Because NO ONE demanded it!

My review of the Friday the 13th series, from start to remake, film by film.

Here we go.

Friday the 13th
The original, and the one that has the least to do with Jason Voorhes, the franchise's iconic monster. A fairly well-scripted little piece of work, and an example of something many slasher flicks neglect- The viewer is led to at least kind of like most of the victims, and all of them have lives beyond being impaled, stabbed, or otherwise doomed. These are people with plans for the future- plans which are, of course, fucking doomed. As anyone who saw Scream can tell you, the killer in this film is actually Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhes. Jason himself is presumed dead, having drowned years earlier. He does pop up to fuck with the heroine near the end, looking like a waterlogged, zombified little boy. We can therefore assume that this film regards him as dead or Undead, because he hasn't visibly aged since his drowning. All told, a pretty damn solid movie.

Friday the 13th, Part 2
And here we get Jason himself as the main man. The script still focuses mainly on the helpless chumps whose deaths are inevitable- one of whom, in a wheelchair, is killed so awesomely that they use his last ride with a knife in his head as stock footage for the rest of the series. Jason is reinvented as having survived his alleged drowning and runs around with a bag over his head, in the tradition of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Jason is basically just a big, tough, normal dude (or so we are led to believe). He takes a hellacious pounding and is presumed dead at the end of the film. Not as good as the original, to be sure, but still pretty damn good.

Friday the 13th, Part III
The only reason anybody even remembers this one is basic sequential numbering. Oh, that, and it introduces Jason's hockey mask... about 75% of the way through the movie. While some token effort is expended on the victim characters in this one, the effort really falls flat. This also marks the first time we see Jason surviving anything truly unbelievable, but it's still attributed to his being an insanely tough mortal. An axe to the head puts him down, apparently dead. With that said, this third entry is a horrible clunker, with all of the right elements there, but in a bad mix.

Friday the 13th IV- The Final Chapter
This, in many ways, marks the first film in the series as it would later be perceived. Jason gets carted off to a morgue (an axe to the head can kinda do that) where he wakes up, kills some chumps, and wanders off. The victim cast in this is a little better than the last, but still nothing to write home about. Still, we at least acknowledge that some of them are people we sort of care about. This film also introduces Tommy Jarvis, who has the distinction of being the only non-Jason character to appear in multiple installments of the series... and survive. Jason does his thing, kills some folks, and then Tommy and his sister trick the big ox, get the drop on him, and basically hack his shit up. Jason is pretty emphatically dead at the end of this one- the "sequel shot" is Tommy's face as he hugs his sister in the hospital. Of course, since he's played by Corey Feldman, it feels less like dread and more like "what a funny-looking kid." Oh well. Still kinda fun.

Friday the 13th V- A New Beginning
Dear Christ does this one suck. Jason makes an appearance as hallucinations in a now young-adult Tommy Jarvis' mind, but he's not actually in the fucking movie. Nope. In fact, we're told he was cremated, and his ashes scattered. So we sit around this funny farm where Tommy's gone for therapy, while someone (we're supposed to think it's Tommy) runs around killing people. Had it actually been Tommy, it would have been predictable, but cool. But nope, we have some nutjob in a different hockey mask killing people for a reason they clearly just trumped up out of nowhere. Yes. Our killer isn't even a real character... nor are most of his victims- from here on in, they're purely caricatures who elicit no sympathy. This one isn't even required viewing for the series, because nothing that fucking happens in it is referenced ever again, aside from a throwaway line in the next film. It's not even a good movie in its own right- it's a crap movie cashing in on a franchise it's only part of because someone figured they could crap out a script in time.

Friday the 13th VI- Jason Lives
Apparently the folks at Paramount agree with my assessment of part V, because they quietly sweep it under the rug in this one. We open with Tommy Jarvis having gotten out of the institution, driving to Jason's grave in order to burn his body. So much for the cremation they referenced in Part V. So Tommy and his dumbfuck friend dig up Jason, Tommy loses his shit and stabs the corpse with part of a wrought-iron cemetery fence... which is then struck by lightning, resurrecting Jason. This is the first time he quite explicitly comes back from the dead. For some reason, Tommy has Jason's hockey mask- wouldn't that thing be in an evidence locker somewhere? I guess given the Undead Killer in this movie, I can let that bit of stupidity slide. So, Jason gets up and starts killing people. Tommy has a hard time getting anybody to believe him... and why not? They fucking buried a corpse which has been nice and dead for years before this fuckhead dug it up. Ah well. Tommy and his new girlfriend manage to lure Jaosn out into the lake and chain him to a rock, keeping him pinned and immobile under the water. Yay. Honestly? Dumb as it is, this may be my favorite "supernatural" Jason flick. It's dumb in the right ways.

Friday the 13th VII- The New Blood
Since things weren't dumb enough yet, this flick introduces a telekinetic chick to serve as Jason's foil. She dredges him out of the lake (which, you know, nobody should have been allowed near, what with the undead killing machine stuck out in it). He slaughters some people whole she grapples with Daddy issues before whupping Jason's ass via telekinesis, and dumping him in the lake. Again. Ugh.

Friday the 13th VIII- Jason Takes Manhattan
Possibly the worst of the films to actually tie into the storyline. This one is just idiotic. Amusingly, Jason doesn't "take" Manhattan until about three quarters of the movie has dragged by. Not only do we not care about his victims at this point, we now don't give a shit about the "hero" characters, either. They're bad rehashes of earlier characters, and by the time they're in New York, being chased by Jason, we share the locals supposedly cold-hearted indifference to their fate. The whole movie from the time the Statue of Liberty is sighted is one long, poorly-told joke about what jerks New Yorkers are. Oh, and apparently Manhattan's sewers flood with toxic waste every night. 'Cause, you know. Cities work like that. This one sucks so hard, it was explicitly not in continuity for the next film.

Friday the 13th IX- Jason Goes to Hell
We have no idea where the hell this one takes place in relation to the others. Part of that is because New Line, not Paramount, made it, and some of the intellectual property didn't make the jump. But there is no reference to anything except Jason's supposedly drowning as a child, his Mom killing some people, and his own alleged body count. The movie opens with Jason being blown apart by a S.W.A.T. team, and then it just gets weirder. See, Jason's body, it turns out, is just a shell. He's actually demonic. Or something. Anyway, some coroner eats his heart, gets possessed, kills some people, and then Jason jumps bodies a time or two. It's all very strange. In the end, some character we've never seen before this film says he has a magic knife that can kill Jason. He gets killed, but our hero manages to cack Voorhes, who dissolves. And then Freddy Kruger's glove drags the hockey mask down. This movie makes very, very little sense. But it's poetry compared to the next entry in the series...

Jason X-
Because, of course, Jason belongs in space. This movie is a total piece of shit, which I am proud to say I saw in theaters. Jason gets cryogenically frozen, thawed out in the future and, of course, starts slicing up teenagers in space. He gets blown to hell at one point, then gets rebuilt by futuristic nanotech looking like Super Shredder. Super-Jason fucks around, kills some people, then gets blasted out into space, and appears to be almost destroyed by atmospheric reentry. Or something. Honestly, this one was so goddamned stupid it deserves some kind of award.

Freddy vs. Jason-
Putting that behind them, New Line finally gave fans of the slasher subgenre what they'd wanted for ages... and did a way better job than Alien vs. Predator of delivering the goods. Oh, it still sucks- Kane Hodder wasn't cast as Jason because they wanted someone with "kinder eyes"- even though Jason still just basically kills everything in sight, making it hard to feel much sympathy for him. This is basically a Nightmare on Elm Street movie that happens to include Jason- Freddy carries most of the plot, and is seen as the greater menace. But what the hell, it's the fun kind of stupid.

And Finally-

Friday the 13th (2009)
This franchise went for a reboot, and high goddamned time. This flick is pretty formulaic, being sort of a group remake of parts I-III. Jason is definitely supposed to be a non-supernatural human in this one- he's portrayed as more sneaky and skilled than simply unstoppable. Not bad, but, as all remakes are doomed to, it broke no new ground. Some of the kills were noteworthy, but honestly, this one illustrates how little of impact the original would have had if it were released today.

And there you go.

Maybe next time I'll do another series.
Maybe not.

My Home

I live in a marvelous place. A legitimate checklist for my Saturday follows-

1. Check ammo status.
2. Sharpen Kukri.
3. Don gunbelt, pack knapsack.
4. Pay off The Russian.
5. Ride into the mountains.
6. Tea and sandwiches on a mountainside.
7. Shooting practice.
8. Ride back into town reeking of cordite.

Well Hello Again.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Pull up a stump and don't mind the fish heads. The lady from the dog yard hasn't been by yet today.

When last we met, I was eulogizing my late Grandfather. Before that, I was basically pinwheeling my arms wildly and waiting for my job to begin.

A lot of water under the bridge since then.

As intended, I packed my worldly goods up and shipped them and myself off to a spectacularly scenic little corner of the Northwest Arctic, finding employment as a schoolteacher.

And oh, what a clusterfuck it has been. And at the same time, what a marvelous decision.

The bad is almost all job-related.

I don't know if I'm a good teacher, a bad teacher, or perhaps the sort of teacher who burns his entire community to the ground. It's early yet- we just finished our second week of classes.

What I do know is that any and all time spent learning about the ancestral culture of the locals is wasted. Simply and utterly wasted. Because it has sweet fuck-all to do with the students. I've gotten more mileage out of the childhood tales of some of my more colorful friends than any amount of Native Heritage study. And thank whatever deity is listening that I actually appreciate casual brutality, or I would find living here to be a chore.

As it is, the teaching is difficult. My students, bless their enlightened little hearts, do not give a shit. They ask me "why we gotta read?" And while I have answers to THAT one, some others are trickier. For example, Health Class. It's a load of shit. They know it, I know it, anyone who has ever taken Health knows it. I'm reasonably sure even the Sex-Ed part is Abstinence Only- in other words, it's an hour every day that serves as torture for both the class and for me, while teaching nothing that's going to stick.

So some classes are awful and some are good- and they all have the unusual problem that they go off every day, instead of rotating like they do in larger schools. And then we have the real gravy part.

As a small school, we have a staff of five... or should. Four full-time teachers, and one Teacher/Principal. Until the end of the first week, when our Teacher/Principal, impelled by drama from last year, transferred to another school. Yes. The pigfucker gets in one week's worth of time-wasting, then rides off into the sunset, leaving us high and dry. As of this writing, we're not completely sure what the hell is going on or who will take over. This will be a semester dictated by who manages to fail the least. It's going to be a long, hard slog.

So much for the job. I get my first paycheck soon, and so much of it is already spoken for it hurts to think about.

But the place... the place is another story altogether.

The river runs by the front of the village, rich with fish and a lot of fun to boat around on. On all sides, there is nothing but empty space. An old mine lies about fifteen miles out of town, easily reached by 4-wheeler, nestled in the mountains. The village lies on flatlands immediately south of the mountains, hemmed in by forest and tundra in a delightful mix. Caribou pass by so close that hauling their carcasses back to town is a short trip, and every day I feel as if I've woken up in a postcard. It's also a place that, in spite of the rampant alcoholism and abuse, or perhaps because of it, accepts little things that I enjoy. When I walk down the road with my kukri and my .45 on my belt, the only questions I get are "what kind of gun is that?" and "where did you get that knife?" When a small child lands a pike, no one so much as blinks if I use my kukri to finish the fish off. If I come back into town with an armload of bones or antlers, no one feels a need to comment. If someone wants a dog put down, there's no song and dance about animal cruelty... someone just takes the mutt out to the airstrip and shoots it, then hauls its corpse to the dump.

In other words, it's a place where folks leave one another alone unless they're invited over or unless they need something. It's a place where I run the risk of being the most sentimental man in town.

And it's a place where I can watch old women dress out fish with an ulu in less than fifteen seconds. Where fish racks dot the riverside, and where caribou bones lie under nearly every house.

In other words, if I can stand the teaching for few hours a day, it's possibly one of the best places in the world for me to be.

So Long, Grandfather

My maternal grandfather passed away last night.

While I am saddened by this, I am utterly unsurprised.

Gramps was 91, and had been failing ever since spring. He last looked like himself eighty-one days ago.

Gramps went to sea when he was very young, served in the Navy through the Second World War and afterward, and raised my mother and all of her siblings along with Granny. He knew how to fix almost anything. He was working on the roof of his house when he was over eighty years old.

I am descended from one tough, tough, tough, IRON-tough old man.

I have no regrets about my relationship with my Gramps.

He has been a part of my life since well before I was born, and I don't see how that's going to change now. What he taught me and what he gave me will always be with me. If I'm supremely lucky, I'll be able to pass some of it along, and if I really outdo myself, I'll be half as capable as he was by the time I die.

He gave me a pocketknife... a little one... that I had on me today, before I'd heard. But I've been thinking of him.

He taught me to drive a boat. Some of the highest praise I've ever received in my life was when I heard from someone else that he thought I'd brought it into shore properly (which is to say, jumping over the side and hauling the bowline in with me). He taught me to drive his old Toro tractor. He drove his dog-infested RV back and forth across the country year after year, getting the hell out of Indiana for the winter.

He made sure I always had an air conditioner in working order when I stayed at the farm.

He was one of the few people I could shut up around, simply because I knew he didn't need me to say a damned thing.

I'll miss you, old man.

But I also know you hated being fussed over, and you'd be downright irritable if I moped around because of you, so I'll carry on as I always have.

Thanks for all you taught me.
Thanks for all you gave me.

Godspeed.

A Tribesman Far From His Tribe.

"Parting from friends is a sadness- a place is just a place." - Dune

So, my sister and I watched Blazing Saddles again tonight, and while I enjoyed it, it brought home a simple, unpleasant truth.

I miss the FUCK out of my compadres.

Where I used to be able to drag my broke ass across town and always find a couch to crash on and a place at table, I now find myself more or less trapped at home until I head for Kobuk.

The little things- casual abuse shared by people who knew better than to be offended by it. Someone to bitch about things with who didn't feel the need to solve my fucking lame-ass problems.

A shared sense of identity, honestly. When in the company of my weird, heavily-armed family, I always know where I stand. I belong as I don't think I ever have before (which speaks volumes about just how fucked up the folks I run with are). I can truthfully say that they are "home" in their own twisted way.

I miss the hell out of 'em, but I'm taking the long view- I may be in Kobuk for just two years, or I may live there for twenty.

But whether I'm thirty and bored with it or I'm sixty and the thought of an Alaskan Arctic winter is more than I can stand, I know some folks who'll put me up.

And that's worth remembering.

On Comic Book Nerd Rage

So apparently, someone is tweaking Wonder Woman's costume and origin.

This, of course, has the nerds who care in a frothing rage.

Which is funny, since, speaking as a comic book geek myself, I have the following observation to make-

Scarlet Spider/Spider-Clone- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Superman Red/Superman Blue- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Eric Masterson Thor/Thunderstrike- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Arrowcar- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The High Lords in X-Force (you know, immortal mutants as a community) - It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Azbat- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Superman's Mullet- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Iron Spider Armor - It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Avengers Disassembled- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Spoiler's Death / Leslie Thompkins' Character Assassination- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
X-Corps- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Punisher versus Demons- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Kinder, Gentler Magneto- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Punker, Edgier Storm- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Nightcrawler the Priest- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The offscreen death of Sebastian Shaw- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Hal Jordan as the Spectre- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.



This too shall pass.

Traps and Tricks

So, the old cat died a while back.

For all of her faults, the old girl did one thing, performed one service we kind of miss these days.

She provided guilt-free pest control. No voles could survive in her radius, and her mere presence was a deterrent.

Now that she's gone, the duty has fallen upon me- because neither my sister nor my mother have the stomach for it.

And thus it is I who bait traps with tasty treats for the little creatures. It is I who place them in locations of value. And it is I who haul the little corpses outside and dump them for the shrews and carrion birds.

It's funny.

My sister flat-out refuses to bait traps. She claims it's too "serial killer" for her.

I can try to explain that there's no malice in my heart when I set these traps. I sincerely wish these rather dim-witted little creatures would simply stay away from the trash can and the flour and the rice on their own... But wishing doesn't feed me.

But I doubt she'll ever grasp that.

This wouldn't bother me, except that she wants them gone more than anyone.

After all, I'll be gone in August. I can only hope she figures out that what we need to do often has no emotion connected with it at all.