Friday the 13th Marathon Awards

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I’ve been somewhat disorganized during this marathon and I realized that I never really finished off with awards the way I have for some previous marathons. The Filmspotting guys like to give their awards fancy names (i.e. for the SF marathon, they called the awards the “damn dirty apes”), so I guess the Golden Machetes would fit for this, right? Anyway, since this marathon technically started a couple of years ago, I figure a quick recap is in order:

With that out of the way, let’s get to the awards:

  • Best Final Girl: It’s funny, but when I thought about it, my choice is the final girl from one of my least favorite installments – Ginny Field (played by Amy Steel) from Part II. While the film is a bit on the incomprehensible side, Amy Steel’s Ginny is definitely the standout character and I think the best final girl in the series. She takes initiative and goes on the offensive more than any other woman in the series (save perhaps the final girl from Part VII, who had a neat gimmick that for the most part didn’t pay off that much), even going so far as to put on Jason’s mother’s sweater at one point, just to mess with Jason’s head. Perhaps part of this was that this was Jason’s first real movie, and he had not yet even donned his legendary hockey mask let alone demonstrated ridiculous supernatural powers that make it hard to put up a great fight (again, Tina from Part VII did pretty good in the later films…)
  • Best Douchebag: The series is filled with douchebags that you end up rooting against, but my choice here actually comes from the recent remake: Travis Van Winkle really reaches new depths of Douchebaggery in his performance as Trent. He’s the source of one of the best moments in an otherwise middle of the road film – the only thing that was lacking was a truly unique and gory kill (something the film lacks in general). Honorable mentions to the douchebag from Part IV (don’t remember his name and IMDB doesn’t have pictures) and Doctor Douchebag from Part VII.
  • Best Appearance By Legitmate Actors: Given the tremendous amount of no-name actors to appear in these films, I’m surprised at the amount of possible answers here. The most obvious choice would be Kevin Bacon from the original. Another popular choice has to be Crispin Glover’s appearance in Part IV. Part IX actually has the most starpower though: Steven Culp, Steven Williams, and Erin Gray all put in appearances in that film. To me, it really comes down to Crispin Glover (especially when you consider that insanely funny dance he does) and Steven Williams’s hilarious performance in part IX.
  • Best Jason: A popular choice for this would have to be Kane Hodder, the only one to play Jason in multiple films, but while I think he did a fine job, he’s also only in the worst films in the series (parts VII-X). For me, I’d go with C.J. Graham, who played Jason in Part VI. He strikes quite a few memorable poses in the film, and manages to do some rather expressive stuff, which can be difficult considering the mask.
  • Top 5 Kills: There are a lot to choose from here, but here are a few of the standouts for me…
    • Kevin Bacon in the Original – Laying in the bottom bunk, Bacon feels some blood dripping from the top bunk. Then a hand suddenly reaches up and grabs his head while an arrow is pushed up from under the bed, through his neck. Best kill of the first movie.
    • Sleeping Bag Kill From Part VII and X – In Part VII, Jason happens upon a couple of campers and naturally decides to kill them. He takes care of the guy first, then grabs the girl, who is still in her sleeping bag, and slams her against the tree. Classic kill in an otherwise lackluster installment of the series. There’s a great reprise of this kill in Jason X though, when Jason wanders into some Holodeck simulation thingy and our heroes have programmed a nice Crystal Lake simulation. The whole sequence pretty much perfects what happened in part VII and adds a new twist.
    • Face Smash from Part X – One of the more original kills. Jason wakes up after a few hundred years and finds a cute girl doing his autopsy. He grabs her head, dunks it in a vat of liquid nitrogen (freezing her head) and then smashes it into a thousand pieces. Brilliant.
    • Boxing in Part VIII – One of the few bearable moments of this film features one of our heroes boxing Jason on a rooftop. Jason toys with him a bit, lets a few punches land, then throws one punch that knocks the kid’s head right off. The head goes bouncing off the roof, down the fire escape and into an open dumpster (which then slams shut).
    • Back Breaker in Part VI and Freddy Vs Jason – In Part VI, the Sheriff attempts to protect his daughter by attacking Jason. He puts up a reasonable fight too… until Jason grabs him and folds him in half (ouch). There’s a minor reprise of this in Freddy Vs. Jason when Jason stabs a kid on a bed with his machete like 10 times, then folds the bed up achieving the same back breaking results.

    Some honorable mentions include the wheel chair death from Part II, punching through the heart in part VI, axe to the crotch of a douchebag who is walking on his hands in part III, spear gun to the crotch in part IV, spear gun to the eye in part III, and the eye popping kill in part III (I’m sure these last two are even better in 3D, but I’ve never seen that version). And there’s probably like 5 others that are worth mentioning.

  • Best Jason Resurrection: There are two necessary components to a slasher sequel (besides the standard gore and T&A, etc…). First is how the slasher is resurrected. For me, the best resurrection has to be Part VI, where his dead body gets struck by lightning. It’s very evocative of a Frankenstein creation scene, and it’s pretty funny too.
  • Best Jason Death: The other necessary component of a slasher sequel is how the slasher is “killed”. For this one, it doesn’t get much better than Jason’s death at the end of Part IV, thanks especially to Tom Savini’s brilliant makeup and gory special effects. I’d give an honorable mention to the opening sequence to Part IX, which is one of the better openings and quite unexpected.
  • Best Picture: Well, it’s really a toss up. If I have to choose, it would probably be Part VI with <a href="Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter“>Part IV coming in a close second. I know some people don’t like Part VI’s self-aware and referential nature combined with a more humorous take on the series, but it still works quite well for me! There are not many movie series that make it to six films, but of those that do, there are few that could claim the sixth film to be the best in the series… Part VI must have been difficult to follow up as well, because from there, the series began a long and deadly spiral downwards…

And that just about wraps up the marathon. Why I still enjoy these silly, cheesy movies is still a mystery to me (also a mystery: why I was ever scared of them), but enjoy them I do.