A FILM MIASMA RETROSPECTIVE!

Will I be able to pull this off? (GUESS WHAT?? I DIDN’T!!) If there’s one thing that can be said about Film Miasma is that I can’t adhere to deadlines and I’m as fucking slow as they get. In my defense, it’s college football season here in the place where I live and my Saturdays are now taken up with that and, in general, many beers and the occasional other things. I’m also not going to edit out my first paragraph because it can show you my thought process and, because this is longer than my normal posts so I doubt anyone will make it through this thing, here’s something I did for something way down below that I’m proud of so maybe at least someone will see it and nominate me for a Pulitzer:

Anyway, here we go…

I’m starting this on September 14th so – maybe. That’s probably a big maybe since I have to think up things to in between now and the 31st sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo………. maybe! I can give it a fucking shot anyway. When I started this blog last December I had big fucking ideas to do a Christmas themed horror month and I think I did two. Go me! I win! #IDont but – since it’s that time of a year, here’s my thoughts on all of the Friday the 13th movies, condensed for good measure so it doesn’t take someone until next Spring to read them all.

I don’t remember that poster at all but LOOK – they did their own self promo so good for them! Go ha.com – you win! I actually saw this in the theater – if it was 1980, I don’t remember what we were going to see but my friend Jason (yep!) and I snuck into this and ITSCAREDTHELIVINGFUCKOUTOFBOTHOFUS! I don’t know if I’ve ever been that scared. I don’t even know if I was scared of spiders that much when my mom and I went into that house full of tarantulas and I’ve been traumatized ever since. This gave me that stingy, ball tingly, sphincter tickly feeling we’ve all had at some point and I’ve been hooked on horror ever since. P.S. I watched this just last year and I didn’t love it so much. There was nostalgia and shit but the movie itself didn’t really stand the test of time. To me anyway but: I suck!

I didn’t see this one in the theater, but caught it soon after on the VCR. I remembered this one not being too terrifying either. Somehow the dead boy from the bottom of the lake (Jason of course, who else) is now a beefed up, grown man skulking about taking revenge for the death of his mother, whose corpse is done up shrine-like in his shitty cabin on the lake. I don’t remember how long after the first one this is supposed to take place, but he went from little-mutilated-drowned-dead-boy-resurrected-dragging-you-to-hell-I-guess to -returned-to-life-as-burly-killer awfully quick. Also recently watched, this one wasn’t my favorite and might even be a little worse the second time around but hey, good memories of the VCR days and things that go bump in the night. And starting puberty.

Aaaaaahhhhh yes – I remember those wonderful red and green 3-D glasses we wore then to see the amazing world of three dimensional boobs and shovels and knives and pitchforks. Thank goodness that stupid fad went away for good and ever never to return and plague our sense of balance. Oh wait. Fuck. I don’t think there’s anything special about this except for the fateful hockey mask scene and the stupid ass ending where Jason’s mom jumps up out of the lake, resurrected like Jason was at the end of the first one. For some fucking reason. That made about as much sense as some of those online comics Film Hipster and I used to do. Which was – not much. Here’s a sample:

Elsewhere:

This is the one with Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. Jason is presumed dead again after he’s killed-to-death at the end of the third one. OOOPS – he’s not! Right?? He makes his way back to the lake area where there lives a nice, peaceful family and a rent cabin (I think) with some partying it up, pot smoking, beer drinking, doing-it teenagers. Jason eventually hacks most of them up before Feldman (Tommy Jarvis) cuts off his hair and pretends to be Jason as a kid and then hacks the real Jason to eternal death with a machete. The franchise is over. The tit has been milked dry. The sperm is on the lettuce. (I’m going to keep using that until someone acknowledges it) (anyone) (Film Miasma note; SOMEONE DID!! SOMEONE DID!! Cinema Parrot Disco wins the Eternal Friendship First Prize!) This, to me, is one of the better ones of the series.

Tommy Jarvis returns as a psychologically fucked up teenager (the new actor has got to be in his 30s) who barely says anything and makes scary latex rubbers masks. He is sent to a halfway house of some sort with lots of nubile 80’s tits teens, and an 80’s version of a kid with some sort of mental handicap who eats chocolate bars and smears shit chocolate on everything. This poor fellow is done in up the asshole with an axe by a mean ole dude chopping wood. When the paramedics are called, one of them is extremely upset at the murder of this poor child. Soon, bodies are piling up all over this small town and it’s assumed its Tommy masquerading as Jason. After 90 minutes the killer is tied to a railroad track and run over by a train disposed of and Tommy moves to New Zealand to live amongst the emus is even more fucked up. Those strikethroughs are to see if anyone is still paying attention because I bet not.

My favorite of the whole fucking bunch! I remember when I was living out in California having a full page ad for this from the L.A. Times tacked to my wall for the entire summer. This was a big budget F-13th and it really showed. Tommy returns again (played by the lead from Return of the Living Dead – wearing, I think, the same suspenders) with none other than his institution buddy, Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter – YAY!! The latest Tommy wants to dig up Jason’s body and burn it to ashes once and for all, ending this forever. Unfortunately, since they are exhuming the maggot and worm ridden corpse during a brutal rainstorm, after he punctures the remains in furious rage a few times, lightning strikes the metal rod he was using and Jason Voorhees is resurrected! Like goddamn fucking Frankenstein! Sadly Horshack suffers a cruel fate – but the story goes on! Eventually Tommy sends Jason to his latest eternal demise at his final resting place – back in the bottom of Crystal Lake, forever and ever and ever amen. Finally! I can’t fail to mention the Alice Cooper standard of my youth – He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask) that I still listen to.

The Tommy Jarvis era is finally fucking over and we now meet a young girl with psychic fucking powers named Tina whose drunken fucking daddy hits his mom at their fucking lake house out on good old fucking Crystal Lake. In a rage, she psychically brings the dock down on him and ends his drunken fucking life. At some advanced time in the future, Tina is now a comely teenager who gets sad and mopey one night and resurrects her dear, old dead dad from the depths of hell the lake butnowaititsjasonandhespissedandhekillseveryonelikethefuckingmonsterheisohyeahfuck! Sorry for that weird line break. Luckily, when Mt Vesuvius blows its wad and climaxes all over the place Mister Pubes from my podcast uses his Vas Deferens to climax all over the place at the big finish, Tina finally resurrects her dear old, non wife beating, drunken but drowned dad who jumps up out of the water and drags Jason to fucking hell where he belongs. Finally. Shit! The best part about this movie is when this one girls tells this group of dope smoking youths that “They give her the creeps.” That should probably be the new tag line for my blog. “Film Miasma: I probably give you the creeps”

This move is terrible.

SIGH – “The show must go on.”

“You give me the creeps!!” Shout the gallery.

Jason’s dead again at the bottom of some body of water by Nova Scotia, by himself, and some choads in a boat resurrect him so he hitches a ride to the capital of sleaze, bed bugs, shankings and sewage. I’ve actually never been there but I’ve been close enough and I’ll pass. Back to the movie – along the way he kills everyone on the vessel and then heads to a cabaret show when he hits the mainland. Sadly, it’s not a true burlesque but just some guy in a dress pretending to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The waves are bunches of feathers painted blue and the water he lands in are just splashes someone under the stage threw upwards from a bucket. Pissed as fuck, he kills everyone and then goes to hide in the sewers. Down in the tunnels he tries to befriend some stinking fucking rats but they don’t bite (HAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAH I suck) so he pulls the nearest Rudy Giuliani Toxic Waste Yank In Case of Emergency Pin, floods the sewers and kills them, the C.H.U.D and establishes a new colony South of the place that will one day be called Piscataway, New Jersey. Mercy! What a deal! At some point in our nation’s history, some fucks decide to build a road to the worst place in the world and call it Interstate 287. Thanks Jason!

I don’t know who made that poster but it’s fucking fantastic and I love it!

This is the one with the lady from Buck Rogers. Did I ever tell you I met Gil Gerard and we talked about football a lot? Probably not and you probably don’t care. Disregarding every single thing that ever happened in the last 40 years of this franchise, Jason gets turned on by a naked girl – she’s bait!! – he and his giant, wooden, wormy boner get blown to smithereens. Luckily though, his heart is alive and people keep eating it and his murdering soul is transferred from people to people until it turns into a worm and crawls up his niece’s hoo-haw and she turns into Jason, hockey mask and all. Luckily she can put a stop to it because she’s he’s blood and there’s a magic dagger hanging around. Maybe her magic hoo-haw had something to do with hockey mask? Huh. Here’s a graphic to help us understand completely:

I didn’t glean any hockey masks in that 100% accurate piece of anataomical precision. Weird.

If I were a movie reviewer that gave ratings out to things I’ve seen, I’d give this a net worth of: “ONE PILE OF SHIT” and then maybe throw something clever in like: “This movie makes me think of seeing a pile of shit somewhere that someone tried to make look attractive by putting something like a tortilla chip or two in the top of it”. This movie does not make me want to live deliciously. Let’s see… Jason goes to prison even though he’s dead but not. He makes it to space somehow and some sort of technology from back when people used to add things like ‘2.0’ or ‘information superhighway’ or ‘i work at a dot com’ to the end of their sentences, brings him back to life. Including his clothing and mask. Then he kills everyone and goes back to Earth. Or was it Earth 2? I don’t fucking care.

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in that painting but I absolutely LOVE it and might have to look into buying it if I ever finish writing this goddamn post and remember. Well, they tried, I suppose. I was never really into the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, so, of course, I was rooting for Jason in this one, but I think the people responsible for this went the other way. We were lead to believe that Uncle Voorhees had been consigned to hell the last time he was realistically in front of us, partying it up with Freddie Krueger (who I don’t remember why he’s dead to begin with). Apparently Fred can’t do the things he does (did?) because all of the kids on Elm Street have forgotten about him, SO – he brings Jason back from the dead. Somehow Jason must have been dreaming while his body was wasting away to dust and Fred, acting like Voorhees’ momma, commands him to kill again! YAY! See, this way the people of Elm Street will think it’s ole Freddie and remember him again, then he can invade their dreams and terrorize them to their graves. Logic! Along the way we get the girl who played Ginger in the Ginger Snaps trilogy, John Ritter’s son and a hard ass black chick who teases Krueger about his small weenie way before everyone was woke. Like me.

For this next one, since I’m tired of looking up movie posters, I thought I’d share a picture of my keychain I’ve used for years and, for a few observant readers, a picture of the palm of my hand, some fingers and even a fingernail or two. MMM MMM MMM you lucky devils!

I had some really high hopes for this thing. I remember so long ago, a few months after the release of the My Bloody Valentine remake (which I LOVED heart heart heart), came a long awaited modern reboot of our beloved franchise which seemed to finally die of dysentery years ago and the corpses of its memory had been piled up to rot on behind that shitty grocery store down the street. You know the one. C’mon. You know it. Now we were going to get some modern special effects, some modern people, some high res shit and, OMG OMG OMG some modern clothing and music. Did it work? I don’t know, I suppose. This came out so long ago, it seems, that these characters are no longer really modern and seem like old memories, like Myspace. Our your Zune. Or my iPod I played Angry Birds on FOR YEARS. I can barely see my phone screen anymore without my glasses – I can’t imagine how I did that for so long. *Looks at camera lens* Maybe that’s why my eyes suck. Well, technically it’s just my right eye but. Nevermind.

Do we have to cover what happens in here? I doubt it other than Jason might be a weed farmer who keeps people locked up in labyrinthine underground tunnels that would make Rambo: Last Blood proud. Teens, sex, dead. Teens, searching for people, Crystal Lake. One of the things I feel I should always mention is this has an actress who goes by America Olivio in it and I don’t like her at all ever since her movie Neighbor and Bitch Slap bilched me out of my money years ago. Bilched goddammit! Bilched! Why doesn’t this spell correction understand me? Do you know how long it took me to spell dysentery?? As a general rule and principal, I’ll fuck around for minutes and minutes before I go to spell check.

Well…. there we are. Is it midnight where you live because you’ve been looking at this for too long? If you made it this far, dear gods bless you!

FILED UNDER: FILM MIASMA RETROSPECTIVES