Years:  1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989
Genre:  Horror, Slasher, Garbage
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kevin Bacon, Betsy Palmer, Cory Feldman, Crispin Glover, Kane Hodder
Eye candy:  All kinds of dumb young naked (mostly horny) chicks with knives in them
Directors:  Sean S. Cunningham, Steve Miner, Danny Steinmann, Tom McLoughlin, John Carl Buechler, Rob Hedden
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On October 4th, the horror box sets start appearing, beginning with the Friday the 13th Limited Edition Gift Set from Paramount Home Entertainment.  This 8-disc box contains the first eight Friday movies (as some purists would have it – the REAL 8 Friday movies).  If you want the ninth and tenth also (Freddy Vs. Jason and the bonkers slasher-in-space opus Jason X), they are available together on a bargain double feature DVD from Alliance Films the same day.

     The first eight movies are, of course, Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th Part II, Friday the 13th Part III (in 3-D – the box set comes with the glasses), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  For individual reviews, click the above links.

     The thing is, all of these movies are genuinely terrible.  The Friday series has been one of the most consistently awful film series in history, and has become famous…why I don’t really know.  Maybe just volume.  But the fact remains that it HAS become famous, a weird cult thing for people with bad taste and those with a keenly developed sense of irony.  And for those people this box set is just about perfect.

     It comes with a mask – just in time for Hallowe’en!  The mask is decently made, but way too small for the average adult.  And of course the average Friday the 13th geek IS an adult.  In my house, the only person who could fit into the mask was my 11-year-old stepson, who is too young to watch Friday the 13th movies anyway.

     That being said, what makes this box set work is the geeky minutiae in the booklet.  Each movie has stats – number of kills (21 in Jason Takes Manhattan!) and weapons used.  How many sex scenes and stalled cars in Jason Lives?  Which is the one movie where a character other than Jason exhibits supernatural powers (telekenisis!)? 

     THIS is the sort of thing Friday buffs love.  I think most of the recognize the awfulness of the films, so they must care more about body count and spear-gun-vs.-hatchet than they do about really enjoying the films.  And that’s exactly what this box set does.  It caters to the audience for the movies, and I think that audience will be thrilled.