All Rise...

For Judge Victor Valdivia, every day is Friday the 13th.

Editor's Note

Our reviews of Friday The 13th (published December 24th, 1999), Friday The 13th: Region 2 Edition (published August 13th, 2004), Friday The 13th Part 2 (published September 25th, 2000), Friday The 13th Part 3 (published October 31st, 2000), Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter (published October 27th, 2000), Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning (published September 25th, 2001), Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (published September 25th, 2001), Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (published September 3rd, 2002), Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (published September 3rd, 2002), Friday The 13th (Blu-Ray) (published February 3rd, 2009), Friday The 13th Part 2 (Blu-Ray) (published June 16th, 2009), Friday The 13th Part 2: Deluxe Edition (published February 3rd, 2009), Friday The 13th Part 3 3-D (Blu-Ray) (published June 16th, 2009), Friday The 13th Part 3 3-D: Deluxe Edition (published February 3rd, 2009), Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning: Deluxe Edition (published June 16th, 2009), Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives: Deluxe Edition (published June 16th, 2009), Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter: Deluxe Edition (published June 16th, 2009), and Friday The 13th: Deluxe Edition (published February 3rd, 2009) are also available.

The Charge

"ch-ch-ch ha-ha-ha"

The Case

Note: The following are transcripts from 911 calls recorded from Judge Victor Valdivia's phone over a two-week period in early October 2011.

OPERATOR: 911, what's your emergency?
VICTOR: Hello, this is Judge Victor Valdivia and…I…I don't know what to do!
OPERATOR: What's the problem, sir?
VICTOR: Well, I'm reviewing the new Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection box set, which compiles all of the Deluxe Edition DVDs for the first eight films in the Friday the 13th series along with a little plastic hockey mask. You remember the Friday the 13th series, right? Those quintessentially Eighties slasher pics in which hockey mask-wearing Jason Voorhees methodically butchers horny teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake?
OPERATOR: So what is the crisis, sir?
VICTOR: Well, it's that these films are all so terrible. The characters are cardboard, the dialogue is tin-eared, the plots are silly, and the special effects have dated badly. Yet I can't stop watching them. I grew up in the Eighties so these films are as much a part of my adolescent heritage as Iron Maiden records and Cindy Crawford posters. Still, even as I reminisce about watching worn-out VHS tapes of these films while, ahem, not entirely sober, I can't escape just how, well, unscary they are now.
OPERATOR: Sir, that's not actually a crisis.
VICTOR: It is to me, damn you! (sobbing) It is…to me. (hangs up).

OPERATOR: 911, what's your emergency?
VICTOR: You have to help me! I'm in danger!
OPERATOR: Sir, calm down. What's the trouble?
VICTOR: I'm watching the first Friday the 13th movie and I'm in danger of seeing how it could have been an interesting idea, except that the direction is awful!
OPERATOR: Sir, please don't waste our time. We have serious emergencies—
VICTOR: This is serious! The gimmick of making the killer someone who you would never suspect actually works really well here! It's just that the film is so sloppily paced that it alternates between boring and gory. Neither of which, you will note, is the same as scary.
OPERATOR: Sir, please hang up and clear the line.
VICTOR: Oh, my God!
OPERATOR: Sir, what? What happened?
VICTOR: Kevin Bacon (Footloose), who plays one of the doomed teenagers, just gave another flat line reading! Even Kevin Bacon, who's usually solid, can't act in this film! It's brutal! Make it stop! (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911, what's the emergency?
VICTOR: I don't believe it! I just can't believe it!
OPERATOR: Sir, what's wrong?
VICTOR: I'm watching Friday the 13th Part 2 and I can't believe how formulaic this series has become in only its second film! It's almost a rewrite of the first film, except with a different villain! Teens have sex, teens get killed! It's almost a perfect metaphor for the moralistic "Just Say No" Reagan Eighties! It's enough to have kept teenagers from having sex at all the whole decade!
OPERATOR: Excuse me?
VICTOR: Okay, maybe that's just the excuse I kept getting from all those girls in high school. The point is, this is probably the least memorable film in the series, apart from the climactic confrontation between the last teen (whose name doesn't matter) and Jason. At least that's kind of interesting and well-shot. The only other thing I remember about this entry, though, is that Jason wears a burlap sack with one eyehole. That's right—no hockey mask! What's that about?
OPERATOR: Sir, that's not an emergency. Please clear the line.
VICTOR: Don't you think I want to? Yet I can't stop! I have to keep watching! (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911, what's the emergency?
VICTOR: Oh God! The pain! Aargh!
OPERATOR: Sir, what's wrong? What's the problem?
VICTOR: I'm watching the third Friday the 13th movie and it comes with 3-D glasses to replicate the film's original 3-D release. Unfortunately, these aren't the modern kind of 3-D glasses but instead the old red-and-blue kind. The DVD comes with both a regular and 3-D version of the film, but you should really stick to the non-3-D version, because the 3-D one is painful beyond belief to watch! The 3-D really only works in scenes shot in broad daylight and since there aren't that many of those, the whole thing just looks murky and dark. It's hurting my eyes! And now I can only see red out of one and blue out of the other one!
OPERATOR: Sir, really, you have to stop calling—
VICTOR: At least this is the film where Jason wears his iconic hockey mask for the first time. Beyond that and the truly awful, awful 3-D, there's no other memorable part. Oh, there's also topless girls, some good kills, and some weird, interracial, intergender biker gang made up of three people. None of which is as bad as the painful 3-D! And that's the real emergency! (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911, what's the emergency?
VICTOR (whispers): I think I'm in trouble…
OPERATOR: Sir, what's wrong? Where are you?
VICTOR: I just finished watching the three films in the "Tommy Jarvis" arc and I have to admit, these are the best ones (relatively speaking). In The Final Chapter, Tommy (Corey Feldman, Stand By Me) kills Jason, in A New Beginning he fights a Jason impersonator (no, really!) and in Jason Lives he fights a resurrected Jason. I know fans tend to hate some of these, especially A New Beginning, but seriously, what more do you want? A New Beginning has a guy in a hockey mask killing horny teenagers! You're gonna complain because his hockey mask has little blue triangles instead of little red ones? In a series of films that has Jason being resurrected from the dead by electricity more than once? That's why I think I'm in trouble—those hardcore fans are a scary bunch!
OPERATOR: Sir, please don't call here unless you have an actual emergency—
VICTOR: And how sad is it that Tommy Jarvis is the most well-developed character in the whole series and yet all we know about him is that he makes rubber masks? Which, by the way, doesn't pay off at all anywhere? If that's not an emergency, then I don't know what is! And I don't! (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911. Sir, I recognize this number and I'm going to have to ask you to hang up unless you have an actual emergency.
VICTOR: I understand and I'm sorry.
OPERATOR: You do?
VICTOR: Which is more than I can say for The New Blood, the seventh film. I don't understand that at all. A psychic girl (a la Carrie) fighting Jason? Who the hell thought that was a good idea? They really were running out of ideas by that point, weren't they?
OPERATOR: Oh, good lord.
VICTOR: Yes, good lord indeed. This film also marks the second time Jason is resurrected from the dead with no real explanation. Has no one in these films ever heard of cremation? Or even a concrete vault?
OPERATOR: Sir, I'm going to hang up and ask you not to call again.
VICTOR: Don't worry. I shan't bother you anymore. Not like this movie bothers me. I mean, if you're gonna rip off Stephen King, why not make Jason fight a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury? Now that would have made a great movie! Or a really terrible one, but at least one that's not as tired as this one! (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911. Sir, we have your number flagged for nuisance calls. Please don't call unless you have a real crisis.
VICTOR: But I do have a real crisis!
OPERATOR (sighing): What's the crisis?
VICTOR: I'll tell you what the crisis is. It's that the eighth movie is called Jason Takes Manhattan and yet most of it takes place on a damn boat in Canada! We don't even get to see Manhattan until the very end! What the hell is that? That's the most blatant case of false advertising since I saw a concert by the band that calls itself 10,000 Maniacs!
OPERATOR: Sir, please hang up and do not call again.
VICTOR: At least Jensen Daggett (Major League: Back to the Minors) is the most appealing protagonist in the whole series! And there are some great visuals, especially towards the end! Still, it's way too long and way too slow—and there's not even that much gore! What's the point?
OPERATOR: Sir, I'm hanging up now.
VICTOR: As well you should! Who can possibly take more of this? (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911. Sir, please do not call here anymore. We can't help you.
VICTOR: That's the problem!
OPERATOR (sighing): What's the problem?
VICTOR: No one can help me understand Paramount's decision to release this set! It's pointless! All it does is repackage the previous Deluxe Editions for each of these films, with no new extras or remastering. If you have all of those, you don't need this set unless you want the little Jason hockey mask, which is barely seven inches tall. If anything, this is even worse than having the individual discs because here they're packaged in a "book" with cardboard sleeves for each disc. That's a format that guarantees that the discs will get scratched or, even worse, get gobs of glue on them. Granted, if you didn't buy the individual Deluxe Editions, then this is the set to get, since all of the discs come with extras that range from middling to solid (and the remastering and remixing beats the old DVD issues by a mile) but it's hard to imagine any hardcore fan of this series that doesn't have these editions by now!
OPERATOR: Sir, I am not your therapist. Please don't call again.
VICTOR: The thing is, I'm still proud to have this set in my collection! Even thought the films are terrible (I gave them all identical scores because I honestly have a hard time telling them apart), I can't deny getting such a thrill whenever Jason appears with his machete and hockey mask. He's such an iconic part of pop culture of the Eighties that I, having grown up in that era, just have to enjoy it. However, I'm not sure I could recommend these films to anyone outside that age group. They're mostly not very good and have dated rather badly. I guess you had to be there.
OPERATOR: Are you done, sir?
VICTOR: Maybe I am, 911 operator. Maybe I am. (hangs up)

OPERATOR: 911, what's the emergency?
VICTOR (screaming): Oh my God, you've got to help me! There's a guy wearing a hockey mask and wielding a machete outside my window! He's going to kill me!
OPERATOR: Oh, blow it out your ass, DVD boy. (hangs up)

The Verdict

If you were a teenager in the Eighties, not guilty. For everyone else, very, very guilty.

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