Crystal Lake Memories – The Complete History of Friday the 13th - REVIEW

 

 

Ok, sometimes late is better than never, I suppose.

Almost exactly one year ago I received a screener copy of Crystal Lake Memories, a 2-DVD documentary on the Friday the 13^th film series from 1428 Films and Panic Ventures. I started watching it last year but got completely caught up in the Halloween hullabaloo (my Octobers are always insane), and I meant to revisit it several times since. Just recently my son Luke and I sat down and watched both discs and I immediately regretted waiting so long to do so - this thing is fantastic! And not just for fans of the Friday franchise – those folks will obviously enjoy it. I’d recommend this for the casual Friday fan or even anyone who simply enjoys documentaries in general.

First off, this is a massive documentary. It is a visual counterpart to the 2005 book by Peter M. Bracke, and covers the entire franchise from the original 1980 film by director Sean S. Cunningham all the way through to the 2009 remake, including the 1987 TV series. It features interviews, clips, and commentaries from almost everyone that took part in those films; actors, directors, writers, stunt men, producers, casting agents, composers  – you name it, they’re probably in there somewhere - even Alice Cooper!

Crystal Lake Memories opens (and closes) with a brand new sequence shot specifically for the documentary, featuring a group of kids (ok, not so much kids as twenty-somethings… or thirty-somethings, but who’s counting?) huddled around a campfire being told the legend of Jason Vorhees by none other than, appropriately enough, Corey Feldman (who plays a significant part in the Friday series). This then dissolves into the title sequence where the moon morphs into Jason’s signature hockey mask – and the show is on! We are led through the series film by film in chronological order with Feldman’s narration and a host of interviews and comments. There are behind the scenes photos and video and even, in some cases, never before seen footage excised from the films.

It is truly an enormous endeavor, and too much for me to take in in one sitting; I had to break it up over several nights. There is more information delivered than I ever thought possible about this series, and here’s the thing – it is all totally entertaining. I credit the editors who put this beast together with keeping it rolling and fast-paced. It never gets boring – which is amazing considering it’s over 6 hours long - 400 minutes of footage!

Each chapter of the documentary tackles a different film – the contents of each disc are as follows:

Disc 1
I Prologue/Long Night at Camp Blood
II The Body Count Continues
III A New Dimension in Terror
IV Jason’s Unlucky Day
V repetition
VI Ressurection
TV Curious Goods

Disc 2
VII Jason’s Destroyer
VIII Terror in Times Square
IX The Nine Lives of Jason Vorhees
X Evil Gets An Upgrade
XI Winner Kills All
XII Reboot
XIII Reflections in the Water/Epilogue

And to top it all off, there’s even a commentary track for the entire documentary! Yep, that’s right – a commentary track that is, believe it or not, equally entertaining! It features the creators of the documentary discussing the trials and tribulations of creating this gigantic documentary. You can imagine how much work and coordination went behind this production, and the number of stories that were created in the process.

The folks responsible for Crystal Lake Memories, 1428 Films, are also the creators behind the amazing NEVER SLEEP AGAIN documentary on Freddy Krugar and the Nightmare on Elm Street series. That is another massive documentary that follows the Freddy franchise film-by-film and is equally entertaining. It is on Netflix right now, and highly recommended!

So check out CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES – available on DVD and BLU-RAY now. Definitely worth the price of admission – which ain’t that high! It sells for around $30 on Amazon right now for the Bluray, $18 for the DVD. You can’t beat that with a machete!

Random ramblings...

Few random thoughts today…
It is a beautiful, sunny, 70 degree day outside in Nashville today. I had lunch with my wife and youngest son in the park. Good times. I hope this weather will stick around for a while.

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I saw the Oscars last night, and was thrilled that this year’s award ceremony included a tribute to horror movies. It was pretty well done, despite the fact it was introduced by Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, two of the stars of Twilight. Yuch. The tribute covered a wide variety of movies than spanned the decades, from Frankenstein to Twilight (again, yuch). Kind of scratched my head at some of the films in the montage, like Edward Scissorhands (a fantasy movie at best), but apart from those gripes it was great seeing a salute to the genre so often ignored by the Academy.

So how much fun would it be to see Jason kill someone with one of these?
Hey, there's an idea for a future sequel!

I noticed in the end credits that this segment was credited to Jon Bloom. This is not to be confused with John Bloom, best known as TV Horror Host Joe Bob Briggs. I daresay good ole Joe Bob would have put together a MUCH better tribute, and I guaran-damn-tee there wouldn’t be any Twilight clips in it, either!

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I didn’t see the entire Oscars, just kind of caught it in bits and pieces. I didn’t see if they showed Roger Corman last night, or even announced his honorary Governor’s Award. I sure hope they did – no one is more deserving of this honor than Roger. Congratulations from a big fan down south here in Tennessee.

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To the a-hole who backed his car up in front of me as I was walking back to work (parked in a no parking zone, to boot), and then got out and tried to start a fight when I said something to him, you receive the jackass of the year award.

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I saw Rob Zombie’s CSI episode last week. I’m not really a fan of the show, and ordinarily don’t watch it. But I did catch Rob’s episode. I thought Rob handled the material well enough, and even managed to work in a classic horror clip (Nosferatu), a snippet of one of his songs from the new CD (Virgin Witch), and a cameo by his wife Sherri Moon, who was great, btw. But the plot was just so-so, and there was only so much they’d allow Rob to do within the confines of the show. I’d love to see him given free reigns to really cut loose with the characters and story, but that wasn’t going to happen. Overall, not bad, but nothing spectacular.

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I really need to pay closer attention to what I’m doing. I recently made a purchase on Amazon of what I thought was the CD soundtrack from the movie Trick or Treat – but instead what I got was the cassette. Doh! Oh well, got it transferred to CD and am listening to it right now. I have to laugh at myself over that one, though.