Back before Jason took Manhattan, became a demon, visited space and fought off Freddy, he was just a mongoloid child. Now the longest-running horror film franchise of all time is back with this almost thirty-year old low-budget entry 'Friday the 13th' making an arrival on the Blu-ray format with Paramount shelling out a features-packed, 'uncut' edition.
The 'uncut' label is for about 14 seconds of gore that got snipped out of the original theatrical run and is reinstated back into the film for the first time on these shores so it's a long-awaited treat for fans of Sean Cunningham's seminal slasher flick and makes a nice incentive for a double dip along with the decent-looking high-def transfer. Now, let's just hope they present 'Friday the 13th Part 3' in 3D - it's been a long time coming.
And, yep, I think 'Friday the 13th' is a seminal horror film. Of course not the first of it's kind, Mario Bava's 'Twitch of the Death Nerve' inspired Bob Clark's 'Black Christmas' and Clark's 'Black Christmas' no doubt had a hand in John Carpenter's 'Halloween' with Halloweens enormous success proving good motivation for this pic. However, it was 'Friday the 13th' that established a slasher template that got copied throughout the eighties.
Without 'Friday the 13th', we wouldn't have gotten such jewels (and I'm not being sarcastic) like 'Sleepaway Camp', 'Madman Marz', ‘April Fool's Day', 'Just Before Dawn', 'The Burning', etc. The enormously successful theatrical run of 'Friday the 13th' led to a glut of slasher pics both good and bad and to probably the most thriving horror market to date.
Granted, there were a few good slasher pics between 'Halloween' and 'Friday the 13th' like 'Tourist Trap' that might deserve some due, but there's no denying the zeitgeist that was the introduction of Jason Voorhees.
This is not to say ‘Friday the 13th’ is a great film. In fact, by most accounts, it's barely competent with a threadbare plot that could be summed up in a sentence or two and dialogue that would make Uwe Boll wince. Yet, there are a couple things that keep this pic worth a watch outside of just nostalgia.
First of all, director Sean Cunningham, despite working with a budget that's probably hovering around what was spent on catering for the upcoming remake, establishes an effective atmosphere right away.
Camp Blood, rather Camp Crystal Lake really does come off as rundown and desolate and the characters while generally being as one-dimensional and vapid as they come, act like real teenagers/young twenty-something’s i.e. stupid.
Add to that one of the most iconic horror scores yet from Henry Manfredini (taking a few shrill cues from Hermann's 'Psycho' score in addition to his own kill-kill-kill-cha-cha creation) and one whopper of a jump ending, and it doesn't take long before we arrive at one best slasher pics of its generation.
Intriguingly, the film had generated some controversy at the time due to it's explicit on-screen gore (opposed to the mostly hinted-at grue of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Halloween') but even this 'Uncut' version comes off as extremely tame compared to recent 'torture-porn' franchises like 'Saw' and 'Hostel' - which is actually a refreshingly quaint change of pace.
Tom Savini gore effects still hold up for the most part although the uncut version of Kevin Bacon's death didn't age well (unless I've just missed that Bacon had a two-foot neck this whole time).
Paramount brings this 29-year old film to Blu-ray with a 1080p 1.78:1 AVC encode and the result is quite good considering the age and budget of this thing. There's some grain and there's no getting away from the washed-out look of the film but the master used is super clean and detail is quite good in close shots. I doubt this film could look much better. Also included is a lossless Dolby TrueHD aud track along with the original mono track.
A lot of new stuff was produced for this Blu-ray along with features carried over from a SE British DVD with most features presented in high-def. First up is a audio commentary hosted by DVD reviewer Peter Bracke (I'll have to assume my phone was off the hook?) which splices together interview comments from a wide variety of cast and crew including Sean Cunningham, editor Bill Freda, composer Henry Manfredini, & actresses Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer. A lot of fun anecdotes here but cut together comments always leave me a bit cold.
'Friday the 13th Reunion' and 'Fresh Cuts: New Tales from Friday the 13th' is about 25 minutes taken from a convention Q&A shot last year. Cunningham, Savini, Manfredini, Palmer and others are all present and throw some fun stuff out.
'The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham' runs nine minutes and gets the perspective of the director on the whole phenom. 'Lost Tales from Camp Blood' is a peculiarity that's essentially an eight-minute short telling a separate 'Camp Blood' tale of murder. Cool in idea but lacking in execution.
'The Friday the 13th Chronicles' is a 20-minute featurette with more cast/crew insights and 'Secrets Galore Behind the Gore' lets Tom Savini guide us through his kills and how they were executed. Rounding things out is the original theatrical trailer presented in high-def.
No one will argue that 'Friday the 13th' is a great pic but I also think that few will argue that this isn't required viewing for horror 101. There's still a lot of fun to be had here and with Paramount giving the pic a nice amount of respect with some good visuals, nice audio and new high-def extras along with some uncut goodness, this should be a no-brainer for horror fans.
Friday the 13th Uncut [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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