Despite its campy reputation and how absurd it eventually became, I love the Friday the 13th series. And yes, nearly every one of them follows the exact same format and Jason is little more than a Michael Myers ripoff. But I don’t care. In the mid-80s, when I was a kid, Jason was the movie monster and Friday the 13th was the slasher series. (Along with Freddy and A Nightmare on Elm Street, of course).

So why choose Part III? Not to spoil the first two movies (both of which are excellent, by the way), but this is the first time we actually see Jason in the now-famous hockey mask. See, Jason didn’t start as a lumbering Myers ripoff. Hell, he barely featured in the first flick at all. But this is where the Jason Voorhees icon that we all identify with began, which is kind of strange, if you think about it.

Part III plays out exactly as you’d expect. A bunch of teens head out into the woods and, one by one, they get picked off by Jason. It’s cliched, it’s expected, and it’s awesome. Again, if you like your slashers to be by-the-numbers, this is about as close as you’ll get.

As you can see by the poster, this flick was originally released in 3D, with all of the cheesy effects you can probably imagine. If you absolutely must see it in its “original” state, you can buy the 3D (red and blue glasses) version here. But I recommend picking up the Friday the 13th – From Crystal Lake to Manhattan (Ultimate Edition DVD Collection). For $50 you get the entire series. And that is one hell of a deal.

Christine and I checked this out last year on Comcast’s OnDemand service. Oh yeah…this is the good stuff. Low-budget, horrible acting, ludicrous premise, and awesome kills. This movie’s got it all!

The movie begins with nerdy Marty getting picked on at high school. He’s the victim of a rather brutal prank resulting in his being institutionalized. Five years later, the perpetrators of the prank are invited to a class reunion – just for them – at the now-abandoned high school. That’s right: they all show up and none of them are suspicious. Now as ridiculous as this is, even more ridiculous is when the reunited students start having sex in the school even after people start getting picked off. One girl even takes a bath in a scummy old bath tub. I guess the filmmakers decided they needed some T&A to make up for the shitty plot.

Slaughter High is a great 80s flick if you love to laugh at your horror movies. The kills are cheesy and terrific and the plot will have you rolling. Marty’s a great killer and you’ll be rooting for him as he picks off his former high school bullies one by one.

“Where’s the beef! Where’s the beef!”

Too funny.

Ok, this rounds out the original batch of Sleepaway Camp movies, and unfortunately, this is the worst of the bunch. The first one had that unbelievable ending, the second one had great – and funny – kills, and now part three…well…it doesn’t have much, to be honest. The kills mostly happen off screen, and you never really get much of a sense of suspense. You just know that Pamela Springsteen is back and chipper as ever as she kills teen after teen, camper after camper.

Sleepaway Camp 3 takes place exactly a year after part 2. The camp is under new ownership who have concocted a scheme in order to get government funding, since nobody in their right mind locally will pay to go to this place. So they start a project where they mix inner-city and underprivileged kids with wealthy, well-educated kids as some sort of social experiment. Of course, Angela quickly figures out a way to impersonate one of the kids and the killing spree begins.

As I mentioned, though, what could be the best, most gruesome kills usually wind up taking place off screen. For example, there’s a great lawnmower scene that cuts away just as the audience would have let out a collective gasp. Instead, we get to see blood splatter on Angela’s face.

It seems that rather than focusing on horror and kills, the filmmakers decided to take the cheesy humor of the second movie and run with it. In one scene, Angela and a couple of kids are fishing and they pull a hockey mask out of the water. Angela asks, “What day is it today?” and the kids respond, “Saturday the 14th.” Yeah…that’s gold…

Aside from that, there’s a healthy dose of T&A and The Boss’s sister is joined by Michelle Pfeifer’s sister. So unless the first two movies hooked you so much that you just have to see the third, I’d say avoid this particular entry in the series. Later in the month, perhaps we’ll talk about Return to Sleepaway Camp, the movie that came out just a couple years ago.

The 80s were unquestionably the glory years for the slasher genre. It’s when the major slasher franchises were either born or perfected, and it’s when the new great horror icons crept out from the shadows to invade our nightmares. Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees were to the 80s as Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman were to the 30s and 40s. They were instantly recognizable household names, and much like their Universal counterparts, they would spawn franchises that would eventually run themselves into the ground. These horror staples would eventually play out to become parodies of themselves, leading to crossovers and, laughably, to outer space. But despite Hollywood nearly turning these characters into cartoons, the fact remains that they are each compelling horror icons that laid the foundation for the cliches that they eventually became.

It’s no wonder, then, that each of these major franchises are going through reboots. Rob Zombie took his controversial stab at Michael Myers with 2007′s Halloween remake. While the second half of the film was practically a shot-for-shot remake, the first half attempted to go into the how and why of Michael Myers. And whether or not you appreciated it, Zombie did at least create a somewhat plausible background for what was originally just a mindless killer. We haven’t yet seen what the new Nightmare on Elm Street will reveal, but the Friday the 13th reboot has been unleashed and it’s a much different take than Zombie’s Halloween. They don’t add to the back story of Jason or reinvent the formula, nor is it a remake of the original film. Instead, it comes off as Friday the 13th Part 11…or 12…or wherever they left off, depending on spinoffs.

The slasher film is something that should be a pretty easy formula to follow, yet so often it’s messed up by convoluted plots or self-parody. With the new Friday the 13th film, it’s obvious that the filmmakers looked at the existing franchises, figured out what worked, what didn’t, and used the classic template to go forward. And at the risk of pulling a Jarrod, I’m going to step out on a limb and say that this could be the perfect slasher film.
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Article By: Tyler Durden

This clip sums up the second movie very nicely:

Yeah.

While not nearly as good as the first Halloween, the second is serviceable. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence, Halloween 2 continues the story that began in the first movie. While Laurie Strode is en route to the hospital, suffering from wounds from her encounter with Michael Myers, Dr Loomis learns that Michael is not dead and eventually learns that Michael and Laurie are brother and sister. (more…)

Tyler Durden sends us a review of one of our favorite seasonal movies, Halloween.

Article By: Tyler Durden

In honor of its 30th anniversary, and because it is one of my favorite movies, I am going to review the first Halloween movie, followed by the rest of the franchise. The goal is to have at least two reviews a week in order to coincide with the actual date of Halloween.

So here goes!

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