friday the 13th Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This month is all about villains on Cinematical, and thankfully, October seems flush with folks who fit the bill: horror movies, often released in anticipation (if not exploitation) of Halloween, usually offer at least one person, creature or entity that qualifies as an adversary to be fled from or feared. But the sad truth is that not a whole lot of them have particularly great theme music, which brings us to this week's Cinematical Seven.

To be fair, these folks don't often have the luxury of choosing said music themselves, so if they get a crappy rock song or some kind of dumbass lullabye, it's not their fault. But after revisiting a number of classic horror series and the movie monsters they immortalized, we've put together what we think is a pretty good collection of themes that folks can and will still find scary. (And while some of this music may or may not be specifically associated with the individual character or creature, the guideline to which we held ourselves was the association of the music with that particular monster.)

Suffice it to say there are a number of other great horror movie themes, and we're just scratching the surface with a list of seven, but check our list of some of the most famous, memorable, and yeah, terrifying, with or without some dude in a mask bearing down on the bathroom door where you've found temporary safe haven.

Members of the cast and crew of Friday the 13th Parts VII and VIII sat down with a small crowd of genre press to discuss their experiences on the films and delve into the extras on both films' forthcoming DVDs, which are due on Sept. 15. Vincent Craig "VC" Dupree, who played Julius in Jason Takes Manhattan, said he was amazed people still had so much affection for his death in the film, in which Jason literally knocks his block off. "People just have a lot of love for that particular kill," Dupree said at a press event Wednesday on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. "As Kane and I were just talking about, the fact that I'm one of the only black guys who's like made it towards the end of the movie [is significant], so the response from it is really cool. More recently I started doing these conventions, and I didn't realize how much love people had out there for that kill."

Kane Hodder, who played Jason in the film, corroborated the fans' love for that particular scene. "It's one of the kills that I'd done that fans talked about the most," he revealed. "In fact, I was just in Atlanta at DragonCon and a guy came up and was talking about that kill. He says, 'do you know how many times he punched you before you knocked his head off?' I said no. 'Sixty-six!' The guy knew that. Then I was looking at them and it was hard to count because he was throwing body punches really fast. I'm not kidding – he was hitting me. I had a catcher's pad on."

Read the rest over at Horror Squad

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Today at Paramount's DVD luncheon commemorating the release of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan, actor Kane Hodder, who played Jason Voorhees in both films, made a surprising revelation about the trailer for Jason Takes Manhattan, a perennial favorite among fans of the series. "This is the first time I've ever said it: that's not me," he announced. "We were shooting in Vancouver, that was done on the Jersey side of Manhattan, and I don't know who it is."

Hodder was first cast in The New Blood and stayed with the series for four installments, including the two New Line iterations Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X. Hodder said that not only was he not the hockey-mask-wearing manic in question when that teaser was shot, but he didn't feel like the actual performer played the character accurately.

Can a horror movie have a political agenda? Well, that was the question I asked myself after reading '15 Horror Movies Socialists Could Love''. So as I started to think back to all the hacking and slashing I'd seen over the years, I looked for some some pattern or connection between what I choose at the box-office and what I do at the polling station -- and what did I come up with? Well, I'll get to that, but first I wanted to take a moment to look back at some of the films that have gained a reputation with critics and fans alike as movies with a so-called conservative or liberal state of mind:

'Red State Horror':

Friday the 13th (1980)
Conservatives supposedly love this movie because it's all about no-good kids getting what they deserve. Sexy teens don't stand a chance in this franchise from the moment they take a drink, get high, or get naked. Plus, it's one of the few horror films with a moral about the importance of a good work ethic.

Frankenstein
It's science vs. religion in the story of a man who presumes to know more than God...and I think we all remember how that turns out.

Lost Boys
Family values are all over this one, and when a divorced mom pays more attention to a her love life than her two sons, look what happens. So even with a pot-smoking grandpa, plenty of critics agree that this film is all about Regan's America and the triumph of family over no-good, rock n' roll loving, motorcycle-driving youth gangs.

Tremors
2nd Amendment fans praise this tale of a band of locals fending off giant worms and the gun-toting survivalists that help save the day -- Take that Brady Bill!

Check out the rest at HorrorSquad!

Our pal Jason is having one hell of a big DVD day, with no less than six different releases dedicated to the masked masher. With that in mind, we dig up a piece from last February and reminisce over our favorite slasher's greatest hits.

To commemorate the re-re-reawakening of good ol' Jason Voorhees, I thought it'd be fun to toss out seven of my favorite kills from the hulking lunatic. And so I did. To find out if the new Friday the 13th has any kills worth considering, well, I guess you'll have to buy a ticket. Or wait for the DVD. Or cable.

Mark (Friday the 13th Part 2) -- This is where we learned that all bets were off: Not only would Jason gladly kill a good-looking handicapped guy who was about to get sexed up ... but he'd also give the wheelchair-bound lothario one of the series' most diabolical demises! Yep, poor Mark got a machete in the face before his wheelchair bounced (backwards!) down a giant staircase. Simple, creepy, effective.

Andy (Friday the 13th Part 3) -- Why would a guy spend his after-sex time walking around on his hands? So that Jason can chop him (downward!) from the groin to the ... I dunno really, but in a movie filled with cheesy FX and unconvincing kills, this one still comes off as impressively nasty. I was gonna go with "Jeff & Sandra's post-coital dual-skewer" scene, but the MPAA gutted most of that creativity.

Jack (Friday the 13th) -- Most hardcore fans would probably pick Annie (nasty throat slice) or Marcie (axe to the face!), but there's something about that hand popping up from beneath Kevin Bacon that always freaked me out. Plus the "arrow throat" gag works exceedingly well, whether you're watching the American version or the slightly messier UK edition.

Friday the 13th
Marcus Nispel directs a rebooted version of the venerable series, which borrows elements from the first four films and adds precious few of its own. I'm tempted to say "skip it," based on my own review, but those first 20-25 minutes are pretty ferocious, and the "Extended Killer Cut" promises more of everything. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.

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Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail
Tyler Perry has grown his beloved character Madea "into a larger-than-life force of nature that is genuinely funny," wrote Eric D. Snider. He noted the writer/director's "tendency toward oversimplification," however, and commented: "Maybe if someone would do a better job of making films targeted at a black, female Christian audience, Perry's half-baked didacticism would suffer in comparison. In the meantime, this is the best there is, so it's nice that Perry is improving, albeit in small increments." Rent it.

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Ghostbusters
The comedy classic with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, and Sigourney Weaver stands ready to imprint itself upon your memory once again, in a new Blu-ray edition. One word to keep in mind before buying, however: grain. "Surprisingly heavy," says DVD Beaver; "heavy wash of grain that never quite dissipates," per IGN; "features plenty of the swirly stuff in most every scene," according to Blu-ray.com. Other than that important factor, which is claimed to reflect the original source print, reviews have been positive. Rent it.

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Also out: What Goes Up, Morning Light, Sword of the Stranger, and a boatload of TV series (a list of the latter at TV Squad).

After the jump: Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray, and Collector's Corner.

On a recent visit to the Chicago-based set of the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form gave us online types a good hour with which to poke and prod about that film and countless other projects in the works. The Elm St. stuff will have to wait until the time is right, but at the moment, you're just a hop, skip and jump away from finding out where Platinum Dunes currently stands with a Friday the 13th sequel, their present involvement in reported remakes of The Birds and Rosemary's Baby, and how exactly the little-seen Horsemen ended up slipping through the cracks last spring...

Read the full interview at Horror Squad!

Oh, what might have been! Alison Lohman gives a terrific performance as the cursed loan officer Christine Brown in Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, which opens tomorrow. If not for the vagaries of scheduling, though, Ellen Page would have played the lead role. Would Page have been any better? We'll never know, but she joins a long list that inspires thoughts of 'What if ...?'

Once upon a time, we might have seen Leslie Howard as the titular Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi as The Monster. Instead, Colin Clive played the good doctor, Boris Karloff got a jump-start on life, and the rest is horror history. Here are seven more recent examples of actors and actresses who were considered for key roles in great horror films ... and the ones who replaced them, listed in chronological order. [Disclaimer: Based on information provided on IMDb's "trivia" pages, so no guarantees on accuracy.] Better? Worse? You decide.

1. Melanie Griffith / Sissy Spacek (Carrie)

Even though she was in her mid-20s, Spacek looks so young and fragile as Carrie that it's difficult to imagine anyone else in the role. Griffith was 18 or 19 and already had made an impression in Night Moves, The Drowning Pool, and Smile when she auditioned to play the telekinetic high schooler. Conveying Carrie's complexities might have been beyond her still-developing skills at that point. The pic above, left, is from Joyride, released the following year.

Just when you thought it was safe to go wandering in the woods with your portable DVD player, Jason Voorhees appears to remind you: check your calendar before leaving the house. I wish that the Friday the 13th reboot, directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay, had lived up to the promise of its first 20-25 minutes. As I wrote upon its release in February, "the set-up in the present day was classically simple, the action flared up in mean and bloody outbursts, and Jason's appearance was note-perfect."

It's too bad the movie never regained its footing after it paused to take a breath, but I know that won't keep horror fans from checking it out when it hits DVD on June 16, especially since the unrated version will include additional scenes (reportedly nine minutes of unseen footage). The theatrical version did appear short of some of the expected bloody carnage -- a few scenes felt incomplete, while others stopped just before more explicit mayhem might have been unleashed. DVD Active has the early artwork; the unrated edition on DVD includes a "Rebirth of Jason" featurette, while the Blu-ray will have both the theatrical and unrated editions, plus two additional featurettes and a "terror trivia track."

Meanwhile, Shock Til You Drop has details on the extras and artwork for the new special editions of Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. All three feature audio commentaries and featurettes; Part IV even gets a "fan commentary" by the talented directors Adam Green (Hatchet, Spiral) and Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End). Personally, I'll be buying at least two out of those three. They'll all be released on Tuesday, June 16.

Have you ever dismissed a movie as an unmitigated piece of junk, and then seen it a second time and thought, "That wasn't so bad"? Xan Brooks in The Guardian raises the question: "Who's at fault if a film fails on a first viewing and succeeds on the second? The viewer, the film-maker, or the tangled, criss-crossing dialogue between the two?"

He notes the turn-around he experienced with the Chilean drama Tony Manero, which is due for US release shortly. and admits that he is "nagged by the suspicion that there may be many other films in need of hasty reappraisal." The influential film critic Pauline Kael famously said she never watched a movie more than once, but Newsweek film critic Joe Morgenstern completed changed his mind about Bonnie and Clyde after describing it as a "squalid shoot-em-up for the moron trade." His mea culpa read in part: "I am sorry to say I consider that review grossly unfair and regrettably inaccurate."

I'm not suggesting that every bad movie will suddenly blossom into a classic with a second viewing. Our own Scott Weinberg recently watched Howard the Duck again, and that sucker is still a "$40 million dollar poop-nugget." On the other hand, my estimation of the original Friday the 13th rose with a recent reviewing, and Peter Bogdanovich's films have been rising in stock for me lately after falling through the floor for a period of my critical life.

What about you? Have repeat viewings changed your mind, perhaps after a period of years, either for good or for bad? Are you now convinced that Citizen Kane isn't so bad after all, or ready to give Watchmen a second chance when it hits DVD?