The Cool Channel DVD Review: Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan, Disc 1 Posted by J.D. Dunn on 03.08.2006
All of Jason's Paramount exploits in one convenient package.
From Crystal Lake to Manhattan, Disc One
Many of you probably have this one already. It's a five-disc set of all the Paramount-owned Friday the 13th films from the 1980s that was released in 2004. When fans heard about the collection, many were excited that they would finally get to see the Friday's uncut and uncensored by the MPAA (which is part of the point of DVD).
Unfortunately, Paramount later announced that it would just be the same films they'd already released, plus a bonus disc featuring some cut footage. We do get alternate commentaries for parts 3,6,7 and 8, though, and many of them offer a lot of insight into low-budget, crank-em-out filmmaking and the process of working on a "franchise."
Although each disc in the set contains two movies, thanks to improvements in compression technology the films actually look better than in their original DVD releases. No 3-D glasses for Part 3, though, sorry.
I had intended to do the set as one review, but it would have been too long and tedious for most readers, so it's broken up into nice, convenient bites.
And for obvious reasons, part two's review contains spoilers to part one, so be warned.
Friday the 13th(1980) D:Sean S. Cunningham W:Victor Miller Starring:Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Betsy Palmer, Kevin Bacon and Jeannine Taylor Runtime: 95m. MPAA: [R]
The Film:
If you haven't heard at least something about this film, you've probably been living under a rock. A group of young adults arrive at the remote Camp Crystal Lake to help set up the summer camp to open for the first time in decades. It seems the camp is cursed by bad water, fires, and a boy who drowned in 1957.
All this comes from a combination of Crazy Ralph (the late Walt Gorney) and truck driver Enos (Rex Everhart) who offers to give young Annie (Robbi Morgan) a ride out to the crossroads. When Annie is killed by a stranger in a jeep, it's obvious that someone just doesn't want this camp to open.
Of course, the kids are unaware of this, and they blissfully go about their business of smoking dope and trying to get into each other's pants while "working" on the campgrounds. Alice (King) is our primary heroine, fending off lecherous advances from the camp's owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) while being the only responsible person around.
When Steve heads into town to get some supplies and can't make it back because of a torrential rainstorm, it leaves the kids (and the killer) to their own devices. Jack and Marcy (Bacon and Taylor) decide to slip away from pesky, nebbish jokester Neddy (Mark Nelson) and have a little sex. That doesn't go well for any of them as Neddy gets his throat slit, Jack gets an arrow in the throat, and Marcie catches an ax to the forehead.
Meanwhile, Alice, hunky Bill (Crosby) and Brenda (Carrie Fisher lookalike Laurie Bartram) entertain themselves with a game of strip monopoly until Brenda remembers she left her cabin windows open. Brenda goes off to her cabin and hears a tiny voice out in the downpour screaming "help me!" When she goes to investigate, she too gets killed by an arrow.
When Bill's dead body gets tossed through a window after going to check things out, it leaves Alice and the killer in a one on one duel to the death. If you're one of the three people who haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil it for you, but I will say the denouement has a rather gory, slow-motion finish.
I won't go so far as to say that this is the first film to throw away any hopes of artistic merit in favor of squalid porno-violence. There's always "I Spit On Your Grave" after all. But "Friday the 13th" was so successful in its day that it serves as a benchmark into America's psyche. After all, there were at least two dozen slasher films that were released from 1978 to 1984. We must have had *some* reason for wanting to see them all. The value of these films comes in finding out why.
As a film, it's not much more than an "easy lay." You don't have to put much effort into it, and you get a lot of scares in return. The filmmakers shot low and reached a little higher. C+
Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981) D:Steve Miner W:Ron Kurz Starring:Amy Steele, John Furey, Kristen Baker, Marta Kober and Lauren Marie-Taylor Runtime: 87m. MPAA: [R]
The Film:
It's been two months since the ending of the first film, and lone survivor Alice (Adrienne King) has kept a home near Crystal Lake in the hopes that she will be able to deal with her trauma stemming from that long, horrible night at the hands of insane mother Pamela Voorhees. Unfortunately, it puts her at risk, and someone tracks her down and runs an icepick through her brain. (It should be noted that this is considered the longest pre-credits sequence in movie history.)
Five years later, the camp on the other side of the lake from "Camp Blood" is opening. The local authorities, of course, don't like it one bit because of all the bad things that have happened in the area. That doesn't stop Paul (Furey), the camp's lead counselor, from going ahead with it, though. He even brings in his girlfriend Ginny (Steele) to help train the newbies.
Of course, as with the first film, someone doesn't like the idea of the camp reopening and is willing to go to violent extremes to ensure that it doesn't. So we get a series of campers getting dispatched. Terri (Baker), she of the amazing derrière and terrier, is killed offscreen; Oversexed troublemakers Jeff and Sandra (Bill Randolph and Kober) get impaled in their bed post-coitus; Terri-luster Scott (Russell Todd) gets his throat slit after being hoisted up in a snare trap; wheelchair-bound Mark (Tom McBride) gets a hatchet to the face. Even Crazy Ralph (the returning Walt Gorney) gets killed while peeping.
That leaves Paul and Ginny, who were in town drinking and talking about the possibility of the existence of Pamela's son Jason Voorhees, to come home to an empty cabin…or so they think. A man wearing a potato sack over his head attacks and knocks Paul unconscious. Ginny runs for her life, and the result is a cat-and-mouse battle between Ginny and the masked man.
Ginny finally retreats to a small shack in the middle of the woods where she realizes that Jason is far more than just a legend.
Well, it didn't take Paramount long to capitalize on the success of the first film. Miner was given a $1 million budget and turned in another $22 million hit by rehashing the exact same formula as the first. Even most of the characters are the same, with Ted the Joker replacing Ned the Joker and Jeff and Sandra replacing Jack and Marcy as the hot-to-trot couple.
Most fans will point to Amy Steele as the series' best heroine, and I can't disagree. For one thing, she's the only heroine in the first eight films to have sex and live to tell about it. That's feminism for you. Also, she uses her brain to outsmart Jason instead of simply hacking away until he doesn't get up.
Sack Jason is also a lot of fun, mostly because he had not yet reached iconic status yet. He was just a retarded young man who watched his mom get killed and came out of hiding to do something about it.
The biggest downside is the same downside to all Friday films: stock characters, bad acting and dialogue, and essentially being a retread of the first film. C
Video
All of the films are recreated in 1.85:1, and they've never looked better on video, even with the compression problems of putting two feature films on the same side of one disc. This is especially evident when comparing them side by side with the unrated British DVD, which is dull and blurry by comparison.
Audio
These films aren't exactly known for their surround sound and awesome auditory cues. This is still 1980 and 1981, after all. But everything is adequate for the source. The "ki, ki, ki, ki" still runs a shiver down your spine after all these years.
The 411: One wishes that Paramount would just bite the bullet and release the unrated versions, especially in light of some of the gruesome efforts we've seen in big budget action films over the years. Unfortunately, horror got significantly spanked by the Reagan-era MPAA, and the films were so poorly received by critics that Paramount quickly dumped the franchise as soon as they had the excuse of poor revenues (which still brought in significantly more than their budgets). For those of us who want to see Claudette's death, or Mrs. Voorhees' eyes opening at the end of Part 2, we'll just have to wait until Paramount needs another cash infusion.
