We cap off Halloween Horror Month 2014 by celebrating Day of the Dead with “The Top 10 Greatest Zombies” Part Two. Felix Vasquez Jr. offers his top five Zombie Slayers to take on the nasty horde of the sometimes evil, sometimes misunderstood walkers.
In 2012 we listed ten of our favorite Horror Heroines that we consider underrated. This year we thought we’d list five more very underrated horror heroines that risked life and limb for their family, or for a cause battling against a monster, demon, or some kind of alien. They’re gorgeous, strong, and prove you can be the final girl in a horror movie and not be at the mercy of pure evil. It’s really tough to find female characters in horror that are heroic and not just final girls. There’s a ton of final girls, but not many heroines, however we were able to find five we loved that also were conveniently enough, heroines until the very end.
Joseph Zito’s 1984 treatment of “Friday the 13th” really should have been the final film in the series. While I do love the “Friday the 13th” movie series dearly, there’s a considerable drop off in quality after “The Final Chapter” as you can sense the writers trying to bring Jason back with as little absurdity as possible. “The Final Chapter” is one of the last really excellent horror romps that focus on character dynamic and family, and surely enough it’s still a very strong horror film where Jason Voorhees is an unstoppable killing machine.
My original thought was how the hell they’d explain Jason Voorhees fighting uber-Jason from Jason X. And the writers do a piss poor job of it. Maybe there are two realities in the future in where the space scavengers form a time rift? Who knows? What we learn is that Uber-Jason is not really Jason, but the head of Jason with a body compiled of nanobots, and robotic parts. He is kind of a pseudo-Jason, to be exact.
We learn in the two part mini-series that he’s convinced he’s Jason and is trying to re-claim the psyche of the original Jason to complete his memory and continue his mission to murder everyone and anyone who steps foot in Camp Crystal Lake. So Jason belonged to Earth Prime, which is now a wasteland, and the space crew from “Jason X” froze and destroyed Jason from Earth 2. That Jason was re-invented as a science fiction monster known as Uber-Jason. They then went to Earth Prime to capture Jason again, and learn from his regenerative tissues. That failed. Duh.
And now Jason is thawed and lurking on the abandoned ship. We now have two Jasons. So does that mean we have two Freddy Kruegers and two Pinheads and two Leprechauns? In either case, taking off from the “Jason X” special, the characters from Earth Prime that survive their confrontation with Jason end up on the party ship where Uber-Jason is, and as one female pilot attempts to flee, she ends up caught in between the battle of Jason and Uber-Jason for complete dominance.
As with the usual slasher fare, there are no characters we can root for, but this comic takes it to a whole other level. There are literally no interesting heroes or heroines here, and it’s mainly just pages of slaughtering hapless victims. The fight between uber-Jason and Jason also doesn’t warrant much sense, especially considering the Jason the writers chose to go with, in the end. Uber-Jason kills Jason, and puts his brain in to his own head to garner the crown of Jason Prime. So then what? Is Uber-Jason the primary design now? It’s all so unsatisfying, in the end.
The team of 1428 Films is at it again, and this time they’re giving Jason Voorhees, the man behind the mask, his due. If folks loved “Never Sleep Again” and it’s extended run time, you’ll be glad to find out that “Crystal Lake Memories” is an exhaustive and lengthy documentary running almost seven hours. This allows for funny, wry, and honest looks in to every single installment of the series. Including the remake. With narration by series star Corey Feldman, “Crystal Lake Memories” traces the series back to when “Friday the 13th” began life as a low budget production at half a million dollars. Thanks to the introduction of Wes Craven’s “Last House on the Left” along with John Carpenter’s iconic “Halloween,” the creators set out to make their own mark with a holiday themed horror film.
What does your average run of the mill slasher do on his time off? Eventually your hockey masked slasher has to unwind and recharge right? Kristjan Lyngmo’s short animated film is rather genius, in that it not only features a hockey masked slasher, but one of a lineage of hockey masked slashers who divides his time between murdering hapless campers and coming home to deal with everyday problems.
