It’s a bit late but to finally end my Halloween champion Slasher report on who is the king out of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger,  I have watched the entire back catalogue of their films and given a run down on each characters franchise story and best kills.

Part 1 was on Jason, Part 2 was Michael Myers and finally Part 3 is on the killing Dream Demon Freddy Krueger.

Set on Elm Street, Freddy is the reason I struggled to sleep through the late 80′s due to being terrified of him visiting me in my dreams.

Beware pictures of blood, a lot of gushing blood and other violent deaths.

And so a little rhyme to begin this story:

One, two, Freddy’s coming for you.
Three, Four, Better Lock your door.
Five, Six, grab your Crucifix.
Seven, Eight, Gonna stay up late.
Nine, Ten, Never sleep again.

The brilliant little rhyme is sung in each film by little kids playing jump rope and fits in with the mythology of Krueger and like the Halloween theme it will always bring a chill to your spine when heard.

Freddy is possibly the most instantly recognizable looking of the three horror killers with his burnt and disfigured face, trade mark Fedora hat, stripped Jumper and razor sharp clawed glove.

Freddy kills you in your sleep where he terrorises you by making it difficult to tell the difference between dream and reality. I remember being terrified to go to sleep after seeing it as a youngster and the concept heightened the myth that if you die in your dreams then you die in real life.

First brought to the big screen in 1984 by Wes Craven and spawning eight films in total with a 9th coming in 2010, Freddy Krueger has racked up only 31 of on screen kills but with approximately 20 deaths of kids tallied up before he was murdered by the revengeful parents.

The story of how Krueger came about is a fantastic one, A serial child killer who was caught but released on a technicality who was hunted down by the parents of the victims and cornered, he was burned alive and forgotten by the parents but not by the dreams of their children.

Freddy has done something that Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers haven’t done and that’s get his own TV show called Freddy’s Nightmares, it was an anthology show similar to the Twilight Zone that Freddy Krueger hosted and occasionally made appearances in of episodes, one being the trial of Freddy Krueger and the aftermath.

Freddy was magically brought to life on the big screen by the possibly irreplaceable Robert Englund who added a personality to Freddy that made him equally terrifying as he was comical, Robert Englund is the only Horror Icon that was performed by the same actor throughout it’s run in the eight movies over ten years, Jackie Earle Haley has a lot to live up to but his performance as Rorschach in  Watchmen is definitely encouraging and potentially more insane.

A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984 was a roaring success and came off the back of Halloween and Friday 13th franchises that were into their 3rd and 4th films respectively and receiving huge box office receipts.

The film starts with Tina in a dream being stalked by Freddy but she awakes with rips in her clothes similar to the claws that the thing in her dream attacked her with.
Tina tells her friend Nancy and they agree to have a sleep over with Nancy’s boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp) joining them.

Whilst at Tina’s house Tina’s rebel boyfriend Rod joins them and they go upstairs to do what all teenagers do before they get murdered in these films.
And so during a dream Tina is killed by Freddy and in reality her boyfriend watches in disbelief as Tina is slashed open then dragged up the wall then across the ceiling leaving a bloody trail then dropped to the floor, As Rod is the only one present he flee’s but is arrested the next day.

Nancy starts to have dreams about Freddy, she see’s her friend Tina in a bloody body bag and is staked by Krueger awaking just in time before being killed. Nancy

visits Rod and they discuss what he saw and so Nancy believes that the man in her dreams is the one who killed Tina.

After another dream involving Rod, Nancy and Glen rush to the police station where Rod is found hung but only Nancy concludes that it must be Freddy.
Nancy’s mum takes her to a dream therapy clinic where she is studied and whilst dreaming she is cut on the arm by Freddy and brings back his hat that she was holding as she awakes with her arm bleeding also.

Nancy’s mum is hiding the truth of this monster but spills the beans when she gets drunk showing the glove of Krueger that she has hidden in their basement.
Nancy and Glen hatch a plan to bring Freddy back through to reality but that night Glen falls asleep and is eaten by his bed, spewing tons of blood in a jet from the bed in the now famous scene.

Nancy’s dad, the sheriff, now becomes involved and Nancy tells him to awaken her and arrest Freddy when she brings him through, Nancy goes to sleep and eventually brings Freddy through and using a series of booby traps, Freddy is set on fire and locked in the basement and fetches her father.

But Freddy has escaped and following his fiery footsteps they find Freddy has smothered her mum in a fiery blaze and killed her and she vanishes into the bed. Freddy Krueger then brilliantly rises through the bed sheets and Nancy confronts him saying she takes her power from him and she wants her friends and mother back as it’s all a dream and Freddy lunging to attack vanishes.

The ending is bizarre, like a dream within a dream, Nancy leaves the house and gets in a car coloured like Freddy and Nancy’s mum waves them off, The car seals itself up and Nancy’s mum gets comically dragged through the window of the front door by Freddy.

Best Kill:- There can be only one, Mega star Johnny Depp getting eaten by his bed and regurgitated in a water of blood, utter bonkers and forever memorable!

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge in 1985.
A complete nightmare of a film that ruined everything the first movie did so well.

The story is set five years after part one and is about Jesse, whose family have moved into 1428 Elm Street and Jesse has moved into Nancy’s old bedroom. It begins with Jesse getting on a school bus that is shown to be driven by Robert Englund which speeds off through the desert and finally stops and the floor collapses leaving the bus dangling like a seesaw and as Freddy approaches and the kids back off the bus tips so the kids move closer to Freddy and just as it falls Jesse awakens, Nice little Nightmare. Jesse starts to have more nightmares about Freddy and in them Freddy tells him to kill for him so Freddy can come back into the real world through his body, Right….

Jesse’s friend Lisa finds Nancy’s old diary in his room and the dreams described in it are obviously similar so Jesse panics to his parents who argue and he runs out.
Jesse then works out at school with his gym teacher and afterwards whilst showering, the gym teacher is his office and attacked by balls and sports equipment, he is dragged to the showers by rope and is attacked by a Freddy silhouette and as the steams disappears its revealed as Jesse.

And so the story continues with Jesse dreaming and Freddy manipulating Jesse to commit murders which was so against everything Freddy is known for and creating a fear of dreaming, but having said that one scene has Freddy ripping out from the inside of Jesse and it’s very well done using the brilliant animatronics that was so popular in the 80′s, Jesse eventually returns to normal and runs to Lisa’s house who’s having a pool party with a load of friends and Jesse is again taken over by Freddy who proceeds in killing a few revelers who think they can take him on, they die and so it’s Lisa’s dad who saves the day by coming out with a shotgun shooting but Lisa just stops him from shooting Jesse in the form of Freddy.

Lisa has been doing her research and discovers that Freddy will be found in the factory where Freddy use to take his victims and so heads there for the final showdown. She comes face to face with Freddy and tells him/Jesse that she loves him and can fight it from the inside and so gives the burnt face killer a big kiss which finishes Freddy off as the factory and Freddy go up in flames. Freddy is dead and so it seems is the mass murderer Jesse, but not quite, Jesse crawls out from Freddy’s ashes and they live happily ever after.

(And now finally a decent bit of the film) That is until they board the school bus the next day and the bus seems to be speeding, Jesse panics but the bus stops and everyone relaxes then bam! Freddy’s gloved hand comes out the chest of one of Jesse’s friend and the bus speeds off into the desert with Freddy laughing.

Best Kill:- The ending of the film, I could only find it in Spanish but that’s an improvement really.
All seems ok but Freddy wants to wave goodbye so bursts his arm through an unsuspecting girls chest, BYE!

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors in 1987 was the return of Wes Craven who wrote the screenplay which is why it this is a huge improvement on part two and a return to the imaginative dream sequences that should fill the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, the possibilities are endless.

Ignoring part two and set six years after part one and starts with Kristen making a model house that looks familiar and she goes to sleep dreaming of a little girl running into 1428 Elm Street where she follows to the basement and comes across Freddy and awakes in a panic, She goes to her bathroom where she reaches for the tap which turns into a hand and attacks her, as she looks into the mirror she sees Freddy who slashes her wrist and she awakes to see her mother enter and she has slashed wrist appearing to be a suicide attempt.

Kristen is taken to a psychiatric hospital and when they try to sedate her she freaks out, grabs a scalpel and cuts one of the orderlies (Larry Fishburne) with a scalpel and starts singing the Freddy Rhyme and before she finishes in walks old Freddy killer Nancy from part one and finishes the rhyme, Nancy works out that Kristen and the other patients of this loony bin Taryn, Kincaid, Phillip, Joey, Jennifer and Will, are the last of the Elm Street children of those vigilante murdering parents who killed Freddy.

Some of the kids start to die in awesome ways, see below, and Nancy realizes she has to protect the kids. Meanwhile a decent additional plot of the origin of Freddy Krueger starts to unfold that carries on in the next films, the kids psychiatrist, Doctor Neil Gordon, gets visited by a nun Sister Mary Helena who explains that Freddy was never buried and needs to be put to rest is consecrated ground.

Another kid, Joey is kidnapped in his dream by Freddy and is put in a coma and Nancy and Dr Gordon get fired for their involvement in helping the kids and Sister Mary explains to Dr Gordon that a young girl was locked by accident with 100 insane maniacs who raped her and when se was released she was with child her name was Amanda Krueger, Freddy was the Bastard son of 100 Maniacs and so Dr Gordon and the recruited Lt Donald Thompson, Nancy’s dad from part one, head off to bury Freddy’s remains as Donald is the only one left who knows where they are hidden, in a junk yard.

Nancy gets the kids and performs mass hypnosis to get all the kids into dream together so they can battle Freddy once and for all and rescue Joey from his coma, and as they get into the dream world they take on their Dream Warrior forms and their alter egos, Freddy splits them up and kills Taryn and Will. Nancy, Kincaid and Kristen save Joey and and Kristen fights Freddy and Nancy realizes Freddy is more powerful as he absorbs the souls of the children and just as he is about to kill Kincaid Freddy realizes his bones are about to be buried so he takes control of his skeleton (awful animated scene) and kills Nancy’s dad and knocks out Dr Gordon. Exciting.

The kids battle on and Nancy dies by trusting a ghost of her dad visiting her and gets stabbed by Freddy, and as he goes for Kristen Nancy grabs Freddy’s arm and stabs Freddy with his own glove, at the same time Dr Gordon is finishing the ritual with holy water on Freddy’s bones and Freddy starts to die and with a finishing touch of a crucifix on his head and he is killed but so too is Nancy from her wounds.

At the funeral Dr Gordon sees the Nun again and goes to thank her but she has vanished and he stands by a grave of Amanda Krueger/ Sister Mary Helena the mother of Freddy Krueger. Dr Gordon heads to bed and owns the model house that Kristen built and as he closes his eyes the light comes on.

Best Kill:- I couldn’t decide on these two. Young Dream Warrior Jenny is trying to stay awake watching TV but nods off and awakes to see Freddy Krueger kill a cameo from Zsa Zsa Gabor on a show then as she gets closer gets picked up by the TV which turns into Freddy and he smashes her head into the screen.

Also Philip gets his tendons cut from his arms and legs and Freddy uses them to control Philip like a puppet and it looks horrible!

‘

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master in 1988.

Following on from the Dream Warriors, Kristen (now played by Tuesday Knight), Kincaid and Joey have all somehow been released from the loony bin after their friends and Nancy were all killed on the premises in suspicious circumstances with them surely being the only suspects! But on with the plot where they have been released and living there lives as normal teenagers with new friends.

Whilst having a bad dream she pulls Joey and Kincaid to her dream (her dream warrior power) and the next day they freak out for her doing it. That night Kincaid dreams of Freddy in the scrap yard where Freddy’s remains lie, Kincaid’s dog urinates on his grave that then goes up in flames and Freddy bones rises and grow flesh and Freddy is back, Somehow.

Freddy Kills Kincaid and then visits Joey who is killed in his dream in a great little scene involving his water-bed and the next day as they both fail to turn up for school Kristen gets worried and tells her friends Alice, Sheila, Debbie and Rick who all have a Dream power, Alice tells Kristen about the

Dream Master Rhyme but can’t remember all of it which helps you have happy dreams.

Kristen tries using the Rhyme and has a dream but then gets killed and passes her power to Alice who gets dragged into Kristen’s final dream. Kristen also gets the powers/abilities of Sheila, Debbie and Rick when they die that she eventually uses to fight Freddy in the final fight after her boyfriend Dan is put into a coma after a Freddy induced car crash and Alice goes to sleep to save Dan and to face Freddy inside a run down Church.

The new found abilities she uses are not enough to kill Freddy but she remembers the final line of the Dream Master Rhyme and sings it:

Now l lay me down to sleep.

The master of dreams, my soul l’ll keep.

ln the reflection of my mind’s eye…

Evil will see itself, and it shall die!

Alice uses a piece of mirror and shows Freddy’s reflection and he vanishes leaving just he clothes and Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Freddy is dead until part 5.

Best Kill:- Debbie, who’s arms horribly break when doing weights and if that wasn’t bad enough is then turned into a cockroach and Freddy offers the only solution you can do with cockroaches.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5: The Dream Child in 1989.

And so Freddy is dead and Alice and Dan live on with no sign of Freddy, until of course during a dream Alice dreams of Amanda Krueger being locked in the asylum with 100 maniacs and another dream of Amanda giving birth to a baby, the baby escapes to the run down church from the end of part 4 and crawls into Freddy’s clothes and grows quickly into Adult Freddy and she awakes.

Alice calls Dan and he has another Freddy induced car crash on his way to see her and dies in front of Alice and she faints. When she awakes she’s told she is pregnant with Dan’s baby and see’s a young boy called Jacob walking the hospital who apparently doesn’t exist according to her friends.

And so Freddy starts to kill off Alice’s friends who take on some pretty decent alter egos in their dreams to fight Freddy but alas die. Alice she is informed that Freddy is using her unborn baby’s dreams to kill off her friends, How, I do not know. Further more she finds out that Jacob is Alice’s unborn son who’s being haunted by Freddy and so Alice sets off to release her son from his dreams by getting Freddy. Bonkers!

Alice sends her friend to find Amanda Krueger’s soul and releases it whilst she goes to get Freddy, Freddy however traps Jacob and Alice in an Escher type labyrinth to slow them down. Finally Amanda’s Soul is released and she instructs Jacob how to kill Freddy and using some sort of nonsensese power turns Freddy and himself back into babies, Alice absorbs Jacob and Amanda absorbs Freddy who puts up a fight but the church doors close.

We fade out to the new Alice Family with kids in back ground singing One, Two Freddy’s coming for you. What a crazy mess!

Best Kill:- One of the dream kids uses his obsession with comics to create the ultimate character to destroy Freddy, but alas Freddy has a better imagination.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6: Freddy’s Dead, The Final Nightmare in 1991

Ah good, the final film as promised right? nope,  At least it came in 3D right?, no way, only the last ten minutes were in 3D, well they used Peter Jackson’s script for this one right? Not at all, his awesome sounding script was rejected and they commissioned a script by veteran Freddy producer Rachel Talalay who also directed.

In the futuristic year of 1999 Freddy has long since returned and killed almost all the kids in Springwood and the last one, known as John Doe, is confronted by Freddy in a dramatic imaginative dream and ends up getting hit by a bus throwing him through the border of Springwood which is a barrier Freddy can not cross, the poor kid gets amnesia after hitting his head.

John Doe ends up at a youth shelter and is introduced to three other kids all with troubled pasts, Carlos is deaf, Tracy was abused and Spencer is unable to live with his fathers expectations and all are cared by Dr Maggie Burroughs who confiscates some items of the naughty kids (lovely plot devices).

Maggie finds a newspaper article from Springwood and suggests they go there to jog his memory with Spencer, Tracy and Carlos stowing away to escape the Shelter. They enter Springwood and come across a crazy bunch of adults who haven’t seen kids for years, two being a bizarre cameo from the happy couple Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold, Weird.

They learn that Freddy had a child that was taken away from him which was why he went a bit crazy and John Doe suspects it’s him which is why he is still alive, meanwhile The three other kids take the van to drive back to the shelter but are unable to leave continually driving in circles due to Freddy’s powers.

They eventually give up and decide to enter a house, no prizes for guessing what house it is, 1428 Elm Street.

Freddy starts to get the kids in their sleep in more decent and imaginative dream sequences and kills two of them, Carlos, by turning his hearing aid to 11  and Spencer in a video game dream. John Doe confronts Freddy and is killed but learns Freddy’s child was a girl and he tells Dr Maggie before he dies.

Freddy possess Maggie and as Tracy and Maggie drive through the Springwood border the barrier collapses, Freddy is out. On their return to the shelter no one remembers Carlos or Spencer except for Doc who has learned to control his dreams, of course he has.

Maggie discovers her adoption papers and when sleeping is visited by her father who explains he used her to escape Springwood so he can start killing another towns children.

Good old Doc discovers that Freddy’s power comes from Dream Demons that continually revive him but he can be killed if he’s pulled into the real world (haven’t we heard this all before?) and enters Freddy’s mind where she puts on her 3D glasses, seriously!

The glasses magically disappear (Ready everyone, this is where you put your 3D glasses on) and Maggie finds out that Freddy was teased as a child, abused by his foster father (Alice Cooper!) self inflicted himself as a teenager, killed his wife in front of his daughter and when the vigilante parents came a knocking with Molotov cocktails he was possessed by the Dream Demons creating the legend that is Freddy Kreuger. Well I’m glad that all makes sense.

Maggie brings Freddy through to reality (still in 3D) and have a royal old punch up using the plot device items that were confiscated at start of film, Maggie disarms Freddy and picks up the glove encouraged by Freddy to “wear it, it’s in your blood” so she does and stabs him, then puts a pipe bomb (another confiscated item) in his chest and kisses him on the check wishing him Happy Fathers day. Freddy looks into the camera and says “Kids” then boom, three 3D fish looking Dream Demon’s come flying out of him. Freddy’s Dead.

Best Kill:- After following a deaf Carlos and trying to get his attention by hilariously shouting and making noises at him constantly with no reaction Carlos has to hear things a bit louder after Freddy possesses his hearing aid and proceeds to torture him with sound in fantastic ways with an exploding finale. Brilliant. Freddy at his comical best.

Wes Cravens New Nightmare in 1994

And so finally we come to the penultimate Freddy. A nice change in idea for the franchise with Wes Craven back on board in directing and writing duties and Nancy actress Heather Langenkamp back as the star and the quality is immediately clear.

This was an interesting idea from Wes Craven, with a wide selection of old Nightmare on Elm Street actors, producers etc coming back and playing themselves in a story of how Freddy does come back.

Heather is on set of a new Nightmare on Elm Street film where a glove is being forged with blades and all. Wes Craven calls cut and we see Heather, her son Dylan and her husband Chase wandering the set where suddenly the glove prop comes to life and kills two special FX guys and as it goes for Dylan, Heather awakes to an Earthquake.

Heather is a tad uneasy and mentions of phone calls from someone sounding like Freddy, but it’s put down to an obsessed fan and so she goes to be interviewed on a talk show as it’s the tenth anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street where Robert Englund makes a surprise appearance as Freddy Krueger to the delight of the fans but to the worry of Heather.

Heather is approached by Newline Cinema to reprise her role as Nancy one last time as Wes is writing a new Nightmare film and her husband Chase is making the new Glove but she declines and goes home to kick her husbands arse.

When she gets home Dylan has a funny turn where he says in a freaky voice “Never Sleep Again” and so calls chase to come home but he crashes his car in a Freddy fuelled loss of control, he dies with a huge quadruple claw mark on his chest.

Heather approaches Wes for help who reveals he has dreams and writes them down to form his new screenplay and he reveals that evil has manifested itself as into a demon that has taken the form of Freddy Krueger because it’s the most familiar one and so focusing on Heather to make her weak to be able to enter the world. I think”¦.
Wes asks Heather to play Nancy one more time.

Nancy starts freaking out because Dylan is becoming more unstable and is taken to the hospital when he enters a trance. Here they try to put Dylan to sleep when Heather is taken for questioning, presumed insane, but Dylan’s babysister tries to stops them but Dylan eventually falls asleep and Freddy arrives killing the babysitter.

Dylan runs home being chased by a huge Freddy Krueger across a busy motorway and as she arrives back home Freddy has turned her home into 1428 Elm street and Heather into Nancy which releases Freddy into the real world where he takes Dylan.

Nancy follows them through to Freddy’s world by taking sleeping pills and entering through the bottom of Dylan’s bed where she faces Freddy for the final time and eventually after some more cat and mouse Nancy and Dylan get Freddy into a furnace and he burns revealing the true demon inside and as they escape the collapsing world they end up back home where a script is waiting for them from Wes with the message “Thanks for playing Nancy one last time” Nancy proceeds to read the script which is the same as the opening to this movie.

The End, well kind of as Freddy vs Jason came out Nine years later. Read the run down of that film here.

Best Kill:- Baby sitter of Dylan gets dragged around the hospital room in a homage to the original film in a brilliant revolving room set up. Classic kill.

Nightmare Elm Street 2010

In case you havent seen the trailer here it is.

And that’s Freddy Krueger done, a more comical killer and a horror icon that killed for fun making the most of each kill and using his victims mind to make creative deaths way beyond anything Jason and Michael could do. Good job Mr. Krueger.

This brings and end to my run down of all three films, following very shortly is the verdict on who is the ultimate killer. Who do you choose?

To bring us into Halloween I thought I would do a daring deed and take on Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger in a no holds bared face off (literally) where I have watched the entire back catalogue of their films to determine once and for all who is champion slasher

The three killers have haunted us through our childhoods with each horror legend bringing us movies which have completely terrified and equally bemused us with poor sequels and terrible plots

Beware pictures of blood, gore, slight nudity and terrible acting to follow.

I begin with Part one of the Halloween Special and start with Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees, one of the most iconic horror villains of all time sporting the classic hockey mask and machete, Jason Voorhees has become a vastly popular member of the horror circle and would be up there with Dracula, Frankstein’s monster Wolfman and Fred West in a poll of people you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a dark house with

With his name first brought to the screen in 1980 and Jason murdering his way through 12 films in total with a 13th on the way, he has amassed around 155 kills and has been shot, stabbed, electrocuted, blown up, drowned, dissolved in sewage, hung, dismembered, anchored to the lake floor and dragged into to the lake by a revengeful dead father of a terrified child! I kid you not.

Jason’s first appearance was in Friday the 13th in 1980 but he was not the killer of the teenagers his vengeful mother was. After the death of her disfigured son Jason where he drowned whilst the Crystal Lake Camp leaders were busy getting horny, Pamela Voorhees decided to seek revenge by killing anyone at the camp and finally getting her comeuppance by having her head cut off by a huge machete by the last remaining survivor of the film, Alice.

That survivor then climbs into a boat and awakes in the morning happy as Larry, then from nowhere a young disfigured Jason jumps from the water and drags her into the lake, A classic ending but she then awakes in hospital and asks about Jason, He’s still out there.

Best Kill:- The leaping from the lake when all seemed calm is Jason’s only kill but in the film the best kill was a young Kevin Bacon lying on a bed and having an arrow come through his neck from below the bed.

Friday 13th Part 2 released in 1981 follows on two months after the first one where a mysterious man tracks down Alice, the survivor from part 1, and kills her. Then five years later another bunch of counsellors come to Camp Crystal Lake and one by one they are killed by an unknown killer who is revealed towards the end when Jason is is shown wearing a sack with eye holes, a far more creepy look that the iconic hockey mask.

Jason gives chase to one of the remaining survivors, a girl, to an abandoned cabin where she finds an alter with Pamela Voorhees severed head and sweater which she wears to deceive Jason but not for long, she is saved by her friend Paul with a machete through Jason’s shoulder and they escape back to their cabin only for Jason to appear unmasked smashing through a window.

Best Kill:- A poor counselor in a wheelchair gets a machete in the head and then rolls down a flight of stairs still with a stunned look.

Friday 13th Part 3 was released in 1982 was not only in 3D but was the film that finally introduced us to the hockey mask but not till near the end of the film.

It’s the next day after part 2 and another group of kids head to the area of Crystal Lake and are picked off one by one by Jason, including a rag tag mean bunch of motor bikers who have a conflict with the kids. Jason dispatches a majority in 3D protruding implements and picks up the hockey mask from one of the kids and completes the legend.

And so all that remains is a girl survivor Chris, who manages to hang Jason from the barn rafters, which doesn’t kill him and when he gets free a surviving biker dude tries to fight Jason who is killed easily, Chris seases opportunity and plunges an axe into Jason’s head and escapes in a canoe and falls asleep”¦.sound familiar? Well she awakes seeing an unmasked Jason from the canoe and this time a decomposing Pamela Voorhees rises from the lake to drag her down below only to awake again being taken away by the police clearly disturbed with Jason lying “dead” with his new axe hat.

Best Kill:- As it’s a 3D movie this kill was truly hilarious and must have been terrifying with an eyeball flying at you from the screen after Jason squeezes our victims head until it goes pop. Classic.

Friday 13th Part 4 The Final Chapter (yeah right)
Released in 1984 it’s the day after part 3 and Jason is whisked to the morgue (don’t paramedics check for pulses?) Inevitably he rises and kills the morgue staff and returns to Crystal Lake.
Here another group of teenagers are gathering to spend time at cabin and a mother, her son Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) and daughter Trish live near by.

Jason proceeds to kill everyone off in a variety of ways including a young George Mcfly, Crispin Glover getting a meat cleaver to the face and all that’s left is Tommy and his sister, Tommy is into horror and makeup and so cuts his hair short and applies makeup to make him look like a disfigured young Jason which distracts Jason long enough for Trish to attack with the machete but she misses and removes his mask, she drops the machete which Tommy picks up and stabs in his head but Jason moves so Tommy hacks the hell out of Jason with an evil look in his eyes. The End”¦..

Best Kill:- A swimming teenager is stabbed with harpoon gun in the groin by Jason, then lifted into the air and then Jason fires the gun, Ouch!

Friday 13th Part 5 A New Beginning is a bit of a con but a brave idea to get things going in a different direction in 1985. Young Tommy Jarvis who butchered Jason in part 4 is now a teenager and has been moving from various mental institutions and settles in at a place called Pinehurst run by Pam. A murder occurs on his first day and a disgruntled ambulance man by the name of Roy Burns seems a bit annoyed when picking up the body, Hmmmm plot point maybe.

From then on a series of killings occur by an unknown assailant which lead to Tommy becoming more unstable with his feeling that it’s Jason and by the end of the film a killer emerges dressed as Jason Voorhees but of course it’s not Jason, he’s dead and it’s a Scooby doo ending revealing under the mask it’s old Roy Burns the ambulance driver who’s son was killed at the start, and he would of got away with it if it wasn’t for falling onto some spikes.

Tommy recuperates in hospital and is visited by Pam who is attacked by Tommy, but it’s all a dream”¦or is it.

Tommy opens his hospital bedside cabinet and takes out the hockey mask, you hear a smash and Pam runs in thinking that Tommy has done a runner but as the door closes behind her Tommy is wearing the mask “Look out Pam” it’s too late your dead.

Best Kill:- Another Non-Jason death. Our victim is strapped to a tree by a belt around his eyes and the killer proceeds to twist the belt making it tighter squashing his eyeballs into his head, brutal stuff.

Friday 13th Part 6 Jason Lives. And so he does in 1986, at last supernatural Jason takes centre stage in a brilliant plot device that ignores the last film almost completely.
Tommy Jarvis is back, he’s not an insane killer he’s just stupid.

Jason is buried in a cemetery (with mask still attached of course) and is actually dead with his own tombstone and Tommy and his pal decide to dig Jason up and destroy the body once and for all as Tommy is haunted by Jason in his dreams and so in a fit of rage and some unbelievable odds Tommy impales Jason with a piece of iron fence that is struck by lightening reviving Jason into an all powerful killing machine, Opps.

Tommy retreats after his friend has his heart ripped out and flees to Crystal Lake (now Forest Green as the old name seemed to effect the tourist trade) knowing that’s where Jason will return. With Tommy’s mental past the police find it hard to believe him and so blame him for the recent spat of murders that are occurring.

With the help of the Sheriff’s daughter Megan, Tommy hatches a plan to send Jason to the bottom of Crystal Lake, Jason by now has killed all the new counsellors at Camp Body Count and is lured into the lake where Tommy and Megan wait and eventually send him to the bottom of the lake with some chains and a rock, and so we see Jason is finally dead”¦.. No wait he opened his eye and clenched his fist, Grrrrrrr.

Best Kill:- A teenage girl gets dragged into the bathroom in their RV whilst her boyfriend drives, Jason then smashes her head into the mirror and continues pushing so a perfect imprint of her head comes through the wall on the other side.

Friday 13th Part 7 The New Blood is a venture into the ridiculous for the Voorhees franchise in 1988, not that being electrocuted back to life or being hacked to pieces and still living isn’t ridiculous, but Jason is put against his greatest match, a girl called Tina with telekinetic powers.
The film starts showing the girl at seven years old killing her father, after he abused her mother, by collapsing the jetty he was standing on into Crystal Lake.

Ten years later Tina is still struggling to cope with guilt of killing her father so her mother, the most loving mother in the world, sends her back to their family home where she killed her father (if that doesn’t work nothing will) to be studied by an exploitive psychiatrist with a hidden agenda, now what could that be.

His skills as a psychiatrist are basically shouting verbal abuse at her to increase her mental powers which leads to her accidentally breaking the chains round Jason’s neck that Tommy used to sink Voorhees in Part 6, Oh no!

Jason is obviously quite annoyed at being left on the ocean floor for years and kills everyone near by, including some more kids partying in a cabin down the road and after he has made up for lost time it’s time for the final battle between Tinakinetic powers and Jason, She spins him round, sends him up and down, makes his mask tighten and break revealing his decaying face and finally exploding the family cabin.

Jason is pretty hard though and keeps coming and just when he is about to kill Tina on the Jetty her dead father (presumably brought back to life through her powers) explodes through the jetty, grabs Jason and brings him back to the bottom of the lake, now that’s redemption for abusing her mother isn’t it.

Best Kill:- And probably the best kill of the series, A terrified teenager decides the safest place to hide would be in her tent in her sleeping bag, alas Jason is not an idiot and drags the sleeping bag outside where he smashes it into a tree killing her instantly, it’s hilarious and quite brilliant, so much so in Jason X it’s copied with two girls and two sleeping bags hit against a tree multiple times. Fantastic.

Friday 13th Part 8 Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989, The greatest title of the series and another start that ignores the previous sequel.
Jason is stuck at the bottom of the lake but not by a dead father of Tina, he just is dead.
A randy couple of teenagers on a boat weigh anchor into Crystal Lake which hits an underwater power cable that resurrects Jason who quickly dispatches them and takes a hockey mask the boy used to scare his girlfriend, haha not funny now.

Jason then grabs an anchor of a large boat heading to Manhattan for a graduation party from Crystal Lake as he is probably sick of the sight of Crystal Lake, too many bad memories. Our heroine Rennie is onboard with other soon to be dead teenagers and she starts having visions of Jason as a child drowning and soon the kids start getting killed off and one thing leads to another the boat starts to sink after an explosion and five of the group and Rennie’s dog escape on a row boat to Manhattan.

Jason follows suit and arrives killing a few more on his hunt for Rennie, it’s here we learn that Rennie was almost drowned in crystal lake by Jason as a child, so I take it Jason wanted to finish the job which is why he targeted Rennie, heavy vendetta!

The chase continues through dark alleys and Jason finally meets his demise in the sewers of New York where for some reason toxic waste is used to flush the sewers and it melts Jason away leaving the body of a young Jason”¦.now that’s closure.
You hardly saw any of Manhattan and he certainly didn’t take it so bit disappointing overall.

Best Kill:- Has to be amateur boxer Julius who admirably takes on Jason when he is cornered giving him punch after punch pushing him closer to the edge of a building but Jason has last punch knocking his block off, with one punch decapitating Julius. What a knock out.

Friday 13th Part 9 Jason goes to Hell: The Final Friday (again) 1993 and probably the worst of the series as Jason is hardly in it.
It opens with an unexplained resurrected Jason stalking a woman who leads him into an FBI trap where they shoot him up then blow him to pieces. The remains are then taken to a morgue where the coroner gets hypnotised by Jason’s beating heart, the coroner then decides to eat it therefore leading him to be possessed by Jason’s demonic spirit. Oh dear.

The spirit then transfers from host to host through a terrible looking snake creature and many bodies lay dead. A cool character is introduced in bounty hunter Creighton Duke who seems to know all about Jason and delivers a n explanation to try explain a way to finally kill Jason “Through a Voorhees Jason was born and so through one he can be reborn, and that only by the hands of another member of the Voorhees family can Jason finally be destroyed”.

Jason then tries to locate and get reborn through a relative, so lucky then that he finds Diana who’s his half sister and her daughter Jessica. In a crazy twist of fate Diana is killed and so it’s down to Jessica to finish off Jason using a magic knife (The Bone knife from the Evil Dead films) to the heart which is given by Duke, the knife is the only thing that can kill and send Jason to Hell.

In the final fight, Jessica faces a Jason possessed body who has his head chopped off and the weird Jason Soul snake escapes and finds his Diana, his half sisters dead body and is reborn back into Jason with boiler suit and hockey mask, Right on!

Jason is stabbed through the heart which sends him to hell and all that remain is his mask, and that’s the end of Jason. BUT NO, The hockey mask is shown laying on some sand and as the camera pulls back Freddy Krueger’s clawed hand reaches out and grabs Jason’s mask and brings it to hell, Awesome!!

Best Kill:- Probably one of most goriest kills and most badly timed as two teenagers are caught doing the thing in a tent that Jason hates the most, so to show his disapproval Jason impales the girl with a spike and rips it through her upwards cutting her in two .

Friday the 13th 10, Jason X.
Released in 2002 but initially set in 2008 to avoid problems with the timeline with Freddy vs Jason being released in 2003 as that would have been ridiculous!

Jason has been captured by the U.S Government and held at the ridiculously named Crystal Lake Research Facility where they have unsuccessfully tried to execute Jason so they intend to cryogenically freeze him to neutralize the threat which surprising goes badly and he kills everyone except our heroine Rowan who lures him into the cryonic chamber where she is stabbed but along with Jason is frozen.

And to finally end any chance of adding a further sequel (so you would think) we head over 400 years into the future to the year 2455, Earth is polluted and vacant and our two popsicle roommates are found by a research ship and taken to their spaceship to go to Earth 2.

Amazingly they have a machine that can heal any wound using nanotechnology which fixes Rowan and she warns that Jason is not dead, To cut a long story short (Too late!) Jason is accidentally thawed out and starts killing, he kills more randy teenagers and a bunch of marines led by Seargent Brodski are quickly dispatched.

Jason finally comes face to face with a female android programmed to fight who kicks his ass shooting off his leg, abdomen and chest, one arm and most of his head and is dead, Yeah! but look you fools he’s fallen in the Nano repair machine, why are you walking away!!

Jason is rebuilt into Uber-Jason, making him part cyborg and quite angry but Brodski comes back and saves everyone by blowing him out into space but Jason doesn’t give up and comes back to the ship where some futuristic Holograph machine creates a version of Crystal Lake with frolicking girls to distract Jason whilst they fix the ship to escape. Hilariously Jason recreates the girl in a sleeping bag against a tree kill with two of them this time pounding them over and over (probably one of my favourite scenes in the franchise) and then gets bored and starts the hunt for the survivors.

Jason is again ejected into space but as he comes back again Brodski, the sly dog, grabs him wearing a jetpack suit and flies him into the Earth 2′s atmosphere where they burn up on entry and killing Jason once and for all, unless the image of just his mask floating to the bottom of a lake after surviving the heat of re-entry can possibly mean anything else”¦

Best Kill:- Adrienne, Jason wakes up from his hibernation and the first thing he does grab the girl by the head, sticks it in a vat of liquid Nitrogen that freezes her head than smashes it on the table shattering it to pieces, Brilliant brilliant death.

Freddy VS Jason, 2003

Finally the battle we have been waiting for since the ending of Friday 13th Part 9 ten years previous and what was made was a very well thought out story and a pretty decent horror film.

The basic story is that Freddy is trapped in hell and has been forgotten by the children of Springwood and so he finds Jason Voorhees in Hell and disguised as his mum Pamela Voorhees, instructs Jason to go to Elm Street in Springwood to kill so to get the kids thinking of Freddy again.

Jason does the business and Freddy is mentioned in the aftermath and so our heroine Lori dreams about Freddy but not giving him enough power to kill in dreams. Lori awakens and tells her friends of the dream and so they dream of Freddy giving him more power but the problem is Jason isn’t going to stop killing and step aside for Freddy to return.

The kids hatch a plan to get Jason to Camp Crystal Lake and to draw Freddy from Lori’s dreams into reality to finish it once and for all. They manage to drug Jason to sleep and get him there then Lori sleeps and finally gets Freddy into reality and the two legends face off revealing in the process that Freddy killed Lori’s mother blah blah, the two continue to fight and fight really well with machete and glove slashing and stabbing, until finally Freddy gets stabbed with his own decapitated arm and glove then gets his head decapitated by Lori as Jason’s falls into Crystal Lake due to his injuries. They are both dead.

But Noooooooooo, Jason rises from the lake holding Freddy Krueger’s decapitated head still alive and giving a wink to the camera and that’s that.

Best Kill:- Trey, Is stabbed multiple times with Jason’s Machete whilst in bed and if that wasn’t enough whilst laying face down Jason folds the bed in half so Trey’s feet are touching the back of his head.

Friday the 13th 2009.

A pointless remake adding nothing to the franchise.
Basically a reboot cash in to show Jason Voorhees to a new generation that won’t except the cheap looking versions of the early films this is the same film as the Friday the 13th parts 2-4 but with some added plot to make it modern.

The film starts off showing a young Jason witnessing his mother being beheaded by a camp counsellor then jumps 30 years later to where a group of friends are camping trying to locate some marijuana that was grown in the forest (hey, there teenagers right) they are all murdered except Whitney who he kidnaps because she resembles his mother.

Six weeks later Whitney’s brother Clay (Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki) is searching for her near Crystal Lake and Jenna and her group of young friends are also coming to town to stay in a cabin to party.

The kids all start to get killed off in pretty gruesome ways and Clay and Jenna go off to search for Whitney who find her chained up. They escape but Jenna is caught and killed and so Clay and Whitney run to safety, Whitney pretends to be Mrs. Voorhess and then stabs Jason with his own Machete and Clay dumps Jason’s body in the Lake but as They leave the dock Jason burst through the wooden dock and takes Whitney into the Lake.

It was all too similar to the originals for me and Jason did what he did best which is killing teenagers but with more realistic FX, but there was no scares that were not predictable and no added story to the great character of Jason.

Best Kill:- Teenager camper is sitting round the fire screaming like a girl because he has his foot caught in a bear trap and within seconds Jason appears and slams his machete straight into his head to shut him up.

Although mildly enjoyable it is completely unnecessary reboot and it’s already got a sequel in development that will hopefully add something more but in the hands of Michael Bay producing I doubt it.

And so from one Michael (Bay) who murdered Transformers my next part of the Halloween special will be the murdering star of the Halloween Films Michael Myers.