R0BTRAIN's Bad Ass Cinema: Several Friday's in a Row, But Not 13…

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So it’s the big H and there’s been a pretty steady flow of Horror movies flooding the house, as per usual. My annual Horror movie marathon has hit a lot our regular haunts: Dario Argento‘s Suspiria, John Carpenter’s classic Halloween, and several of the Halloween sequels. I’m even gearing up this week because a friend of mine says he might have even been able to obtain the “Producer’s Cut” of Halloween 6, a version that’s really only available on bootleg, even though I bet Dimension would sell a ton of them if they’d just release the thing on an actual DVD.

Before I go on with the rest of the lineup I got to this month, I’d first like to talk a little bit about watching Halloween this year. I’ve recently switched to Blu-ray, and I haven’t gone totally crazy or anything, but I have tried to pick up a few discs that I thought I would probably watch over and over, things like Superman and Terminator 2. Knowing that Carpenter’s premiere Slasher is an annual tradition in the Sutton household, I went ahead and picked it up on BD, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

I’ve actually owned several different versions of Halloween over the years. I remember the first ever Halloween party that I and my girlfriend threw a few years back and I ended up buying the movie on VHS. Since then I think I’ve seen every version of the movie that Anchor Bay has ever put on DVD and still own the initial release on the format, but this new Blu-ray of the film absolutely blows every other version of this movie away. First of all, I can’t imagine the film has ever looked better, and that includes its initial release in theaters. The image is spectacular, and even better is the sound. The thunderstorm that Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is driving through at the beginning of the film seems to absolutely surround you. I couldn’t believe that I could actually hear and understand the conversation between Michael’s ill-fated sister and her boyfriend at the very beginning of the movie, and Carpenter’s original score has never been more chilling.

This is really the amazing thing about Blu-ray; while I’ve loved DVD from its inception, the amount of clarity and detail on BD is absolutely insane. It’s like watching these movies for the first time. While you might not notice the real difference for some newer movies, because this will be the first time you watch them in your home, checking out movies that you’ve seen a thousand times on TV and home video in various formats over the years can become a very a rewarding experience in High Definition. Now, let’s bring on Suspiria in Blu-ray!

At any rate, I’ve had a pretty full slate on Horror flicks in the last month, especially with Friday the 13th flicks this year, so here‘s a look at the ones I got to this year. Now, these will be spoilerish in some areas, so you’ve been warned ahead of time.
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Friday the 13th Part 2 Starring Amy Steel, John Furey, Adrienne King, Kirsten Baker, Stuart Charno, Warrington Gillette. Directed by Steve Miner.

While Friday the 13th is known as the best film of the series and is really solid overall, I don’t think that Part 2 gets enough love. Overall, this entry is really just as important both to the series and to Horror films in general. It’s also just as solid in its scares and just as much fun overall.

The best reason to see the movie is that it introduces Jason Voorhees (Warrington Gillette) as the “all grown up” killer that would henceforth be the slayer of sexually promiscuous, pot smoking teens. He doesn’t have the hockey mask yet (just a burlap sack), but I really like this portrayal of Voorhees. The zombie Jason of the later Friday the 13th sequels, played by Kane Hodder and others, is formidable and really unstoppable, but this portrayal can be just as fun and to some degree just as frightening because he seems more “real”. Even the burlap sack works because its has this sort of backwoods, Texas Chainsaw-quality to the costume.

The movie was also able to really establish the template for Horror movie sequels. While released the same year as Halloween II, the Friday the 13th follow-up is a little more consistent that works a little better overall because it really seems to know its audience. First is the practice of killing off the previous film’s final girl, which is really too bad, because Adrienne King again shows how good she is in this series. Upping the body count and the sexuality from the first movie, the film plays like a Slasher sequel should play, and was good enough to get another sequel, which upped the ante in several ways. It simply does its thing and is a lot more fun than some of the ones that came after this one.
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Friday the 13th Part III Starring Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Nick Savage, Rachel Howard, David Katims, Larry Zerner, Tracie Savage, Jeffrey Rogers Richard Brooker. Directed by Steve Miner.

Part III is the series at both its worst and its cheesy best. To be honest, this is the series entry that I like to watch most, and why is that? Because initially the movie was shot in 3-D, so its filled every few seconds with ridiculous shots of people throwing stuff or poking objects into camera, and this includes Jason killing people with harpoons and squeezing a dude so hard his eye pops out. Thing is, you can’t get the 3-D version of the movie on DVD, so all you’re left with is a movie that just has characters doing absolutely ridiculous things for no reason whatsoever. Now, if this bothers you, I’d avoid this movie at all costs. Then again, if you’ve got friends over and want to watch a truly “bad” Horror movie, then this definitely fit’s the bill.

Seriously, this one has some ridiculous kills and ridiculous characters to go along with them. There’s the grind house-style biker gang which gets decimated by Voorhees, but not before being completely embarrassed by the movie’s super bitch and goofy nerd. There’s a guy whose gimmick is that he loves doing handstands (guess how he dies), the aforementioned nerd who loves to pretend he’s been killed with the use of some effects (guess why people don’t try to help him after his throat has been slashed), and then there’s a character so like Tommie Chong, that the famous comedian could probably sue this movie for likeness rights. All in all, this Friday is super fun and super goofy at the same time.
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Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Starring Anthony Barrile, Suzanne Bateman, Dominick Brascia, Todd Bryant, Curtis Conaway, Juliette Cummins. Directed by Danny Steinmann.

Now Part V is infamously known as the worst of the Friday the 13th movies. The confusing part of that, is that A New Beginning is actually one of the funniest, most ridiculous, most violent, most nudity filled entry of the entire series, which actually makes it one of the best ones on those levels. In fact, the movie had to be submitted to the MPAA nine different times before actually getting an “R” rating because of those exploitable elements. Apparently 16 different scenes had to be cut. (Writer’s note: I’d love to see this original version, and if you know where to get a copy, let me know.)

Here’s the big problem with the movie, and the reason why this one is shunned by the fans of the series (and we got more spoilers here). After the events of Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter(?), where Jason faces off with Corey Feldman and loses, Feldman’s character Tommy, now played by karate fighting John Shepherd, goes to a psychiatric facility that’s like a farm where patients can work out their problems by growing plants and tending the earth. Well, when a dude in a hockey mask starts killing the other patients at the farm, the local rednecks, and any famous pop stars that just happen to be in the neighborhood using outhouses, you assume its Jason Voorhees rising from the grave. You’d be wrong.

The culprit is actually an EMT who loses his cool after his son, another patient at the facility, is hacked to pieces by one of the patients early on in the film. Distraught and seeking revenge on the farm’s staff, he starts his hockey mask rampage. At the end of the film, a mentally broken Tommy puts on the mask himself and seemingly starts his own rampage, an ending that’s actually quite similar to 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

Now to be honest, I can actually kind of see where filmmakers were trying to go with this, and its really not that bad an idea. They’d killed Voorhees for real in the last picture (still just a regular dude at this point, albeit a deformed, deranged one that just didn’t want to die) and the filmmakers were trying to think of a way of continuing the series, even though they’d killed off their main villain. Well, apparently they learned their lesson and decided to scrapped the idea, and sort of act like this one absolutely never happened at the beginning of Part VI: Jason Lives.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. Hope you guys have an awesome Halloween and I’ll see you guys back next week so we can finally get back to my Hitman list, and then after that, it’s my second annual Bad Asses of the Year list!

Editor’s Note: It seems more appropriate to run this column on Halloween, as opposed to Rob’s usual Monday morning slot, hence the delay in publication. Rob will be back on Monday November 3rd with an all new column — Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz

Robert Sutton feels the most at home when he's watching some movie scumbag getting blown up, punched in the face, or kung fu'd to death, especially in that order. He's a founding writer for the movies section of Insidepulse.com, featured in his weekly column R0BTRAIN's Badass Cinema as well as a frequent reviewer of DVDs and Blu-rays. Also, he's a proud Sony fanboy, loves everything Star Wars and Superman related and hopes to someday be taken seriously by his friends and family.