The Best Way To Watch The 'Friday The 13th' Movies
KI KI KI MA MA MA
·Updated:
·

Welcome to Fan Service, a guide to engaging with gargantuan, lore-heavy franchises. In each volume, we'll recommend a watch/read order to approach the given series with and dissect our argument for it. Today: Let's all take a trip to Camp Crystal Lake on this special, spooky day.

I've got to admit something at the top here: I am not a big fan of scary movies. It's hard to gross me out but it's embarrassingly easy to spook me with a jump scare. One time I played a video game that had just one scare moment in it — it shook me so badly that, playing with frayed nerves, I accidentally found the way to end the game before I'd barely gotten into the story.1 I am a scaredy cat. So why am I writing about "Friday the 13th?"

Well, slasher movies are a bit of an exception for me on two counts: first, they're ridiculous and predictable, a combo takes some of the edge off. For the most part, the "Friday the 13th" series operates like clockwork: Jason Voorhees is resurrected, he goes on a rampage (often at or involving Camp Crystal Lake), he gets killed again.

Second, I love reading about slasher movies. It's my belief that, regardless of genre, the shoddier a film's plot is the more fun it is to read a summary. I can trace my particular fondness for slasher movie synopses to one website — X-Entertainment. Written and maintained by Matt Caracappa, now of Dinosaur Dracula, X-Entertainment was a blog about anything and everything from the '80s.2 Since the '80s were the apex of slasher movies, series like "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" were perfect fits for Matt's October blogs. It wasn't just him, though — there's a wealth of slasher reviews out there online3 that all revel in the silly spectacle of these films.

I hope this installment of Fan Service gets you in the spooky Halloween spirit. Let's take a look at the roots of the slasher genre, explore the "Friday the 13th" movies and give some love to '80s horror bloggers along the way. Here we go.

A Whole Lot Of Roman Numerals

Believe it or not, apart from the 2009 reboot there's actually continuity between all the "Friday the 13th" movies (even if sometimes there's hardly any continuity within them). This is particularly true across the first four films, where we go from Jason Voorhees not being the villain at all to his third rampage ending at the hands of Tommy Jarvis — oh yeah, there are going be spoilers throughout this article. These are old slasher movies, not the latest season of "Game of Thrones," okay? So the story progresses through to "The Final Chapter," which was followed only a year later by "A New Beginning." That film was a misstep for the franchise: this is where, even if you care about the continuing story, you might as well start skipping the bad ones.

Each mostly-enjoyable "Friday the 13th" film is listed in bold, and each of those is accompanied by a link to an entertaining summary or review.4 If you want the full "Friday the 13th" experience just watch through the films in the order they were made except for "Jason X," which should come after "Freddy vs. Jason" seeing as it's set way, way in the future. Cap things off with the reboot (which will likely get rebooted again if they ever make another movie) and you're done. Here's the list:


If you don't care much for the continuity and just want to know what "the best one" is, I compared rankings from Syfy, Collider, IFC and Consequence of Sound, and the first and fourth movies came out on top. If you want to watch one with Jason (complete with hockey mask), watch four. Otherwise, if you just want to watch a bunch of campers get slaughtered and don't care who's doing the dirty work, watch the first one.

The Dawn Of The Slasher Movie

The release of John Carpenter's "Halloween" in 1978 kicked off the rise of American slasher movie in the '80s, and that film's debt to Hitchcock's "Psycho" (felt strongly in the first "Friday the 13th" installment as well) is plain to see.5 Hitchcock aside, the other big touchstone for slasher movies is the Italian giallo genre. Named for pulpy novellas distinguished by their yellow (or "giallo") covers, the genre includes visually rich films that center on murder mysteries — these murders are often outlandishly violent and filmed up close to the victims, both to emphasize the brutality of the kills and to keep the killer's identity just out of reach. Giallo movies also embrace a touch of voyeurism: Masked or no, the killer often pursues highly sexualized victims or catches them in erotic moments. Though slasher movies conjure up some other common traits, like explicitly supernatural elements or frequently iffy acting, a lot of giallo traits and tropes fit like a glove.

Enter Sean S. Cunningham. Cunningham, who'd previously directed a couple seventies sexploitation films and comedies, decided his next film would be a horror movie. He wasn't a stranger to scares: in 1972, Cunningham was a producer on the original version of Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left." Audiences were ready for more films in a similar vein as "Halloween," and so Cunningham and writer Victor Miller began working on "A Long Night at Camp Blood" — an uninspiring title that was later changed to "Friday the 13th."

In the context of the sequels that follow it, "Friday the 13th" could be looked at as no more than an origin story for Jason Voorhees, but that would sell its achievements short. Let's get the fact that Jason's mom does the killing in this film out of the way — if you've never seen it, finding out her motivation for doing so is a big enough reveal as-is. Even though Jason isn't the killer, "Friday the 13th" establishes so many other elements that would come to define the series. First there's Camp Crystal Lake, which both feeds into the horny teenagers-as-victims trope of slasher films and serves as one example among many of how '80s films about summer camps were a totally "A Thing." Master special effects makeup artist Tom Savini, fresh off of working on Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," made the movie a memorably gory spectacle. Composer Harry Manfredini created the haunting, iconic music that would live past the first movie and follow Jason through every sequel to follow, even though people have always misheard it (the creepy whispers are "ki ki ki ma ma ma," not "chi chi chi ha ha ha" according to Manfredini himself). The first "Friday the 13th" both followed in the footsteps of "Halloween" and paved the way for its own sequels and imitators to come.

Interestingly, writer Victor Miller wasn't happy with the choice to make Jason into the killer in the sequel. Miller never returned to write another installment, and Jason takes a little time to come into his own as the series' trademark villain.

VHS And Jason Reign Supreme

"Friday the 13th Part 2" came out the following year, followed by "Part III" a year later (odd that they didn't go with roman numerals from the start). Steve Miner, a producer on the first movie, directed both installments. Miner was receptive to the idea of bringing back Jason as the killer while, at the time, others involved with the first film weren't.

Though many consider "2" a better film than "III," the latter amounts to a sort of "do-over" for Jason Voorhees. In "Part 2," Jason wears a burlap sack over his head — underneath the mask Jason has long red hair and a scraggly neckbeard. This look is dropped in "Part III" in favor of a completely hairless look even though the movies canonically only take place a day apart. Prosthetics aside, Jason's also being played by different people in each of these movies too. Starting with "Part III" Jason gets his signature hockey mask, but it's a while until someone gets to inhabit the role of Jason for more than one film.

Of course, a lot of people watching "Friday the 13th" movies in the '80s could probably care less about strict continuity so long as the bawdiness and bloodshed checked out. The films were marketed to teens and were probably watched more at home on rented VHS tapes than they were in theaters. This video from YouTube critic hbomberguy talks all about the massive influence VHS had on the film industry, particularly for horror films. VHS perfectly enabled the slasher movie boom: the rise of home video players meant that movies kept making money for studios outside of their theatrical release, and the demand for tapes was high enough that sometimes it didn't matter if movies did well at the box office. Practical effects that were either well-done or cheesy both looked better on tape and churning out sequels guaranteed repeat business. While it might be fair to say that betting on a blurry format and uncritical audiences helped enable bad filmmaking, embracing VHS was also a necessary step between thinking of movies as a theater-only experience and the way we engage with film today. Having better access to movies of all kinds makes film enthusiasm easier to foster, which is a good thing.6

You could accuse "The Final Chapter" of being a little cynical from the title alone — really, did anybody at the time really think they'd stop the franchise? Promising the end of Jason Voorhees was probably seen as a good way to sell tickets and guarantee rentals, but it also got Tom Savini returned to do the effects as a way of "killing" Jason himself. The fourth installment is also notable because it introduces Tommy Jarvis, first portrayed by Corey Feldman. Jarvis becomes an important character across the next couple installments, and the way he dispatches of Jason here is… well, pretty memorable. "The Final Chapter" also features a pre-"Back to the Future" Crispin Glover, who gets a dance scene that's… well, pretty memorable.

Enter Freddy, Exit Jason

Starting with the fifth movie, "Friday the 13th" loses some of its luster. "A New Beginning" follows an older Tommy Jarvis who thinks Jason is back from the dead, but it turns out to be a copycat killer. This move was so widely disliked that they immediately brought back Jason in the next movie and called it "Jason Lives."

Meanwhile, at this point in the franchise Jason had strong competition at the box office and on the rental shelves. Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" came out the same year as "The Final Chapter," and now Freddy Kruger was getting sequels on a close-to-yearly basis too. Freddy is very consciously constructed as a slasher villain that embodies the tropes of the genre rather than just obeying them. You can't kill Freddy because he lives in your dreams, you can't escape him because everybody sleeps, etc. On the flipside, you can't kill Jason Voorhees because he's just the villain. If you did kill Jason you'd have to find a different villain… which is exactly what they did in the fifth movie and failed to make a compelling case for.

In recognition of the fact that there's not a good explanation for Jason's resiliency (unlike Freddy), the "Friday the 13th" movies from "Jason Lives"-onwards start to shoehorn in more and more supernatural stuff. "Part VII" includes a psychic protagonist, "VIII" takes a regrettable detour to New York City and the ninth film, "Jason Goes To Hell," straight-up includes the Necronomicon from the "Evil Dead" movies and shows that Jason's soul is able to take over people's bodies. One of the best things the films from "VII"-onward have going for them is Kane Hodder, who's particularly imposing as Jason. Ultimately, though, the films disregard the "keep it simple" ethos that made the earlier installments more fun.

Though layering on supernatural elements might not have been the best choice, "Jason Goes To Hell" had one other trick up its sleeve: Freddy. Plans for a movie pitting Freddy against Jason started after "Jason Lives" came out, but only after Sean Cunningham returned to the franchise and brought it over to New Line Cinemas — who owned "Elm Street" — did the work begin in earnest. "Freddy vs. Jason" remained in development long enough that New Line moved forward with "Jason Goes To Hell" first, using it to establish the franchise crossover in the movie's final moment. That was 1993. "Freddy vs. Jason" didn't come out for another decade.

The Rest Of The 'Fridays'

Nine years after the release of "Jason Goes To Hell," New Line released a movie that might as well have been called "Jason Goes To Space." "Jason X" is probably one of the most hated-on installments of the franchise, but it's also one of the most self-aware. It knows exactly how ridiculous the idea of putting Jason on a space station is and leans into it — at one point Jason gets trapped in a hologram recreation of Camp Crystal Lake where the fake campers offer him beer, pot and premarital sex. It might not be great, but it knows what it should be: silly. Eventually the Mythbusters went on to test its most ridiculous kill idea.

"Freddy vs. Jason" finally came out a year later and, after over ten years in development, it's probably only worth watching if you're a hardcore fan of both series. What should be a more fun and interesting showdown between slasher baddies ends up being a bit of a disappointment, and though Robert Englund reprises his role as Freddy Krueger, the film cut out Kane Hodder completely. Taking the role of Jason away from the guy who'd done it in four earlier movies is probably the movie's cruelest act of all.

Fast forward to 2009 and you have just "Friday the 13th" again — the twelfth movie but a complete reboot of the franchise. Produced by Platinum Dunes, the Michael Bay-affiliated company that also produced remakes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street", the 2009 version of "Friday the 13th" was penned by the same writers as "Freddy vs. Jason" but it exchanged the ridiculousness of that film for a good-old, pared-down series of murders at Camp Crystal Lake. Though it's unlikely that this film will get a direct sequel at this point, the remake should be of interest to anyone who wants to see what "Friday the 13th" can be with a bigger budget.

The Future

Perhaps triskaidekaphobia — fear of the number thirteen — is ironically keeping a thirteenth movie from getting made. A few potential scripts have been churned through, the most recent of which was detailed back in February. It's not as though filmgoers aren't into horror movies anymore. Blumhouse has brought low(er) budget horror movies back in vogue with movies like "Get Out," and their new movie "Happy Death Day"7 is a slasher movie mashed up with "Groundhog Day." Clearly there's pressure riding on whoever does make the thirteenth film to not screw it up, but it's obviously a matter of "when" not "if" it's going to happen. Jason will be back… eventually.

Meanwhile, fans of the movies can live out their own Camp Crystal Lake nightmares in "Friday the 13th: The Game." Released by Gun Media and produced in cooperation with Sean Cunningham and Harry Manfredini, the game is an asymmetrical multiplayer scenario where one person plays as Jason and everybody else is a camp counselor. The game does a lot to nail the look and feel of the films — Kane Hodder was even brought in to do motion capture for Jason. Absent a thirteenth movie, the game might be the only significant new "Friday the 13th" material fans will get for a while… but if you can get tired of twelve movies, a bunch of spin-off novels (yes, those exist) and a very replayable video game8 then more power to you.

1

The game was "Gone Home," if you're interested. Yeah, I know, not very scary.

2

Plus strange things from Jersey boardwalks, most of which seem unmoored in time.

3

My pet theory is that Gen-X'rs loved writing about stuff from their childhood when blogging took off because it was the first time many of them actually got a sense of community from that stuff. This is also I blame being a teen online in the '00s for why I know a bunch of utterly garbage '80s pop-culture trivia.

4

Including a particularly harsh one by Roger Ebert, just for fun.

5

Fittingly, a bunch of "Psycho" sequels were made in the '80s to try and ride the slasher boom.

6

If you really want to hate on sequels and schlocky filmmaking, why are you still reading this anyway?

7

Which comes out on a Friday the 13th, go figure.

8

Also, there was a short-lived TV show tie-in. Considering that it had no real story ties to the movies, I didn't include it in the list, but for completeness' sake I'm mentioning it here. Please don't tweet at me about it, I'm begging you.

<p>Mathew Olson is an Associate Editor at Digg.</p>

Want more stories like this?

Every day we send an email with the top stories from Digg.

Subscribe