As much as I love it, the Friday the 13th series isn’t bound by strong continuity. Jason’s look fluctuates like the weather, people flock to Camp Crystal Lake in droves, and WHY does the camp look like it’s in a different state in every film (don’t answer that)?
That’s not to begin trying to piece together a strict sense of passing time through the Paramount-era films. Ever try? If you date everything out the best you can do is place Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood in the year 1999 or 2000. This is amazingly problematic to say the least considering Kevin Blair runs around in denim the entire movie.
Along the way there have been many WTF moments. Characters disappear, others reappear. People stumble in out of nowhere just to be killed and then forgotten. Having different creative teams behind each production often results in hilarious lapses in logic that cannot easily be explained, while some stylistic choices are just bizarre. There’s obviously no way for a “top ten” (or top 13, as it were) to cover them all, but this list references some obvious choices along with a few genuine oddities. Their common ground? All of them make the viewer say, ”what the fuck?”
13. Jason’s overnight growth spurt between 2 & 3.
We’ll start with an easy one. It’s such a puzzling choice because, in the span of one night, Mr. Voorhees springs up several inches, sheds his ginger locks and decides his backwoods-y wardrobe has gone out of style. Or something.
So yeah, from this:
12. Yeah, I’m afraid of water now… (Freddy vs. Jason)
There’s a lot wrong with Freddy vs. Jason, but the biggest WTF moment comes when it’s revealed that Jason is deathly afraid of water. Never mind all of Jason’s prior traipses into Crystal Lake, FvJ stages an 11th hour retcon in a desperate attempt to make the character more “sympathetic.” It sucks.
11. Zombie Dad (Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)
Apparently Jason wasn’t the only corpse rotting beneath Crystal Lake. John Shepard, the raging alcoholic who goes to his watery grave in the prologue, apparently was left to rot after the collapsed dock was cleared away and then rebuit.
It’s unlikely that his corpse wasn’t tangled up in the debris, though. And how deep is Crystal Lake where the body couldn’t have been recovered (this is true for Jason, too)? Did the police even LOOK? Knowing their success rate, it’s probably safe to assume they did not (more on them later).
Of course, this doesn’t excuse how lame Shepard looks when he comes flying out of the water just in time to drag Jason back down into the raging shallows of Crystal Lake. I know director John Carl Buechler fought for a cooler-looking Shep zombie, but the idea was nixed by one of the producers.
Well, producer, this is the impression your film leaves:
10. Odd radio announcer (Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan)
I love Jason Takes Manhattan. Every second of it. And nothing sets this film in motion better than the incredibly baffling radio announcer at the beginning of the film.
“It’s like this… We live in claustrophobia, the land of steel & concrete. Trapped by dark waters. There is no escape. Nor do we want it. We’ve come to thrive on it and each other. You can’t get the adrenaline pumpin’ without the terror, good people… I love this town.”
What?
It gets even stranger when the movie transitions back to Crystal Lake, with our opening victims listening to him be all creepy/cryptic:
“This request has gone out to Crystal Lake, and the senior class of Lakeview High. They’ll be graduating on the 13th of this month. And we wish them the best of luck and success when they come to visit our seductive city. Our lure is a great one, young friends, but beware…the city of lights casts many shadows indeed.”
Why is he so ominous!? And why does a NYC DJ care that some rural New Jersey kids are taking a class trip into the city? In its opening minutes, this sets up the rest of Jason Takes Manhattan oh so perfectly.
Having said that, it’s cool to note that Crystal Lake has a Lakeview High, right?
9. That awkward time they changed Crystal Lake’s name… (Friday the 13th part VI: Jason Lives)
This isn’t a slight on Jason Lives as much as it is on the films that followed. It’s somewhat understandable that a town marred by endless murder would seek to change its reputation. So Crystal Lake became Forest Green. But why in God’s name did the township decide, sometime after Friday 6, that it was time to change it back?
8. ”He’s killing me!” (Friday the 13th – The Final Chapter)
Here’s an odd and polarizing moment in the franchise. Rob Dyer, vengeance-seeking Jason hunter, ventures into the basement of a neighboring house only to be attacked by the masked madman. Instead of fighting back, he resigns to his fate, screaming repeatedly, ”he’s killing me!”
And odd moment, to be sure, and one that seems to divide its audience in half. Some find it unintentionally hilarious while others find it deeply chilling. Supposedly, the moment was culled from a real-life news story where a 911 call recorded a murder victim screaming out ”Please stop killing me!” The moment stuck with director Joseph Zito so much that he included it here.
It is the very last kill in the following video:
7. Mrs. Voorhees finds her head! (Friday the 13th part III)
The end of Friday the 13th part III mirrors the finish of the original movie. So the filmmakers saw fit to mimic the “Jason jump” that lifted audiences from their seats in the summer of 1980. But there was one problem: Jason was “dead” in the barn. That meant the final jump scare needed to fall to the other murderous member of the Voorhees clan:
Either way, she’s decidedly not rotting at the bottom of the Crystal Lake.
6. Vinnie & Pete, really? (Friday the 13th – A New Beginning)
This is something that seems stranger the older I get. Two greasers who look like they stumbled out of William Friedkin’s Cruising break down on a desolate country road in Crystal Lake while en route to rendezvous with some ladies. At least that’s what the movie tells us.
Where are they going dressed like that? Why does Pete think it’s a good idea to shit in the woods before meeting up for a date? And what’s Roy Burns doing out there with a road flare at the ready? There’s plenty of strange bits in Friday 5, but everything about this scene just seems odd-that’s exactly why I love it.
5. What in God’s name happened to these people? (Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan)
The Lazarus departs for New York City early in Jason Takes Manhattan, revealing several shots of non-principal cast members lounging around and enjoying the luxuries of this ocean liner.
Of course, it also cements Jason’s status as the ultimate slasher. How many others could torpedo a cruise ship? Badass.
4. It’s almost like you guys aren’t really trying … (All movies)
With the exception of Jason Lives, which saw pro-active and (largely) intelligent police, the rest of Crystal Lake’s finest seem to enforce the law with the least amount of effort possible.
From their refusal to check on the kids in Friday 3 (despite the unsolved killing spree the night before) and then again in Friday 4 (where now there have been two bloodbaths and a missing killer) – their ineptitude is staggering. In Friday 5, Sheriff Tucker suspects Jason Voorhees is behind the murders but does’t do a damn thing until the post-climax epilogue.
How many lives might’ve been saved if he’d done the detective work to connect Joey and Roy? I guess we’ll never find out.
3. The rape theory… (Friday the 13th part III)
One of the most interesting discussions to come out of the series is the rape theory from Friday 3. When Chris recalls her earlier encounter with Jason, she admits to blacking out while being dragged into the woods. But she doesn’t remember anything more.
So what happened? Was Jason scared away by a search party? Did the “frightened retard” have his way with an early victim before deciding that he liked murder better? Why wouldn’t Chris’ parents talk about what happened? What are they hiding?
I honestly don’t know how I feel about this theory, but I appreciate that it exists. It gives Jason an extra dimension of creepiness and certainly makes for conversation.
2. Who took that picture!? (Friday the 13th – A New Beginning)
In the ultimate example of someone just not thinking, we have a semi-recent picture of Jason taken up close and personal. But how? Of the lucky few people to have survived one of Jason’s killing sprees, no one ever took his picture.
Maybe (and this is a HUGE maybe), you can rationalize this as security camera footage from the hospital. But considering the angle, that doesn’t really work.
So what we have is a massive head scratcher. A moment where the filmmakers (I love you, Danny Steinmann) tried to pull a fast one and hoped no one would notice. The end result? One of my favorite WTF moments in the entire franchise.
1. Toxic waste flood! (Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan)
I know. This isn’t all that creative. I can remember begging my father to take me to see Jason Takes Manhattan in the theater when I was ten years old. He dragged his feet for a week or two and when he finally acquiesced it was too late. The damn thing was out of the theaters and I was completely crushed (he got his when he had to later take me to Jason Goes to Hell instead).
Especially when I had to hear about it from a bunch of eighth graders who’d been able to sneak in on opening weekend. When I told my father that it ended with Jason drowning in a flood of toxic waste in the NYC sewer system, he responded with, ”that sounds like a bunch of bullshit.”
And he was right.
But, c’mon, there’s an inimitable charm to that kind of ending. Something a modern film wouldn’t have the cajones to attempt for fear of crashing the Internet. If someone tweeted today that an upcoming horror sequel ended with a killer bested by a flood of toxic sludge that rockets through the sewers every night at midnight it wouldn’t be pretty.
It’s dumb, nonsensical (why is that city worker down there a minute to the flood?) and amazing. And there’s no way it couldn’t take the number one spot on this list.