Tuesday Minute
No. 188 | October 26, 2010

Crooked Numbers

Our theme this week
Horror film franchises from the 1970s to today

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (6 films, 1974–2006)

Friday the 13th

The franchise films
1.  Friday the 13th (1980), Sean S. Cunningham, director
2.  Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Steve Miner, director
3.  Friday the 13th Part III (1982), Steve Miner, director
4.  Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), Joseph Zito, director
5.  Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), Danny Steinmann, director
6.  Jason Lives:  Friday the 13th Part VI (1986), Tom McLoughlin, director
7.  Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), John Carl Buechler, director
8.  Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), Rob Hedden, director
9.  Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), Adam Marcus, director
10.  Jason X (2001), James Isaac, director
11.  Freddy vs. Jason (2003), Ronny Yu, director
12.  Friday the 13th (2009), Marcus Nispel, director

The villain
Jason Voorhees, portrayed by Ari Lehman (1), Warrington Gillette (2), Richard Brooker (3), Ted White (4), C.J. Graham (6), Kane Hodder (7, 8, 9), Ken Kirzinger / Spencer Stump (Young Jason) (11), Derek Mears / Caleb Guss (Young Jason) (12); in Part V, Dick Wieand portrayed Roy Burns, a copycat killer fashioned on Jason

Overview
Jason Voorhees died at summer camp long before the series begins.  A promising start, you might say, but Jason is the boy who does not stay dead.  That’s a recurring element through the series of films, many of them set at Camp Crystal Lake, where Jason drowned in 1957.  If only the counselors had saved him, but the counselors were doing what counselors do best, having sex.  That leads to another recurring element:  he and she who have sex must die.  A double murder and other unfortunate events close the camp for decades to come.  The first film takes place when the abandoned camp is ready to re-open.  That’s when the body count for camp counselors begins to escalate.  Knives, arrows, axes—there’s a lot of slashing going on.  A visit from Mrs. Voorhees (the original “mama grisly“?) gets violent, and when she loses her head to one of the surviving staff, it’s the corpse of Jason himself who appears for the final attack.

The franchise got a lot of mileage from the same basic story.  Counselors come to camp, get horny, and die.  Someone kills Jason, but not really.  Jason’s trademark hockey mask makes its debut in the third film (in 3D).  Even after a Final Chapter (part 4) and a Final Friday (part 9), the series—like Jason—refuses to die.  In 2003, Freddy vs. Jason brought together Jason with the villain from the series A Nightmare on Elm Street.  The 2009 film, same title as the original, was a reboot of the franchise.  The latest two films earned more than a combined $200 million worldwide.  As you should know by now, don’t think you’ve seen the last of Jason.

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Friday the 13th (1980)
Sean S. Cunningham, director
Victor Miller, writer
Barry Abrams, director of photography
TV Spot

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Quote of note
Ned:  He neglected to mention that downtown they call this place Camp Blood.
Marcie:  Next they’re going to tell us there are poisonous snakes in the outhouse and crocodiles in the lake.
Jack:  The crocodiles are in the cabin.
—Ned Rubinstein (Mark Nelson), Marcie Cunningham (Jeannine Taylor), Jack Burrel (Kevin Bacon), Friday the 13th (1980)

…58…59…60.