Todd’s Movie Blog

So now Jason Vorhees joins Leatherface and Michael Myers by being revamped and updated for the new millennium and possibly the start of a new series (can Freddy Kruger be far behind?).  Thank God!  You know I was just sitting around the house Friday and thinking you know, I could really go for a movie where a bunch of oversexed, topless teenagers get killed with gardening tools, too bad their isn’t a new Friday the 13th movie out, oh hey look there is one.  My prayers have been answered!  All kidding aside, I don’t understand why they are still making these films.  Teen slasher films as a genre have gone the way of Steven Sagall films, they still have a core group of fans, but aren’t going to set any box office records on fire.  You know, a straight to DVD release at best.  Of the three horror icons mentioned at the start of this rant, Leatherface and Michael Myers are not in the same class as Jason, they were featured in good and original horror films made by you film makers working to produce a good product as a calling card to show studios what they could do.  Jason was created as a way to make money in a series of little originality, outside of a few gorey death scenes in the first few films.  The first film was a virtual plot point for plot point rip off of Halloween, and the second film in the series, which introduced Jason, was little more than a retread of the previous film.  Perhaps that’s why I’m less irritated and more amused by this new remake that is not a remake.  Halloween is one of my all time favorite films, and is still able to produce suspense and fear when viewed today.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a film that still generates unbearable tension and horror in a viewer, and is still hard to sit through for me.  The original Friday the 13th was a brainless, blood drenched attempt to cash in on the popularity of Halloween.  It’s only value in terms of film history was in it’s splatter effects inpiring other film makers to make even more inventively bloody death scenes feature pretty girls having sex either right before dying or sometime during the actual act (talk about coitus interuptus!).  Most don’t remember, but Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre featured little to no gore, using shadows and moody music to achieve their mounting scares.  So considering that the new Friady the 13th has little more to overcome from the original than to make money, I think it will do fine.