#which is the friday the 13th where “Jason” is actually a different dude pretending to be Jason

[xskyll]

Broke: Painting FU on the bottom of your shoes.

Woke: Painting UF on the bottom of your shoes so you can cross your legs and still convey your message.

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[movienotesbyzawmer]

October 22: Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter

(previous notes: Friday the 13th Part 3)

I'm on movie number four in this eight movie project, and for the first time I'll be seeing one of these movies that I haven't ever seen before! When I do my watch-a-movie-and-take-notes projects, I generally do them for movies I've already seen before so that it's not too frustrating to simultaneously watch & type. But I'll make an exception for these Friday the 13th movies in light of the fact that they suck.

I remember this being out at my local theater in 1984, when I was 13, and even thinking it might be fun to see it, but I never got around to it.

It really must have been bittersweet for audiences at the time, knowing that this would be the final chapter. Each time they had a positive moment of enjoyment with this movie, they had to remember, "oh, I'm really going to miss this. It shall all be gone. Once the lights come back on, the days of new Friday the 13th movies will never return."

unless

Okay, watching this now for the first time ever.

Again beginning with a rehash. This time however, it's a montage of moments from the first two movies. Wait, now here's some of the third movie. But it's all framed by one of the monologues from the second movie. Much shorter and less of a cheap move than the last two movies did.

The title has a new title-plus-mask image… and then THE FINAL CHAPTER arrives to blow that image up with fire and splody-sounds!

The credits promise the likes of Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover, so that's exciting.

Okay, now it looks like we're at the ranch where the third one took place. They're hauling bodies out of the barn & other buildings. It looks like Jason's body is one of the bodies because hockey mask!

Actually, I think that first shot was a long-ish crane shot. Cinematically ambitious I guess.

We don't know yet what happened to the girl at the end of the last one. It's weird because this scene is at night, but the last movie ended with daytime paramedic activity at the ranch. I'm confused. Please help me. Please tell me that it will all be okay.

One of the covered up bodies has stirred! Jason is probably up to his not-be-dead-after-all tricks!

This scene is about a pair of frisky hospital workers in the "cold room" where there is at least one body, plus a television where the girl "just wants to watch the news". But 80s-style aerobics is what's really on the TV. And she kisses him after all and gets quite flirty, but then takes it all back because he is so insensitive or something. They show the aerobics a lot. It's all pelvic and prurient. Then Jason kills the guy with a bone saw and then goes and finds the girl and kills her with something else because diversity.

Then an abrupt cut to daytime joggers in the woods somewhere!

Now we are learning about the family of the joggers. They live in the country where there is a legend of a psycho, so I guess we're in the Crystal Lake area. The youngest child is Corey Feldman and his personality is "likes video games and wears a monster mask while playing them".

Now we are learning about the kids that rented a house across the street. Crispin Glover and another dude are in a car, talking about a girl and they clearly don't know how to have this kind of conversation, and the writers don't know how to pretend like they do so the other guy does a gag about how an invisible computer told him that CG is bad at sex. It is an unappealing intro to these characters. We even know there are a bunch of other people in the car, way too many honestly, but we don't get to know them. Just the two people who talk like broken robots about a woman.

Just to keep the mood where it ought to be, a hitchhiker they drove past gets impaled by Jason!

CF, a tweenager I should point out, is peeping-tom-ing at the canoodling couple in the rented house, and it is interesting to speculate as to whose idea it was for him to act the way he does when he watches them. He bounces excitedly and slams his head repeatedly into a pillow. Whose idea.

Now there's a skinny dipping scene. They definitely have arrived to the point in the series where they feel it's important to show pretty girls without any clothes.

For some reason, CF and the adult older sister drove to where the skinny dipping was happening, but they bolted when they realized that's what it was. There is ch ch ch ch ch ha ha ha ha ha on them as they have car trouble in the woods as they head home, plus also as two of the swimmers are hanging out. But they both turn out to be fakeouts! No one is dying at all! At least we'll always have the hitchhiker. They can't take that away from us.

The fakeout with the CF subplot is that it was just some handsome man that comes along to help. He says he is this deep in the woods because he is hunting for bear. CF totally calls him out! There's no way he's hunting for bear! No one is just like "it is bear hunting season and I am enjoying some leisurely bear hunting time". CF is no fool.

They decide to take Bear Hunter in as a guest for perhaps the afternoon. Because of the bubble of this movie, CF shows the Bear Hunter his monster toys and Bear Hunter shares in his enthusiasm.

0:37:13 - Now we are choking down this awkward scene where the young people are hanging out in their house trying to deliver dialogue that is not consistent with normal human psychology. The gist is that the men want to be sexual with the women but there are subtle social obstacles.

!!! Crispin Glover really is interesting! His screen presence absolutely towers above the rest of the cast, when he reacts unfavorably to being teased. But seriously all these interactions are so painful.

For our next murder project, we have an inflatable boat made of thin, vulnerable rubber for a person to get stabbed through. It requires assuming that Jason's magic powers allow him to just hide under water, waiting for a naked lady to lie down in the boat at night. This project was completed on time and under budget.

Seriously, the most terrifying scenes in this movie are the ones where the sexually frustrated young adults are hanging out and attempting to use words.

Another death just happened because the boyfriend of the recently-killed naked lady went to check on her, found her dead, then was Jason'd with some implements that I couldn't really understand. Something with a handle shoved into him somehow. It is filmed weirdly and then we just move on to Bear Hunter, camping nearby.

This is a disturbing turn… we're back on the uninteresting young adults, and one of them announces that he has found something very interesting! We see that it is old movie reels. They start watching them. It's old, old film of naked people. They laugh and laugh and laugh. Maybe this is art?

Pretty cool visual with this next death, we just see the shadow of Jason coming at her and killing her with a something. Looks cool as a shadow thing, plus it isn't "those stupid characters talking" which is a HUGE bonus.

We're back to CF's family; Mom saw something that startled her but we don't know what, and CF and Big Sister are… driving home in the car? Where were they, why did they drive somewhere, I forget. Maybe they had to run into town to pick up a packet of it-doesn't-matter-we-just-needed-Mom-to-be-alone.

Just like that, Older Sister went looking for Mom, but ends up taking shelter from the rain in Bear Hunter's tent. Bear Hunter, in a very predictable fakeout, slashes a hole in the tent because what is she doing in there anyway.

But we cut back to the young adults and CG gets a very ugly death! He's all "hey where's the corkscrew" and Jason makes his hand be corkscrewed and makes his face be stabbed!

Then he kills one of the other young adults just right afterward by being outside her second floor bedroom window and pulling her out the window SO HARD. Seriously it must be a hard job coming up with different ways to kill them, give them a break.

Back to Bear Hunter; he's fessing up to his true motive which is to hunt Jason. His story is hard to believe, and Big Sister is taking it in very diplomatically.

The one guy in the group of the young adults who is the biggest asshole is also the one most amused by the old films. We see them a lot, these old films they are watching. It is the silent era's version of soft core porn - women dancing naked. Anyway, the asshole's death happens when he gets the idea to be close to the projector screen, enabling Jason to stab him through it and making it look kind of cool and be a scene that ends with the projector-still-running cadence.

New death - guy is taking a post-coital shower and Jason comes in and shoves his arm through the sliding glass shower door thing and very effectively crushes the guy's head against the wall. Then the girlfriend comes in and discovers him; she runs down to the front door, but she can't open it, she just can't open it, it just won't open, and it ends with somehow Jason axe-killing her through the door from outside. They don't show it very well and no one probably ever clearly explained to anyone how it was supposed to work.

1:09:20 - This is followed immediately by a scene that is also poorly choreographed - Bear Hunter returns with Big Sister but it's a fakeout because for some reason they break the glass of the side door to get in, even though CF is right there. They are all frightened as if they know about deaths happening, even though they don't know about the deaths. It's just that the power has been spotty; that’s why things are urgent, as far as they know.

They decide to investigate the house where the young adults are staying. They are gingerly surveying the living room, and they walk right by where the projector screen murder happened, but they see no evidence of that crime.

1:11:55 - Bear Hunter tells the big sister "you stay right here with Corey". I'm pretty sure that just happened. I think he was referring to CF, whose character is not named Corey and who also is not with them.

In a shocking piece of non-linear storytelling, a dog jumps out a window in slow motion. Art. ART.

Jason kills Bear Hunter right in front of Big Sister, and even though his mission in life has been to hunt Jason, Bear Hunter doesn't even fight him off, he just begs Big Sister to run as Jason pounds on him. Big sister does run, but each of the house's exits has a dead person surprise that's too scary for her to go past so she's stuck inside with Jason!

But CF has heard her screaming and comes across the street to be with her. Oh but wait, I think they are actually now back at their house. I missed how that happened. That chase ends with a moment where she has reason to think she might have killed him by hitting him pretty hard with a cathode ray television set with an approximately 15" screen. But no, he changes back from almost-dead to regular-Jason and chases them around some more.

1:21:45 - They must have felt like their secret weapon for this movie was slo-mo thrown-through-a-window situations because Big Sister ends a portion of being chased by Jason by throwing herself through a window and landing painfully on the ground outside. Jason's all "you won this round Big Sister, but I'll be back. This is not The Final Chapter of this story!"

Everyone seems to have wound up back at the young adults' house, and CF has come up with an ingenious idea - he shaves his head to confuse Jason! Then he and Big Sister stab Jason a lot and it's all very gory and climactic.

The way the movie ends is that Jason's body twitches a little on the ground after they mostly kill him, and CF freaks out and stabs Jason many many, many more times! Cut to later on when Big Sister is in a hospital bed being told it will all be okay by some Caucasian men in white coats. They suggest that CF was pretty crazy for a minute there but that will pass. CF comes to give her a hug… but he looks scary! You guys, look, he looks scary! The big finish is that CF has a sinister look on his face. Cut to credits.

We never saw what happened to the Mom. Or the main girl from Part 3. Also it seems like there were some other young adults that just stopped being in the movie. How dare they.

Okay so I am halfway through this ridiculous project. I have watched four of the eight Friday the 13th movies. I watched them all by myself at my home during the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenging times I tell you.

(next: Friday the 13th - A New Beginning)

[movienotesbyzawmer]

October 20: Friday the 13th Part 2

(previous notes: Friday the 13th)

Welcome to night two of this solemn duty wherein I get through the first eight Friday the 13th movies. I have embarked upon this task so that I may reflect on and honor the cinematic craftsmanship on display in this proud collection of cheap slasher movies. Or I just thought it would be a fun way to kill time.

I first saw this on cable TV, probably when it first became available; I'm sure I watched it at least as many times as I watched the first Friday the 13th. I remember the final sequence pretty well, but I don't actually remember much else. But I will say this… as a kid who was becoming increasingly curious about movies, there was an appeal to these gory movies that represents something we haven't had in this century. I'm talking about "how did they do that" wonder. Modern audiences don't have to ask that question because we all know that the answer is "CGI". In the early 80s, these movies did challenge me to figure out how certain things were done. Okay, enough about that, let us observe Friday the 13th Part 2 in its unnatural habitat… my TV in 2020.

First shot seems to have ambition, we just see some people's feet walking through puddles at night. Kinda nicely shot, maybe with a Steadicam. They clearly had more money. Also, looks like a very nice Blu-ray transfer.

But nothing really happens before we switch to the bedroom of the main girl from the last movie, nightmaring her memories from the first one; an opaque effort to catch us up on The Story So Far. They spend several minutes here showing us the whole end of the last movie. Like, almost all of the first six minutes of this movie is just the end of the last movie intercut with her tossing and turning in bed.

Some more opaque exposition where she wakes up from her nightmare and answers a phone all from her mom, and is all "I've told you this before, I need to be alone here to try to put my life back together".

So now they're just showing her alone in her cute vintage house, having established that, uh-oh, she's ALONE, and they're just filming it in a scary way, and she's acting scared, but what's she even scared of, it's like she's watching the footage so that's why she's scared.

Ope! She was right to be scared because look how killed she got! That wasn't very scary or gory. It climaxes with the triumphant return of the title logo thing, but this time it EXPLODES and changes to a PART 2. *polite applause*

0:14:25 - Crazy old dude sighting! Must be we're in that same little town that's kind of near the camp. He sees two youngniks and tells them "you're all doomed!" His favorite saying, back for an encore. Oh how droll.

Okay, so we've got some new teenagers, and two of them appear to be meeting up with a third one who lives in this little town. But are they counselors? They said something about going to the camp. But this dude is a local. Whatever.

Oh, here we go with the more prurient approach! A shapely lady is hiking by herself and a really plumb closeup of her butt turns into a cadence about a creepy guy who "flirtatiously" shoots a pebble at said derriere with a slingshot. It seems like we're going to be looking at both of them as sexy people as the movie progresses, and that will be important to the vision of this storytelling team.

Okay, this dumb scene just happened where the girl in the convertible can't start her car. Handsome Boss Man gives her some cocky advice and opens the hood to take a look. But exhaust gets him in the face ever so comically, and the girl acts like she did it all on purpose.

A little more setup happens in the form of a campfire ghost story that is also the plot of the first movie. But he says that was five years ago, probably so that it can make sense that Jason, who will soon be introduced as the new full-time villain for the remainder of the series, isn't a kid any more.

I should mention that the last bunch of scenes have been generously perforated with AND SOMEONE WAS WATCHING THEM moments. Handsome Boss Man is now kissing the girl who keeps humiliating him. She can really do better. But as they are making out, we see that there is a stalker outside. It's the crazy old man! Was it him all along? Why does he even care, this isn't even the same camp. I guess we'll never get to the bottom of that because he GETS KILLED it is a BARBED WIRE STRANGULATION MURDER AGAINST A TREE. The scares in this movie so far are just kind of quick and cheap.

Almost every scene has a CH CH CH CH HA HA HA HA moment to tell us they are being watched. There is too much of it.

So they come up with the idea to fake us out by having the mischievous couple sneak across the lake to check out Camp Crystal Lake, but they're being watched… by the sheriff! They're in trouble but they're okay. But now we're staying on the sheriff all by himself, and he chases a mysterious figure into the woods. He sees something in a shed before getting Jason'd! I remember what he sees. It's a good idea to set that up, but they could have made a bigger thing of it or made it more interesting.

0:46:10 - The girl with the importantly curvy caboose has decided to go for a walk all by herself at night, partly because her dog is missing (we have already seen its mangled corpse though), but also partly because slasher movie. Also for that reason she strips and goes skinny dipping and this time it is clear that they're very deliberate about showing us some sexiness...

…OMG they are even using the Jaws theme! Seriously! They straight up stole the two-note Jaws theme as a tribute to that movie's skinny dipping scene! Not cool dude.

Slingshot dude stepped in a ground-noose trap, and was hanging upside down waiting for Caboose to come back & cut him down, but he ends up an easy kill for Jason, who slices his throat open with a machete. THE machete??? It's the gushiest death so far, but it is still just a quick scare. Could have been more interesting; instead it just counts on us to have considered what a bummer it would be to hanging upside down like that when someone is fixin' to machete you.

Okay, so the people that went into town include the girl who I think survives at the end, and she has this monologue about how maybe you gotta look at this whole Jason situation differently, you know with a little bit of empathy. It doesn't sound like anything anyone would actually say.

A word about the handicapped character. There is a handicapped character! One of the guys is in a wheelchair and he is actually being treated the same as everyone, all egalitarian like. A cute girl totally likes him. I don't recall it being a significant plot point that he’s in a wheelchair - maybe the movie will prove me wrong, but it actually seems like admirable inclusiveness. Do I dare hope that they actually cast a disabled actor?

There was just a scene where Cute Girl went out to her car to get something, and they shot it as if she was MAYBE being watched. But then it turns out she wasn't. They did that once before in the first sequence. I would never do that to you.

But then Wheelchair Guy, all by himself on the porch waiting for Cute Girl to return, gets macheted in the face, and he rolls down some stairs dramatically. I guess maybe that image is why they had that character be in a wheelchair? There was this stylish zoom visual thing that gave it some intensity. But it also gave it some obnoxiousness.

Then a sudden double murder! The couple that was getting busy was shish-kabab'd in bed.

Cute Girl is now the only one left alive that didn't go to town. She goes upstairs and finds Jason, who is wearing a hood, jumping out at her in the bed! He had hid under the covers where he’d speared the couple, so that he could be a terrifying surprise for all of us! He brandishes a knife and we linger on Cute Girl's terror for a bit longer than we've done before in this movie; the camera stays on her face as she is stabbed out of view, and it's more intense.

The main girl and Handsome Boss Man get back and quickly notice that problems are afoot. Soon enough, Jason is attacking them. This movie has Jason in a hood always, I guess. Like a burlap sack with a hole in it for an eye. He's just a guy in a hood that is on their case. This is pre-hockey-mask Jason.

1:10:07 - Jason has a pitchfork now. We had a good scare when she was watching both a door and a window, not sure which way he was going to come from. It was the window! But she made it to a car, and he followed… but where did he go? Where did he go. PITCHFORK THROUGH THE CONVERTIBLE ROOF that's where. Missed her though.

Seems like we're approaching the climax of the movie. She's the last one alive. Chase chase chase, Full moon! Chase chase! Cabin in woods… suspenseful cabin hiding!

1:15:15  - The unsustainable cabin-hide situation ends with her finding a chainsaw, starting it up with a deftness that she can never muster with the convertible, and apparently kind of touching him with it! There's no blood; he just kind of collapses, and she walks away. Hm.

Very soon, she's at the cabin where the Sheriff got killed and she finds the room he'd seen. It's a Mom-head shrine room with some new bodies adorning the base. Caboose's body still looks hot, way hotter than the other corpses. The girl quickly gets the brilliant idea to put on Mom's sweater and pretend she's Mom. The actress who plays Mom even makes an appearance in a dreamy visual! I remember all this. It doesn't work for long though because Jason sees the actual Mom-head. But Handsome Boss Man shows up to fight him some more, giving the girl time to machete him in the shoulder. A climactic machete-shouldering.

But like the first movie, we have a shocking denouement. The couple holes up in a nearby cabin, steeling themselves because of a sound outside that might be Jason, maybe a machete wound to the shoulder wasn’t so climactic after all… but just it's the missing dog that apparently wasn't the same dead dog we saw before! But also Jason launches through a window and does mysterious dramatic things. The only other information we get before the credits roll is that the girl is taken away on a stretcher and is noting aloud that she doesn't know where Handsome Boss Man is. Also, the Mom-head is still where it was. It is a very, very weak ending. Maybe they were in a hurry; this sequel was released less than a year after the first one, and there's no way they expected the first one to be a huge hit.

So that is the end of Friday the 13th Part 2! It seems like they weren't inspired to do much other than have a large number of bloody murders, and have the teenagers be hornier and more attractive. I get why I didn't remember much of it other than that Mom scene; it mostly is not memorable.

Some follow-up info - I have now learned that Wheelchair Guy was not played by an actual disabled actor. But the actor did die of AIDS in the 90s, so there's that.

(next: Friday the 13th Part 3)