Why I Love Jason

            One Christmas I received the best present ever- the actual Jason mask prop from one of the films. John Waters had somehow gotten it for me but there was a glitch in the delivery and somewhere along the line it had gotten lost. The person who mistakenly received it panicked when an article about the missing artifact made the Baltimore Sun and slipped it into a downtown mailbox. The bomb squad first had to dismantle the mailbox and the police called us to come down to the station to pick it up. We were jubilant. When I held it in my hands it felt like a holy relic. There was the slit in the top of the hockey mask where young Corey Feldman jammed a machete into Jason’s head in Part 4. Inside were lumps of congealed makeup and gaffers tape. All the cops laughingly took turns putting it on. As we rode home in the car I wore the mask, tears streaming down my eyes, singing the theme song: “KI KI KI….MA MA MA”. And some mornings I’ve been known to lovingly slip it on during the “Showcase Showdown” on The Price is Right.   

            All of this comes to mind with Shout! Factory’s glorious release of the box set of all the Friday the 13^th films. The set includes 4k scans from the original negatives; incredible extras; rare outtakes and deleted scenes; and the third in the series in actual 3d (if you have a 3D TV). It includes all 12 films on 16 discs. The surprisingly excellent 2009 reboot of the original film, directed by Marcus Nispel (who also surprised with his ferocious remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is also part of this amazing box set.

            I’ve been obsessed from those first moments sitting in a darkened theater in 1980 when I heard that haunting refrain of Harry Manfredini’s score and watched Friday the 13th unfold about the reopening of a jinxed summer camp where years ago a young boy named Jason had drowned. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham, during the course of a storm-tossed night each of the new counselors meets with a gruesome end (thanks to special effects wizard Tom Savini) until the killer is revealed to be Jason’s vengeful mother Mrs. Voorhees (played with fiendish gusto by Betsy Palmer). 

Ever since then my close friends (Bob & Judith Pringle, James Bennett and I) used to dress up (tuxedos, or best suit) and show up on opening day for all the sequels (preferably at the noisiest and scariest theater on Times Square). 

Afterwards we’d head to a fancy restaurant to celebrate with martinis and seriously discuss the film. Oh, how we laughed when Jason decapitated, skewered and dismembered an endless stream of annoying teens. How our spirits soared during Jason Goes to Hell when Freddy (A Nightmare On Elm Street) Krueger’s razor-fingered gloved hand leapt out of the ground to grab Jason’s hockey mask, hinting at a future showdown to come. I’ve always preferred the Friday the 13th series over the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Those were too cerebral. The Jason movies were more fundamental. He stalked. Kids die. I also like the way that Jason has evolved into a near-supernatural, unstoppable, monster. And an equal opportunity killer. He’ll hack them if they’re women, men, children, animals. He doesn’t care. He does have a predilection for interrupting couples having sex, but I can’t recall one teenager using a condom, so maybe Jason’s just political. He’s also kind of sexy, in a rough trade sort of way. The Friday the 13th series ushered in the halcyon era of slasher films where teenagers existing on screen only to be slaughtered, not copulating pies or abstaining from sex for 40 days.  

Years later I had special effects master Gabe Bartalos over to my house and he inspected my Jason mask and admitted it was his prop when he worked on Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives, actually my personal favorite in the series. (You have to love a film that shows a camp kid reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, or a terrified child hiding under a cot who asks another, “so what did you want to be when you grew up?”)

I own the posters for the films and alternate them on my wall from time to time. I really adored the French one-sheet which depicted a bloody axe imbedded in a camp cot- it used to hang in my kitchen and I would stare lovingly at it while having coffee in the morning. I play the soundtrack albums any time I get depressed or want to drive out unwelcome guests. I memorize the “novelizations” and can recite passages from them on request. Once I even dreamed I fucked Jason. It was a little rough, as I recall, but memorable. I remember being disappointed with the TV series Friday the 13^th. I just assumed it was going to be Jason every week murdering television personalities. How wonderful that would have been. “Hon, could get me another beer? Jason just killed off the entire Cosby family.” Next week, everyone on Little House on the Prairie and the following week Jason’s going a-hacking after The Brady Bunch.

I even introduce my friends’ children to the hockey mask. You’re never too young to love Jason. The word ‘hero” has been overused as of late. But I like to think of Jason as a national folk hero. He’s intolerant, ultraconservative and reactionary to a fault. Christ, he’s practically a Republican. But I’ve always liked the strong, silent type. Especially when they’re carrying a machete…