This splatter flick, along with John Carpenter's Halloween, helped spawn the great horror-movie movement of the '80s, not to mention eight sequels, many of which had nothing to... read more

This splatter flick, along with John Carpenter's Halloween, helped spawn the great horror-movie movement of the '80s, not to mention eight sequels, many of which had nothing to do with the films that preceded them. It also gave birth to Jason Voorhees, one of the three biggest horror-movie psychos of the modern era (the other two being Halloween's Michael Myers and A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger). Forever duplicated, the original Friday the 13th popularized a number of themes and techniques that today are now clichés: the increasingly gory murders, the remote forest location, the anonymous and nubile cast, the murderer as cult hero, and, of course, the moral that if you have sex, you will die, very painfully. Still, if you have to see a Friday the 13th movie, this is the one to check out. A group of eager (and horny) teenagers decide to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, which 20 years earlier was closed after the shocking and mysterious murders of two amorous camp counselors. You can take it from there, as the teens get picked off one by one, during a dark and stormy night; of course, their car won't start and there's no phone. The ending stole shamelessly from Brian De Palma's Carrie, but it still provides a slight if campy shock. Look for a young Kevin Bacon as the requisite stud--you can tell that's what he is because when the cast appears in swimsuits, he's wearing a Speedo--who's the beneficiary of the film's best murder sequence, an arrowhead to the throat. Right after having sex, of course. --Mark Englehart (hide)

The tender, tragic saga of Jason Vorhees, the world's unhappiest camper, continues when yet another batch of hormonally advanced teens decide to ignore past history and spend some... read more

The tender, tragic saga of Jason Vorhees, the world's unhappiest camper, continues when yet another batch of hormonally advanced teens decide to ignore past history and spend some time at the woodsy, pine-scented slaughterhouse known as Camp Crystal Lake. It may be a bit of a stretch to describe any of the entries in this interminable series as "good," but this creatively grotesque installment manages to come surprisingly close with a welcome sense of humor and some quick glimmers of real menace (courtesy of director Steve Miner, who would later go on to helm the far more accomplished Halloween: H20). Originally presented in 3-D, which explains the never-ending slew of objects (knives, pitchforks, yo-yos, cats, eyeballs, etc.) that are repeatedly thrust in the viewer's general direction. --Andrew Wright (hide)

As bad as Friday the 13th, Part 2 is, it's a work of art in comparison to the rest of the Friday the 13th flicks that came afterward.... read more

As bad as Friday the 13th, Part 2 is, it's a work of art in comparison to the rest of the Friday the 13th flicks that came afterward. This installment officially introduced us to Jason Voorhees as the killer (if you remember Drew Barrymore's fatal phone quiz in Scream, you know that the killer in the first Friday the 13th was actually Jason's mother), and made the slicing and dicing even more generic. Survivor Alice is dispatched within the first 10 minutes, and we're left with plucky Ginny (Amy Steel, doing a fairly decent Jamie Lee Curtis impression) to do battle with the monstrous Jason. Ginny's part of a another group of horny teenagers (less intelligent as well as less attractive than their predecessors) who try to resurrect Camp Crystal Lake five years after the initial murders--a pretty mean feat, considering this movie was made only a year after the first one. Being a smarty-pants child-psychology major, Ginny tries to outwit the dim Jason, and at one point dons the bloody and moldy sweater of Jason's late mother (which is more disgusting than any of the killings beforehand) in an attempt to confuse the masked killer. Jason may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but the only one who's going to pull the wool--or in this case, the burlap--over his eyes is Jason himself, who wears a sack with one eyehole throughout the movie to hide his deformed features (he finally found his way to a sporting-goods store and his trademark hockey mask appears in the third installment of the series). Directed by Steve Miner, who also helmed the next Friday the 13th film (in 3-D no less) as well as the more reputable House, Forever Young, and Halloween: H20. --Mark Englehart (hide)

Amateur butcher and enthusiastic hockey fan Jason Vorhees is back in business, and business is good. Can a plucky young boy stop the madness before Camp Crystal Lake's... read more

Amateur butcher and enthusiastic hockey fan Jason Vorhees is back in business, and business is good. Can a plucky young boy stop the madness before Camp Crystal Lake's population report takes yet another machete-aided dip? The stalk-and-slash formula was pretty narcoleptic by this point, but this otherwise humdrum entry is distinguished by some unusual casting choices (Crispin Glover as a stud in training? Corey Feldman as a genius?) and the splattery return of makeup master Tom Savini. The fact that this installment was titled The Final Chapter may seem to contradict the existence of the numerous sequels that followed, but it's not as if logic was ever this series' strong point to begin with. --Andrew Wright (hide)

As a child, Tommy Jarvis did what many others died trying to do, he killed Jason Vorhees, the mass murderer who terrorized the residents of Crystal lake. But... read more

As a child, Tommy Jarvis did what many others died trying to do, he killed Jason Vorhees, the mass murderer who terrorized the residents of Crystal lake. But now, years later, Tommy is tormented by the fear that maybe Jason isn't really dead. So, Tommy and a friend go to the cemetery to dig up Jason's grave. Unfortunately for Tommy, (and very unfortunately for his friend), instead of finding a rotting corpse, they discover a well rested Jason who comes back from the dead for another bloody rampage in Friday The 13th - Part VI: Jason Lives. (hide)