Soul Vengeance

I first saw a trailer for Welcome Home, Brother Charles on one of the 42nd Street Forever compilation DVDs.  I didn’t notice anything especially unique about it, but I recall the narrator intoning the title ominously several times during the trailer.  Somewhere along the way I found out why Welcome Home, Brother Charles was considered a blaxploitation classic.  It has to do with a  murder that takes place near the end of the film.  Charles strangles a lawyer that was responsible for sending him to prison.  He strangles the lawyer using his unnaturally long (I’m talking anaconda long) penis.  Yes, he seduces the man’s wife, hypnotizes her with his amazing manhood, and then wills it to grow to at least 20 feet in length and wrap around the man’s neck.

Prior to getting to this scene, we get an interestingly structured blaxploitation film.  The film starts with Charles on a ledge ready to commit suicide, and then fades back to before his arrest as a prostitute makes a deal with a client that takes place right in the middle of a police sting where the cops hope to arrest dope dealers Charles and his partner, N.D..  We watch as the dealers realize they are being watched by the cops and try to split.  One cop makes it a special point to try and capture Charles.  He misses, but another officer catches him.  The cop starts beating on Charles, and has to be pulled off by his partner.  Another flashback reveals that Charles had been having an affair with this cop’s wife.  The cop ends up beating Charles nearly to death and even attempts to cut off his manhood with a pocket knife.

Charles goes to court where he is railroaded and sent away to prison.  In prison he goes through a change and decides to give up pushing drugs.  When he gets released, he tries to get back with his girlfriend, but she is now a stripper and taking up with his ex-partner.  His partner explains that he owns her now, and proceeds to have Charles beaten up to drive the point home.  Charles ends up being befriended by the prostitute that was there at his arrest.  They move in together and he tries to get a job.  She quits hooking and becomes a waitress.  They try and make a life, but one night Charles sees the racist cop that beat him and starts his plan for revenge. 

Welcome Home, Brother Charles, or Soul Vengeance as the DVD is titled, is a pretty fun blaxploitation film.  The way the film plays with timelines to show us things before they happen or well after they have happened gives the film a different feel from most exploitation films.  And while I am not about to seek out the title music to put on my ipod, it works remarkably well with the feel of this film.  There are plenty of plot holes or things that don’t make sense in the film, but they actually add to its charms.  The fact that the cop’s wife doesn’t recognize Charles when he shows up at their house after getting out of jail and deciding to start getting some payback seems odd, but maybe she wasn’t really paying attention to his face.  The scene where she gets mesmerized or hypnotized by his manhood is priceless.

The IMDB lists Welcome Home, Brother Charles as 91 minutes, but the Xenon DVD lists the time as 87 minutes.  One person commented that the Soul Vengeance DVD had been edited which might explain the difference.  I did notice that there were several places the DVD seemed to skip, like a bad splice in the master had went through, but I just chalked that up to the film being a 35 year old exploitation film that was not released by a major studio.  If it is cut, I would love to see the uncut version.  There are some scenes in this film that have to be seen to be believed.   I give it 2 1/2 stars as it is.

Sex At 24 Frames Per Second

I ran into this DVD while looking around at Wills recently.  It was put out by Playboy, but it also has the AMC logo on it as well.  The DVD attempts to provide a history of sex in the cinema.  Not a whole lot of time is spent on the early days, but there are a few snippets from early silent films that helped lead to the creation of the Hayes Code and the Breen Production Code.  These self censoring production codes were enforced to prevent the government from stepping in and to assuage the Catholic church. 

As we move into the 30s the film looks at film noir and the use of double entendre to deal with sexual matters.  Since sex could not be shown, Hollywood sexualized the cigarette for example.  More time is spent on the post production code films of the 60s onward.  Plenty of scenes from Unfaithful are shown as are several scenes from Fatal Attraction.  Although Last Tango in Paris is mentioned, the infamous butter scene is not included. 

The film is a nice overview of sex in films, but I would have much preferred a more detailed decade by decade set than the fast paced 101 minutes the entirety of the 20th century is given in this film.  The movie also claims that now that “the genie is out of the bottle” in regards to sex in the movies, that it can never be put back in, but this ignores all the recent fights that have taken place between the MPAA and filmmakers.  Angel Heart was trimmed to get an R as was Eyes Wide Shut several years ago and there have been a string of other films that have faced the same battle.  The only place the genie has free reign seems to be on the DVD, and even then American audiences have yet to be given the uncut Eyes Wide Shut. 

I also would have liked to have seen more information on a few recent groundbreaking films like The Brown Bunny, Shortbus, and Scarlet Diva.  Unfortunately Shortbus was released 3 years after this documentary and The Brown Bunny came out the same year as the documentary.   As a “Cliff Notes” overview, I give Sex at 24 Frames Per Second 3 stars.  Enjoyable fluff, but not detailed enough to be truly educational.

Edmond

I was prowling through the DVDs at Big Lots and I ran across a film called Edmond.  I had never heard of it, and the cover art didn’t do much to excite me, but it was written by David Mamet, directed by Stuart Gordon, and stars William H. Macy.  For that talent alone it should be worth $3 I figured. 

Edmond tells the story of Edmond Burke (Macy) who has an appointment rescheduled at work and decides to stop off and have his fortune told by a tarot card reader.  The old woman tells him he is not where he is supposed to be and he decides at that moment to radically alter his life.  He tells his wife he is leaving her and heads out to a bar.  There he meets Joe Mantegna who starts to discuss his racial viewpoint in a decidedly non PC manner.  He gives Macy a card and sends him off to a high-end gentleman’s club for the first time.  While a girl dances around topless on the stage, Denise Richards tries to talk him into buying her a drink and going with her to the back of the club.  When he is told the price of the “drink” he complains that it is too much and tries to barter down.  He’s not opposed to paying the girl for her services, but he doesn’t like the idea of paying half of that money to the management.  Needless to say he gets tossed out.

Edmond’s next stop is a sleazy peep show that promises totally nude girls.  He is led to a booth where a stripper (Bai Ling) tells him to put $10 in the slot and she’ll make him feel good.  He only has a $20 bill, so she tells him she’ll give him change.  He keeps trying to figure out how to make the glass partition rise so that the dancer can touch him, and she keeps telling him to “take your dick out”.  He also wants his $10 back.  She finally shoves a $10 bill back through the slot and drops the metal panel that covers the glass pane as Edmond storms out unfulfilled once again. 

The rest of the first half of the film covers Edmond’s other tries to get laid or get money from a 3 card Monte dealer and a pawn shop.  At the 3 card Monte table, Edmond ends up getting mugged and at the pawn shop, Edmond purchases a knife with a brass knuckle style handle.  When he is next taken advantage of by a smooth talking pimp that tries to rob him, Edmond has a switch flipped inside and savagely beats, slashes and kicks the man while letting spew some of the darkest racially motivated insults I have seen in a movie.  Edmond feels do alive after this that he goes to a restaurant and picks up a young waitress played by Julia Stiles.  After taking her back to her apartment and having sex with her, he regales her with the story of how he took out the pimp.  He and the waitress then discuss their mutual hatred for homosexuals.  The girl then starts talking about being an actress.  When Edmond tells her that if she hasn’t acted professionally she is not an actress, but needs to say “I am a waitress”, she gets upset.  Tensions escalate and Edmond ends up using his knife and killing her while screaming at her and calling her a bitch.

Shortly after this Edmond has another verbal altercation with a lady who ends up reporting him to the cops and claiming he tried to rape her.  The cops find the knife and link him to the murder of the waitress.  The last part of the movie finds Edmond in jail and making even more changes in his life and the way he feels about society.

Edmond is not the kind of film I expect from Stuart Gordon who I mostly know from his Lovecraft inspired horror films, but he does a decent job showing us Edmond’s descent into the underbelly of the city.  Mamet is not up to the level of Glengarry Glen Ross with his writing here in my opinion, but William H. Macy does a terrific job acting.  We believe Edmond every step of the way.  He plays him as a character who is swept along and influenced by other things.  He knows where the bad places are in town, but has no idea what to do once he gets there.  If there is a reason to watch Edmond, William H. Macy is that reason.

Overall it’s not a horrible film, but it’s not a particularly great film either.  Once Edmond gets put in jail, it felt like the film lost its footing and didn’t know how to continue the tone of the first half of the film.  Macy gives a 4 star performance.  Unfortunately, Edmond is only a 2 1/2 star film.

The Doom Generation

What seems like a lifetime ago, I used to be an AOL user and one of my favorite pastimes was playing movie trivia in the chat rooms.  My two favorites were Guess Movie By Ploy and Guess Movie By Plot Twister.  The rules were simple.  Someone would give clues to a movie and everyone tried to guess the name of the movie.  A few movies kept turning up all the time that weren’t huge box office successes: The Pest, Attack the Gas Station, and The Doom Generation.  I stumbled across a VHS copy of The Doom Generation somewhere and picked it up.  I watched it and was intrigued.  This was a strange movie.  I finally ran across a DVD copy of the Unrated Director’s Cut at Wills and added it to my collection.  I figured with the year winding down and my having not watched the film in quite some time, it might be fun to revisit The Doom Generation and make sure the DVD played okay.

The Doom Generation is not like every other film out there or even any other film out there as far as I know.  It has a little of the Natural Born Killers feel to it, but these are just teenagers not adults, and they aren’t sociopaths that enjoy killing people.  The movie opens with young lovers Amy Blue and Jordan White (Rose McGowan and James Duval) leaving a rave to go make out at an old drive-in theater.  While they are parked there, a stranger who is being attacked jumps in their car and they take off.  The stranger introduces himself as Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech).  From here on out the film takes us with the trio as they go from convenience store to motel to fast food place and back again.  Their purchases always total $6.66.  Every where they go someone always recognises Amy as a girl by a different name who broke their heart.  Every convenience store and bar is staffed by a celebrity making a cameo (Perry Farrell, Margaret Cho, Dustin Nguyen, Amanda Bearce).  And some people get killed while the trio becomes sexually adventurous. 

The Doom Generation isn’t a great story.  It is more a series of bizarre events strung together, but it is always fascinating.  Xavier is a free spirit with some unique quirks like a picture of Jesus tattooed on his penis and a habit of masturbating and then licking his hands clean.  Amy is a self-centered speed freak who tells Jordan she loves him, but flips a coin to see which of the two guys gets to have sex with her first.  Jordan is just a nice guy who lets other people use him as they please.  He doesn’t like confrontation and is interested in hearing about the things Xavier has done.  The film play up a lot of homoerotic tension between Jordan and Xavier that ends up getting Jordan beaten and tortured by a band of neo-nazi punks in a brutal scene involving hedge clippers.

The Doom Generation is not for everyone, but if you’re looking for something a little different, this might just be your movie if for no other reason than to watch a young Rose McGowan run around topless, have sex in a bathtub, have sex with Xavier while Jordan sleeps next to them, ride Xavier naked wearing a cowboy hat while Jordan watches and masturbates at the window to the motel room, and walk around naked in a clear plastic rain poncho.  In simple terms, if you want to see the very sexy Rose McGowan in various stages of undress, you need to see this film.  The film also has a great soundtrack if you enjoy bands like Nine Inch Nails, Cocteau Twins, God Lives Underwater, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Porno For Pyros.  I give The Doom Generation 3 stars.

Twilight Of The Dark Master

On a recent trip to Wills I noticed that someone had apparently turned loose of their anime collection.  I picked up the Samurai 7 and Gantz box sets, and I bought several single disc anime DVDs as well.  Most of them were part of a series like Gungrave or Heat Guy J, but there was one stand alone disc titled Twilight of the Dark Master.  The DVD had a stark pencil and ink drawn cover with just slight application of streaks of red.  I wanted something relatively short to watch, so I decided to give Twilight of the Dark Master a spin.

Twilight of the Dark Master features some amazing animation work.  Visually the film reminds me of a mix of anime and Heavy Metal.  I really wanted to like this movie because it looked so cool.  The biggest problem I had to achieving that however was the story.  Twilight of the Dark Master is the story of a war between demons and the guardians, but of course humans are also caught up in the mix.  A girl and her boyfriend share a romantic evening as the film opens, but then something happens.  The scene uses quick cut anime style, so we’re not entirely certain what happens, but the girl is seen laying on the floor and the boy is gone.  Soon police are tracking down something that turns out to be a huge demon creature.

The movie continues with the demon being captured and held at a nightclub where it is fed young women.  The girl begins to hunt the demon, and the police are trying to track it down as well.  By about 15 minutes in I was so confused that I wasn’t sure who was what or why they were doing what they were doing.  I decided to just enjoy the animation. 

Twilight of the Dark Master is not an anime for kids.  There is language, nudity and graphic violence.  The demon devours two topless girls who sneak off from pleasuring the club owner to try and find something to steal.  They find the demon and get torn to pieces.  It’s possible my problems with understanding this movie could be cultural or they could be cleared up with a second or third viewing.  Since the film is supposed to be based on a manga, reading the source material might help as well.  For right now, I’ll just say I was disappointed.  I loved the look of the movie, but I wish I could have been more interested in the storyline.  I give Twilight of the Dark Master 2 1/4 stars.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

I have to admit, I didn’t even realize this movie was out.  I had seen the book at Books-A-Million a ton of times, but I was only tangentially aware that there was a movie based on it.  I happened to stumble across the DVD while shopping the pawn shops and decided to check it out.  Needless to say, I had no preconceived notions of what the movie would be like.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell is the semi-autobiographical tale of Tucker Max played by Matt Czuchry.  Tucker is an egotistic, self-serving jackass who takes his friend to a strip club for his bachelor party and ends up nearly causing his fiancée to call off the wedding.  His other friend had just dumped his girlfriend after he caught her performing oral sex on a rapper.  That friend meets a new woman, and he tell Tucker he doesn’t want him around right now either.  The movie covers these turbulent friendships as well as Tucker’s attempt to patch things up with both of the guys and their women.  The catch is unlike most films of this type where the character looks inside himself and finds out how big of a jerk he truly was and changes his ways, Tucker just cons everyone into believing he has changed his ways.  The film ends with zero character growth for Tucker, unless you count his being a better liar and being more tolerant of his friends’ girlfriends.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell spends a good part of the movie in strip bars and to say that it is a raunchy sex comedy would be a fairly apt description.  Just as Miss March found humor in messy bowel movements, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell serves up a scene that is even messier and grosser than that film. 

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell also features plenty of female nudity as well as Tucker’s bare ass in much of the above mentioned scene.  Tucker has a penchant or perhaps a fetish for women with disabilities.  He tells about the cops busting in on him while he has sex with a deaf girl.  He takes his buddy to a particular strip bar just so he can hook up with a midget stripper. 

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell was a lot funnier than it had any right to be, and I could see it being very quotable in certain groups.  I did feel a little dirty after having watched it, but that soon faded.  I decided to check out the opinion on the web after I watched the film, and was surprised at how horribly the movie was slammed by some people.  A lot of the people seemed to be slamming the movie as a way to slam the real Tucker Max, author of the book on which the movie was based.  The fact of the matter is, Tucker seems like a major asshole, but the movie is still entertaining never the less.  Tucker might deserve a whopping half a star as a human being, but the film was funny enough to rate 2 1/4 stars in my book.

Miss March

Having worked my way through a plethora of Universal monster movies, I was ready for a change of pace.  I found Miss March in the $5 DVDs at Wal-Mart in widescreen, unrated, and with the little “brown paper” slipcover.  I grabbed it up and decided to check it out.  When Miss March first came out, I wasn’t excited enough to rush to the theater to catch it.  I also wasn’t all that worked up when the DVD came out.  I figured I would eventually pick up a copy at one of the pawn shops I frequent.  Unfortunately most of the copies I have found at the pawn shops have usually been scratched and scuffed up pretty badly.  Also most of them were either used copies from Blockbuster in the crappy rental boxes, or they were missing the little slipcover that came wrapped around the DVD.  The piece of cardstock works similar to the slipcover used on The Girl Next Door.  It makes it appear that the girl on the DVD cover is naked beneath the brown paper covering.  It’s a trick of course.  The girl on Girl Next Door has on a strapless top and the girl on Miss March has on a blue bikini.  Never the less, the little strip of brown cardstock makes the cover much more interesting.

There’s one other thing that has changed since Miss March first came out to indifference on my part.  I became a fan of The Whitest Kids U’Know featuring the movie’s stars Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore.  I also gained more respect for the talents of Craig Robinson who plays rapper Horsedick.MPEG in the film.  Robinson has a recurring role in The Office and was also featured in Zach & Miri Make A Porno.  He also wrote and performed in a wonderful stand up bit where he is playing keyboards for a singer who is singing a song about finding out his girl is sleeping around on him.  The song is filthy, hilarious, and has a great pay off as well.

Robinson performs three songs in Miss March, albeit songs written by Cregger and Moore who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film.  Two of the songs are actually the same song, except one version is the radio friendly version of the original.  It’s a pretty funny scene where Cregger and Moore are listening to the song and Moore explains that fact to Cregger when he hears Horsedick.MPEG belting out “I wanna love a white girl” instead of the lyrics he had previously heard.

The plot of Miss March involves virginal couple Eugene Bell (Cregger) and Cindi Whitehall (Raquel Alessi) deciding to have sex after the prom.  After doing several shots with Tucker Cleigh (Moore), Bell falls down a flight of basement steps and ends up going into a coma instead of losing his virginity.  When he awakens in the hospital four years later, he finds out his former girlfriend has just posed for Playboy magazine.  He and his friend decide to journey cross-country to meet up with her at the Playboy mansion.

There are some very funny bits in this film, and there are quite a few misfires as well.  The funny bits are never up to the heights of the Whitest Kids U’Know television show, but they did still make me chuckle.  Unfortunately there are also several gags that just fell flat for me.  Did I really need to see Bell lose control of his bowels all over the hospital floor?  Am I really supposed to believe someone can fly out of a bus window just because the bus hit a section of rough road? 

Miss March was a pleasant diversion, but it could have been much better if Cregger and Moore had let some of their fellow Whitest Kids look over the script and offer some advice.  Maybe letting one of them direct would have been a better solution as well.  I give the film 2 1/2 stars for the laughs it did provide me, but I also have to say that for a film set in the Playboy mansion, there was a lot less nudity than I would have expected.  There are a few topless scenes with background characters at the mansion or on Horsedick.MPEG’s music video shoot, but the Kids seem to have chosen gross out humor over raunchy humor despite the film’s title and premise.

Halloween (1978)

When Halloween first came out, I remember seeing the ads in the newspaper.  Unfortunately it was playing at The State theater and my mom wouldn’t drive there after dark, and The State never had matinees.  I think the first time I saw Halloween was on HBO.  I loved it.  It was unlike any horror movie I had ever seen at that time.  It was wonderfully scary with great performances and fantastic direction.  The music was also really cool.  Several years later I got my first VHS recorder and Halloween was one of the first movies I taped on television.  The TV version was missing the nudity, some of the language, and I think the violence was toned down some as well, but it featured at least two additional scenes as I recall. 

I purchased Halloween on VHS and watched it several times.  After I started the conversion to DVD, I found a copy at Wills and purchased it as well.  I never sat down and watched it until the other night.  I was certain that the DVD I had contained the expanded edition of Halloween with the additional scenes, but I was wrong.  This was the THX approved version, but it did not have the additional scenes.  Guess I need to start watching the pawn shops or maybe I’ll just wait and get the Blu-ray.  A couple of scenes seemed to have been adjusted in this cut as well.  The opening scene with Michael killing his sister seems to have had the eye holes in the mask that Michael is wearing shrunk down.  I seem to recall a much wider view of the sister and the murder.  A similar image editing appears to have happened in the scene with P.J. Soles lowering the sheet and appearing topless.  The bottom of the frame now appears to be higher blocking the view of her naked breasts.  I seem to recall both of these tricks being used for the television airing of the film, but I really thought we were given a completely topless shot of Ms. Soles’ breasts when the movie played on HBO and VHS.

What can you say about Halloween that hasn’t already been said?  The film is a masterpiece and definitely a quintessential horror film.  I don’t think there was a single red-blooded teen-age boy that wasn’t in deep lust with P.J. Soles, and most were also pretty taken with the more innocent Laurie Strode as played by Jamie Lee Curtis.  It was the presence of Jamie Lee Curtis that made me sit through Grandview U.S.A.

I had seen John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 on HBO and really enjoyed it.  At the time I didn’t know he was the director behind Halloween, but I learned quickly, and he became one of my favorite directors.  I loved Escape From New York and The Thing, although Christine left me a little disappointed. 

Halloween told the story of an escaped killer that returns to his hometown to murder once again.  It was so successful that a string of sequels were made over the years.  Only Halloween III dared to depart from the exploits of Michael Myers.  It pretty much bombed at the box office, but I actually enjoyed it.  In fact it was much more entertaining than Halloween 2 in my opinion.

Halloween is a true classic and I can’t help but give it 4 stars.

Superbadazz

Superbadazz is interesting to me because it is one of the view DVDs I have watched that is not listed on the IMDB.  It stars Shaun May, who is listed on the IMDB, but this movie is not listed under his credits; same situation with Randy Clark.  It would be interesting to know why Superbadazz is not listed.  The movie is no worse than several other films which are listed on the IMDB.  And if low distribution is an issue, there are films that are probably less well known that are listed including lost films and short films.

Superbadazz is a comedy about a young man whose parents are going to kick him out of the house if he doesn’t get a job and start helping to pay his way.  The problem is that any time he or his buddy make any money they end up spending it at the strip club or for gambling.  They finally come up with the idea of opening their own strip club in the basement of Rodney’s parents house.  They hire several strippers, each with their own unique quirks.  One stripper has a wooden broom handle for a leg, one has an electronic voice box because she has a hole in her trachea, one is blind, one is narcoleptic, and one has Tourette’s syndrome. 

The boys are trying to run the club without letting Rodney’s parents catch on to what they are doing.  Rodney convinces his dad that they are having a late night garage sale, but when his dad comes down to check it out, one of the strippers quickly pretends that she is looking to purchase a tea-pot.  When Rodney’s dad asks why the woman is naked, Rodney explains that she is homeless and needs to buy some clothes at the garage sale. 

Superbadazz is sort of a low-budget version of Risky Business and Night Shift set in an urban setting.  It is not the funniest film I have ever seen by a long stretch, but it does have some fairly humorous moments like the aforementioned tea-pot sale.  Despite all the time spent in both the real strip bar and the one that Rodney and Leon set up in the basement, there is no full frontal nudity.  The strippers have plenty of topless scenes (and one of the strippers has some truly artistic nipple tattoos), but that’s about it as far as sex and nudity go in the film.

All in all, I enjoyed Superbadazz for what it was.  It’s not Citizen Kane.  It’s not even Scary Movie (1,2,3 or 4), but it has a sense of energy that makes up for a low-budget and all the challenges that brings with it.  The script could have used a little more polish and the direction and editing could have been a little tighter, but I still give it 2 1/4 stars.

Friday The 13th (1980)

I was in high school when Friday the 13th hit theaters.  I had read about it in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine as well as a fairly new horror magazine called Fangoria.  I knew the make up effects were being done by Tom Savini who had dazzled me in Dawn of the Dead, so I had to see this film.  At the same time another film opened, a sex comedy about softball called Squeeze Play.  Our movie group of Allen Browning, Valerie Austin, and myself, decided to hit both films the same night.  Friday the 13th was playing at the Saint Albans Mall Twin while Squeeze Play was playing in Charleston at the Plaza East Cinemas.  Based on the showtimes, we decided to go see Friday the 13th first and catch Squeeza Play on the late show.  There were several shots in Friday the 13th that were unlike any that I had previously seen.  The throat slashing near the start of the film looked incredibly real, and I couldn’t ever recall another decapitation.  As a teenage fan of gore effects, I was thrilled.  As the peaceful music played and Adrienne King raised up in the boat to see the police arriving, Allen nudged me and said we should go on and take off before the credits to avoid the crowd and hopefully make it to Charleston earlier so as not to miss any of Squeeze Play.  I remembered seeing the pictures of Jason grabbing the girl in the boat being featured in one or both of the magazines and told him the movie wasn’t over yet.  About then Jason jumped out of the lake and the theater erupted in screams.  We stayed until the credits finally started and then booked it to the Plaza East where we arrived in plenty of time to catch Squeeze Play.  Thirty years later Friday the 13th is a horror classic and almost no one remembers Squeeze Play.

I bought the original Friday the 13th on VHS and it was also an early DVD purchase, but I don’t know that I ever watched either of them.  Last year when the remake was getting ready to hit the big screen, new editions of the first three Friday films were released on DVD.  The third one was released in 3D and the first one was released in an Uncut Unrated edition.  I wondered what they might have cut out to get the R rating, but it appears it was mostlya few seconds here and there rather than some here to for unseen graphic bit of gore.  (I would have also been happy with an extended version of the Strip Monopoly game, but I seriously doubted that ever existed.)   It also doesn’t appear that there was any additional topless scenes, nudity or sex that the filmmakers decided to work back in.  The topless scenes that were already there are still there, but no topless scenes for Ms. King unfortunately.

So how did Friday the 13th Unrated on DVD measure up to my memories of seeing it in the theater?  I don’t guess it’s any surprise that it didn’t have quite the same effect.  The plot has been repeated hundreds of time since 1980.  It’s no longer fresh.  The world of special effects make up has advanced by leaps and bounds.  It’s no longer all that shocking.  The identity of the killer is no longer a mystery, and of course I didn’t have Allen and Valerie here to watch it with me either.  That being said, the film is still a classic.  It inspired 10 sequels, a remake, books, a television series, and countless pieces of merchandise although the hockey mask didn’t come into play until Friday the 13th Part 3.

From a nostalgia point of view, I’d give Friday the 13th 3 stars easily, but sadly watching it without rose colored glasses, Jason’s first outing is only gonna get 2 1/2.