Thank God It's Friday the 13th: Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives!

The title Jason Lives was a reassurance to the fans that the Scooby Doo era of ersatz Jasons was over, and the classic killer was returning to, once more, kill lots of people for no particular reason*. This was both a good thing and an admission that basically these movies are all the same and are never really going to change, which is also a good thing. There's nowhere to take a character like Jason except all over the place in terms of physical geography. Whether you call it Crystal Lake or Forest Hills, or whether you call Toronto New York City, or whether it's space 400 years in the future, Jason will be doing the same thing, and that is reassuring in its own way. Should a horror flick be reassuring? No, and this is why the series turned, as every series does, into a comedy.

"Does he think I'm a fart head?" - actual dialogue

Tommy Jarvis is suddenly cured of his murderous impulses from the ending of Part 5, and Jason just as wondrously cured of his cremation. So of course Tommy must go and dig him up in order to make sure he's dead, which of course means he comes back to life. He vaguely explains he's been having Jason dreams and this may be the only way to lay them to rest. I know this came out way before Freddy Vs Jason was conceived as an actual project, but wouldn't it be fun in retrospect to imagine that Freddy engineered those dreams to get Tommy to dig up Jason in the first place?

For no reason at all, Tommy brings a mask with him to the cemetery. It's like he wanted what inevitably happens to happen.

Anyway, Tommy and some guy go dig up Jason, who is then hit by lightning and thus revived to kill again. Unfortunately for us, he spends most of the picture whacking annoying unfunny comic relief characters on a corporate paintball outing before finally making it to the camp, making it only the second and final time in the series Jason himself actually kills camp counsellors.

This superqt should have been the Final Girl 2bqh my fams

So Tommy butts heads with the local sheriff, makes out with the said sheriff's daughter, and gets in a car chase, all of which is amiable filler, but filler regardless. Finally he hatches a successful plan to defeat Jason by tying a rock round him with a chain and letting him sink to the bottom of the lake, for someone else to deal with further down the road.

Metaphor for the b**mers polluting the world for their descendants, or not that?

Sadly this would be the last time we'd ever see Tommy, and therefore the last time a main protagonist recurred during the series. It also signposts a major turning point for the tone of the series, as from now on surviving the movie is a life-affirming experience that allows the protagonists to overcome their demons, as opposed to the early instalments in which the survivors were visibly traumatised if not outright nuts from their ordeal. Even goofy as fuck entries like Part 3 and Part 5 went with this, whereas from 6 onward, surviving basically meant peace of mind. Protagonists even tend to survive in convenient romantic pairings, which suggests a sort of closure I'm not sure we really expect or want from these movies.

This kid gets it.

But by far the most important takeaway from this one is the soundtrack of Alice Cooper songs, including the official Jason theme song, "Man Behind The Mask", with its accompanying music video which is maximum 80s/comfy/horror/rock-kino. You'll never guess the twist ending!

*They stopped bothering with motive around Part 4.

NYOO video for Halloween: EVIL of Pumpkinface!!!!

NYOO

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning!

Spoilers throughout.

One year after bowing out on a high note with the still-classic-feeling Part 4, Friday the 13th entertainingly shit the bed (and every bed) with a fifth instalment in which Jason is replaced by a guy in a Jason costume, making this technically Scooby Doo.

Despite the fan outrage that their beloved murderous retard in a hockey mask was replaced by a cheap knockoff murderous retard in a hockey mask, that angle is by far the least of the flick's many, many problems. And when I say "problems" I mean it in the sense that microcephaly is a problem.

A nice detail is you can tell he's not the real Jason because he has blue stripes on his goalie mask instead of red.

Tommy Jarvis, the young man who, as a child in Part 4, killed Jason, is now in a halfway house for nutter butters, convinced he keeps seeing Jason around every corner despite the insistence by the cops that Jason's body was cremated - a plot point point-blank ignored by the next instalment, as was the twist ending and pretty much everything else from Part 5. For all that exceptional individuals like me like to go over the continuity of these series, there effectively isn't any. However, this is good, as the alternative would be reddit-tier werld berlderng.

Friday the 13th is not about plot.

So one of the unstable kids at the halfway house axe-murders another of them because they gave him an axe like dumb-dumbs. Axe-Boy is arrested but later someone in the town starts killing again. Has Axe-Boy escaped? Has Tommy snapped? Is Jason back from the grave? Or is it a guy we saw for two seconds at the start and won't remember by the time we find out it was him? It's the last one, but also maybe Tommy, except that the twist ending, as mentioned above, is dropped and never mentioned again, making this possibly the most pointless Friday the 13th movie, which is like being the most neurotic twitter user, or the fattest person over 400lbs.

"Alas, poor Not-Jason. I knew him, well, not at all really" - Tommy

Jason would look way more creepy in a patient's gown than the random ass hobo clothes he normally wears.

Worse still, it's the most annoying Friday the 13th movie, thanks largely to the fat tard who initiates the whole comedy of errors by pissing off Axe Boy and the two most obnoxious red neck stereotypes in motion picture history, which is quite the achievement since if there's one thing skinnyfat Hollywood hacks hate more than adult heterosexuality (there isn't), it's the rural working class. These "gross hicks" chew up the scenery and what feels like about fifteen minutes of screentime shrieking, being dirty and hacking up unappetising chicken meat before getting unceremoniously bumped off, making not the merest difference to the plot but giving child-molesting liberals something to feel superior to while pissing everyone else off.

Stunning and bravely punching up at poor people.

On the plus side, there's a guy named "Demon" who is a Michael Jackson fan, and a girl that does the robot while listening to new wave music, just to remind you that it's 1985. The final chase sequence is pretty good too, and includes a brief face-off between a chainsaw and Not-Jason's machete. As we know, the real Jason is afraid of chainsaws, so this is a neat little tip-off that it's not really him (as if that was planned).

Fortunately this would be the absolute low point of the series at least until Jason Goes To Hell (but let's call it a tie).

Live and Let Die

Spoilers throughout.

After the Lay-Z-Boy debacle you might think the James Bond producers might have played it safe when introducing their third Bond, but Roger Moore's first outing would prove you entirely wrong. Live and Let Die might be the strangest 007 movie of all, and this is a series that includes Moonraker.

Ugh, I canNOT buhLIEVE she wore the same outfuht???

Bond is called in to investigate an agent disappeared by drug lord Mister Big and/or Kananga, President of not-Haiti, who are the same person wearing an elaborate disguise. Why Kananga didn't just get one of his numerous minions to stand in as Mister Big is beyond me, but then Diamonds are Forever had a villain who was several of the same guy, so why not have a villain who's two guys at once?

YO LIL DONNIE I PULLED MY OWN FACE OFF. WHADDYA THINKA THAT?

Anyway the plot is not important. What's important in the Moore era is chases, stunts, setpieces, gags and ill-advised but always entertaining left turns into whatever was popular that year. Thus it is that Live and Let Die is the first and last early 70s blaxploitation flick starring James Bond wandering around the mean streets of Harlem and fighting drug dealers in comical pimp outfits. As you might imagine, this is the best thing ever in movie (and all) history.

We need to bring back this aesthetic.

Kananga is a fun villain with his inexplicable cosplay hobby and array of sidekicks including Teehee, a hook-handed henchman whose enjoyment of his work is infectious, Whisper, who whispers, and a taxi driver with the best sideburns in cinema. Another quirk of his is using Jane Seymour's Solitaire to predict the future for him using the Tarot. For some reason he believes in the Tarot despite knowing for a fact that Voodoo is real. He knows this because his other bff is Baron Samedi, the Ghede lwa, who appears several times throughout the film, is killed at least twice and can clearly do literal magic, which means in the James Bond films Voodoo is literally the correct religion.

DAS RITE

Why an actual god/spirit manifesting irl wants to help a drug kingpin push heroin is of course never explained, but I'm sure for shits and giggles is a good enough reason. The supernatural is never invoked in any other James Bond movie so this one is all we have to go on. This is also perhaps the movie that best illustrates the "overly elaborate death trap" bit from Austin Powers, with villains trying to feed Bond to both crocodiles and sharks, and has three chase scenes involving a bus, plane and boats. Teehee also continues the tradition of henchmen outliving their masters coming back for one last shot at Bond and starts a trend of fights on trains ending in defenestration that would continue in The Spy Who Loved Me.

70s stuntmen were not paid enough.

Teehee is a sadly overlooked henchman who loves his work.

The only things that keep this one from being the greatest Bond (or otherwise) film of all time are the lame villainess and comedy redneck stereotype. Rosie Carver is set up as a ditzy CIA agent (???) but turns out to be working for the villains, but never gets the drop on Bond and is killed off quickly for no real payoff, and Sheriff JW Pepper is astoundingly unfunny, though perhaps they put him in there to head off charges of racism towards the black cast, who are nearly all villains.

See? We hate poor whites more, now get off our backs.

Such considerations are dumb and gay because one movie out of eight (at the time) having black villains hardly constitutes a pattern, and Quarrel Jr (ostensibly the son of a character from Doctor No) appears as a goody, and, let's be honest, this couldn't be made today no matter what concessions they tried to awkwardly shove in there.

LMFAO who wrote this scene? DW Griffith?

No matter. Bond wandering into literal Voodoo, disappearing through a false wall and a false floor in the baddies' restaurants, and a main villain who inflates like a balloon are all the reasons you might ever need to see this wonderfully strange, unique experiment.

This happens too.

Diamonds are Forever

Spoilers I guess.

The sixth Connery outing promptly ignored the absolute turd that was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but the damage was done. The rot set in and the beautiful dream that was the classic Bond was over, never to return. Maybe it was the 60s, something unrepeatable, or just changing tastes, but the writing is unmistakably different, and mostly in a bad way. Diamonds are Forever is effectively the first Roger Moore film, but with Sean Connery. It's arch and campy and overtly comical, totally missing the point of its subtler, smarter forebears. Bond was always humorous, but played it straight enough to make it interesting. This one...

Bond was b& from the pool for bullying thots

Nonetheless, the Moore era is not the Connery era, and once this is accepted, it becomes much more enjoyable for what it is. The Moore films aren't surreal or satirical, they're live action cartoons with action beats comparable to Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry. Diamonds features Connery in proto-Moore mode driving a moon buggy, flipping a car up on its right wheels into an alleyway and driving out on just the left ones, and killing off the baddy by picking up his one-man escape submarine on a crane and smashing it into a building like a wrecking ball. It's all very entertaining, you just can't quite shake the feeling the writers are leaning over your shoulder going "ya get it? Huh? Huh? Ya get it?"

Grand theft auto. The log lady stole my moon buggy.

Diamonds picks up right after the end of You Only Live Twice, with Bond tossing a hapless goon through a paper wall in Japan. He follows Blofeld (now played by Charles Grey with hair) to Egypt where he kills him off for good, until it turns out it was just a lookalike, even though Blofeld himself looks nothing like either of his last two incarnations. They'd have been better off just leaving him dead and having a new villain for the remainder of the movie. The Chairman Mao cosplay is back but the magic is long gone and by the final act there can no longer be any excuse for Blofeld not to just have Bond immediately shot instead of capturing him. He comes across here as an ineffectual pantomime villain and if I were given to writing fix fic I'd say the Diamonds version was just a decoy for the real thing all along. If the OHMSS version is Blohard, we'll call this one Fauxfeld.

Interestingly[citation needed], the villain was originally meant to be Goldfinger's twin brother who was obsessed with diamonds instead of gold. Sadly Gert Fröbe declined to reappear most likely because he realised that idea was stupid, but it most likely would have been better overall.

Much better baddies are his henchmen, the extremely creepy Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, two flaming homosexuals who literally skip and hold hands with each other but are perhaps the most cheerfully sadistic killers in the series, trying to have Bond cremated alive, burying him in the desert and eventually coming at him with a couple of kebabs. There's also a Bond girl named Plenty O'Toole, which is obvious but still funny, and the excellent scene in which she is tossed out of a window, which features a punchline so good that one shitty Wolverine flick ripped it off word for word.

plenty o'toole more like yeeted out o'the window

I also like the fact the final showdown is set on an oil rig because oil rigs are cool.

this is #cool

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Because we live in the tiresome era of hipsters chasing clout, George Lazenby stinkbomb On Her Majesty's Secret Service has recently become a fashionable favourite among the douchebag crowd. Liking this mess is an instant tell for a pseud, don't even @ me.

Numales will defend this.

The plot involves, boringly, Telly Savalas trying to destabilise British agriculture with a foot-and-mouth-style pathogen disseminated by a squad of brainwashed 60s hairdos. This is such a step back from hijacking spaceships from a volcano I think even with a decent Bond it would have been a letdown, but it gets stupider. George Lay-Z-Boy has to go undercover as a boring nerd, which is up there with casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as an emotionless robot in terms of making the best out of casting, to establish whether or not Savalas is really Blofeld, posing as a count with a suspiciously similar name like he wants to get caught.

What is this stupid fucking doily thing meant to be?

This is dumb for at least two reasons: one is that if Bond is meant to be the same person as last time, Blofeld would immediately recognise him. There's a pre-title gag where Lay-Z-Boy sort of winks to the audience that he's not the "other guy" so I guess maybe he isn't, but if that's the case then why can't Miss Moneypenny and M tell the difference? There's an old fan theory that "James Bond" is just a codename given to every agent who takes on the role, but that's even stupider because that would mean he, Miss Moneypenny, M and Q are all in kayfabe 24/7 like a pack of rancid LARPers.

To paraphrase Scre4m, am I overthinking it, or did the writers underthink it?

The other reason this is dumb is that Blofeld is jeopardising his entire plan for the trivial matter of pursuing a title, which seems to fly, stupidly, in the face of his previous characterisation. The classic Blofeld is interesting only because he's such a mysterious cypher, the literally faceless mastermind known even to his closest followers only as "Number 1". Even the name SPECTRE evokes something ambiguous, amorphous. He didn't even care enough to get the huge scar on his face fixed until now. OHMSS Blofeld, meanwhile, is such a preening douche he'll paint a huge target on himself just for a meaningless honorific. More like Blohard.

Your villain should not look like someone who tells boring stories at work parties and drives a sports car because he's bald.

Worse, this is the one with the ""tragic"" ""love"" story, which makes it all the more regrettable that it's the one where Bond is played by a man with all the acting talent of a rock and all the charisma of a less interesting rock. The girl of his dreams is played by Diana Rigg from Loicenseland TV show The Avengers (not to be confused with Disney's Marvel's borefests), which is like casting the chick from Relic Hunter as Lara Croft, except that would be hot af so not like that at all. Rigg is more likeable than Lay-Z-Boy, but this is not a very considerable achievement, and her character goes from a suicidal trainwreck to Bond With Tits offscreen for no reason at all.

"U WOT M8 I'LL FOCKIN GLASS YA" - our hero's one true love

Even the action scenes are boring and go on way too long, especially the ski chase which features some of the worst back projection I've ever seen, including in Laurel and Hardy flicks. Blohard fucks up constantly, putting Bond in a storage room and forgetting about him, leaving him for dead in an avalanche, getting distracted by his thot at an important moment, dismissing an obvious attack as "nothing" even though it's literally minutes before his win condition would have been achieved, missing an easy shot at an oblivious Bond's back, and dropping a live grenade in his own bobsled. I am literally not making any of those up.

"DURR HERP DERP DURR" - a once feared mastermind

"But Pat", you simper hipsterishly, "OHMSS is Bond for grownups. Simple minds like yours can't comprehend the artistry. I have been to many wine tastings and am enlightened by my own intelligence". While there are two neat transitions in the flick, that is the full extent of its artistic distinction.

Actually I lied, this is the only one.

The story is as silly and contrived as any other Bond, just less fun. In fact it was such a disaster that the next instalment, Diamonds Are Forever, completely ignores it and picks up immediately after You Only Live Twice, with Sean Connery back in the saddle as if OHMSS had just been a bad dream, but not of the Nightmare on Elm Street variety, but of the Freddy's Dead variety instead. (Mildly) interestingly, the Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton Bonds occasionally mentioned Bond's brief marriage, but Lay-Z-Boy was never seen or heard from again.