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    #1

    Friday the 13th series

    I found a bargain today in my local Cash Converters - a boxset of the first eight Friday the 13th films for £1.99!

    I've never seen any of these for some reason, apart from one at the cinema in about 1986. (It was maybe part 4 or 5)

    Are there any fans of the series here?

    Is the first film a classic? How do you rate it compared to Halloween?

    And what other films of a similar ilk do you like?
    Tags: None
    #2
    Friday the 13th series

    The first one, genuinely, is bloody good.

    By the time you get to about number three, they're kind of victims of the Scream franchise that pastiched them. Is pastiche a verb? You know what I mean.

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      #3
      Friday the 13th series

      I watched them all over one weekend ages ago. I had just been dumped by a girl and they were back-to-back on Film 4 when it did that sort of thing.

      As Rogin says, they become pastiche pretty quickly, and more interested in Final Destination "ha-ha" ways to kill folks. By the Leonard Cohen-inspred Jason Takes Manhattan I think I'd lost all sense of time and reason.

      The whisky and why-did-she-leave-me-God? boo-hooing actually heightened the viewing experience, now that I think about it.

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        #4
        Friday the 13th series

        They both predictably exhibit diminishing returns, with the exception of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which I really like (but had nothing to do with Michael Myers).

        But yes, the original Halloween is very good.

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          #5
          Friday the 13th series

          Not a fan of it at all.

          Nope, not me.

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            #6
            Friday the 13th series

            It is not a classic like Halloween. Halloween is in a class by itself.

            It's a series that you just have to reset your barometers and readjust your views on cinema.

            It's a time when New Jersey was seen as this vast wilderness where weird shit happened. New Jersey was a punchline of New Yorkers for generations (Billy Crystal had this joke at the 9/11 memorial, "during this time it is important to be mindful and respectful of people with different customs and beliefs....yes, we have to be nice to people from New Jersey.")

            It was also the place where New Yorkers would send their kids to summer camp, where they'd hear stories of insane janitors with hooks for hands who would dangle girlfriends or boyfriends upside down above their car roofs when they ran out of gas, or monsters who would pick children off one by one in a forbidden part of the woods, etc.

            The series success has a lot to do with the rite of passage of summer camp. Where boys and girls who are losers for 9 months out of the year are suddenly a new reinvented hottie, where you will feel your first boob or will spend the night trying to figure out what to do with the taste in your mouth from your first French Kiss.

            The early 80s had Meatballs in the comedy realm of summer camp, in addition to the shamefully brilliant Ernest Goes To Camp. Friday the 13th just made a very simple horror version.

            The hockey mask doesn't appear until part 3. Parts 1 & 2 are pretty f'n good. Part 3 is useless, Part 4 gave us the hero we needed, Part 5 is utterly reviled...

            Parts 6 & 7 are a lot of fun.

            Part 6 kind of has its own mini-gravitas. It's own private universe of brilliance. There was a novellization of Part 6 I once saw in a store...I would LOVE to find that book one day. And smoke whatever Bob Marley was smoking when I read it.

            Part 6 I saw air on NHK in primetime in Japan. Unedited. Complete with chiropractic adjustments. During commercials, they had that James Bond intro where Bond is walking then turns and fires at you....only it was Jason and he'd turn and slash his machete.

            Up until part 6, there was this question if Jason is "alive" or not and if he can be killed. At the beginning of part 6? Lightning strikes a shove at his grave and he's stone cold Frankensteined.

            Part 7, he's up against a girl with telekenisis. In the threatre, the final battle was awesome.

            Part 8 he goes to Manhattan. In many ways echoing what happened with New Jersey and Manhattan. New Jersey spend 30 years building the best education system in the country, and the suburbs of New Jersey ended up taking over most of Manhattan.

            Part 9 was the body jumping bit, and Part 10 it's outer space.

            So a quick graph
            Part-Score
            1-8
            2-9
            3-4
            4-8
            5-0
            6-10
            7-9
            8-5
            9-7
            10-4

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              #7
              Friday the 13th series

              Very interesting Jason. Thank you! It's nice that you've given star ratings, as it'll help me select which ones to see.

              I think I saw the one I saw was Part 6, on a double bill with this, which was a good flick:

              http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090655/

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