The first Friday the 13th is fine. It's just a generic slasher saved by Tom Savini gore and out of left field -no setup whatsoever- performance by Betsy Palmer. The reveal of Mrs. Voorhees in the original is the ultimate copout. Here's a character that was never introduced, never hinted at, never seen until the last 15 minutes. It's amazing just how much Palmer brought to that character.
"Kill her mommy! Kill her!" That's psychotic and great. When the actress did conventions for the last couple of years of her life she was dumbfounded that woman would approach her and have her take photos with their babies. She asked them what they saw in her character and they said that they understood a mother's rage over losing their child. Everyone harps about Kane Hodder being snubbed for Freddy VS Jason but I always felt that not having Betsy reprise her role was the bigger snub.
I like part 9 despite how much of an insane shit show that it was behind the scenes. And no, I am not a contrarian. Blame it on nostalgia because it may have been the first one I was exposed to (and the 2nd one I was exposed to, oddly enough, was part 5 not long afterwards). But I will defend it to an extent. It has great gore, the design of Jason (what little there is) was great, the characters were fun, the nonsensical plot was amusing and it at least tried something different. And come on, it has Kane Hodder doing a cameo and he's killed by Jason so it can't be that bad. For the most part, I think the plot works but what sinks it is the non-explanation of various plot points such as: why is Jason a demon, how and why can he body hop, what is up with the Voorhees knife, how did Pamela have a daughter, what is Creighton Duke's backstory? Etcetera and etcetera. And most of those plot holes can be explained away by the fact that the movie was hastily reshot by the studio because of the radically different direction the movie was heading in.
Part 9 was supposed to star Jason's incest brother (yes, really) who would have fished out his body from Camp Crystal Lake, perform a ritual, eat his heart, assumes Jason's powers and then it would proceed onwards. All of the scenes with Jason in the hockey mask, the coroner, Creighton Duke, and the scene with the campers were all part of the reshoots. Now there's a docu in the works for Part 9:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7686010/
The director and Sean Cunningham have been pointing fingers at each other over the years accusing the other of fucking up the movie. The whole thing is fascinating but I'm curious if this docu will shed some light on what happened. Probably not because the director is producing it. But he alleged that Cunningham demanded that there was no hockey mask.
Part 10 is dog shit.
