There’s no other way to say it.  I love the Friday the 13th franchise. The films are silly, over the top at the right moments, and overall, they’re just plain fun to watch. Others would disagree. Some would say they’re just mindless slasher films. And sure they don’t have the substance of something like, for example, John Carpenter’s Halloween, but there’s always something to appreciate. Whether it’s the outlandish kills, the make up effects, goofball characters, early celebrity appearances (Kevin Bacon and Crispin Glover being the obvious examples), or even odd and funny moments, I always find a lot to enjoy in the films.

There’s a lot I could go into, but right now I think the best thing to talk about when it comes to this is how I heard about the franchise. Let’s get started!

One of the first things I often saw in cartoons and games were parodies of Jason Voorhees.  The ones that always come to mind are these hockey mask-wearing bad guys from Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Rick from the Splatterhouse video games, and especially this funny parody from an episode of Bobby’s World that had a similarly-masked character who was referred to as Mason.

Mason.png

Yep, that’s a plunger.  And yes, this still makes me laugh.

Some time after this, I remember seeing the NES game of Friday the 13th and thinking to myself, “This has to be a good intro to the films!” Well, I bought the game and realized how wrong I was.  That game is nothing like the movies aside from a few things here and there. And yet, despite the silly inaccuracies and other flaws, the game is actually kind of fun. Plus, it did lead to one of my favourite reviews from James Rolfe’s “Angry Video Game Nerd” series.

In addition to those parodies and the game, I’d often see the VHS tapes and cover art for the movies whenever I’d be in video stores.  This is how I started to learn about the films. As I got into middle school, I wanted to start watching them. I was beginning to warm myself up to more horror movies (as mentioned in the previous blog post), but I knew I wanted to watch slightly edgier films that I never would’ve thought of seeing as a kid. And not long after my family finally got satellite TV, I started looking around and reading the TV guides to see when any of the Friday the 13th movies would be playing.

I mostly caught bits and pieces of various installments from the franchise, so it was very sporadic. Eventually, I saw a copy of the first film at a store and bought it for one of my brothers as a present. He enjoyed it, and I ended up watching the movie myself not long after that.  Now that tape is mine, he’s moved on, and doesn’t give a rat’s ballsack about VHS tapes unlike me.

So anyway, by this time I was more excited than ever to get into more horror movies. It was always fun staying up late and watching them, but it was especially fun watching them during marathons. Enter TNT’s MonsterVision!

Thanks to Joe Bob Briggs, I started watching a good majority of the Friday the 13th films. I took immediate notice of his vast knowledge regarding behind-the-scenes stuff from the franchise and other trivia. And on top of that that, he was entertaining and very funny. His ways of reviewing the films and making jokes along the way felt like you were watching the films with him right at your side. Even though the films were edited for TV, I still had a lot of fun watching his MonsterVision marathons. It really makes me wish TNT would bring it back.

Eventually, I got around to watching all the other films in the series and truly became part of a larger world. My friends didn’t seem to be all that interested in them, and many of them weren’t even all that crazy for horror in general, so it often felt like this was my own little world.  I was getting into many other horror films throughout high school, but out of all of them, I always found myself wanting to watch the Friday the 13th movies. I even made a video out of boredom at one point in which I talked about the films as well as the genre as a whole. To put it simply, this was and still is a big part of my interest in not just the Friday the 13th series, but horror as a whole. Not only that, it’s a big part of how I grew up.

As for the franchise’s future? Well, I never bothered with the Platinum Dunes’ attempted reboot/”interquel” (I’m just… not fond of their ideas. Let’s leave it at that). The recent video game looks really fun and is a blast to watch on Twitch streams, so it’s nice seeing others keeping it alive and getting into the films. But as far as new films go, I hope they do something. I feel like new things could be done, and I’m fine with new things in the franchise, but nothing too different that strays too away from the original feel. Or heck, even if you do something different, embrace the silliness like they did with Jason X. Sure, Jason X got a lot of weird reactions for taking Jason to space, but it was still at least aware of the silliness and it managed to have a good kills and funny moments.

Yes it’s twisted, but it’s so unconvincing you can’t help but laugh.

Overall, I’m glad to be a fan of the franchise and I am hopeful for what the future holds in some form. I could talk about this for a long time, but I’ll save more for mini Facebook posts and the next blog post. Afterall, there’s always going to be another Friday the 13th  🙂

Thank you for reading, and until next time… stop looking for corkscrews.  Trust me, it’s just not going to end well.  See ya next week! o/