Saturday 2 July 2011

His Name Was Jason: 30 Years Of Friday The 13th (2009)

A documentary about the most enduring slasher icon of the horror genre, to date, and brought to you by the people who made Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, you'd expect something great here but you'd be mildly disappointed.
With some fun linking material provided by the great Tom Savini, His Name Was Jason provides an overview of each instalment of the Friday The 13th franchise with clips, comments from those involved and observations from fans of the series.
The big problem that this documentary has is it's short runtime. 90 minutes. 90 minutes to cover a franchise that includes even more than the Elm Street series, which itself managed to get a 4-hour runtime in documentary format, and has a wealth of backstory already well covered in numerous books. The fact that a lot of this documentary also feels like an advert for the remake/reboot doesn't help either.
There's still plenty of fun to be had here, with most of the usual suspects in attendance (Sean S. Cunningham, Kane Hodder, Betsy Palmer, etc), but when you stop to think of all the "behind the scenes" material that could have been included, the countless parodies and riffs and the marketing offshoots then you start to realise what a bit of a wasted opportunity it all is. And that's just the tip of the Crystal Lake iceberg.
6/10

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