary film for our generation and it's lucky enough to have a wide array of stars that will hopefully draw in viewers from a much broader demographic than it might have. It's inelegant and at times overwrought, but there is no denying the tremendous importance of bringing history to life in the most tactile, emotionally raw format imaginable. And not just for gay people. For everybody.

Because this fight isn't over. HIV transmission in America is still at epidemic rates and climbing. It doesn't get the press that it used to once people chilled out about the gay panic and focus shifted to Africa, but everybody - gay and straight - is putting themselves at risk because of lack of awareness. Gay men are still at highest risk of transmission because they are naturally exposed to the top tier of risky behaviors by default, but this is happening everywhere. A quarter of new infections are contracted by heterosexuals yearly and the CDC estimates that, if we don't get more careful now, over half of college aged gay men will have HIV by the time they are 50 and the risk to straights isn't much less terrifying.

Maybe this isn't what The Normal Heart set out to do, but the bleak, terrifying depiction of real life events should spur a new generation to learn the risks and how to prevent them. Living in the sheltered 21st century, it's easy to reduce the impact of what history teaches us, but the film hits a nerve, bringing the horrors of the past to today like no other.

We need to see it, both to learn the true story of the AIDS crisis and to prevent another from striking. To win a war, you have to start one. And that, hopefully, is exactly what The Normal Heart is going to accomplish.

TL;DR: The Normal Heart can be clunky at times but it is a harrowing and utterly necessary film.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1509

Happy Birthday, Jason!

Every Friday the 13th, I like to take a little time out of my day to watch a movie or two in my favorite franchise. Can you guess what it is? It ain't Toy Story. And today is a very special day, because not only is it a Friday the 13th, it is also Jason's birthday! (It's also the full moon and my pay day, so things are going great around here.)

The only problem is, if I'm celebrating on Friday the 13th in my personal life, my blog won't see a review until the day after so Jason doesn't get any love on his special day. So, while you betcha there's some fabulous slasher reviews just around the river bend, today we're going to honor my serial killing idol Jason Voorhees with

Jason's Top 13 Crashed Parties

My boy Jason is a social butterfly. He knows about all the greatest gatherings of young people drinking booze and having premarital sex. In honor of his birthday and the parties he doesn't get to have with his mommy anymore, here's the top 13 parties he has crashed in his expansive lifetime.

#13 Dumb Remake Party (Friday the 13th 2009)

This gets bottom of the list because it was the remake and come on, it was only OK. But watching all those douchebags get mown down was still worth the price of admission. And because it was 2009 and everything was all sleek and shiny and modern and "edgy" they got to do outrageous things like drinking out of shoes, which is also a fitting punishment for being such terminal tools.

Body Count: 6 partygoers

Best Kill: Chelsea is stabbed in the head through a dock and dragged upwards, revealing her breasts. It's basically a summary of the entire franchise in one fell swoop.

#12 The Jason's Dead Celebration (Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday)

This one gets extra points for being cheeky. In the beginning of the truly bizarre Jason Goes to Hell, Jason's mortal form is blown up by the FBI (see: truly bizarre) so, when he comes back to cull the citizens of Crystal Lake once more, they are even more unsuspecting than normal. In fact, they even hosted a party at the local diner! Hockey mask shaped burgers for all! Jason wasn't a big fan of that, as you can imagine. He went through those diner patrons like so much ground beef. There wasn't even time to grab the ketchup.

Body Count: 6 partygoers

Best Kill: Joey gets her loud mouth bashed in.

#11 Search Party (Friday the 13th 2009)

On the search... for pot! Seriously though, they're scouting a giant marijuana crop in rural New Jersey. Although nobody minds taking time off for a little canoodling in tents. Jason is probably part bear or something because the musky sweat of surreptitious woodland lovemaking is like a siren call. As usual when Jason doesn't get invited to parties, he brought his machete along.

Body Count: 4 partygoers

Best Kill: Mike is stabbed in the foot through the floor. Then dragged into said floor.

#10 Virtual Reality Party (Jason X)

One of the few truly enjoyable moments in the science fiction chapter of the Jason saga was the virtual reality camp designed to distract him while his prey escaped. The two teenagers the computer invented met the exact specifications to be victimized by Mr. Voorhees - namely, they loved premarital sex and rolling around in sleeping bags.

Body Count: 2 partygoers

Best Kill: Jason slams the two girls together in their sleeping bags. Rest in pieces.

#9 Paintball Party (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives)

Don't you just hate it when you're mandatory team building excursion for work is interrupted by a machete-weilding maniac? It's even worse when you're on the losing team. Now that's just rubbing it in. Literally, in some cases. Ouch.

Body Count: 5 partygoers

Best Kill: This.

#8 Mini Dance Party (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)

When nobody else in the halfway home is as cool as you (or as alive as you), sometimes all there is to do is dance it out to terrible 80's synthcrap. Violet was doing the robot alone in her room when she died, ensuring her the coolest tombstone in recorded history.

Body Count: 1 partygoer

Best Kill: A cop out, but there you go.

#7 Lori's House Party (Freddy vs. Jason)

I was going to rank this party lower because 1) It was kind of an accident, Lori didn't even want it to happen, and 2) Freddy vs. Jason was just not as good as I remembered it being, but when your movie has the smarts to kill off the most odious character early on and in a deliciously gory manner, I give you props. Good partying.

Body Count: 1 partygoer

Best Kill: Trey is ruthlessly machete punched in the back, then bent backwards in a folding bed. Darn tootin'.

#6 Strip Monopoly (Friday the 13th)

Ah, the party that launched a thousand cash-in sequels. When Alice agreed to play strip monopoly with her co-counselors, she had no idea that she was in for a long night of despair at Camp Blood. This one isn't higher on the list because it technically wasn't Jason's doing, but hey. We all have to have role models.

Body Count: 2 partygoers

Best Kill: Bill's tremendously thorough disposal.

#5 The Cat's Away Party (Friday the 13th Part 2)

Now we're getting to the really juicy stuff. The original quadrilogy, baby! In Part 2, all bets are off when the head counselors head off site to hang out in town. Things begin to turn upside down when the previously prudish girl goes full bore for her wheelchairs prey, making hockey innuendos like there was no tomorrow. Which, for her, there wasn't. This is Jason's first party and it was a pretty great example of the spirit of the franchise as it was heading at the time.

Body Count: 4 partygoers

Best Kill: Jeff and Sandra are impaled with a spear in the middle of doing the do.

#4 Cornfield Rave (Freddy vs. Jason)

OK seriously. I really didn't like this movie. But the two party scenes just so happened to be the best parts of the film bar none. Jason trawls through this ill advised rave like a football player after a hunger strike. He stabs indiscriminately left and right, slicing through the Day Glo awfulness that was the party scene in the mid 2000's. Can't say they didn't deserve it.

Body Count: 9 partygoers

Best Kill: Jason, machete atwirl, mows down a half dozen ravers in the blink of an eye.

#3 John Hughes Party (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter)

One of my personal favorite entries in the franchise, The Final Chapter mixes top notch Savini gore with totally credible teen characters (including a pre-fame Crispin Glover) in a delectable party scene that lasts for the entire second half of the film. Hormones flow freely and partners switch with the wind. There's so much going on that Jason killed a full half of them before anyone even noticed. Now that's party crashing.

Body Count: 8 partygoers

Best Kill: This differs from my best kill of the film overall, but it's so hard to choose when Savini's in the house. I'm very partial to this simple yet elegant axe through the chest a post-shower Sara receives.

#2 Michael's Birthday Party (Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)

Give or take five minutes at the end and the beginning, this film takes place entirely at a delayed birthday party for Michael, who never even shows up. I know he was impaled on a tent spike, but still. Rude. Look at all the trouble they went to to blow up those balloons. So Michael sucks, but as a result, the party went on for several days, giving Jason all the time he needs to work his magic.

Body Count: 9 partygoers

Best Kill: Kate's particularly festive death involves a party horn in the eye.

#1 Graduation Party (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan)

This party wins for being the only party Jason could literally crash - because it takes place on an enormous cruise liner. The idea of taking an entire class of graduating seniors to Manhattan from New Jersey for one night on a cruise ship is a totally dubious one, but who wouldn't want to go to that party? Even Jason wants to tag along! And as a party favor, he gets his most prolific crop of kills yet!

Body Count: 10 partygoers (not including the fact that he drowned a good half of the party when he sunk the ship)

Best Kill: Jason bludgeons JJ with her own guitar.

Word Count: 1461