Movie Review: Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013)

My favorite slasher franchise has always been Friday the 13th. For me, it started with seeing Parts 2 and 3 late at night on channel 32 in Chicago. Jason was terrifying, and the kills were gory. I really liked the character, and I eventually became a fan of the entire series. Crystal Lake Memories is an extensive documentary that focuses on every film in the franchise. They start it off right by having a campfire surrounded by young people. At the center is series alum Corey Feldman telling the tale of Camp Crystal Lake. Feldman narrates the documentary, which starts off just before the creation of the iconic first film.

The beginnings of the story are very interesting. Sean Cunningham flat out admits that he took the idea from Halloween. I thought that was great, but he didn't steal the masked killer idea. Instead, he took the shell of a slasher film and made the killer someone you could sympathize with. Yes, I'm talking about Pamela Voorhees, whose first name we don't even learn until it's written on a headstone in the fourth movie, but let's take a quick sidestep to compare Jason to Michael. Michael was evil from minute one. Cold blooded killers get no sympathy, and they shouldn't. Jason was a scared kid who drowned because of the negligence of some camp counselors. You feel for him, and you definitely feel for Pamela. Try to stop me from going on a murderous rampage if anything happens to my kid. Go ahead, try.

Movie Review: 6 Degrees of Hell (2012)

Really, people, if you have to tout your movie as a Corey Feldman vehicle, and he’s only in the damn thing for 10 minutes tops, you’re not giving me much hope for a fun ride. Or a good one. Or at least a tolerable one. Okay maybe this movie was sort of tolerable.

6 Degrees of Hell begins with a group of four friends as they go through a haunted hotel attraction. Kelly, Chris, Kellan, and June are only mildly amused/frightened by it but they’re having fun anyway. Afterwards they have a little private party where it comes out that June is psychic. Kelly wants a reading and immediately freaks out when June give an accurate description of Kelly’s birth. Then June starts mumbling something about doom and it’s coming and whatnot and Kelly assumes it’s all about her so boyfriend Chris has to talk her down from the ledge. When he goes to get Kelly a drink, leaving her all alone (uh oh), some white figure appears behind her and she promptly dies.

Switch over to present day and here is where we see Corey Feldman play Kyle Brenner, a paranormal investigator speaking to good cop, Hendricks, as he describes a horrific and unexplainable (unless you’re a believer) police case involving demons and possessions and that damned haunted hotel attraction. Which, as it turns out, was built over an old asylum where bad things happened. *eye roll*