Kane Hodder

Five discs gather the first eight movies in the Friday the 13th series, plus a batch of behind-the-scenes featurettes. You can track the rise, fall, and endless resurrections of Jason Voorhees,...( read more  read more... ) from the original 1980 film to Jason's self-kidding trip to the Big Apple. Horror fans eat up packages such as this, but there's something odd about the deluxe treatment for a series that spotlighted atrocious acting, pitiful production values, and inane storytelling.

You'll spot a few future "name" actors in various installments: Kevin Bacon is morbidly dispatched in the first one. But in general, the dominant focus is how to kill horny teenagers, most of whom have gathered at Camp Crystal Lake in the misguided belief that the curse of the impossible-to-kill Jason has worn off. The first movie has a certain raw, crummy ability to shock, Part 2 is a dismal retread, and Part 3 actually features interesting use of 3-D, which doesn't translate to its flat DVD version. The fourth is boldly subtitled The Final Chapter, and we all know where that went, but it does have Crispin Glover doing a funky dance. A New Beginning and Jason Lives continue Jason's bad mood, maybe because the hockey mask doesn't fit right. The seventh chapter, The New Blood, stakes Jason against a worthy opponent (Crystal Lake's answer to telekinetic Carrie), but the result is the same. Part 8's subtitle, Jason Takes Manhattan, is wittier than the movie itself, as Jason menaces an unlucky cruise ship of high-schoolers bound for New York--where Mr. J fits right in.

Some of the films come with commentaries from directors or cast members, including heralded Jason performer Kane Hodder. Brief documentaries (ranging from five to 15 minutes) cover separate installments with amusing anecdotes, including interviews with Sean S. Cunningham, Tom Savini, and various actors. In another doc, actors speak of the fraternity of young actors who've been slaughtered by Jason over the years. A deleted-scenes section is skimpy and not very interesting, while the tricks of special-effects gore merit a film to themselves. It's a customer-savvy DVD box, even if the effect of watching a bunch of this stuff together is a little dispiriting. --Robert Horton

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DVD Release Date: October 5, 2004

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  • wolfforrest
    November 26, 2007
    JASON X SUCKS
  • LoveAndAdoreHardMaleNipples1
    May 30, 2007
    Missing Jason "X"
  • MorpheusOne
    May 3, 2007
    This made the bad guys in the show interesting & the good guys, the main characters of the show, interesting as well bc it's not like they stood by & did nothing, or very little, throughout each episode like the doomed morons in the movies...
  • MorpheusOne
    May 3, 2007
    The first two or three might actually be worth watching bc at least they were presenting the horror genre in a way even more ghoulish & depraved than was ever done before, & with what was at the time an original story, but the franchise was a complete pile of garbage since essentially nothing changed as the movies kept coming out. The Nightmare on Elm Street run was pretty bad too, but even it was not as downright dumb as the Friday the 13th. And then there was The Friday the 13th The Series, which had absolutely nothing to do with the movies, thankfully, and was ten thousand times better for it. The show dealt with evil of different shades, that was complex & truly malevolent, but sometimes, ....sometimes, still tried to seek redemption, even if it was hopeless.
  • nerdpanda
    March 17, 2007
    What about Jason Goes to Hell?

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Friday the 13th -... : Watch Free on TV


Friday the 13th - From Crystal Lake to Manhattan Trivia

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