The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Friday the 13th movies
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I make this statement with absolute sincerity: a Michael vs. Jason fan movie is a good idea. It doesn’t need actual acting, because neither of the slasher villains are going to be speaking or emoting. Their shapes and the filmmaking are going to do the work. You could do it on zero budget, you just…
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Freddy vs. Jason is terrible, no doubt about it. It’s poorly directed, it’s poorly written, it’s poorly acted. Not even composer Graeme Revell–who’s actually worked on good movies–tries. His most ambitious part of the score is the generic mixing (consecutively cut together) the two separate franchises’s familiar themes. It’s real lazy. One cannot accuse director…
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Jason X is wonderfully bad. I don’t think it’s intended to be camp, but who knows. It certainly plays as high camp, possibly the best camp at the expense of the Friday the 13th series. Maybe if it were just a little less gory…. Todd Farmer’s script borrows a number of set pieces and dialogue…
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Jason Goes to Hell is terrible. It’s terribly made, it’s terribly written, it’s terribly acted. It’s so terrible I wish the word “terrible” was in the title just so I could continue to make terrible jokes instead of trying to write about the movie. There’s something interesting about it. And not just how the movie…
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Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan has a number of significant problems. Director Hedden can’t direct actors or compose a shot well, the actors aren’t any good (even experienced character actor like Peter Mark Richman can’t seem to figure out what Hedden wants him to do), Bryan England’s photography is lousy, Fred Mollin’s…
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Let’s take Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood at face value and not assume it’s a soulless corporate production with no ambition other than to separate the 18–24 year old demographic from some cash on Friday night of pay day. With that consideration in mind, the film is about this evil psychiatrist (Terry…
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Director McLoughlin tries something new for the Friday the 13th franchise; he makes Jason Lives a monster movie. A really bland, not even slightly creepy and only once surprising, monster movie. It’s not notable for it failing to be a good monster movie, it’s notable because McLoughlin’s so sincere about it. McLoughlin, who also scripted…
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Someone–whether it be the writers, director, producers, studio, composer, whoever–someone tried really hard to make Friday the 13th: A New Beginning a comedy. It fails miserably, but the attempt is interesting if not admirable. Wait, it’s not because of the composer; Harry Manfredini plays it straight and ruins a lot of the scenes. Well, not…
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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter never tries to be scary. It tries to be gory… but not too gory. It saves the biggest gore moment for the last, when any number of the other ones throughout the film would’ve given Tom Savini better material. It’s supposed to be gory, but not too gory. It…
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Friday the 13th Part III is shockingly inept. Director Miner has a number of bad habits, some related to the film being done in 3-D, some just with how he composes the widescreen frame. Miner favors either action in the center of the frame or on the left. The right is unused. Miner’s shooting for…
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When director Miner finally does a decent sequence in Friday the 13th Part 2, it comes as something of a surprise. Amy Steel is on the run from the masked killer and, even though it’s stupid, it’s somewhat effective. Steel probably gives the film’s best performance (she’s still not any good) and Ron Kurz’s script…
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There’s nothing wonderfully terrible about Friday the 13th. It’s not like any of the cast are bad in funny ways, not even Betsy Palmer who’s doing inept histrionics. Are any of the cast members good? Not really. Some are better than others. Kevin Bacon’s probably the most useless (and annoying, due to an affected Southern…
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I don’t know what I was expecting from Friday the 13th, but whatever it was, I didn’t get it. It’s not particularly gory, it’s not at all scary, it’s not stupid enough to be funny; I do understand why producer Michael Bay walked on it due to the level of sex. It’s like they traded…
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