Reid About It

Longtime readers of my stuff know what a fan of bad movies I am. In honor of the new movie, I'm reprinting my column on one of the longest running yet worst franchises ever...


He's more recognizable than your average Vice-President, only with a slightly higher body count. He's Jason Voorhees, everybody's favorite serial killer, and somehow he's had eleven movies and made more than three hundred million bucks in the past twenty-eight years.

No need for you to see these movies, I've already done it. In honor of the anniversary, here's what you need to know about each flick.

Friday the 13th This was after the movie "Halloween," when studios were green-lighting anything with a slasher and a calendar connection. "Prom Night," "Happy Birthday To Me," "April Fool's Day," basically any special event was cause for a whole boatload of people to get killed. Kevin Bacon is killed by Mrs. Voorhees, thus giving Jason a "Kevin Bacon Index" of two.

Friday the 13th Part 2 Jason's first appearance, wearing a potato sack for a facial covering. He appears to be a cross between the Elephant Man and the banjo player from Deliverance.

Friday the 13th Part 3 This movie was in 3-D, thus making it not only horribly acted, but awkward on cable. Jason picks up the famous hockey mask in this one.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter This movie wasn't the final chapter, obviously. Jason meets nutjob loonball Crispin Glover and parks a cleaver in his face. Sadly, Corey Feldman gets away. In retrospect, it would have been a mercy kill.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning This was the "Jason: The Next Generation" try, where they kept Jason dead and had someone else take up his exact MO. Accepting that one retarded super-psycho killer was hanging out and carving up teenagers at Crystal Lake was hard enough, nobody bought that there were two of them.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives Jason gets struck by lightning, then rips out the heart of Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter. No kidding. This was the movie where Jason effectively becomes immortal and unstoppable, and the franchise turns from "horror" to "comedy that makes you feel creepy about all of the teenagers in the theatre cheering for the serial killer."

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood Jason versus Carrie. A machete beats a telekinetic high school girl nine times out of ten, by the way.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan Jason leaves his country home for the big city, and winds up killed by nuclear waste. I think there was a metaphor of some sort there, but I didn't get it.

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday Again, "Final" obviously is just a marketing term. This film answers the question, "Why haven't the federal authorities noticed that Jason has killed a thousand people over the past ten years?"

Jason X Jason revives in the future, and in a world of laser cannons and virtual reality, he still hacks up people with a machete and people shoot at him with bullets. He's old school.

Freddy vs. Jason Jason has apparently killed everybody else by now, so he's being sicced on other fictional serial killers. Next sequel, he'll be fighting Hannibal Lecter, Sweeney Todd, and Voldemort.

And there you have it. I've wasted my youth watching them, no need for you guys to waste your brain cells. You're welcome.