Customer Reviews

Friday the 13th (1980) / Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) (Double Feature)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Four stars for the movies themselves, but beware, you get NO extras on this at all! On the back of the case, it says there are theatrical trailers for each film but there aren't when you put the disc (which, by the way, there is only one disc, not two) into the player. No biggie to me, I got this for 10 bucks and can easily watch the trailers on YouTube but it's still annoying when they say something is included and it's not! Buyer beware, but not bad for those who want to replace their worn out VHS copies of these movies as I did :)

I can't believe Paramount has the you-know-what to release these two classics in their "butchered" versions again. What the hell is it with them already? Die hard Friday the 13th fans are ready to open their wallets for an "uncut" pressing of these films. What's the matter, Paramount? Are you not feeling well? If it weren't for the fact that they control Star Trek, I'd have boycotted them a long time ago. Thankfully, I own the PAL release of the first movie which was distributed by Warner. It's great. Go and get yourself a copy and while you're at it, get a multi-region player as well so you can watch the DVD. Let me go before I say something I'll regret.

Here we have the best two films in the legendary Friday the 13th series. One of the things that really make these movies work well is the scenes where the stalker lurks, stalks, and watches before he or she makes a kill. That plays on the juvenile fear that we all carry in our heads that there is something out there watching you. When you were a kid, your parents always used to tell you to be a good little boy or girl because Santa, The Easter Bunny, or God is watching. If you are bad you will not get a present or you will not go to heaven. The constant here of course is the idea of something watching you, and if you get out of line, there is a consequence. Perhaps, that is the best theme of all that is played out in these early Friday installments.

- Friday the 13th (1980) -

In 1957 a young boy drowns in Crystal Lake. In 1958 two young camp counselors are murdered by an unseen assassin. Years later Steve Christy is preparing Camp Crystal Lake for re-opening despite warnings of the superstitious locals of the "death curse." It seems that as a result of the camp's unexplainable dark history the locals suffer from a sort of mass hysteria by attributing unsolved crimes to some sort of ghost story. These new people should have listened to the warnings to stay away from the place the locals call "Camp Blood," because on Friday the 13th 1980, there is a string of horrifying and grizzly murders ending in the beginning of an urban legend come to life.

- Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) -

Five years after the events of the original film, Paul and Ginny are running a summer camp counselor training facility. This place is not exactly at Camp Crystal Lake, but it is on the same like, adjacent to the old (not condemned) murder site. The locals believe that Jason is out in the wilderness as some kind of monster. Some claim to have seen him. Others claim that he is just a legend, a ghost story for the campfire. This film puts the story into the urban legend context, putting the story on the same wave length as Big Foot or Loch Ness or The Jersey Devil.

For anyone who does not already own these two movies, you can't beat the price for these two classics and the cover art is worth it alone.

Don't support Paramount and buy this. It's the same incomplete heavily censored versions of these movies with little-to-no extras and little-to-no effort put into it. In the age of Director's Cuts & Unrated everything Paramount still refuses to release these movies in their entirety when the fans have been begging for it for nearly 30 years. Warner Brothers has been putting out uncut releases of Part 1 overseas for decades, so we know that footage is out there and it's been mastered--sound, score, everything in tact. ...No idea why Paramount still insists on giving us the version with so much of Tom Savini's awesome work removed. The ridiculous thing is R-rated movies nowadays have 10 times the amount of gratuitous violence, even glorified violence at times. Yet these movies are actually scary; the violence isn't there to amuse you or be glorified, it's meant to scare you and upset you and make you think. Instead we get this choppy, quit-cut garbage that comes off as being cheesy and not packing the punch it builds up to. Paramount has never done this series justice with any of their releases. They just keep repackaging the same stuff, and we're sick of buying it just because we love the work behind it. BOYCOTT until Paramount starts to give a damn that they own the rights to one of the biggest horror series's of all time and give the fans something worth-while.

In 1980 Sean Cunningham released, not the first film of its kind, but the most famous (or infamous, depending; maybe I should say notorious?) of modern slasher films. Who would have known so many sequels and imitations would, or could, follow?

~ Camp Crystal Lake, 1958: Some teens are kicking back in a summer resort, when an unseen assailant enters one of the cabins and slaughters the two young people inside, who are about to engage in a little carnal, sinful fun. There was no apparent motive, no clues, no suspects.

Cut to the present day: Friday, June 13th, 1980 (circa the film's release): After years of misfortune and general bad karma, Camp Crystal Lake is about to reopen. We, the viewing audience, know what's going to happen, even without having seen the film beforehand. A girl, maybe 18 years old, hitches a ride from the local diner to the cursed resort, as she is supposed to work there, but on the way she meets an untimely, grisley fate. In a very well-executed (I realize the pun after writing it) scene, the magic of Tom Savini's work comes to the fore, as Annie, the aforementioned hitchiker, is hunted down and murdered as well. And as beautiful as it is, nature doesn't care a whit about you; the trees standing tall and the birds going about their business as usual while Annie receives a fatal slice across the throat, spilling arterial blood on herself and the ground while this maniac looks on, bitter and spiteful.

Some fans of the slasher genre don't give this, the first installment of the series, the credit it deserves, because (spoiler alert for the two or three people who haven't seen this movie) none of the murders are committed by legendary fiend Jason Voorhees. But this installment is the most believable in the whole franchise. A deformed, possibly retarded boy is believed to have drowned in the lake while the camp's counselors and staff are unaware, too preoccupied with their own fun to notice. He was all his mother had, the light of her life, and now, due to negligence, he disappeared in the lake, and hasn't been seen since. Everybody says he is dead.

The main body of the film depicts the events of the rest of the night, as one by one, the people at the lake are mercilessly killed by this unseen stalker, and the morning after (spoiler again), as surviving victim Alice awakes from a vivid nightmare in the hospital (this scene is one of the best shockers in film history). The dialoge leads one to believe that Jason Voorhees is dead, although it's possible he isn't. This doesn't contradict Pamela Voorhees' assertion that her son was left to die, because what if he didn't? He was still left alone to struggle in the lake, unable to swim. It was traumatic, and preventable; a mother's worst nightmare.

The movie itself looks good, nice and clear, good picture, wide screen letter-boxing, and though not hi-def, it is visually a good product nonetheless. The sound is nice and immediate, not bad at all; unless you want 5:1 surround, you won't be disappointed. But for cheapskates like me, it is optimal. There is an alternate audio track in French, which is puzzling because the subtitles are in English and Spanish. So you can read the subtitles in English or Spanish, or listen to it in English or French.

~ "Part Two":

Picking up exactly where the first film left off, Part Two tells the rest of the early part of this saga; the continuity between the first two films is probably the best in the entire series. The first reel recaps highlights of the first film's last reel, Alice's deadly showdown with Pamela Voorhees. Per this part of the story, Jason has been living in a deplorable little shack in the woods since his near-death experience, believed by most to be dead, possibly even by his his own mother. He was alone in the world, especially after seeing his mother's decapitated body on the lakeshore that night, and this is what set off his legendary killing spree: Anyone who came to his neck of the woods must die. Every killing was in revenge for his mother's death; a strange twisting of circumstances, given his mother's crime spree was to avenge her son's alleged death. Close family, huh?

There is some dialogue in this installment which helps clarify the story for the casual viewer who may have missed a few key points as to why Voorhees is out killing everyone who comes near him, as there is an element in this film's audience which don't care much about the specifics and may have missed them first time around.

The only thing in this sequel which reeks of the inferior sequel syndrome (just my opinion) is the way the ending virtually cloned the first film's ending. We get to see Jason in all his hideous splendor, but possible this was Ginny's nightmare, as she and Paul are being taken away in stretchers as the major scare scene cuts to the next morning. It is effective, made me jump many times over the years, and I guess it is just a staple of this story's depiction; it just seems to try to clone a very effective scene from before. But again, it really is effective, as it sets out to scare, and it does.

This was before Jason adopted the hockey mask as his trademark, and I have to say, the pillow case with an eyehole is a lot scarier; it's reminiscent of "The Elephant Man," which was itself a true story. And when we finally do see Jason, his deformities are consistent with the way he looked in the first film; it was a very good age-progression, ignored when Part Three was made.

This film has the same look, sound, and features as the other film on this disc, a French audio track along with English, and Spanish subtitles, letterboxing, the same film qulity, the same look, same sound, and so on. So you could say it's a three-hour movie, with a gap in the middle.

(ch-ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-ha-ha)

It's a good holloween movie. If your not looking for a brain teaser movie and just want to have fun this is a good choice.

The first Friday the 13th movie has its good and bad moments, both of which are entertaining. It also established a landmark in horror movies and spawned innumerable slasher imitators, and while its I feel Friday the 13th Part 2 is an inferior follow-up to the first movie, it's an important part of the series as it's the first movie where Jason gets his knife on. So, if you're a fan of both of them and you're looking to conserve some shelf room for My Bloody Valentine or Maniac, you've come to the right place.

THE GOOD:

-Clean, animated menus
-Both movies on one side of the disk (it's not a flipper!)
-Comes in a standard DVD case, so it takes up half the room of both movies packaged separately.

THE BAD:

-This is the exact same disc from the Friday the 13th box set, which isn't a big deal, but shows the limited amount of thought that went into putting this together.
-There's no chapter insert.
-No trailers.
-The yellow. The original cover art for these movies, while still here, is a foreboding black and red. Here, it's swallowed up in a chipper yellow frame. Even the spine/side of the art is yellow, so when you stick it in your DVD case, you'll only be able to recognize it by the bright yellow spine that obscures the titles of the movies, making them tough to read. Hey, at least it's not as bad as the horrendous "I Love the 80s" cover art.

So who is this for? If you're a fan of the series, you probably have these movies already in better looking cases, and if you just want the best of the series, you're better off with just getting the first movie. However, if you want to save some room in your DVD case, or want a little Jason with your introduction to the series, then this is an easy way to get the first two. My two cents? Get 'em both separately and toss your copy of "Underworld."

What can you really say about this collection? This is classic 80's horror that used to make my eyes shoot open every time there was a noise in the house when I was a kid trying to go to sleep. They don't make movies like this anymore.

The spooky atmosphere makes these films. I recommend this Film to anyone. My favourite movies are pts 1-4. Pt 1 - 3 brings me back to my youth and the DVD transfers are fine, if you are after something intelligent, this is not for you, for the films are a fun and entertaining session of good-looking horny teens getting slashed. I think the series went a bit far after pt 8, but what the hell its all popcorn stuff anyway. For all the people bagging Paramount GET A LIFE this box is beautifully put together, (like how many times do you need to see Jason do the sleeping bag thing)???????
If anyone is interested in Friday the 13th collectables, email taylor5821@hotmail.com