Friday the 13th





Unlike its seven sequels, this movie was actually good.

It just got worse with each sequel. *sigh*

Hugely overrated Halloween knock off that is a lot worse than most people probably remember. In a rare "movie world" event, nearly all of the subsequent sequels are better than the original. At least they had an ounce of fun and creativity in them, something which this film is sorely lacking. Great effects by Tom Savini are about the only bright spot for this one. C-.

Hmm, that's odd, because I don't remember the sequels being as good. The whole series itself is not that great, but I distinctly remember this one being the best of the series. I was, like, 8, though. :razz:

Yes, it was a cash in on the success of Halloween, but it's still bloody good fun. I like the sequels a bit better due to the fact that they have Jason in them, but this one is good as well.

B+

A clumsily made shlockfest that inexplicably spawned a neverending line of sequels.

While Halloween was the perfect way to make a slasher film (suspenseful cat-and-mouse sequences), this movie was just ridiculous with its campy, excessive gore.

You're actually very right about the F13 series being not that great in general. It's definitely one of the weakest franchises in the horror genre.

yes they are terribly made, make no sense and don't pay attention to continuity or plot holes whatsoever, but i think that's why i love them so much. they hare just campy, ridiculous, schlocky fun movies if you don't take them too seriously.

dont rememeber much, but i really liked it!

B+

I so much agree.

I give this one a B-. It's a decent slasher flick with some nice gore, but it is nowhere near a horror classic and, really, funnily enough most sequels were better. They are just a lot of fun.

And just to think that it's the one that spawned off the most sequels.

The best long ongoing horror movies franchise, in my opinion, is Nightmare on the lm Street. I happen to like pretty much every single flick in that franchise and the first movie in t stands as one of the ten best horror movies ever made.

Well I saw the second one and it sucked. God forbid how bad the final ones were. :-#

Actually, Friday the 13th is okay. I didn't mind the good special effects and got a few chills. It's enough to warrent a C+

a fun series to watch, 21 June 1999




Friday the 13ths on a whole can be summed up in one review, that's 1-9. Because essentially what is appealing about one is exactly what is appealing about them all. So let's start with an overall view of the films.

Fridays the 13ths are the kind of movies where you go into the basement to watch when you are 12 or 13 and you're with four or five of your close friends from school on a Friday night and watch these films. You have your three bags of chips and lots of pop and you wait for that " chi chi chi ha ha ha " music to start so you can get all freaked out. And that's what's so fun about these films. Even though they are rated R, the ones that enjoy them the best are adolescent males that cheer Jason on and playfully hope that the next death is going to be more inventive than the next. And you hope to God that noise you heard upstairs at 3:00 in the AM is just the cat. And as strange as a statement as this is going to be, it must be said that there is just something innocent and pure about being scared to death while watching the Friday's. You know they're not real but they certainly make you want to put the light on in the basement before you go down there alone at night.

Friday's are so laughable because they really are poorly made. The continuity in the films is so terrible that me and some of my friends can actually have fun now just by picking apart the movies.

The time-line is so ridiculous that Jason must be in his early 80's now. But that is not the point. The point is to have fun and enjoy this. They don't make scary movies like these anymore. Now, all horror movies are action movies disguised as scary movies. Studio guys don't realize that what makes a movie scary is an innocent place like Camp Crystal Lake, a killer as maniacal as Jason and teens as horny as the ones that inhabit horror movies from the early 80's. You don't have that anymore. It's just not the same. But back to the actual review of the Friday's.

The first one is actually pretty good. It has an amazing climax to it and for it's time, the decapitation scene was as scary as it gets. It's like Cunningham took the best parts of the first two Halloweens and not only immitated them, but he went a step further with the gore. Also look for a young Kevin Bacon in one of the roles ( he dies really well ).

The second Friday starts out so incredibly scary that it sets the tone for the whole movie. And the story that Paul tells around the camp fire is truly terrifying. The second Friday is probably the 3rd best in the bunch. There are some great deaths and the direction is actually quite good because there are a few scenes that keep you guessing. I liked this film a lot.

The third instalment has to be a terrible film in the 3-D department, but it is really one of the scariest films that I have seen. Jason is bigger and meaner and he seems to have a chip on his shoulder. He kills so violently and ruthlessly that he scares you with his brutality alone. An excellent entry in the series, and the second best one at that.

The " Final Chapter " is the best installment. First of all Rick Baker was asked to do the special make-up for the film and his Jason death scene is unbelievably realistic that it still gives me chills. There are also so many tense moments in the film and so many really innovative and teeth grinding deaths. I really loved the fourth one ( also look for Corey Feldman, Lawrence Monoson and Crispin Glover ).

The fifth one is a joke. It is a great example of terrible writing, awful direction and some pretty bad acting. But you know what? It's fun. It's hard to explain why, but it just makes me laugh every time I watch it ( watch for Boner from Growing Pains in a quick but painful role ).

The sixth is the last honest effort in the series and I'd have to say that there are some good chills in here.

The seventh and eighth are terrible. That's all I'll say about that. Just really terrible films. ( But look for Scott Reeves of Y&R fame in the eighth one. )

The ninth made me mad. It starts out so well. The whole opening sequence had the feel of the first four. There was lots of atmosphere, great music, false scares, unnecessary nudity ( a Friday trademark ) and a great chase scene. But after that it just goes back to what made the last two a terrible disappointment.

So if you really want to have a good time, watch the first four, they are great, but stay away from the last three. Have fun and keep the lights on!

Dissapointing considering all the hype it is given. Really nothing that original and quite derivitive of the slasher genre. Sure, Jason Vorhees is a good villain, but this film was just not that good.

C+

Jason Vorhees is not even really in this movie, hehe.

I watched this for the first time tonight. I didn't watch it because I have any intention on seeing the remake, and after watching this it'll take a lot for me to even rent the remake, I just watched it because my dad recently picked up the Blu-ray so I decided to give it a whirl. By the way, everything I write about here is in regards to the "Uncut" version. I have no idea what the differences are (except I'm gonna take a guess and say the end is different) so I can't really compare and contrast.

All I have to say really is that this is one gigantic pile of shit with or without the hype. It's absolutely a Halloween knockoff. It's just missing two key ingredients - scares and likable characters. I'll admit, I'm kind of a whip when it comes to horror films. I get started easily. This didn't even make me flinch once. I did not move from my seat the entire time. I was waiting for something, anything to happen. Outside of a couple nice shots to the throat, nothing ever did. And as for the characters I wanted them all dead within the first 15 minutes. The film makes absolutely no effort to get us to like them. They just plop us there in the middle of Camp Crystal Lake with them and we're expected to care when they die. I didn't. And the last scene in the film (the hospital - as I said I watched the uncut version and not the original theatrical cut. I hope the original cut ends with the girl getting pulled into the lake) is completely unnecessary.

This sucked.

*

The remake is so much better. For one, the cinematography alone makes it worth seeing, IMO. Daniel C. Pearl does great work.

EDIT: ... Wrong thread..

F

It's a miserable film. Bad on just about every non-Betsy Palmer level.

It's adequate as a gory cash-in knockoff to Halloween and a prime example of "standard 80's slasher movie" but nothing more. None of the sequels are good, either, but I guess I'm not a Jason guy. I don't find him scary or interesting in any way. He's just--to be blunt--this big (then bigger, then hulking), boring, unkillable retard who kills everyone and anyone he comes across.

The Halloween and NOES series are vastly prefarable for me, even though NOES became far too comical and a pattern sure became clear a few sequels in (kill hero from previous film, introduce new hero, repeat) but they're still far better than the F13 series. At the very least Freddy had the nightmare thing going for him as opposed to the utter dullness of Jason. Halloween had some consistent protagonists in Jamie-Lee Curtis and the endlessly entertaing Donald Pleasance, as well as Danielle Harris' Jamie.

Rooting for more kills and gore was never my thing and it became pointless after a while since there was no way for any of the new characters to actually stop Jason (or Michael, or Freddy) so it really was just "Look, more people for Jason to slaughter in graphic ways". I simply don't like how all the franchises--well, that they became franchises in the first place.

for a movie that was low-budget by 80s horror standards, this wasn't too bad. Nowhere near the classics like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street, but decent.

C+

I disagree. The cinematography in the new film is rather ugly. It reminded me of Pearl's HEINOUS lensing of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Not AS bad, but close...