Customer Reviews

Friday the 13th Uncut (Deluxe Edition)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've already recorded my thoughts on the original Friday the 13th. I think it's among the top two or three greatest slasher films ever made. It has a kind of 'Blair Witch Project' feel about it, as you never see who or what you are dealing with until very close to the end. This creates an aura of dread, as well as a nearly tangible feeling that these characters are pretty much doomed.

I don't waste too much time mincing words about such matters-to me, this is a great movie. Not just a great slasher film, but a great film, by ANY standards. And it continues to grow on me. By now, I've seen it around 100 times, but I continue to like it better over time.

One word of caution, though. They refer to it as 'uncut',as if this is a big deal. I expected there to be major differences, such as reinserted deleted scenes or something of that nature. There isn't. So don't expect to get anything radically different than what you've had in the past. In fact, the major difference-the death scene of Kevin Bacon-looked better BEFORE. Some things get cut for a reason.

But the picture and sound quality are outstanding. The other special features are okay. But if you are satisfied with the version you have at present, there is no overwhelming reason to replace your old dvd with this one.

A lot has been said about this being a graphically violent film. That may be the case, up to a point. But I believe that it's often what you DON'T see that most powerfully affects your imagination. And that's where this movie really sets itself apart. The killer is hardly ever shown, up until the final twenty minutes,but their presense hovers ominously and continually over the entire movie.

For example, you could consider the scene where the girl is brushing her teeth at the sink. Off to her far left, we see a shower curtain shift a couple of inches. We, as the audience, realize the implications: if she goes back there, she will be killed. She,of course, is oblivious to the danger. The killer is back there, silently waiting. The movement of the shower curtain is so subtle, so understated.........yet you know full well what it means.

Most of the horror movies I have sat through, even taken in their entirety, simply do not compare with that brief, seemingly trivial scene. Mystery, dread, suspense,horror, tension-all found, in abundance, in a scene that only lasts a minute or two.

I regard this as a masterpiece.

a few months ago when i heard paramount was releasing friday the 13th UNCUT for the first time in the US on blu-ray, i thought for the first time they had come to their senses and were going to finally give us a good release of this movie...man, was i wrong!!

first of all, let's look at this new revamped cover art. it looks like it was made by a high school student using photoshop for the first time. the arms are not proportionate to each other and the forearm of the one holding the knife looks deformed. i don't know what's up with the squiggly line that makes up the right leg under 'uncut'--i think it was supposed to look like creases in the pants, but it doesn't. it looks like bad photoshop clone-stamping. basically, it's amateur work from a professional company. i can't believe they wouldn't touch it up some before releasing it to the masses.

second, the movie is ZOOMED IN. normally i wouldn't notice something like this, but they've cut out like half the shot from previous releases...'Friday the 13th' in the opening credits actually get's cropped off at the top. i compared this to the previous paramount DVD release and Warner's uncut overseas DVD, and they both have a significant margin above the name. you notice it other places too...when the couple at the beginning is flattening out the blanket on the floor--completely cut out of the shot, when you could see it before. marcy's buttcrack when she's sitting on the bed in her panties with K.Bacon, completely cut out of the shot, when you could see it before....i always loved that buttcrack shot as a kid!! now it's gone!!!! if you grew up with this movie like i did, you'll definitely notice it throughout the movie...every shot is right up in the actors's faces when you knew that before you were seeing clear down past their shoulders.

as for extras, there's a few cool interviews, but most of it is recycled from previous releases.

'LOST TALES FROM CAMP BLOOD' is the worst piece of crap anyone's ever created! it's a mini-movie (filmed recently, so in no way pertains to a release of the original F13th). a couple is awakened by an intruder, so one at a time, they go downstairs and call people's names for about 5 minutes. then they die gruesome deaths at the hand of some bald dude who looks nothing like jason. all this while the score of the original movie plays in the background. I HATED THIS. apparently this is all paramount thinks a F13th movie is...they must have missed the fact that F13th required creativity, talent, a script, and good filmmaking.

all in all, the only thing they got right is they finally released it uncut. everything else is wrong and a step down from previous releases. the hi-def picture was okay but i was fairly unimpressed...probably because all i could think about was how weird it looks zoomed in like that. if it were zoomed out to its true ratio, it would have made the picture look clearer and less grainy.

paramount is a disgrace to F13th. they always disappoint me beyond my expectations.

One of the most-repeated fandom gripes I heard at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival was directed squarely at Paramount -- they won't release the uncut DVDs of the slasher movies that they produced and/or distributed in the 1980s, even when the materials are plainly available. Well, one such complaint may be silence now -- Paramount Home Entertainment has announced new DVD and Blu-ray "Deluxe Editions" of Friday the 13th that will restore gore footage that has been missing from all US releases of the film (Warner Bros., owner of the foreign rights to the movie, has had the uncut version out for years in Europe). Both will come out on February 3, 2009.

Special features on the Deluxe Edition will include:
Director Sean S. Cunningham's commentary track,
Four featurettes:
Fresh Cuts: New Tales from "Friday the 13th"
Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham
Friday the 13th: Special Reunion
Lost Tales from Camp Blood: Part 1)
The trailer.

Also due out on February 3rd are Deluxe Editions of Friday the 13th Part 2 and Part 3, although both appear to be the theatrical versions. Part 2 will also be heavy with special features -- five featurettes (Inside Crystal Lake Memories, Horror Convention, Slasher Films: Going for the Jugular, Jason Forever, and Lost Tales from Camp Blood - Part 2), a Jason trivia text track, and a trailer. Part 3 will feature both the regular 2D version, as well as (for the first time ever on DVD) 3D version, complete with a pair of 3D glasses. It will also feature the theatrical trailer.

There will be about 10 seconds of extra footage added into this unrated edition.

The extended death scenes in Friday the 13th part 1 include:
Annie's extended death scene. Annie getting her throat cut.
Marcie's death scene. Marcie getting an axe to the head.
Jack's (Kevin Bacon) extended death scene by arrow through the throat.
Mrs. Voorhees's death scene.

One of the most-repeated fandom gripes I heard at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival was directed squarely at Paramount -- they won't release the uncut DVDs of the slasher movies that they produced and/or distributed in the 1980s, even when the materials are plainly available. Well, one such complaint may be silence now -- Paramount Home Entertainment has announced new DVD and Blu-ray "Deluxe Editions" of Friday the 13th that will restore gore footage that has been missing from all US releases of the film (Warner Bros., owner of the foreign rights to the movie, has had the uncut version out for years in Europe). Both will come out on February 3, 2009. No word yet on whether Parts 2 & 3 will be released on Blu-ray.

Special features on the Deluxe Edition will include:
Director Sean S. Cunningham's commentary track,
Four featurettes:
Fresh Cuts: New Tales from "Friday the 13th"
Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham
Friday the 13th: Special Reunion
Lost Tales from Camp Blood: Part 1)
The trailer.

There will be about 10 seconds of extra footage added into this unrated edition.

The extended death scenes in Friday the 13th part 1 include:
Annie's extended death scene. Annie getting her throat cut.
Marcie's death scene. Marcie getting an axe to the head.
Jack's (Kevin Bacon) extended death scene by arrow through the throat.
Mrs. Voorhees's death scene.

After the success of HALLOWEEN, producers and directors across the country rushed to cash in on the popularity of the new teen slasher. No one accomplished this better than LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT producer Sean S. Cunningham with 1980's FRIDAY THE 13TH, which was purportedly sold to investors based strictly on the name alone without a script. FRIDAY THE 13TH set the standard for countless other camp killer pictures to follow by trapping a group of teenage counselors with a murdering psycho in the woods at Camp Crystal Lake. Each of the teens that are caught doing drugs, sleeping together, or fooling around on the job are then killed off in the most gruesome methods imaginable before the killer is identified and must be stopped by the last surviving female, or "final girl," as she would come to be called.

The portrayal of death in the Horror film is as old as the genre itself, carried over from the macabre spectacles that were found in the Theater of the Grand Guignol. Throughout the 1960's and 70's, filmmakers like Mario Bava and Wes Craven pushed the limits of violence and gore, but no one did this better than George Romero's star pupil Tom Savini. With FRIDAY THE 13TH, Savini introduced a number cutting-edge special effects that left audiences disgusted and fans amazed at the stunning results. Sean Cunningham frequently uses misdirection to heighten the effect of the shocks, making it that much more surprising when Kevin Bacon has an arrow thrust through his neck in all of its blood-spurting glory! FRIDAY THE 13TH also lays claim to showing the first frontal on-screen beheading during the film's climactic end.

While FRIDAY THE 13TH and the Slasher sub-genre at large have been criticized for being misogynistic in their depictions of women in peril, further investigation into the films shows that quite the opposite is true. FRIDAY THE 13TH is empowering to women in a number of ways. The female victims typically tend to be more resourceful and cautious than their male counterparts. The number of men that are killed also exceeds the number of women, and where the deaths of the men are almost always shown in gory detail, the women are usually killed off-camera (only the aftermath is shown). Adrienne King embodies every element of the "final girl" in her role as Alice, a smart and capable young woman that uses her skills to elude the killer until she is able to gather the strength and courage for a final confrontation. FRIDAY THE 13TH also contains a female villain, which dismisses any Freudian comparisons between the killer's relationship with his or her murder weapon and the victims (at least in this instance). If one argument could be made against the feminist theory in FRIDAY THE 13TH, it is that the killer serves as a reinforcement of traditional values, since each of the girls that express their liberated sexuality are offed, while the pure, virginal Alice survives.

FRIDAY THE 13TH takes the basic premise of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and extends it into the splatter genre with great success. It best exemplifies each of the standard conventions of the Slasher sub-genre, including a fateful wrongdoing on a significant date, a young cast of careless teens, excessive amounts of violence and nudity, and a resourceful "final girl," and as such, it must be regarded as a classic.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Whoever rated this 1 star, should be put in front of a firing squad! This is without a doubt, one of the best movies in history. When you think of Horror movies, one of 2 names come to mind. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Both are epic, and paved the way for horror movies.

May 9th 1980: Friday the 13th was released, earning $39,754,601 at the box office. To date, it has spawned ten sequels, dozens of imitators, a televison series and a high-profile remake.

Review: It is no secret that the success of John Carpenter's 1978 horror masterpiece, Halloween, inspired Sean S. Cunningham and writer Victor Miller to create Friday the 13th.

Nearly one year after the release of Halloween, with only a $700,000 budget, Cunningham and crew ventured off into the woods of New Jersey to broaden the boundaries of a slasher film. Sadly, for many viewers, the film's nuances and subtleties is lost to those who have either seen the sequels prior to the original film or are all too well-aware of the backstory.

This is an interesting element that is often ignored; Friday the 13th actually had more of a story - and subplots - than what the series would become accustomed to, or even given credit for.

For one, the original film is played off as a mystery as no one knows - or should know - who the killer is. Could it be one of the counselors? Steve Christy, the owner of the camp site? Or could it be the revenge of a child who has returned from the grave to seek his vengeance? This element of the film is often completely lost to those who are just now visiting the film for the first time. This is often the problem for long-running franchises.

Unlike most of the film's sequels, there is a clear difference between each character. Now, these are not dramatically enriched characters, but much more so than most slasher films of its time. It should also be remembered that characterizations in this film were new for their time and it is really what spearheaded many of the genre's clichés that followed.

With a rather simplistic story that centers around mysterious incidences and creative kills set to the backdrop of Camp Crystal Lake (or Camp Blood, as some locals call it), Friday the 13th is an intentionally gradual horror film that is better than what most would claim. It features one of the earliest roles of Kevin Bacon's career, an effective - and now legendary - musical score by Harry Manfredini, and of course, the terrific make-up effects by Tom Savini, which would really set the template for 80's horror films. Ironically, Halloween II would be one such film that would follow in its gory footsteps.

Now, over the years, Friday the 13th has been released on many home video formats in various different ways. Currently, the DVD market has two versions available. The theatrical cut of the film is only available in the Friday the 13th - From Crystal Lake to Manhattan (Ultimate Edition DVD Collection), which includes the first 8 films on 4 discs and an additional bonus disc of extras that include The Friday the 13th Chronicles (8-part featurette), Secrets Galore Behind the Gore (3-part featurette), Crystal Lake Victims Tell All!, Tales from the Cutting Room Floor, Friday Artifacts and Collectibles, and of course, Scary Trailers. It may not be the definitive set that fans had been clamoring for, it is still a solid, affordable collection that is worth checking out.

For those who don't want the whole set, however, you can pick up either the DVD or BluRay release of Friday the 13th Uncut (Deluxe Edition). Both editions only include the uncut version, but it really isn't all that much different from the theatrical cut. The special features included on these single-disc only releases has a creatively edited Commentary by Sean S. Cunningham with cast and crew, Fresh Cuts: New Tales from Friday the 13th featurette, The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham featurette, A Friday the 13th Reunion, Lost Tales from Camp Blood - Part 1, and the theatrical trailer. After viewing the extra features on Anchor Bay's well-made His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th, this release falls way short. It seems rather redundant, and uninvolving. Paramount could have done so much better. That said, if a few more seconds to some of the kills is important, this is your only option.

As I'll no doubt reveal in many other reviews, I get a real kick out of horror films. With slashers and giallos taking the lead.

While Halloween can usually considered to be the first true American slasher film, it was Friday that popularized them. It is sometimes hard to see why. but a few things need to be taken into account.

The film's final plot twists, rather subtly foreshadowed early on were NOT widely known as they are today.

The basic concept was still novel instead of being an entire genre.

The public was still not used to much violence at all in their horror.

The ending had people leaving the theatre in a buzz.

These factors in place, the film caught a certain wave that was coming through horror cinema at the time and rode it well. The sequels are each really their own beasts, but should not be used to retroactively judge the first film as tame or boring.

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I am NOT reviewing the special features. However, this is coming from watching the uncut version. However again, I'm not comparing the original with the uncut version. This is simply from the perspective of the uncut version.

Please note that the rating above is possibly skewed by the ratings on this specific site. There might be a slightly different rating at the end.

...I just had an injection of epicness, and now I went into shell shock.

From start to finish, this movie has just about everything you would expect, and everything you wouldn't expect, out of a slasher film. Welcome to Friday the 13th A-Thon, during the whole month of Halloween. What is really great about the whole movie, is the sense of mystery. Any time there's a kill, we see it in first person, so we don't know who the he11 is the killer. Probably most of you would know, but I'm gonna not spoil in until I have to. You wanna know, yet you know it's better if you don't know. But that's the awesome part. It makes you want to keep watching the movie, that's what a good movie does!! And when you actually find out who the killer is, man, are you in shock. And they do it such an awesome fashion, which I'm gonna try to not spoil, that you are just ready to get your adrenalin pumping!!!

But then, it does something you don't expect it to. Go Alien (1979) style, and have what 3-8 minute moments of tension building (which is extremely genius,) and then finally relieve you and make you think for just the right amount of time "it's safe..." and the BOOMZA!!! Something scary comes out. And it's not just something stupid, it's someone who's been killed most of the time. Not the killer. But sometimes it is the killer, but it's done extremely well. Not to mention, even watching the Unrated version, it's not blood soaked like people make it out to be. Rather, it is just blood dipped. Like a DQ Ice Cream Cone with Chocolate. It doesn't over-power the substance, but there's just enough to make you want it every time you go to Diary Queen. And, the creep factor. I swear to God, this movie is all in the dark. It is one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen. The Chi Chi Ha Ha. Perfection! This movie is so extremely awesomely epic epic of epicaheness on so many freaking levels!!!

It's got a great "camp" value. The characters aren't the chessyness though. No, the characters are actually extremely awesome (too bad I don't remember their names.) They're funny, they're likable, they're relatable, they're awesome. As you might of guessed, it's the dialogue. But not in the "so bad it's good" sense. More like the "so good it's bad" kinda sense. "Crocodile in the Cabinet." Such an awesome line. This movie has some of the best lines in all of cheesy horror movie history! But this isn't cheesy, this is a mysterious blood deep tension building creepy dramatic beautiful innovative significant MASTERPIECE!!!! (And not to mention it teaches you not to hitchhike.) Speaking of which, in that hitchhiking scene, it kills off the character we think is going to be the star (and I didn't spoil anything for you.) Just like A Nightmare on Elm Street (BOTH VERSIONS.) Not to mention, I never would have predicted a creepy stranger in such a campy car.

Most people think having $3X is a natural thing for a killer to put on his "MUST KILL" list. Nope, that is not the villains motivation at all. The $3X scenes are completely useless. (Which takes .05 points off.) (Or, as you would say, .1%) It does become a part of the movie though. These are the rules that you must follow in order to live. Rule #1: Don't wash anything in the sink (to evolve into don't take a shower.) Rule #2: Never Sleep. Rule #3: Don't have $3X. And Rule #4: Don't be in any position that might piss off the killer. (Like, if the villain once got abused by a Police Officer, don't be a Police Officer.) And Rule #5: When someone says they're a messenger of God, THEY'RE A FREAKING MESSENGER OF GOD!!! Onto the next part, do you ever notice that only one of the teenagers reacts to seeing her friends die before her eyes?

Also, would you expect a Slasher Film to have a freaking amazing score? It's two steps away from Phillip Glass standards. Just buy the soundtrack, if it's available. If it's not, screw Paramount, they didn't know what they were doing. There's a lot more I want to talk about, but I HAFT to save it for the next review if I wish not to spoil anything. So overall, this is A FREAKING MASTERPIECE. What a wonderful film, it will leave you shaken with shell shock, yet at the same time leave you with a new FREAKING PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE!!! 5.95/5!!!!

Yes, this Blu-ray shows less of the image than the older DVD releases. However, the Blu-ray and newest DVD are framed according to what the director of photography had intended. Story goes, when Paramount had decided to cut certain bits out of the film, they forgot to properly frame the film, showing rather the whole viewing space of what was actually filmed, not what was framed by the DP. If you watch carefully, you'll notice that the framing on this release actually makes more sense. Look at the title screen compared to the older DVD releases; notice how the "Friday the 13th" opening logo is actually centered, and not veering off to the right.

So the framing is correct. How 'bout the picture quality?

Excellent. Filmic. Appropriate grain, untouched and untampered with. My assumption is this is exactly how the film looked upon its initial release in theaters. It's low-budget, it's cheap stock and lighting, it's not the most detailed film around, but this Blu-ray Disc represents it accurately.

Highly recommended for fans of this slasher classic.

The Blu-rays for movies 2 and 3 look excellent and filmic as well, bearing in mind that "Part 3" was filmed in such a way to achieve the 3D effect; it looks a bit blurry, especially to the sides, but this is intrinsic of its original photography. All three films have never looked better on home video. I recommend all three to high definition enthusiasts and fans of the film series. Looking forward to "The Final Chapter" looking as good and accurate.