21 Days to "Friday the 13th"

I remain unaware of the fact that I am insane, and I am certain that helps take the edge off.

It is cold as shit in Omaha right now. Exactly the time of year when certain people among us begin to wonder why the fuck we are here. Me, I am here because my DVD player is here, and my wife and son are here, and my copies of the "Return of the Living Dead" DVDs are here. Omaha, is also where I keep my 'waiting to be treasured' set of "Friday the 13th" films are which is not nearly as important as my wife and son, but are still serious business.

I'll get to the zombie fest in a minute.

"Friday the 13" opens on Friday, February 13, 2009 and is showing at 'the' local drive-in theater of the magic moving pix. That is not going to fly if the weather is this fucking cold. Fortunately we have some of those new-fangled 'multa-plexies' with the magic moving pix that are indoor, so we're all good either way. I think it goes without saying, but I'm going to anyway, we will be watching the best of the rest of the franchise in preparation for the release.

You should probably know that "Friday the 13th" is my favorite horror...franchise? OK, F13 is my favorite series of horror films (minus a walk of shame or two), F13 definitely encompasses two or four of my favorite horror films, "Friday the 13th Part II" is my favorite horror sequel, and Jason, in all of his various incarnations, is the best killer by far!. Friday the 13th really is just all-around fucking awesome.

I have no clue whether my wife and her sister have seen any of the F13 films, but no matter. We will watch parts I (fucking awesome), II, III, IV, VI, VII, and VIII (maybe) for now.

Something really changed in the series, for me, with part IV. I suppose the 3D 'element' in part III could be interpreted as a foreshadow of the new 'formula' for the subsequent films. However, that is more of a technical thing and therefore does not impact the plot the way, for example, Tommy Jarvis in parts IV-VI, or Tina's psychokinesis in part VII, or the whole taking Jason to Manhattan thing in part VIII are what make those films 'new'. Yeah, and of course the angry goalie goes lunar in "Jason X" which we will have to catch later. I have not seen "Jason Goes to Hell" so we'll check that one out at some point.

I think up through part III I was still a bit hopeful that the series was not going to turn into a 13-part thing. I will admit there was an interesting sort of buzz around the fact that both the "Halloween" and the "Friday the 13th" franchises seemed to be headed in that direction. Still, even though part IV was billed (and titled!) as "the Final Chapter" I never bought it. To my credit I think I was just not savvy enough to realize the lengths they went to,Tom Savini's involvement for one, to make this seem like it was truly the end.

OK, on to the zombies...

So we have now watched the first three films in the "Return of the Living Dead" series and I had forgotten how much I like that series. At this point, there are three more of the "Blind Dead" series, "Zombie Strippers", "Zombie 2", and a couple of remakes on the list. My expectation is that we will take an unscheduled break to deal with this nagging 'Jason crush' I have going.

We will likely catch a few more zombie flix this weekend, then we'll have to make that change to the F13 stuff until after the release of the new film.

21 days and counting