At Flashbak: “Some Folks Have a Strange Idea of Entertainment:” The Five Greatest Kills of the Friday the 13th Films

My new article at Flashbak considers the five greatest kills in the Friday the 13th movie series

Here's a snippet and the url: (http://flashbak.com/some-folks-have-a-strange-idea-of-entertainment-the-5-greatest-kills-of-the-friday-the-13th-films-22512/)

"The Friday the 13^th film series possesses its ups and downs, high-points and low-lights, and yet virtually every entry in the franchise features shocking and often grotesque death scenes. 

Unlike the death scenes in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, by comparison, the violence in the Friday the 13^th movies tends not to be deeply psychological in nature.  Freddy Krueger kills by finding his victim’s personal foibles in their dreams and then ruthlessly exploiting them. Jason kills by brute force, or very sharp machete. He doesn’t play games.

Many films in the Friday the 13^th film series follow the same outline:  A group of teenagers head out for a weekend at Camp Crystal Lake, or thereabouts, and are promptly stalked by a killer (either Jason Voorhees, his mother, or a Jason imposter, depending on the entry…). 

A storm rolls in, cuts the power, and it’s time for the killer to go to work on the misbehaving teens, punishing those who engage in premarital sex and smoke weed. The message: if you fuck, you’re out of luck.  If you play, you pay.

Yet even within this repetitive (and eventually highly-predictable) framework, the Friday the 13^th films manage a high-degree of ingenuity in terms of the actual death scenes, often highlighting gruesome, cutting-edge special effects in the process.

Here my selections for the five best or most memorable death scenes in the franchise..."