• Friday the 13th/Friday the 13th Part 2 (page 1)
• Friday the 13th Part 3/Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (page 2)
• Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning/Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (page 3)
• Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood/Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (page 4)
• Killer Extras (page 5)

Part I (21 mins.)
In the grand tradition of Roger Corman and William Castle, Friday the 13^th director Sean S. Cunningham worked backwards from marketing by taking out a full-page ad in VARIETY about the impending release of the most terrifying movie ever made--all before he had a script or even the money to realize what would become Friday the 13^th. Cunningham is the predominant talking head here, though well-preserved actresses Adrienne King and Betsey Palmer ("The Katie Couric of her day," according to Cunningham) and makeup man Tom Savini also get their day in court. Particularly amusing is Palmer's admission that she took the role of Mrs. Voorhees--"What a piece of crap," she says, recreating her reaction to the screenplay--to finance a new car.

Part II (14 mins.)
Why is Steve Miner AWOL? Cunningham offers some clue in saying that the director of the first and second sequels "had been a close friend." Miner's absence is never more deafening than when King struggles to fill time by making a mountain out of her molehill cameo. The majority of the piece is given over to stars Amy Steel (now going by Amy Steel Pulitzer) and Warrington Gillette (Jason himself), both of whom seem vaguely embarrassed to be discussing this film in middle-age.

Part III (9 mins.)
With the commentary taking care of cast reminiscences, this instalment focuses on the 3-D aspect of Friday the 13^th Part III. Cinematographer Gerald Feil reveals that he had coincidentally spent six months researching 3-D photography just prior to the project coming along and admits that they (the production) were essentially guinea pigs for a new polarized system called Marks Depix, which led to a severely inflated shooting schedule and much flying blind. Looking a little like Will Ferrell, Larry Zerner is the only actor interviewed, and while he's mostly there to confirm how effective the film is in 3-D (thanks for the cocktease, Shelly), he actually reflects on the curious bit of trivia that Jason inherited his goalie mask from Zerner's character.

Part IV (13 mins.)
Corey Feldman hams it up at first, pretending he's there to discuss his nonexistent role in a nonexistent Halloween sequel. Meanwhile, director Joseph Zito outlines his specific contributions to the sequel, i.e. a kid, a dog, hot identical twins, and the occasional subversion of convention, such as the shower murder of a guy instead of a girl. Feldman spins an amusing yarn around the picture's climax, referring to his character jokingly but not inappropriately as Jason's "Mini Me."

Part V (6 mins.)
Feldman returns to discuss his single day of shooting on Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning whilst admitting that he would've been the star had The Goonies not thrown a wrench in the studio's plans. Alas, one measly anecdote about filming in somebody's backyard on a Sunday makes for a pretty sorry-ass retrospective; the disc's producers would've embarrassed themselves less by pretending the fifth film didn't exist at all.

Part VI (15 mins.)
Seated in his gothic abode, Jason Lives writer-director Tom McLoughlin basically gives us the READER'S DIGEST version of his commentary track, although he slips in the occasional post-script, such as the fact that the film was shot under the title "Aladdin Sane" (after the David Bowie album) to throw fans off its scent. And you thought there wasn't any need for that kind of thing before the Internet came along.

Part VII (12 mins.)
Director John Carl Buechler and actor Kane Hodder likewise offer bite-size portions of their yakker, with Lar Park Lincoln shoehorned into their pauses. Looking like a Clinique saleswoman, Lincoln remembers getting the script and being deeply confused by all the Jason stuff, since the title--again to keep the gorehounds at bay--made no allusions to Friday the 13^th whatsoever.

Part VIII (14 mins.)
Turns out Rob Hedden is capable of engaging listeners. In this concluding segment, the hyphenate behind the final Friday explains how he got the gig (his work on "Friday the 13^th: The Series" brought him to the attention of Frank Mancuso), how his original idea--Freddy Vs. Jason--pitted too many attorneys against each other, and how the movie would've taken place almost entirely in New York City had Paramount not put a cap on the budget. (To prove his point, we're treated to storyboards of Jason on the town--frightseeing, as it were.) That said, Hedden doesn't play pass the buck, acknowledging as he does the common criticisms about the film with genuine humility. Hodder, the only other interviewee, recalls the Times Square shoot with immediacy and an endearing lack of guile.

Tom Savini on Part I (10 mins.)
Savini divulges the primitive techniques behind the first film's impressively-staged kills. I'd say he "shatters the illusion," but outside of specific names for the prosthetic devices, it's very easy for us laymen to reverse-engineer the various effects. Cunningham actually offers the most applicable bit of wisdom when he speculates that half the reason Kevin Bacon's murder is so successful is because of a key misdirection that leads us to expect the killer to strike from above, not beneath.

Tom Savini on Part IV (13 mins.)
This is half a deconstruction of Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter's deaths and half a PSA for Savini's new school, which looks like an awesome place not only to learn the art of F/X makeup, but also to meet cute goth girls. As the type of guy who wanted a subscription to FANGORIA for his eleventh birthday, I used to long for a place that would give you a degree for slathering your friends in latex, so I can't say this bit of propaganda made me feel anything but wistful. Are fake beards and vampire chicks what George Burns had in mind when he sang "18 Again"?

John Carl Buechler on Part VII (11 mins.)
Hodder once again joins Buechler, who started out in the industry as a makeup designer. Somewhere along the line we catch a glimpse of the unabridged sleeping-bag murder, but a more in-depth exploration of that footage is forthcoming.

Zerner rehashes his "Lana Turner story," Lincoln discloses the encrypted title of the screenplay ("Birthday Bash"), King personalizes the toll of low-budget filmmaking with a story about boots, and Feldman bestows co-star Judie Anderson with the honour of being the first woman he ever saw naked. In other words, DVD superintendent Donald R. Beck is cherry-picking from the leftovers; the piece counts William Butler (one of the meatbags from Friday the 13^th Part VI: The New Blood) as the only fresh face--and furthermore, did Feldman and Lincoln even play "victims"? Zito--whose appearance makes the least sense of anybody's--goes on the most fruitful tangent with his observation of the often devastating impact that seeing themselves die onscreen has on Friday the 13^th cast members. He also becomes Crispin Glover's proxy via candid remarks about the actor's unorthodox working methods. So it's not a total loss, but the poor turnout of series vets is thrown into relief by that hyperbolic title.

Rather awkwardly, this is a continuous block of elided or extended footage, albeit in chronological order. Shame that the protracted murders of Friday the 13^th, presented for comparison's sake in a splitscreen with the more familiar bowdlerized alternatives, weren't reincorporated into the film--a pair of flailing hands, barely registering in the final cut, lend verisimilitude to the decapitation, for instance. Three deleted scenes crop up from The Final Chapter, in the first of which (previously seen in one of the Savini featurettes) Feldman's Tommy Jarvis demonstrates his finger guillotine. (Jokey irony--Tommy's mom complaining that Tommy needs a haircut--closes out the final omission, with cheesecake filler comprising the interim.) We return to a picture-in-picture format for Jason Lives, though sometimes the difference between two sequences is a matter of McLoughlin having used the angle from camera A rather than camera B. Buechler and Hodder provide commentary for various extended sequences that were unfortunately sourced from a VHS dub with timecode, in effect obscuring the violence anew. They admit to preferring the sleeping-bag murder as it appears in the compromised theatrical release, but lest you think they've adopted a conscientious attitude, they refer to one slashing victim as "cootchie face." The lamented alternate ending, for what it's worth, is retarded, even taking into consideration the stupidity of The New Blood 's deus ex machina. Gotta side with the powers-that-be on that score.

Hedden kicks things off by holding up the actual electric guitar used in Jason Takes Manhattan, facilitating Gillette's segue into musician Brooks Burton's fan project to have all the Jasons sign his personal ax. Hedden returns to bedazzle us with Jason's toxic-waste-ravaged mask, McLoughlin shares an amusing story regarding the Jason Voorhees tombstone in his backyard, and Nicole Puzzo hawks NECA's line of Jason toys. The highlight is Buechler getting belated revenge on the (unnamed, but female) producer who nixed the use of makeup on Tina's undead father by submitting the original rotted-corpse design for our evaluation. Needless to say, that woman had no business producing horror movies.