JGTH certainly has one of the most explicit sex=death scenes ever. And the stepping on the condom wrapper was truly the height of subtly.

At least the makeup designs and effects were usually cool and well executed, since *that's* what I'm talking about.

The makeup and stuff there though does look pretty cool regardless of how goofy it was to completely change Jason from a deformed human to essentially a zombie monster.

See, I think that design is awesome and at least looks like something that belongs in a horror movie.

But this:


just reminds me of this:

I think the series had gone over-the-top before New Line got involved. With the Zombie Jason, telekinesis in part 7 and Manhattan gimmick of part 8. It was seriously cheesy stuff, but that's part of what I love about the franchise. With Jason X, I actually preferred the final act because it was like producers just threw up their arms and admitted they were just having fun with the concept. The less said about Jason Goes to Hell, the better.

The over the top factor started to go overboard (as if it wasn't before already ) with Jason Lives when he was essentially made into a zombie. I love that film though and its one of the best of the franchise in my honest opinion. The New Blood isn't bad but it basically is just Jason meets Carrie. Still pretty entertaining though. I would say Jason Takes Manhattan is the weakest Paramount entry (though I still like it for what it is) just because of what a wasted opportunity it was. We saw so little of Jason actually in Manhattan that it was disappointing.

I still think though that the New Line entries are pretty different in tone from the Paramount films. Something about Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X to me lacks the fun campy factor of the Paramount entries. The New Line entries to me almost feel like they take themselves too seriously despite both films having ridiculous premises (even by the standards of the franchise).

Jason Goes to Hell is easily my favorite FT13 to view today. I like Part 6 a great deal due to nostalgia.

The Final Chapter is my favorite but part 6 is a lot of fun. A lot of fans hate part 7 but I found it enjoyable. Jason Takes Manhattan is pretty bad, and probably the worst of the Paramount movies, but it is the best in terms of 80s cheese. The colorful clothing, the big hair, the opening song:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NSLSUDDKpbA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The movie scores some big points with me for 80s nostalgia alone. I actually kind of prefer the boat portion of the movie to the New York scenes. It's fun sticking Jason in a new environment, especially a claustrophobic environment like the boat. When the movie goes to New York, things get sleazy. The scene where the thugs drag the leading lady to an alley to inject her with drugs and rape is truly repulsive and feels out of place in a Friday the 13th movie. The finale with all of the sludge is also pretty gross and these scenes just make me feel dirty while watching them. It reminds me of the hillbilly characters from part 5, whenever I see them I think of one of my favorite MST3K lines: "can you catch a disease just from watching a movie?"

Jason Goes to Hell did seem to take itself pretty seriously, but I thought Jason X was pretty tongue-in-cheek. I'm open to more entries in the series, but I don't think it'll ever be the same. As I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite aspects of the franchise is the 80s nostalgia, and I don't think they can get that back unless they hire Adam Wingard to direct. Now there's an idea.

You don't see that opinion very often!

Yeah Jason X doesn't take itself as seriously but it still seems to have a different tone overall. I think horror films in general lost something after the 80s or early 90s personally. Most of my favorites from the genre are from the 60s-80s and some early 90s stuff.

Then along came CG and killed everything .

I wouldn't blame CG for everything but that's part of it. I started to get sick of stuff like self-awareness in horror which began to be pretty prevelant in the 90s with films such Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Scream and its sequels. Then the 2000s started to bring us shit like torture porn (Saw and its sequels, Hostel and its sequels, etc.) and a whole slew of remakes. Plus the new trend of stuff like found footage I absolutely loathe just because I think its an overused gimmick and doesn't fit in a lot of times its used.

I think there are some good modern horror films and directors (Ty West is a personal favorite director of mine) and a lot of the more indie stuff is pretty decent or even some direct to DVD/Blu-ray releases tend to be better than theatrical at times I think. By and large I tend to find a lot of modern horror very bland in a lot of ways though.

There have been shitty horror movies from every decade, the difference with me is that I actually enjoy watching shitting horror movies from the 80s. They are guilty pleasures.

I agree with this too but it seems like the number of shitty horror films has gone up. Not in a good shitty way where films are so bad that they're good, but just in a shitty way that they aren't enjoyable to watch. I think more older horror films had that campiness factor to them that made them enjoyable.

I think that New Nightmare is brilliant, one of the most underrated horror films of recent years. I do like Scream, but I'm pretty cine-literate, so if you want to show off, you'd better have something interesting to say. Though Cherry Falls has an interesting idea. Most of the time, it was just "look how clever I am" and got kind of annoying.

If I never see another found footage film again, I will be OK with that.

There's a certain cheesy charm to the old 50s flicks too.

Pretty much describes the Chiller Network.

80s horror flicks have a certain amount of bravura kitsch going for them that, even though they're not 'good' movies, they're still sort of fun to watch. You could tell that the people making them were doing the best they could with what they had to work with. This modern flood of b-horror movies just seem lazy and derivitive.

Modern horror is often going after crossover audiences that don't normally enjoy horror films, which leads to many tepid films with nothing going for them. Horror films in the 1980s were never compromised with the delusion they needed to pander to anyone but true horror fans. That often led to a few delicious moments, even if most of the movie was poor.

Someone should re-make Jason Takes Manhattan properly someday. The commentary on the DVD set for that movie was hilarious, where they basically said "We WANTED to have Jason go nuts in New York City, and that's what all the fans wanted, but we just didn't get enough money to do it so we did this instead!" I just wondered why they bothered making that movie at all? Though I did enjoy it for what it was, at least the first time.

I thought the same thing, but I doubt anybody would ever touch JTM ever again. Would be cool to see somebody try it though.

Jason Takes Los Angeles!

or even better...Jason Takes Las Vegas!

I would check them out if they could come up with a plausible excuse for why Jason was on the West Coast.

I am surprised we haven't seen a modern re-make yet with a cult being inspired by Jason going around killing in his name. Jason gets upset and offs all the cult members in various gruesome ways, allowing the audience to root for him. The script practically writes itself. It shows the lack of creative horror talent in Hollywood at the moment.

I want a "from an idea" credit if someone reading this page rips my idea off.

The shift in tone is the reason I don't like Jason X. I didn't think the sci-fi setting fit Jason or the series at all and the movie was just too damn goofy for me. Personally, I thought it felt more like a parody of the series than anything.

I agree with you on horror movies loosing something once the 90s rolled along and I've actually had that same feeling for a couple years. I don't know what happened, but once the 90s came along, it seemed like horror movies just weren't fun anymore. The people making them either tried making them too seriously or they turned them into these "hip" self-aware horror movies we had in the late 90s.

Wasn't this the plot from one of the early, unproduced scripts for Freddy vs. Jason? I remember reading a synopsis that sounded similar on a forum around fifteen years ago, but at that point it was hard to tell what was official and what was fan fiction.

Both if memory serves me right. There was a script with a Freddy cult and a Jason cult.

I guarantee it would be more plausible than the one for having him in SPACE! Jason takes Las Vegas would be pretty cool- maybe have him go down the Stratosphere Tower.

I was about to say that too, I think a Freddy cult was in one of the FVJ drafts. Though if Phantom Stranger is getting any royalties for it, I'm sure he wouldn't be posting here.