Before I get into the movies, quick shout out to Dave for this incredible slide that honors one of the greatest characters in the history of horror films,
Ethel Hubbard. She was played brilliantly by actress
Carol Locatell, who just passed away last April at the age of 82. If you've never seen the movie, picture a violent, psychotic
Thelma Harper. She steals every scene that she's in, including her own character's death.
This movie was released in 1985, a little over three months before my fifth birthday. It's another one of those movies that I saw for the first time when I worked for
Blowout Video when I was a teenager, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't watched it from start to finish in about a quarter century since that first time. Seeing it on the big screen at
Camp Blood X reminded me of how much I absolutely love this movie. It's a perfect blend of sex, horror and comedy, with a side of mystery that is missing from the rest of the franchise. If you've never seen the movie before,
Jason is not the killer, and you won't find out who it is and what their motives are until the end of the film.
If they ever show
Part V again at Camp Blood, I'm going to suggest that one of the pre-show camping games is port-a-potty singing contest in honor of the great
Miguel A. Núñez Jr. and them damn enchiladas.
The 35mm print of
Part V that was screened during
Camp Blood X had Spanish subtitles. I'm not good enough to hold a conversation in Spanish, but I know enough to recognize that the subtitles are not an exact translation of what is being said in English on the film, which added another element of fun to the experience.
The scene in the photo above is the only part of the movie that
Corey Feldman appears in. He was filming
The Goonies at the time, so this was shot in his back yard with a rain machine on his day off. The movie jumps ahead in time after that first scene, after which point the adult
Tommy Jarvis is played by
John Shepherd.
The second film of Saturday night, and the final chapter of the
Tommy Jarvis trilogy, was the 1986 film
Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This is widely regarded as the best film in the series, and is absolutely one of my favorites, though
Parts 5 still tops this one for me, just by a little bit.
Thom Mathews takes over in the role of
Tommy Jarvis in this film, which begins when he and a friend who he met while incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane take a trip to the graveyard to dig up Jason's body so that Tommy can prove to himself that
Jason really is dead and hopefully put an end to the hallucinations he's been having since he killed Jason when he was a child in
Part IV. In a fit of rage, he stabs Jason's corpse with a long metal rod from the cemetery fence. Soon afterward, the rod is struck by lightning and Jason is brought back to life Frankenstein-style as an undead killer with superhuman strength. The rest of the movie is spent following Jason's killing spree, and Tommy's attempts to stop him and to convince everyone in town that the iconic killer has returned.
This film is iconic for many reasons, including its theme song
He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask) by the legendary
Alice Cooper. We saw this for the first time at the
Mahoning during
Camp Blood VII back in 2021. It was
Night Two of that year's event, and it was also my
25th visit to the drive-in. My second Mahoning screening of this film for this year's
Camp Blood X is my
236th night at the drive-in. I'm going to have to think of something to do to celebrate on the lot when I get up to my
365th night, at which time I will have spent one full year of my life at the greatest place in the world to watch a movie. What can I say folks... you've got your goals, and I've got mine.
Last up on Saturday night was the 1988 film
Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood. This is the one where a telekinetic young woman named
Tina Shepard revives
Jason from the bottom of the lake when wishes to bring back her abusive father who she accidentally killed when she was a child by causing the dock over the lake that he was standing on to collapse.
The concept behind this film is "What if
Jason battled against
Carrie White", with
Tina standing in for
Carrie. It's a fun movie, but I think this is one of the weaker films in the series.
The first movie of the last night of
Camp Blood X is the only one that was shown on Sunday night that I had seen before; the 1989 film
Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. This is the one where Jason is electrocuted back to life by an underwater power cable before hitching a ride on a ship that has been chartered by a high school senior class for a trip to New York.
Horror fans are in almost unanimous agreement that this is the worst movie in the
Friday The 13th series. I'd still rank it slightly higher than
Jason Goes To Hell, if only because it holds true to
Jason as a corporeal being, but it is definitely among the weaker films in the series. It's still fun to watch, but it doesn't pack the same punch as the films that came before it.
I'm going to say the same thing about
The Final Friday as I did about
The New Blood and
Jason Takes Manhattan. After watching all ten films over four days at the drive-in, I think that those three films are the weakest in the series, and that
The Final Friday is the weakest of those three. I don't mean to say that I didn't enjoy it because I did, but if you have a list of things that you enjoy, something on that list is going to be your least favorite. Having said that, in my opinion, the worst
Friday The 13th movie is better than the best film in a lot of other horror movie franchises.
Last on the official
Camp Blood X, but certainly not least, was
Jason X. This is the movie that I was most looking forward to seeing this past weekend. The only thing I had seen of it before this past Sunday was the trailer, and the only thing that I knew about it was that
Jason was killing people in outer space.
Jason X begins in 2010, which is nine years in the future from the 2001 release of this film.
Jason is being held by the US government in the Crystal Lake Research Facility. They have spent the past two years trying to kill him, but he keeps regenerating. The plan is to cryogenically freeze him until they can figure out what to do, but a rival opinion in the government is that he should be transported to a different facility where they can study his rapid cellular regeneration so that it can be replicated and used by the medical industry. Jason briefly breaks free during this disagreement, but is ultimately trapped and cryogenically frozen. His rampage results in the project leader,
Rowan LaFontaine, also being trapped and frozen with him.
The story picks up in the year 2455. By this point, the Earth has turned into a poisoned wasteland that can no longer support life, but a college professor and his students discover the cryogenically frozen bodies of
Jason and
Rowan during an intergalactic field trip, and they bring the two of them on board their spaceship to be brought back to Earth II. They first revive Rowan, who warns everyone about the danger Jason poses, but the professor comes to the realization that he can sell Jason to a collector to pay off his massive debts. I think you can probably guess where the story goes from here, so I won't spoil it any further.
Jason X was slaughtered by critics and fans alike when it was released 23 years ago, but I must respectfully disagree with the entire world on this one. I absolutely loved this film! It's a fusion of the plot devices from
Futurama and
Alien with
Friday The 13th, with the end result being a futuristic sci-fi slasher flick that is unlike anything I've seen before. It's also just the latest in a string of lessons that I have been taught - don't ever let the reviews of others prevent you from seeing a film and making up your own mind about it. Sure, you might end up watching some bad movies in which you're in complete agreement with popular opinion, but there will be times like this when you find something that you enjoy so much that you can't imagine why others don't seem to appreciate it.
