📜 My History with Friday the 13th

When I was a kid, my sisters would have Friday the 13th playing on tv in the basement and I would peek from behind my fingers before running upstairs. I didn't have the courage to watch these movies in full until I was a few years older, scrambling to the weekly TV guide to find the next showing of any scary movie they might play on AMC or TNT. Some entries were more frequently aired than others, so it took me a long time to piece this series together.

The old WB channel used to air Friday the 13th (1980) a fair amount. I would catch it appropriately on Friday nights and the atmosphere stuck with me as that of an epitomal slasher flick. Oozing with ominous mood, rainy wooded darkness, and that perfect Manfredini score, my idea of Summer camp was forever tainted by the need to associate the wilderness with primal hunters deadset on striking fear into the hearts of those who never heed the warnings. It's got a death curse, haven't you heard?

I had already seen Scream by the time I watch the first film, so it came as no surprise that Mrs. Voorhees was our main antagonist. This added a whole new layer of tragic mythology to series, knowing that like the memory of her dear son Jason, people would forget the traumatic catalysts for a history of bloodshed and view it all through the filter of whatever appeals to their visceral appetites. In this case, it was the man in the mask, killing to avenge his mother who only ever killed to avenge her son. It was the never-ending cycle that only goes on because people are so quick to forget, and that message was always poignant to me, even as a child.

The order I saw them in runs together, but it was definitely mostly out of order. I managed to catch Part 8, probably before I had even seen the first, and I kept thinking how terrifying this unstoppable figure was. He had clearly already jumped the shark at this point in his career, notably with his ability to teleport and swim through the ocean, but it never made him any less threatening to me. I knew he had more humble beginnings and I was anxious to see it all started.

TNT would play Part 3 regularly, and that quickly became the most iconic to me. I would watch it in the living room at night with the volume low so my dad wouldn't catch me, and I found the vibe the creepiest of them all. Nothing would top part 3's portrayal of the hulking newly masked Jason and his pervy axe-wielding disco-themed backdrop. It defined the 80s to me, and I needed more of it.

I remember thinking how dumb the description in the TV guide was for part 5: “A man dressed as Jason Voorhees begins killing kids in a halfway house." I kept thinking, “That's because it IS Jason, you idiots," completely unaware that A New Beginning was the second entry in the series to stray away from Jason as our primary antagonist. A bizarre entry that still retained the proper vibe, so its authenticity never wavered. By the time I'd seen 6 and 7, the mood was changing just as Jason shed his living form for that of the undead. He became impervious and unrealistic, and here I was, growing desperate to see the lost chapters of his human years that had continued to evade me on cable.

It took a long time before I ever got around to part 2 and 4. I had used my earnings from my first job almost exclusively on DVD purchases from DeepDiscount.com, and the Friday the 13th series was on the top of my to-do list. These entries were completely satisfying classic Voorhees adventures, reminding me why Jason's human years were always his creepiest. Pure 80s nightmare fuel that defined a generation.

While the grounded entries would always be the scariest renditions, I always had a soft spot for Jason Goes to Hell. My sister had borrowed a VHS of it when it just came out, but I was too young and scared to watch the whole thing. By the time I caught on TV sometime in the midst of all the other viewings, its imaginative supernatural possession plot always struck a chord with me as a unique and fan-fueled romp into uncharted territories. It was super gory and completely unconventional, and that's why I loved it.

Then Jason X came out, and I avoided it like the plague. Even as a franchise fan, I thought it sounded dumb as hell, much like how I felt about Halloween: Resurrection. It was an insult that strayed too far from the basic premise of a madman in a Summer camp that I just couldn't get behind it. I'd caught it on Syfy years later and my assumptions were correct. It was a shit movie and I still don't have a high opinion of it.

Of course, they remedied the issue by releasing Freddy vs. Jason a couple years later. I was old enough to remember when this came out, catching TV spots and having fangasms. We eventually rented this alongside Kill Bill Volume 1 and it was glorious. Jason was back and he was stealing the show, much to Freddy's chagrin. Then it would all end in a glorified wrestling match through Jason's homegrounds, completely wiping away the bad taste of his previous outing. Sure, the timeline indicates that he was doomed to get sent to space a few years later, but movies were changing now. Remakes were coming out, timelines were being disregarded, and there was hope that the Friday the 13th series would toss that bad dream and keep him on earth where he belonged.

Following the success of Platinum Dunes horror remakes, Friday the 13th was next in line for the remake treatment. I absolutely loved the 2003 TCM movie, so I was pumped to see how they could make Jason terrifying again. What we ended up getting was a derivative cliche of a movie that tried too hard to be the Chainsaw Massacre movie it wasn't, and while Derek Mears was a great Jason, the movie failed to live up to the franchise's “standards”. Alas, the series was dead in the water, and remained so for another 15 years. Will Jason rise again, and will he prove that he has the longevity to survive outside of the 80s?