Ranking the Friday the 13th franchise from worst to first
Regular listeners to the show are probably well aware that I am a Jason fanboy. I watch the Friday the 13th films repeatedly, never tiring of their campy, hack-and-slash style. From my collection of machetes and goalie masks, to the permanently inked mask on my arm, I live and breathe Friday the 13th and treasure the franchise.
Because of this, people often ask me (no they don’t), “Tony, how would you rank the Friday the 13th movies?” And I’ll politely respond, “Excuse me, but I’m using this bathroom stall. Please close the door.” But, even though it’s been done a million times before, people have been clamoring for me to weigh in (no they haven’t). So since we’re here with the first Friday the 13th of 2017, I’m going to rank the entire Friday the 13th franchise from worst, to first.
So here we go…
#12 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
You may be asking, “Why is this dead last?” Well, have you seen this hunk of shit? First of all, Jason is in the movie for aaaaabout 5 minutes, collectively. Now my F13 brethren might be saying, “But Tony, Jason isn’t in Part V at all.” I’ll get to that. This asinine movie takes the, admittedly, already farfetched concept of an undead serial killer stalking the woods to an even more ridiculous level by deciding that the Voorhees were some kind of satanic cultists and that’s why Jason can’t die. But when he’s blown to absolute shit, his essence in in some fucking hell-worm thing that has to be put in his sister or niece – neither of whom we’ve never heard of in all EIGHT of these god damn movies – in order to be reborn. If any of this sounds familiar, its because they did practically the same story two years later in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. And whaddaya know? That movie was awful too. So, Jason jumps from body to body by mouth-fucking people with this worm thing that looks like Bad Milo until he can find his remaining family and mouth-fuck one of them to be reborn… or whatever.
This was also the first F13 film to be produced under the New Line Cinema banner after buying the rights from Paramount. And man, did they just fuck it all up. Bad story, bad direction, bad bad BAD acting. Just a total shit show. Plus, except for a couple years, there was a F13 film once a year through the 80’s, but this one fucked that up, coming out 4 years after the previous film. New Line needs to have their collective dicks kicked in for raw-dogging Jason this badly. Even Jason Takes Manhattan wasn’t this bad.
Which leads me to…
#11 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Don’t get me wrong, guys. This is still #11, and it’s still really bad.
Admittedly, a lot of Friday movies suffer from varying degrees of poor direction, bad script, bad writing, or bad acting. This one takes all four and cranks it up to 11. What makes that even more sad is that this one actually had a well-known and seasoned actor, Peter Richman, and even he bumbled through it. So the story is, a couple of horny teens are trying to bang on a boat in Crystal Lake, their boat passes over some cables in the water (?) that are apparently carrying an electric charge (??), severs them, and electrocutes Jason (previously dragged to the bottom by a ghost or something) back to life. Apparently Crystal Lake is also an open lake (who knew?) because Jason hops aboard another boat of high school seniors taking a trip to Manhattan (heyyyy there it is), sailing from Crystal Lake… into the Atlantic Ocean. Naturally, Jason slaughters damn near the entire boat’s worth of patrons. Save, of course, for the final girl and her golden boy. She, by the way, keeps seeing visions of little baby Jason. Is she psychic or clairvoyant? Nope, she’s not. Just seeing things. For no particular reason. They make it to land, Jason PUNCHES A GUY’S HEAD OFF, and then he gets obliterated by a tidal wave of New York City’s famous magical raw sewage and is instantly reverted to a child, who has also amazingly been cured of his monstrous deformities, and of the whole being dead thing. Then the final girl and her man walk off into the sunset. That’s how it fucking ends.
Jesus Christ.
This was Paramount’s last go with the series, and I’m sure at the time (see above), people thought, “THANK GOD” when the rights transferred to New Line after seeing this garbage bag filled with vomit. Kane Hodder’s second time out as Jason and he was of course awesome, but that doesn’t save the film. Oh, and they were only in Manhattan for aaaabout five minutes, and they only filmed there for about that long. The rest was filmed in Vancouver.
#10 Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)
A lot of people will fight me on this one’s position. They’ll say it’s actually one of the better films with good kills and decent acting and a decent story. To those people, I say come at me, bro. This movie is balls. Wanna know why? Two reasons: 1. A guy duets with his girlfriend while he’s taking a shit, and 2. IT ISN’T FUCKING JASON VOORHEES, GOD DAMMIT. Get the fuck out of here with this shit. Apparently the producers wanted to start a new series of F13 films with a new killer. Hey assholes, remember Halloween III and how well that worked out? Yeah, shut up.
Tommy Jarvis had a mental breakdown after killing Jason in The Final Chapter (note that this came after that one, the final chapter), and is being sent to a halfway house for unstable and degenerate teens. While he’s there, some dude starts dressing up like Jason and wiping out all of the kids. It’s not Jason, as I’ve said, the guy doesn’t have a particular vendetta against Tommy and quite possibly doesn’t even know he’s there, so why did he opt to take on the persona of a killer that had been dead for multiple years at that point? Make sense to you? Me neither.
I will give this one credit for amping up the kills and having the best nudity in the original series, but my god, this is total horse caca.
