Friday the 13th Movies Ranked

Jason videos aren’t supposed to be good. Heck, they weren’t actually supposed to be about Jason. Producer Sean S. Cunningham saw the economic achievements of Halloween as an opportunity to funds in himself in the late 1970s. But he took out an ad for a movie called Friday the 13th, riffing on the trip ]…]

On Den of Geek, the second post Friday the 13th Movies Ranked appeared.

Jason shows aren&#8217, t supposed to be good. They weren’t actually supposed to be about Jason, hmm. Producer Sean S. Cunningham saw the economic achievements of Halloween as an opportunity to money in himself in the late 1970s. In response, he ran an advertisement for a film called Friday the 13th that was a riff on the John Carpenter movie’s holiday theme.

Only later did he come up with the idea of a whodunnit, in which a criminal begins menacing lawyers trying to restart a camp times after a junior named Jason Voorhees drowned it. As everyone is aware of, Jason&#8217’s family Pamela Voorhees, who wanted to stop Camp Crystal Lake from reopening, was the killer. The shock end of that picture, in which Jason emerges from the water to get a last lady, was only tacked on because Cunningham wanted to copy the shock ending of Carrie.

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Creativity wasn’t the end objective. Income was. And to achieve that, Cunningham and Paramount Pictures were successful, with Friday the 13th being a huge hit as well as its earliest some sequels. And still, apparently, imagination happened yet. Jason replaced his mother in the next film, taking the lead. And midway through the next movie, Jason got his name face, entirely becoming a dread image.

As you might have guessed, those pictures had varying levels of quality as a result of this prolix approach. Not all of the Friday the 13th shows are wonderful, but they all offer something for watching—if just the terrible death of some camp counsellor of ill-repute.

12. Friday the 13th ( 2009 )

Who accurately is the 2009 version of Friday the 13th for? One may think that a reboot of the collection may try to clarify the franchise&#8217, s reportedly wandering and vague timeframe to make things easier for fresh viewers. Instead, Friday the 13th ( 2009 )’s first 30 minutes attempt to condense the first three movies into a single prologue, complete with killer Pamela ( portrayed by Nana Visitor of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ) and baghead Jason. The beginning just confuses visitors and feeds long-time enthusiasts ephemeral &#8216, part berries, pleasing no one&#8211, which accurately sums up the film.

Which is not to say that the reboot lacks charm, though. Derek Mears is fantastic as a more feral Jason, trading dynamic energy for the usual slow-moving beast of previous films. The film pulls off a surprising final girl fake out thanks to the excellent acting by the cast of young adult jerks. Still, Friday the 13th 2009 never shakes the feeling of being a fan film instead of a proper entry in the series.

11. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan ( 1989 )

People have been making fun of this film for more than three and a half decades because the majority of it is shot on a boat and the majority of the New York and Vancouver sections are actually in the water. And you know what? Jason Takes Manhattan deserves a lot of mockery! Why give the eighth Friday the 13th entry that name if you &#8217, re never going to actually be in Manhattan (outside of some second unit stuff shot for the opening credits )?

Sincerely, we could forgive a boat and Canada if anything interesting happened in the movie. But, outside of a couple of cool kills, nothing does. Jason Takes Manhattan instead spends way too much time mythologizing the tragic passing of a young Jason ( which, depending on the status of Fridays II, III, and IV ), again. In the end, Jason Takes Manhattan succeeds at nothing: not drama, not horror, and not even taking Manhattan.

10. Friday the 13th Part III ( 1983 )

After the first two entries, Friday the 13th ran the risk of becoming predictable and rote. Cunningham and Paramount were aware of this. They knew they had to shake things up. They made the gimmick that would set the series apart, perhaps the most disastrous one. They decided that Part III would be in 3-D.

Everything in Part III is well-known, from the group of counselors reopening the camp to the hicks who turn into early cannon fodder to the &#8220, shocker &#8221, ending in which Pamela emerges from the lake to grab the final girl. And unless you &#8217, re using the flimsy blue and red 3D glasses that get distributed with modern releases, or unless you saw a special screening at a repertory theater, you &#8217, re watching all of this in 2-D, making the pointy bits annoying instead of compelling. Jason receives his hockey mask at the end of Part III. Outside of that, everything in this movie is a dud.

9. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday ( 1993 )

Like Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes to Hell falls short of the title’s intended use. No, Jason does n&#8217, t spend time in Hell in this movie. He&#8217 is instead scurrying around a town in New Jersey. No, it &#8217, s not the final Friday movie, as this list shows. Most shocking of all, Jason isn’t even in Jason Goes to Hell when he is blown up by government agents in the cold open.

Instead, Jason Goes to Hell directly rips from The Hidden to introduce a bunch of nonsense lore about Jason being a demonic worm that can jump into other bodies. So Jason is cast as Richard Grant or Stephen Culp, not as imposing as Kane Hodder or any other big-boy actor, which is not what we get. That said, Jason Goes to Hell commits so much to its absurd premise that it does provide some wacky fun for those who don&#8217, t get hung up on Friday the 13th lore.

8. Freddy vs. Jason ( 2003 )

Freddy wins the Freddy vs. Jason game. Yes, we all know that New Line Cinema wanted to keep the actual outcome of their monster mash ambiguous, letting Jason behead the Nightmare on Elm Street monster, but having Freddy give the camera a knowing wink at the end. However, it is unquestionably a bad Jason movie and a good Freddy movie.

Sure, Jason gets in some cool kills and there is a part where he rips off Freddy &#8217, s arms and attacks him with them. However, other than that, director Ronny Yu&#8217’s hyper fight style and reliance on digital effects suit Freddy much better than Jason, and Robert Englund has a blast reprising his signature role. All in all, Freddy vs. Jason manages to be a functional monster mash with a pretty coherent story. However, if you’re here for Jason and are willing to pay a premium, you’ll be disappointed.

7. 1980’s Friday the 13th

As discussed earlier, the first Friday the 13th is little more than a rip off of Halloween with a little bit of Carrie. The Burning will be released the following year, so it doesn’t even get to call itself the best camp slasher of all time. Instead, it &#8217, s a pretty by-the-numbers whodunnit with none of the flash or style of the Italian Giallo that precede it.

However, Friday the 13th receives two favorable marks. First, the movie has an absolute ringer in Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees. In her final scenes, she convincingly pulls a reverse Norman Bates routine and channels her son, chewing on the scenery. Second, Friday the 13th has effects by Tom Savini, who gives the film a level of gore quality that, frankly, it does n&#8217, t deserve. If the film didn’t produce any sequels, it would be remembered as a curio. Instead, it has to fall midway on a ranking in the franchise it started.

6. Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning ( 1985 )

Paramount made an effort to keep its word. The studio really did kill Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part IV. Paramount attempted to return to the drawing board when box office receipts made it clear that they couldn’t just ignore this profitable franchise. A New Beginning is another whodunnit with a new person doing the killing. Is it Jason who has come back from the dead? Is it Tommy Jarvis, the troubled boy who was sent to a juvenile home after killing the killer in the previous entry?

No, it &#8217 is not Roy, an ambulance driver we only see once at the beginning of the film, who commits murder after his obnoxious son is killed by a teenager with an anger issue. That massive flub aside&#8211, and it is a big one&#8211, A New Beginning is actually kinda fun. And it has a kill sequence that lasts forever thanks to the reliable Miguel Nuez Jr., an outhouse, and some burritos.

5. The New Blood ( 1988 ) is the title of Friday the 13th Part VII.

The biggest knock against Freddy vs. Jason is that it learned nothing from the far superior seventh entry in the franchise, in which Freddy fights Carrie White. Okay, it’s not really Carrie White, but teen Tina ( Lar Park Lincoln ) does share the same psychokinetic powers and parent issues as the well-known character from the Stephen King novel and Brian DePalma movie. On the orders of her unscrupulous therapist, Tina goes to Camp Crystal Lake for isolated study, and inadvertently brings Jason back from his watery grave.

From there, Jason has plenty of room to do what he does best in The New Blood. As so often happens with the top entries on this list, censors did cut down a lot of the movie, which diminishes the shock of its best kill scenes. There is something triumphant in watching Jason shove a weed eater into the therapist’s face, even if we don’t get all the bloody gory.

4. Part 2 of Friday the 13th ( 1981 )

It would n&#8217, t be accurate to say that this list would not exist without Friday the 13th Part 2. However, that statement isn’t entirely accurate either. Part 2 took everything good about its predecessor and did it better, actually giving us Jason in the flesh and an excellent final girl in Ginny ( Amy Steel ).

Additionally, Part 2 provides the first illustration of what the franchise actually becomes. A bunch of teens come to the camp, and Jason ( wearing a burlap bag instead of the hockey mask that would be his trademark ) kills them in inventive, gory ways. Part II makes a strong case for Friday the 13th as a reputable series in addition to the pure energy of the kills and an actually intelligent final girl in Ginny.

3. Jason X ( 2001 )

If Friday the 13th Part 2 says that Jason deserves respect, then Jason X suggests maybe he does n&#8217, t. And that &#8217, s a good thing. Jason X belongs to the long and odd line of horror films that transport their murderers to space. Although that approach has had mixed results with the Leprechaun or Pinhead, it still works well with Jason.

Well, mostly perfectly. There are so many characters, and Jason X wants so badly to be a Kevin Williamson or Joss Whedon movie, and he can’t say anything without dripping it in snark. Yet, these annoyances aside, it &#8217, s hard not to cheer when uber-Jason takes the stage or when he&#8217, s killing people with space-age weapons and chemicals.

2. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives ( 1986 )

Jason Lives was Scream before Scream in Part VI. Okay, okay, that &#8217, s going too far. However, Part VI has a metatextual quality that both acknowledges the absurdity of the franchise and firmly places it in horror history. Jason Lives completes the Tommy Jarvis trilogy with yet another actor playing the part ( Thom Matthews here ), but it makes him into a proper Jason hunter and gives him a reason to accidentally resurrect the killer.

Even better, the film strikes a balance between clever jokes and effective kills. There&#8217, s, of course, the James Bond opening in which Jason throws a machete at the screen. However, there is also the pitch black joke when one child realizes that Jason is coming to get him and asks,” So, what did you want to be when you were growing up?” &#8221, A genuinely smart Friday the 13th movie? Believe it or not, yes!

1. The final chapter of Friday the 13th ( 1984 )

It took four movies for Friday the 13th to get it right. But man, did it actually get it right? The Final Chapter is the platonic ideal of a slasher movie. It has interesting victims, is lean, and some incredible and unforgettable kills. It even has a great kid performance from Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis at his youngest and awesome Savini effects.

The Final Chapter‘s plot isn’t anything special, either. Again, we have teens coming to party at the campground, at the same time that single mom Mrs. Jarvis ( Joan Freeman ) arrives with her kids Trish ( Kimberly Beck ) and Tommy. However, that skewed plot allows for some excellent kills and for the teens to stand out. I mean, when you have Crispin Glover as a slasher movie teen, you don&#8217, t need any plot. The Final Chapter is what every Friday the 13th movie should be, sparse and straightforward.

On Den of Geek, the second post Friday the 13th Movies Ranked appeared.