email: latenightpickwick@gmail.com
Christmas. Valentine’s Day. Halloween. Presidents’ Day. Name a holiday, and it’s certain to remind you of a horror show connected to it:
Black Christmas (1974). My Bloody Valentine (1981). Trick ‘R Treat (2007). Name your most terrifying Presidential term here.
But few holidays are more connected to horror than Friday the 13th, the holiday that inspired a cinematic masked killer to first terrorize summer camp counselors, then — many movie sequels later — just about anyone that crossed his path. To the Pickwick Drive-In’s way of thinking, the hockey mask-masked killing machine named Jason Voorhees is perhaps the most important slasher of all time. His films – second perhaps only to Michael Myers’ – encourage film fans to cinematically return to Camp Crystal Lake whenever a Friday the 13th appears on the calendar. The only problem is that Friday the 13th can’t always be anticipated year-in, year-out, around the same time of year as a traditional holiday — like Halloween or Christmas. It’s an infrequent high, at best, but one that draws horror fans back to any of the 15 (yes, 15 – as well as a nod to a short-lived, misguided TV series) different films closely associated with the franchise.
And as unlucky as Friday the 13th may be to your everyday lives, luck would have it that there are a total of three of the holidays in 2026. You may have already missed the opportunity to celebrate the first of them.
Luckily, the Pickwick has stockpiled some cinematic kindling of five F13 films, ready to set it ablaze, for this year’s second Friday the 13th this year — which stalks into your helpless summer camp world next week.
Here are five F13 movies that will chill bones, wrack nerves, and remind you why summer camp – if you were unlucky enough to survive it – was often replete with the most awkward moments of your life. So gather around the campfire and devour these widescreen morsels like S’Mores. Each of them is enjoyed best night by night, each night of the week – Monday through Thursday – leading up to Friday’s big day where the Pickwick recommends the most compelling Friday film of all. Or, better yet, watch all five movies as an endless parade of peril in a single sitting on Friday the 13th itself. But always use this watchlist as inspiration to explore the varied cinema that has come out of such a simple concept: Camp Crystal Lake.
But, please: no drinking, no drugs, and no sex during the screenings. Art can imitate life in the most horrifying ways, after all — and the Pickwick would like to find you floating safely in a canoe in the middle of placid Crystal Lake when the sun finally comes up.
Monday, March 9th
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Friday the 13th (1980)
1980 | Rated R | 96 minutes | s. Victor Miller | d. Sean S. Cunningham | c. Barry Abrams
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Invariably, whether you’re an incredible fan or a pedestrian fan of the Friday franchise, you will meet someone who associates Jason Voorhees with the hockey mask. That mask has adorned movie posters, t-shirts, sweat shirts, and bumper stickers. It has been a keychain, a static sticker, countless tattoos, and more — and all of this, despite the fact that Jason didn’t adopt the hockey mask as his signature disguise until the third movie in the series.
But in the franchise’s first film, released in 1980, Jason wasn’t even the seemingly unstoppable killer preying upon camp counselors at Crystal Lake. As the movie begins, a new crew of counselors arrives at Camp Crystal Lake in order to prepare the camp for the summertime guests that will soon arrive. But when each of the counselors is systematically & brutally murdered by a mysterious killer, the motion picture straddles the line of being a slasher film rip-off of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and of being a rather provocative Whodunnit, which will ultimately — hopefully — lead to revealing the identity of the killer. What is most important to recall here is how this movie’s simple kernel of a concept would become such a notable contributor to the slasher film movement.
Like its seemingly immortal antagonist Jason, Friday the 13th would be pursued by a slew of imitators — some of which would demand legitimate attention — and a trail of sequels that would finally make it impossible to defend even the franchise’s most humble beginnings, as the films more & more failed to deliver in their — shall we say it? Yes, we shall — execution.
Friday the 13th and Halloween played pivotal roles in starting it all, even keeping the lights on with their sequels through the 90s, until the subgenre all but slit its own throat. But films like these didn’t necessarily start here. And they certainly couldn’t accomplish what others would do almost two decades later, proving to be a greater cinematic bloodbath — both commercially & critically — than audiences could ever have imagined.
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WARNING
Spoilers for other horror films — including Psycho (1960), Scream (1996), and Scream 2 (1997) — abound here.
Please, jump to the Pickwick Drive-In’s next viewing recommendation in order to avoid spoiling your viewing experience of these films.
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At the risk of spoiling the killer’s identity in Friday (1980), it’s essential to go back even further than the very beginning, to a film that certainly had some influence on Jason Voorhees’ origin story. To that end, the Pickwick would like to transport you to Universal Pictures’ Psycho (1960). In that classic motion picture — directed by Alfred Hitchcock — the Bates Motel appears to be terrorized by the erratic Mrs. Bates, who lives in the three-story Victorian-style home that stands on the property. Never fully visible in the film, Mrs. Bates is a domineering, aggressive mother to her submissive, victimized son Norman (Anthony Perkins), who tells Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) — a troubled motorist staying at the motel for the evening — that his mother is an invalid, altogether imprisoned in her home. But the terror of the thriller takes full shape when Mrs. Bates stabs Marion Crane in a bloody shower scene that many film historians still see as one the most impressive sequences captured on film. From there, Hitchcock’s film becomes an unsettling game of cat & mouse: long, breathless scenes illustrate Norman disposing of the murder’s evidence — obviously in order to protect his mother — while the second half of the motion picture plays out as a mystery where Marion Crane’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) investigates her sister’s unexplained disappearance.
But those familiar with Psycho know that the killer Mrs. Bates was always her tormented son Norman all along, dressed as his mother once dressed in life and subconsciously controlled by the stringent, matronly values that she once possessed in life and insisted upon her son.
Psycho in 1960 settled upon a familial twist that would be in a similar fashion explored in Friday the 13th in 1980, just as the film score seemed to have a bit in tonal common with Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho. But the cinematic ripples of Camp Crystal Lake wouldn’t end there, also glimpsed more than 15 years later. More than 15 years after the release of Friday (1980), horror as a film genre was languishing, and it would take someone like A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) director Wes Craven — performing at the peak of his powers — to resurrect the genre. Embracing a similar Whodunnit sensibility, Scream (1996) flirted with similar gender misdirection, insinuating Ghostface’s true identity here, introducing another red herring there, and replacing the taut, claustrophic scores of Psycho and Friday (1980) with a chorus of contemporary rock tracks aimed at the audience that it hoped to attract.
Just as Billy Loomis (played by Skeet Ulrich & so named as a character in the film as an homage to Dr. Loomis in the Halloween franchise) commits murder as Ghostface in response to his own mother’s experiences in Woodsboro in Scream, a mother-son relationship takes center stage in Scream 2 (1997), also written by Kevin Williamson & directed by Craven.
In the franchise’s first sequel, Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) — having survived the events of the first film — now attends college, where she first fends off prank phone calls voiced by would-be Ghostface killers and then must protect herself from a new Ghostface killer targeting those closest to her. And — despite suspicions that the killer could be the ruthlessly ambitious journalist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), movie geek Randy (Jamie Kennedy), Public Enemy #1 cum talk show celebrity Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), or even fraternity boyfriend Derek (Jerry O’Connell) — the killer turns out to be the mother of Billy Loomis himself, thereby reversing the mother-son killer display illustrated almost 40 years earlier in Psycho, and yet no one would have accused Scream of treading familiar ground. Here was a franchise seemingly going where none of its inspirations had gone before.
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Friday the 13th (1980) is streaming on Pluto TV.
Tuesday, March 10th
Friday the 13th (2009)
2009 | Rated R | 97 minutes | s. Damian Shannon & Mark Swift | d. Marcus Nispel | c. Daniel C. Pearl
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It’s only Tuesday of Friday the 13th Week, so it may seem a bit strange to some that the Pickwick’s second F13 film pick is the franchise’s reboot – a full 10 motion pictures after the original film. But it’s not strange at all. In fact, one could make a case that film studio Platinum Dunes’ low-lit Friday film is three times the film as any single motion picture from the original franchise, because it is.
That’s a fact.
The 2009 reboot – co-produced by Michael Bay (yes, that Michael Bay); directed by Marcus Nispel, who helmed an admittedly effective reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2009) and then took a turn as a film documentarian with his Friday-focused His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (also in 2009); and scored by the formidable Steve Jablonsky, who cut his teeth on 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well — remains a thing to behold, even to those reluctant to embrace reboots, remakes, and requels. Nispel & Jablonsky are a dream team, returning for Friday after Chainsaw, and bringing their signature partnership of screen & sound to Camp Crystal Lake, but Friday (2009) is a riotous success for more reasons than the filmmakers themselves. It’s a success due to the filmmakers’ – ahem – execution. What this film does so well is avoid the missteps that the original franchise made in the making of its free three films, doing so by truncating the plot of all three original films into one single picture. Here, the audience will still know the story of Pamela Voorhees (as seen in Part 1), still see a burlap sack-masked Jason terrorize his victims (as seen in Part 2), and still witness the introduction of the hockey mask as Jason’s most famous fixture (as seen in in Part 3). What’s been excised, though, is what the original films did that made it so hard to see the forest for the trees.
Here, many of the problems that bubbled to the surface of Camp Crystal Lake in the franchise’s original “trilogy” are largely fixed. Here, Jason no longer follows Alice to civilization so that he can avenge his mother’s death. Here, Jason no longer terrorizes the camp’s immediate community. Here, the passage of time between Jason’s childhood drowning and his adult killing spree don’t inspire endless head-scratching. Here, Jason isn’t momentarily cast as a sexual predator as he was in Part 3.
In fact, here, the filmmakers have cleared the stage of the baggage that accumulated in the original three films so that the 2009 reboot focuses solely on slaughtering young people, which is what the audience ultimately came to see.
No moral judgments about the necessity of the final girl being a virgin. No moral judgments about substance abuse. Not even a mention of the date as Friday the 13th, really. Simplicity is at the heart of this movie. One could imagine that a similar approach for the 1980 original would have kept the franchise from becoming so mired in its storytelling, as incomprehensible as a campfire ghost story where one must suspend disbelief so much when the narrative could have allowed them to simply enjoy the chills.
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Friday the 13th (2009) is available for rental & purchase on Amazon Prime.
Wednesday, March 11th
Friday the 13th Part 2
1981 | Rated R | 87 minutes | s. Ron Kurz | d. Steve Miner | c. Peter Stein
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In the cold open of the slasher franchise’s first sequel, it’s been five months since Alice Hardy (Betsy Palmer) survived the traumatic experiences at Camp Crystal Lake at the hands of Pamela Voorhees, and she’s still understandably a bit traumatized by the experience. But her recovery is cut short when Alice finds Mrs. Voorhees’ decapitated head in her refrigerator and is killed by an unknown assailant.
Was Jason Voorhees Alice’s killer – having walked from Camp Crystal Lake to Alice’s apartment home – slaughtering the last of the camp counselors that Jason’s mother originally targeted in the first film? Likely.
Will this sequel – the first sequel of the franchise – be one of the last best films of a franchise that spans more than 10 motion pictures?
Definitely, maybe.
Following the film’s opening sequence, Friday the 13th Part 2 doesn’t do anything as or more progressive in its storytelling than was done in the first film. Friday (1980) — at the very least — toys with the audience as it creates a lakeside landscape perfect for the film’s blatant suggestion that Jason Voorhees still lives, but the opportunity for lightning to strike twice in Part 2 remains almost impossible.
In this motion picture, Camp Crystal Lake is populated once more with camp counselors, and they share much in common with the first film’s victims. They are carefree, they are promiscuous, and they are summarily picked off by the burlap sack-masked Jason, whose new mission in life is not simply to annihilate his mother’s killer but to annihilate all camp counselors who visit there.
Otherwise, Jason’s motives become a little too murky too soon in this picture. It’s suggested early on that Jason’s mental faculties may be the cause for his psychosis, but the film possesses one of the franchise’s strongest female protagonists and some compelling twists that are enough to make the movie worth a watch. Unfortunately, that particular bar – “worth a watch” – will become exceedingly easier to clear.
Moreover, with Part 2, the franchise begins leaving obstacles in its own path, increasingly more problematic and obstructing any great potential for success that the series could have had.
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Friday the 13th Part 2 is available for rental & purchase on Amazon Prime.
Thursday, March 12th
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
1986 | Rated R | 86 minutes | s. Tom McLoughlin | d. Tommy McLoughlin | c. Jon Kranhouse
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Since the franchise’s original film in 1980, Jason has been quite busy. He has:
1
Left Camp Crystal Lake in order to kill Alice, the sole survivor of the first film, his mother’s killer;
2
And, having done so, returned to Camp Crystal Lake where he would terrorize a new slew of camp counselors;
3
And then, upon suffering a machete chop to the head, wandered into town (unmasked, even!), where he would kill the two owners of a townie convenience store on Saturday the 14th;
4
And then killed some attractive young twentysomethings staying at a cabin in the area — and then some biker gang members — and the rest of the attractive young twentysomethings. None of these killings have any real consequence for Jason or camp counselors, in general;
5
And then killed an entire cabin of innocents vacationing near Crystal Lake, before he was stabbed to death by a youngster (Corey Feldman) with a shaved head.
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And that’s Part 2 through Part 4 of the Friday sequels leading up to Part V, the last of which really has nothing to do with Jason as much as it has to do with an adult, troubled Tommy Jarvis dealing with the trauma of his run-in with Jason Voorhees.
Jason Lives — the sixth film in the series — was released as many years later as the first film. When it comes to slasher regeneration, that’s fast — and it’s safe to write that the studio should have exercised more forethought in the development of this film.
Five films after Pamela Voorhees slaughtered camp counselors & four films after Jason Voorhees slaughtered camp counselors at Crystal Lake, the series took a decidedly different turn. One year after his attempt to kill Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman), Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) — intent on wiping Jason Voorhees from his mind for good — returns to Crystal Lake to burn the buried body of the hockey masked killer. But when a lightning bolt inexplicably resurrects Jason’s corpse, the frenetic franchise is once more on its feet, and a new slew of victims is suddenly in danger of Jason’s wrath.
From here, Jason’s rampage in the cinematic series becomes less associated with the inept operational procedures of Camp Crystal Lake & its lovemaking employees and more synonymous with Jason’s rancor.
Period.
Nothing can stop Jason Voorhees at this point, in his cinematic career:
Not the metaphorical prison walls of Camp Crystal Lake. Not the victims of which he preys upon. Not the diminishing box office returns, which assuredly anticipate the final end of Jason Voorhees.
But — for better or worse — it would give the character some mileage: taking him to Hell (1993), to outer space (2001), and finally into a Mortal Kombat-like cage match against Freddy Krueger (2003).
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Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is streaming on Pluto TV.
Friday, March 13th
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th
2013 | NOT RATED | 400 minutes | s. Peter M. Bracke & Daniel Farrands | d. Daniel Farrands | c. Buz Wallick
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This multi-hour documentary (at six hours & 40 minutes, to be exact) isn’t meant to serve as a cheat code in the Pickwick’s watchlist so that the audience can enjoy every F13 film irresponsibly without committing to a much more abbreviated five films – but for Friday fans, this comprehensive look at the franchise (which even momentarily recognizes the Fox-TV doomed television series as a member of the family) remains a brilliant reminder of what’s made the series so entertaining …
… And the production of that series so captivating.
For those viewers wholly unfamiliar with the franchise, Crystal Lake Memories will spoil some of the franchise’s big surprises, but — when it comes to slasher films & big surprises — there are rarely surprises except for those reserved for the creativity of the kills …
… And Crystal Lake Memories doesn’t spoil the joys that come with carnage.
What the documentary will still do for those viewers is contextualize the franchise’s place in genre filmmaking and fill in some of the gaps that the Pickwick’s five-film watchlist will inevitably create. A picture like this could have appeared at the beginning of this watchlist or, at the end of it – the viewer will ultimately have to decide. But what will be entirely evident is that filmmaker Daniel Farrands’ juggernaut of a documentary is also a notable piece of non-fiction, genre film moviemaking, likely responsible for some incredible documentaries that came after it.
Rest assured: like summer camp itself – no matter what – Crystal Lake Memories will become a film that viewers return to year after year.
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Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th is streaming on Plex.
Chris Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.
Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In 
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