The 'Friday the 13th' Franchise

A mysterious figure stalks and kills a group of camp counselors one by one. Near the end of the film, we discover that it's Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), seeking vengeance for the death of her son and displaying a remarkable amount of strength for a 50-year-old woman. The sole survivor, Alice (Adrienne King), showing some strength of her own, manages to decapitate Mrs. Vorhees with a machete. But be ready for the jump-out-of-your-seat surprise!

A few months after surviving the Crystal Lake slaughter, Alice is slain by an intruder in her home. Five years later, attempts to start a new camp adjacent to Crystal Lake are met with more murders, this time at the hands of a sack-headed Jason, who, thanks to a profitable first film, turns out to be alive. This time it's Ginny (Amy Steel) who survives, confusing Jason by pretending to be his mother before slashing him in the shoulder with a machete. There's little doubt he'll be back for more.

A wounded Jason leaves the comfort of home for a neighboring resort, Higgins Haven, where he takes a break from killing camp counselors in order to kill some bikers who happen to venture into the barn where he's hiding. Having lost the sack from Part 2, Jason finally dons his trademark hockey mask and kills everyone (in 3-D!) except Chris (Dana Kimmell), who stops his reign of terror with an axe to the head. He's dead now, right?

Jason's body is taken to the morgue, but he shakes off the whole death thing and kills a couple of workers before trudging back to Crystal Lake. A bunch of friends, not discouraged by the dozen murders that occurred nearby a few days earlier, rent a house on Crystal Lake and commence partying. As such, they all die horribly by Jason's hands, at which point he goes after the neighbors, Trish (Kimberly Beck) and her little brother Tommy (Corey Feldman). Jason seems to see something of himself in Tommy, which is why he shouldn't be surprised when Tommy hacks him to death with a machete. The end.

Now 15 and mentally disturbed from having hacked Jason to death, Tommy (John Shepherd) is sent to a halfway house for troubled teens. Soon, bodies of the teen residents start to pile up. Could Jason be alive? No, turns out it's a copycat killer dressed as Jason trying to avenge the death of his son at the halfway house. Boooo...

To make up for the fraudulent Jason in A New Beginning, the filmmakers had to deliver the real Vorhees goods this time around, but how to revive Jason? Take a cue from Frankenstein, of course! Tommy (Thom Mathews), fresh out of the loony bin, digs up Jason's grave and stabs him with a metal pole, which acts as a lightning rod to revive the killer. Jason makes his way back to Camp Crystal Lake, which is again trying to reopen, this time under the name Camp Forest Green. He kills the new camp counselors before being lured into the middle of the lake, where Tommy chains him to a boulder and leaves him to drown. Again. Along with The Final Chapter, this is arguably the best of the sequels.

Having revived a dead Jason in the previous installment, the filmmakers opened the door for other supernatural possibilities, like telekinesis. Thus we have Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), who, as a child, inadvertently killed her father at Crystal Lake with her mind powers. Years later, she attempts to resurrect him, but fishes up Jason instead. Jason does his serial killer thing for a while but is eventually returned to the lake floor by Tina and her dead dad.

Electricity again revives Jason, this time via an underwater power cable that's inadvertently dragged in his vicinity. He awakens and boards a ship full of high school seniors who are, for some reason, sailing to New York City. (What, no Greyhound?) Jason kills most of the kids on board, leaving little to do when they actually land in Manhattan. Rennie (Jensen Daggett) and Sean (Scott Reeves) get him to follow them into the sewer system, where Jason is killed by toxic waste. Wow, really? This and Jason Goes to Hell are easily the low points in the series.

Hey look, Jason's alive again! And somehow, he's found his way back to Crystal Lake. (The writers didn't even bother trying to explain.) He's trapped by the FBI, who literally blow him to pieces. However, his soul begins jumping from body to body, possessing people who continue his murder spree. By the end, he manages to resurrect his body, but we discover that only a blood relative can destroy him for good. His long-lost niece Jessica (Kari Keegan) does the trick, sending him to Hell without so much as a hand basket.

Apparently no longer in Hell, Jason -- again, inexplicably alive -- is being held in a government research facility in the near future. The feds are coming to terms with his apparent indestructibility, and one solution is to cryogenically freeze him, which they do. Jason's body is discovered and brought on a spaceship 450 years in the future, whereupon he thaws and picks up where he left off, slicing and dicing until he's blown out of an airshaft into space.

Picking up where Jason Goes to Hell left off (ending with Freddy's claw dragging Jason's mask into the underworld), we find A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger plotting his return from Hell. He manipulates Jason, who seems to have no problem returning from Hell, into killing people in his old Elm Street neighborhood in order to build the community's fear to a level that will allow him to return. Jason does his job too well, though, and Freddy feels threatened that Jason might outshine him. Thus begins the epic battle of horror icons, which more or less ends in a draw. But more importantly, it leaves plenty of room for a sequel.

This "reboot" reinvents the Vorhees legend by portraying Jason as a child in 1980 when he witnessed his mother beheaded following her slaughter of a group of camp counselors. For 30 years, he's lived in the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake, presumably doing a lot of cardio and weight training. One night, a group of partying kids tread on his turf, and he disposes of them. However, Whitney reminds him of his mother (with a head), so he keeps her as a pet. Weeks later, when her brother Clay comes looking for her, Jason follows him to a lake house being used by ANOTHER group of partying kids. You know the deal: Jason knocks them off one by one. Clay eventually rescuses Whitney, and they team up to stab Jason and dump his body in the lake.

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