‘Friday the 13th’s’ Jason Voorhees’ Top Thirteen Kills Part 2

Written by: Brent R. Oliver

If you missed the first half of Brent’s insanely awesome list of top Friday the 13th kills, you need to catch up. And you can do that quite easily, just check it out right here!

5. Computer Simulation Girls – Jason X

“Hey, you want a beer?”

“Or do you want to smoke some pot?”

“Or we could have premarital sex!”

These lines are spoken by two scantily-clad ladies meant to entice Jason away from what’s really going on. Incidentally, what’s really going on is fuckwit crazy and cool as hell. Jason is in space. He’s onboard a spaceship and he’s hacked and smashed his way through most of the crew. Those that remain are trying to escape but they need a diversion. They have to buy some time while they do whatever it is that they’re doing to get away from Terminator-Jason.

Since it’s the future, holograms are very sophisticated. They’re so good they can fool an undead mongoloid serial killer with a one-track mind. A member of the crew whips up a holographic scene that replicates Camp Crystal Lake. The aforementioned semi-nude girls are drinking and smoking next to a pair of sleeping bags. After they deliver their “dialogue” they slip into the bags so Jason can do his thing and the real humans can skedaddle.

True to form, Jason gets to whacking. He picks up one bag and smashes it several times into the one still on the ground. Both bags are still squirming in a sexual fashion and giggling. The giggling is also somehow sexual. Jason bashes them together a few more times and seems a tick confused when they keep squealing and contorting. Eventually the bag on the ground goes

silent and still but the one in his hands is still pretty lively. Jason resorts to a method that’s proved efficacious in the past: he cracks it against a nearby tree. That does the trick.

I realize these aren’t technically “kills,” since Jason is in a simulation. But the combination of cartoon violence, homage to history, and comedic self-awareness is priceless.

4. Every Motherfucker in the Room – Jason X

Remember Sam Jackson’s classic line from Jackie Brown regarding the AK-47? “When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room? Accept no substitute.”

In this case, you can accept Jason Voorhees as a substitute. He’s never been a more maleficent murder machine than right here. For the first time ever, Jason blurs the boundary between horror icon and action hero. He was caught by surprise at the beginning of Jason Goes to Hell. That SWAT team came out of nowhere and he wasn’t prepared for the level of fire- and manpower they produced. Never again.

When a group of military personnel decide to freeze-dry Jason for eternity, they don’t bring enough balls and bullets. Jason, who’s been chained and covered in the middle of a room, pulls a David Copperfield and vanishes from his bindings, leaving an Army dude in his place.

Speaking of Davids, did I mention that they guy in charge here is David Cronenberg? I didn’t? Well, the King of Venereal Horror plays a doctor or something orchestrating Jason’s deep-freeze initiative. When they find he’s slipped his bonds they’re totally unprepared for the carnage that unfolds.

Jason reappears with a machete (I seriously have no idea where he got it) and lays into these guys. He offs a couple pretty quickly but takes several shotgun blasts to the chest as well as about one million rounds of machine gun fire. Not. Quite. Enough.

Jason slings one of the chains that formerly bound him around the neck of an Army dude. In his other hand is one of those sticks the dog pound uses to keep frothing canines ten feet away. It’s literally a ten-foot pole. Jason smashes the end of it into a guy’s helmet, which drops said guy and most likely explodes his brain. It also results in the stick splintering into a sharp point. He jerks the chain, which snaps the first guy to the ground – and snaps his neck as well – and then looks up.

David Cronenberg is running. The cowardly doctor has abandoned the men and is flat-out sprinting for the exit. Can’t blame him, really. All the armed and armored guys in the room have been picked apart like chicken wings. What chance does he stand?

None. Jason throws his newly pointed dog-stick at Cronenberg, who’s now about a hundred feet away. It soars through the air with the greatest of ease and perforates the Baron of Blood. David Cronenberg just died in a Friday the 13th film. Bitchin’.

3. The Ravers – Freddy vs. Jason

This is the last installment of Freddy and Jason before both of them got rebooted. It’s a thoroughly modernized story that seems to feel the need for reasons and motives that might make sense to a new audience only now discovering these two old legends.

Not that it’s bad. I understand the need to rake in dollar bills by convincing modern teenagers that Freddy and Jason have serious, complicated back stories that lead to well-thought-out, contemporary horror movies. Hollywood wouldn’t be alive today if it didn’t pander to folks who had those dollar bills to throw around.

Nonetheless, Freddy vs. Jason is lackluster. Big-budget but low-fidelity. Let’s make one thing clear right the fuck now: fleshing out these stories is tricky business. By all means, explore new avenues, use original ideas to prop up fading tropes, but, above all else, keep the slaughter coming. We don’t need ridiculous shit about why and how Jason and Freddy kill teenagers, just fucking kill teenagers.

This movie has a few nice death scenes, and one of them stands out magnificently. It’s in the top five to show that modern takes can sometimes hold up against the classics.

The specifics – names and whatnot – aren’t important. The scene is a rave in a field. That’s it. Music pumping at the center, a bunch of high school kids dancing and probably taking drugs. Jason is there because reasons.

Somewhere in the field two rednecks are smoking weed and drinking. Jason happens upon them and they make fun of his outfit because this is a rave, not a Halloween party. One of them douses Jason with grain alcohol and sets him on fire. That’s cool with Jason. When the flame-throwing redneck runs, Jason follows him through the cornfield, leaving a burning trail behind him. He sedately stalks his prey until the gentleman stumbles back into the rave proper. Before he can warn anyone, a flaming machete flies out of the corn and impales him. The fiery blade pops out of his chest, he coughs up a gout of blood, keels over, and dies. Teenagers scream and run away.

Jason wanders out of the corn, plucks his flaming steel out of the redneck, and gets back to work.

2. Paul – Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter

This one is monstrously bad ass. Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, historically the only person to really kill Jason Voorhees. And Crispin Glover as whatever the fuck Crispin Glover is in this movie. F14p4 is a major installment in the franchise. It has everything the die-hard fan has

come to know and love, including a spectacular death. Several, actually, but one rises above the others, primarily because Jason hoists it there on the end of a spear gun.

Smoking hot Samantha has gone – what else? – skinny dipping in Crystal Lake. Oh, man. Jason kills her. What a bummer. But at least he leaves her corpse in the raft for someone else to discover.

That someone else turns out to be Paul, Sam’s boyfriend. He swims out to the raft with no-doubt high hopes of premarital sex. When he finds Sam dead he does an awkward and hilarious version of the 50 meter freestyle to get back to the dock.

Fortunately for us, Jason is lurking close by. When Paul boosts himself up onto the dock, Jason lunges from underneath it and jabs a spear into Paul’s dick. Paul howls and writhes like a bug on a pin. The spear happens to be in a spear gun and Jason doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger, which lifts Paul even higher over the dock. He’s like a victory banner that Jason raises to signify his dominance.

1. Vera – Friday the 13th Part 3

This is number one for several reasons. For one thing, it’s just a sweet, simple death. Direct, to the point, vicious. For another, it’s the first time Jason ever kills anyone wearing his trademark hockey mask. Before this, his photogenic face was covered by a bargain pillowcase with only one eye hole cut out. Because Jason only needed fifty percent of his vision to mutilate one hundred percent of his victims.

Shelley, the practical jokester/perpetual virgin, scares Vera by popping out of the lake wearing a wet suit and hockey mask and carrying a spear gun. I’m not sure what makes it funny

and neither does Vera. She gets mad and Shelley slinks away, no doubt to mail order an XXL wetsuit for next time.

Jason takes care of Shelley and decides the hockey mask is a much better option than his raggety-ass pillowcase. Also, the spear gun is pretty fucking sweet. The wetsuit, not so much. Jason wisely elects to stick with his janitor fatigues.

Newly masked and weaponized, Jason stalks out onto the dock. Vera is knee-deep in the lake, fishing out Shelley’s wallet which he dropped earlier along with his dignity. She thinks Jason is Shelley and points out that, even though she doesn’t want to sleep with him, she’s nice enough to pull his billfold and soggy condoms out of the drink.

Jason raises the spear gun with one hand and steadies it against a light pole because this is his first time and he doesn’t want to mess it up. In typical fashion, Vera tells him this isn’t funny. Jason fires the spear anyway which rockets directly at the viewer, who is presumably wearing cardboard glasses with red and blue plastic lenses. I know my DVD came with a pair so I had ‘em on.

The spear skewers Vera’s left eye and renders her more or less deceased. Jason goes on to fame and glory wearing borrowed headgear.