OK, I know what you're going to say before you even say it: "Dude, it's a big guy in a hockey mask. Don't exactly need a snapshot to envision a big guy in a hockey mask." And that's a fair comment, but I work for this blog and weekends are really slow so here we go:

Our first look at the new Jason Voorhees! A big bulky guy in torn clothes and a hockey mask: Yep! Snark aside, the big guy looks pretty solid. No silly changes or anything, although his NECK sure does look sort of extra-thick. It's the close-up shot of horror-dom's supreme stalker that the fans want to see, but I'm quite a bit more impressed by the "far off" shot. The lake is a grungy shade of green and the shadows are trickling through the forest quite creatively. Anyway, the new Jason will be played by Derek Mears, who's played more crazies, creeps and killers than just about anyone.

The pics come from a recent EW article that Erik covered right here, but it took the hardcore horror fans to get a bigger shot of the serial stalker. Expect a lot more Friday freakiness once Comic-Con starts next week. And if director Marcus Nispel can do as good as job as he did with the Texas Chainsaw remake, that'll be good enough for me. (Yes, I quite like the Chainsaw remake. A hell of a lot more than any of the TCM sequels, anyway.) The next Friday the 13th arrives in February of next year.

[ Thanks: BD.com ]

Earlier this week, we learned that Jason Voorhees will be wearing both the burlap sack and the iconic hockey mask in the new Friday the 13th remake (or is it technically a remake of the first three movies?). Now, in honor of today being 2008's only Friday the 13th, MTV (one of the new film's co-producers) also shares a report from the set of the movie. They don't have anything as interesting to tell us as IESB.net did with the headgear news, but they do have video coverage, which you can watch above.

Any fan of the franchise should be excited after watching this footage. We get to see a hot young actress (Amanda Righetti) running through the woods, a dilapidated cabin, a sign telling us its Camp Crystal Lake and an overlong view of the hockey mask prop. That's almost all the ingredients needed for a Friday the 13th movie (it sounds so easy to do, right?). Oh, and finally we get to see the actor portraying Jason (Derek Mears) wearing ... a t-shirt and no make-up.

A few years back I was lucky enough to spend a few days on the set of The Hills Have Eyes 2. I hate to say that I thought the final product was pretty ... meh, but the 2.5 days I spent on the set in Morocco were something pretty special. Among the many actors, stuntpeople, FX technicians and general crew members I met, one of the very coolest was a giant guy called Derek Mears. Everyone on the set was very nice, but Mears was the one who made sure to invite the "horror geek press" back to his hotel lounge so we could have a few beers and give the guy the scoop on American sports, recent horror movies, new video games, comic books, etc. (The man had been cooped up in Ouarzazate for a few months by this point.)

Anyway, Derek was a sincerely gracious dude (and he DID make for a pretty creepy freakin' mutant in Hills 2), so I'm happy to share the news (via BD.com) that he's landed the role of mad slasher Jason Voorhees in Platinum Dunes' upcoming remake of Friday the 13th. So while you might not recognize the face, you've probably seen some of Derek's work in flcks like Cursed, Zathura, Men in Black 2, and The Haunted Mansion. (Plus a whole lotta TV work.) Odds are you won't see a whole lot more of Mears once he dons the legendary hockey mask -- but the Jason character has always been played by a huge, likeable lug, and I think Mears fits the bill quite nicely. Plus he's really freakin' huge, and that's a big plus. The new Friday is due early next year.

Depending on your point of view, this is either very good or very bad news. Shock Til You Drop is reporting that the much-discussed Friday the 13th update will not be a remake of the classic 1980 flick. According to sources, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason) will not be re-writing the original story. Going one step further, Shock reports that the flick would not be an origin story of any kind. Instead, Shock reports that the film will take place, "somewhere between parts two and four". As any horror fan knows, the story of Jason Voorhees and his reign of terror at Camp Crystal Lake is one of the cornerstones of 80's horror, and the thought of a remake had plenty of fans all up in arms. Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Marcus Nispel hopped onboard a few weeks ago to direct.

Just last week Scott had reported that there were still some details to iron out with the script; mainly how they were going to work around the fact that Jason did not really appear in the films until Part 2. As we all know, it was good old Mommy dearest doing the dispatching in the first film. If Shock's sources can be trusted then this means Nispel won't have to worry about how to work in the big daddy of slashers and his trusty goalie mask and they can just start fresh. Stay tuned for any official word on whether or not we will be seeing a "stronger, faster, better" Jason headed our way. Friday the 13th is set for release February 13, 2009.

As we approach Halloween, we're not the only ones shelling out all types of scary movie-related content. Which reminds me, have you checked out the 25 days worth of Halloween madness we've already written? It's good stuff. Read up, get scared. Boo. Anyway, those freaky folks from Cracked have put together a list of the top seven most easily escapable movie monsters. For example, both Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees aren't very fast when it comes to following their intended victims. In order to avoid being killed by one of them, all you really need to do is find an open field and run ... fast. Of course, according to our Friday the 13th death count, this didn't work out so well for 153 people.

Among the different movie monsters on their list are Samara Morgan from The Ring. In that film, there's a tape, there's a time of death and she crawls out of the television. Easily avoidable, says Cracked: "One would think the obvious thing to do would be to step outside and leave the TV behind. Co camping maybe." Or how about The Blair Witch, who apparently likes to stick people in the corner as push them over. Here's what Cracked suggests: "The Blair Witch is, however, old, dead and picks on children. If you are reading this distinctly adult-oriented site, you should be old enough to just punch her in the face and stroll away, possibly walking on her lawn in the process." I've always thought Chuckie would be pretty easy to get away from -- after all, he's a friggin' doll. How hard could it be to escape from a doll? Or what about zombies? I always loved that scene in Shaun of the Dead where they just pretend to be fellow zombies and cruise through the crowd. That's not too hard, just go a day without caffeine and most of us automatically turn into zombies. In your opinion, which movie monsters do you think are the most easily escapable?

If you have a teenager in your house, you already know they think everything their parents suggest is lame. Pop one of these flicks in the DVD player on family movie night, though, and you just might up your cool quotient a notch or two. Your teen is probably familiar with the more recent horror flicks that have come down the pike, but a marathon night of some of these films will show him that mom and dad know horror, too. Besides, every horror fan should have a basic knowledge of some of the old-school stuff. (And yeah, I know there are a lot of films I left off this list, but I could only pick seven, and these are my personal faves ... what are yours?)

Scream -- I can't say I'm a real horror girl, but if Scream had come out when I was a teenager, my friends and I would have watched it over and over again. It's fun, it's creative, it has (like so many great horror flicks) a scary killer in a mask. Who could the killer be? Half the fun of Scream is that the killer could be anyone -- after watching this film, your teen might just re-evaluate her own friends. Which of them might have the potential to be a psycho killer? You just never know.

A few years ago, I decided a good way to spend my time would be to watch all 10 Friday the 13th movies and keep track of the statistics: how many kills, how many heroines taking showers, how many people falling down while trying to run away, etc. I was fond of the Scream series' deconstruction of the slasher genre, and it occurred to me that the Friday the 13th films -- most of which I had not seen at that point -- were probably the source of some of the oldest, ripest clichés.

So I watched them, I took notes, I wrote snarky reviews. And I also compiled the data. Now, years later, in conjunction with Cinematical's October festivities, that data is finally useful! My life's work has not been in vain!

The 10 Friday the 13th movies (I did not include Freddy vs. Jason) are fairly bursting at the seams with death and mayhem. I counted 153 deaths over the course of the decalogue, and that's out of 246 speaking parts. In other words, 62 percent of the series' cast is murdered at some point. Given that the 10 movies total 909 minutes in length (including credits), that's an average of one death every 5.94 minutes.

Parts 5, 9, and 10 have the most murders with 20 each. Parts 1 and 2, on the other hand, are almost puritan in their restraint, having just nine murders apiece.

Part 7 is noteworthy because it has 15 murders and only 21 credited actors. That means if you were in that movie, there was a 71 percent chance you would be killed.

Following the Labor Day success of Rob Zombie's re-invented Halloween, we knew it wouldn't be long before our old pal Jason Voorhees popped back up on the big screen. Like folks are just going to sit around and let Michael Myers soak up that box office cha-ching all by himself. No. Not a chance. There have been rumors circling around a new Friday the 13th flick for awhile now, with some saying they'd do a franchise re-boot (a la Halloween), though I have a feeling the peeps over at Platinum Dunes were waiting to see how well Myers was received in his return. And now that they've seen him rake in the dollars, they've apparently decided to fast-track the flick and place it on their pre-strike roster, replacing Roger Clemens: Will The Man Ever Retire???? (Not a real title, but a film someone should probably make -- after all, the dude seems to have more lives than Freddy, Jason and Myers)

According to ShockTillYouDrop, who've heard from a source that is "100%, solid gold, baby," Dunes has just brought writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift on to pen a draft of the new Friday the 13th. For those that don't remember, Shannon and Swift were also the guys who brought us Freddy vs. Jason -- a film I still have not seen in its entirety, though I've heard fans enjoyed it. Shock also gives us a little backstory on the current film, recalling how early drafts from Mark Wheaton (The Messengers) were shelved, and that Jonathan Liebesman was attached as director. There's currently no word on whether Liebesman is still onboard, or what direction they'll be taking the franchise, but there's now a pretty good chance we'll see that freaky hockey mask guy wreak havoc at some point within the next year.

Come on and listen to a story 'bout a man called Jay
He killed a thousand people way back in the day
He's been in 11 movies and he always comes back
Cuz the gorehounds love the guy like a junkie digs crack.

Now if you wanna see all his murders in a row
And you don't have time for a multi-movie show
I'll give you all a tip on a place that's hip
Head on down to JoBlo's for a YouTube clip!

(Yes kids that's right, we have ALL of Jason Voorhees' murders in one handy little 7-minute movie clip! He slices, he dices, he cooks 'em up with spices, ladies and gentlemen. No Friday the 13th is complete without JV's horrific arsenal of garden-variety flesh-piercers! We're talking hacksaws, hatchets and harpoons! Axes, arrows, machetes, spears, pitchforks, corkscrews, shears and knives! Um ... road flares, weed-whackers and electric guitars, too! Yes, there's nothing that Jason won't wield while trying to rid his peaceful forest home of those devious teenaged fornicators! And sometimes they smoke pot! Get 'em, Jason! So join us now in celebrating the fine work that Mr. Voorhees has done over the past quarter-century. Enjoy his full exploits -- without all that painful dialogue!)

Okay, so how many times today has someone said to you, "Hey, be careful out there -- it's Friday the 13th ya know?" Yeah, we know. And there's nothing better than a Friday the 13th only a couple weeks before Halloween. It feels right. The cold, crisp October air (well, for those of you in places where the seasons actually change) sets a nice, spooky mood for what has to be one of my favorite days of the year, if only because it's easy and fun to freak people out. In the spirit of Friday the 13th, here are a few things you film freaks can do to celebrate the day:

• First, why don't you start by reading up on the history of Friday the 13th? No, not the movie -- the actual day. For example, some feel the original Friday the 13th (or Black Friday) was when hundreds of Knights Templar were simultaneously arrested on Friday October 13, 1307. Oh, and cherish the fact that today's Friday the 13th is taking place in the month of October, because this will not happen again until 2028 2017. Our next Friday the 13th will come in April of next year.
• Okay, now that you're done with that, you can finally go and check out the history behind the movie version of Friday the 13th. Do you know what year Jason Voorhees was born? How about the identity of his first victim? Does Camp Crystal Lake have a nickname? If so, what is it?
• By now, you're probably dying to watch Friday the 13th, or one of its many sequels. Friday the 13th: The Website lists a few theater locations throughout the country that are screening various parts of the classic horror franchise tonight. Too superstitious to leave the house? Bravo will be airing the original Friday the 13th tonight at 8pm and midnight, followed by Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood.
• For those of you not in the Jason Voorhees kind of mood, The Grudge 2 (which opens in theaters today) should enable you to get your spook on.
• Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn't do it for ya, huh? Well, in anticipation of Saw III (slicing its way into a theater near you on October 27), why don't you pick up parts 1 and 2 and have yourself a little Saw marathon. Afterwards, make sure to check out the third installment's final trailer and that much-talked about movie poster featuring actor Tobin Bell's blood.
• And finally, all these horror movies probably have you itching to make your own. First, you must watch American Movie. Afterward, it might be a good idea to read, "How to Make a Horror Movie That Doesn't Suck."

Am I leaving anything out? How will you be celebrating Friday the 13th?