Michael vs. Jason: Evil Emerges (2019, Luke Pedder)

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 need the masks.

And the Harry Manfredini Friday the 13th music.

Michael vs. Jason: Evil Emerges has some Friday the 13th music, carefully remixed just enough not to be infringing (I assume). They don’t use the Carpenter Halloween music at all because you figure they’d get sued. Good enough for Luc Besson, good enough for some Australian family who really wanted to make a Michael vs. Jason slugfest.

And it is, for a time, a glorious slugfest.

I wasn’t actually expecting one. Not like director Luke Pedder delivers, but for a while, it works really, really well. Stars Joshua Pedder and John Pedder give their all; it’s a wrestling match with some ultra violence. Not gore ultra violence because there’s no money for it, so instead just ultra violent sound effects and editing emphases. It’s cool. It’s kind of dumb, but it’s cool.

Then some Australian hicks show up and threaten the slasher movie villains with guns and bats. It’s all way too predictable and way too unimaginative. Because director Pedder doesn’t seem to get where the film’s strong, where he’s strong—the two villains duking it out.

See, Michael vs. Jason doesn’t just not have a sick mix of Manfredini and Carpenter’s music themes to go over the action, it doesn’t have a single night shot. It all takes place during the day. In this very distinct forest. In Australia. Or in New Jersey, but a New Jersey where the Australians have invaded and run things like a bunch of fascists. They’re killing Michael (John Pedder) without a trial or anything. Jason (Joshua Pedder) has already woken up because his mom told him to get out of bed and kill people.

Michael vs. Jason doesn’t open well. The mom voice is bad, the Jason mask is bad (not the hockey mask, but the full latex mask Joshua Pedder wears so no one could possibly recognize him in the other parts he plays in the short), then comes the Michael stuff and it’s all cribbed from H40, including the too big mask.

The seemingly unintentional charm of it—the actors all covered in one mask or another so they can Fake Shemp, the bad and wordy dialogue, the Australian accents—get it through until Michael inevitably breaks free of his captors. There’s an extended sequence where Michael’s chasing this kid in reflective sunglasses—he’s the boss, probably played by Christopher Goldup, who does the fan movie shot in a woods with no budget equivalent of scenery chewing—and it’s kind of… good. Pedder intuits how to use the reflective sunglasses for effect, even if they’re silly. The whole thing’s silly.

Then Jason shows up and the wrasslin’ starts and Michael vs. Jason coasts to the end. It never gets better than that first fight, where there’s a combination of good choreography, all-in performances from John and Joshua, and some nice cuts from director Luke. The finale has a fake thunderstorm and CGI gunshots. The thunderstorm filter isn’t impressive, but the CGI gunshots are cool until you notice they don’t leave any damage.

I can’t believe I’m getting 600 words out of this one.

Anyway. Michael vs. Jason has a good fight scene, some fine cuts, and the Australian charm factor to get it through its way too long thirty minute runtime. It’s not really a proof of concept, except one to show how director Pedder’s got one heck of a can-do attitude. You’d have to be mildly interested in the concept or potential to be engaged, but Michael vs. Jason is far from a failure. It’s just very hard to recommend. Especially at the thirty minute runtime.

It’d probably work better as just the slasher rumble.

Freddy vs. Jason (2003, Ronny Yu)

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 Yu of being lazy, however. He, photographer Fred Murphy and editor Mark Stevens rush through every shot in the film. With the exception of two or three crane shots, there’s nothing well-directed in the film. Yu’s a lousy director; the film looks awful and the actors clearly weren’t getting any direction.

As the primary damsel in distress, Monica Keena is awful. Kelly Rowland is awful as her friend, Jason Ritter is awful as her boyfriend. The film’s best performance is probably Brendan Fletcher but only for half of his performance. Really bad acting from Kyle Labine.

Like most franchise pairings, Freddy vs. Jason doesn’t have much in the way of artistic potential; it might’ve been nice to have an iota of intelligence from Damian Shannon and Mark Swift’s script.

Not even the film’s fight scenes work out. Robert Englund looks silly battling his hulking adversary. Well, Yu wouldn’t know what to do with the footage anyway. He can’t construct a scary sequence and he’s even worse at trying to do a fight sequence.

The film’s mean, misogynistic, homophobic and a little racist. Freddy vs. Jason’s only achievement is being entirely worthless.

Jason X (2001, James Isaac)

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 exchanges from Aliens. And he forecasts it at the beginning, when Lexa Doig’s present day protagonist gets cryogenically frozen trying to escape killer monster Jason. It immediately feels like Aliens and then the similarities just continue, complete with a Burke character in Jonathan Potts and even Apone with Peter Mensah.

Would the film be at all amusing to someone not well-versed in Friday the 13th, Aliens and eighties movies in general? No. Farmer’s script is exaggerated and most of the actors can’t sell the lines. Melyssa Ade does rather well with her lame one-liners, giving them a proverbial eye roll on delivery.

The problem’s director Isaac. He can’t direct. The movie could even get away with the cheap (and derivative) special effects if Isaac and photographer Derick V. Underschultz were better at their jobs. Harry Manfredini turns in a surprisingly okay score and editor David Handman gets in a couple rather solid jump scares.

By turning slasher movie monster Jason Voorhees into Alien, Jason X erases all expectations. It’s too stupid to consider taking seriously. And has some success. Doig’s likable and Manesh’s good.

It’s truly too bad Isaac’s not a better director.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993, Adam Marcus)

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 implies Jason Voorhees is a Deadite, which would have been far cooler, or he’s a leftover from New Line Cinema’s previous effort, The Hidden. Tying it into either of those franchises would have at least been imaginative. Well, not the second. Director Marcus apes The Hidden more than enough.

But the other interesting thing is disturbing. Marcus makes a big deal out of torture scenes featuring Steven Williams and Richard Gant. Both have big scenes where they torture white guys. The first one, with Gant, is a ritualistic BDSM thing with a naked Rubenesque male. The second has Williams gleefully torturing geeky but secretly a great fighter white guy John D. LeMay, all while whispering softly to him.

Marcus is similarly creepy when it comes to women in the film. He sexualizes Erin Gray while she’s injured, while her daughter–female lead Kari Keegan–escapes any objectification.

It’s not competently perverse enough to give pause, but Marcus seems to wish he could be that perverse.

Really bad photography from Bill Dill; he and Marcus are the incompetent duo on this one. Though Harry Manfredini’s score’s atrocious this entry.

Hell is tired before the opening titles.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989, Rob Hedden)

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 music is lousy, the whole thing looks cheap, but none of those problems are what drain any interest from the film.

It’s Hedden’s inability to decide what he wants the movie to do. He doesn’t go for gore, he doesn’t go for scares. Okay, sure, Hedden couldn’t deliver scares, but he could have at least tried. For a while, he compensates for the lack of gore (and scares) by subjecting characters to absurdly long fearful suffering sequences. Poorly acted, but the actors deserved better. They’re already giving lame performances; being further embarrassed just because Hedden can’t figure out what to do is too much.

Lead Jensen Daggett is bad. She has a huge story arc–complete with flashback–to explain her importance to the movie (and the franchise). Hedden has no sense of scale, not when he’s directing scenes onboard the cruise ship (sorry, the commercial freighter converted into an Elks Lodge-inspired luxury ship), not when he’s trying for big moments in the screenplay. He’s bad at the whole filmmaking thing.

The film’s real long at 100 minutes; it gets intensely boring around the thirty minute mark. The rest is just excruciating.

Bad stuff.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988, John Carl Buechler)

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 Kiser) who brings this girl with telekinetic powers (Lar Park-Lincoln) out to the woods in order to develop her powers. Why isn’t important. In the woods, Park-Lincoln releases this monster who apparently thinks he’s in charge of maintaining the forest and the way to get plants to grow is with human sacrifice and decorating trees and other plants with the corpses.

Kind of gross, but far more interesting than the utter laziness of New Blood. Park-Lincoln’s terrible; director Buechler seems entirely unfamiliar with Kiser as an actor and wastes him as a non-comedic weasel. The only performances of note are Kevin Spirtas as the male lead (just because he’s not atrocious) and maybe Kane Hodder as Jason, only because he’s got so much to do physically. Just not as a character.

Buechler’s approach to New Blood is to turn the monster into the audience’s entry into the film. Not for empathetic reasons, of course–Buechler uses it to give the audience wish fulfillment with the graphic murders. It’d be disturbing if it weren’t all so ineptly done.

Atrocious production design from Richard Lawrence makes every scene somewhat unpleasant.

Lousy stuff.

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986, Tom McLoughlin)

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 the entry, is also sincere about making the film accessible. No, really, there’s no other reason to have a bumbling executives playing paintball than the make the film accessible. McLoughlin wants people to enjoy Jason Lives.

Unfortunately, his script is lame and his direction of actors is weak. His composition is bland, predictable and never effective, but a lot of it is cinematographer Jon Kranhouse. The movie’s terribly lighted. And, even worse, Harry Manfredini’s score is laughable. It’s never scary. He’s going for that monster movie vibe McLoughlin wants.

In the lead performance, Thom Mathews is terrible. As his love interest, Jennifer Cooke gives a perfectly adequate performance in an unbelievable role. As her father–and the sheriff after Mathews–David Kagen is real bad. There are a lot of actors in a Jason Lives, sometimes too many to track, but none of them are good.

Jason Lives also distinguishes itself by putting children in danger of being brutally murdered by a resurrected by lightning slasher monster. McLoughlin can’t even make that sequence scary; he can’t even create empathy for children in danger.

Jason Lives is rather bad, even as a Friday the 13th movie.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985, Danny Steinmann)

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 exactly ruins them but he definitely works at cross purpose.

It’s hard to say if it’s director Steinmann working the absurd cliche angle; there are a handful of ambitious scenes in the film, where Steinmann is clearly trying to do something with the filmmaking (never the film). So are those moments the fluke or is the rest of it the fluke?

The actors suggest the former, just because the acting is so bad and there’s no way Steinmann wouldn’t prefer better acting in those parts. He’s got Shavar Ross, who’s annoying as all hell but he’s a capable actor and Ross is stuck in scenes without any professionals to work with. Leading lady Melanie Kinnaman is bad. She doesn’t have anything to do, but she’s still bad.

As the suspect in all the film’s ineptly cut murders, John Shepherd is terrible. Obviously Steinmann saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre for one sequence, but he also borrowed heavily from The Karate Kid for Shepherd’s scenes. It’s silly and awful and the film’s so unsuccessful, it’s actually pitiable.

Decent enough performance from Juliette Cummins in one of Steinmann’s acceptable tangents.

But it’s an awful movie. Just lame.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984, Joseph Zito)

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 still has to be mainstream.

And The Final Chapter is a desperate attempt to fulfill the mainstream expectations of a Friday the 13th movie. There’s pointless nudity, dumb coeds, scary music, a kid with a horror movie fixation. Except Zito can’t do any of it right. He does best on the exploitation of his female cast, but even that is inept because of his direction. Zito shoots everything in a medium-long shot, straight on so the pan and scan video release won’t miss any of the technically competent, but entirely unimaginative gore.

Worse, Zito has a screenwriter in Barney Cohen who give him okay scary setups. Zito flops on all of them. Occasionally it’ll be something as simple as needing Harry Manfredini’s (admittedly somewhat lame this entry) score over a scene instead of the scenic sound. There’s not a single good thing Zito does in the film.

Except the opening tracking shot tying it to the previous series entry.

Lots of bad acting, but also an almost good one from Crispin Glover and okay ones from Kimberly Beck and Barbara Howard.

One scare out of The Final Chapter shouldn’t have been asking too much.

Friday the 13th Part III (1982, Steve Miner)

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 pan and scan. But he also has enough interest to do a quick Psycho homage and a more elaborate one to the first Friday the 13th. So there was some ambition. At least twice.

But even if Miner were a better director, there’s still cinematographer Gerald Feil. Feil does an atrocious job. Sometimes, during the terribly lighted night scenes, it’s impossible to tell whether a shot is interior or exterior. The light doesn’t create anything. It barely even illuminates relevant action.

All of the acting is bad. Some of it is worse. Lead Dana Kimmell is real bad. Not as bad as Paul Kratka as her boyfriend, but still real bad. The rest of the cast isn’t much better. Catherine Parks and Tracie Savage probably give the best performances.

It takes the movie over a half hour to really get going and Miner never matches the care he gives the first suspense sequence (the first after the previous installment’s recap). Maybe most surprising is the lousy score from Harry Manfredini. He opens with a disco thing, then abandons it for a tired rehash score.

Beside that one opening suspense sequence, Part III’s total turkey.