Sep 2, 2024

The Mahoning Has Got A Death Curse!


Friday The 13th 1-10
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The longest running annual tradition at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater celebrated its tenth anniversary this past weekend.  To celebrate the milestone, they screened 35mm prints of the first ten movies from the franchise that gave this event its name: Friday The 13th.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern
Show poster designed by Justin Miller

Camp Blood began in 2015.  This was before my wife and I discovered the Mahoning, but we were in attendance for one night in 2021, two nights in 2022, and all four nights for the first time in 2023.  Now, it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to be at every night of Camp Blood unless some sort of tragedy keeps me away.


The special food for the weekend was the Stabby Jason.  It's like a Sloppy Joe, but... it's a Stabby Jason!  It's especially yummy with an optional cheese upgrade.


As always, there were special guests on the lot.  Adrienne King, who plays the final girl Alice Hardy in the first Friday The 13th movie (and the first victim in its sequel) joined us on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  Amy Steel, who stars in Friday The 13th Part 2 as Ginny Field, was in attendance on Friday and Saturday night.  They were both in the concession building to meet fans, take pictures, and sign autographs.  Money is a little tight this month for me so I had to hold off on the extras, but they were super nice and seemed like they were both having a great time!


There were camping games on the lawn under the big screen in the hours before showtime on Friday and Saturday.  The events included a body bag race and a capture the flag style game on Friday, a three-legged race and a Scream Queen contest on Saturday, and an eyeball egg toss and tug of war on both nights.

The video above is from some of the events on Friday.  I didn't record any footage of it, but the Scream Queen contest was especially fun to watch.  The participants were made up of men, women, and children who lined up to take their turn screaming as loud as they could with their volume measured by a decibel meter.  The winner was a young girl who was crowned with a tiara by Adrienne King as the 2024 Mahoning Scream Queen.

Adrienne King and Amy Steel also participated in the tug of war on Saturday, but I have a good reason for not recording any video from that event.


Mike, Tom, and I put a team together for the tug of war that included Virgil and Andrew Kern (the artist behind all of the awesome banner art for Mahoning shows) to go up against the Camp Blood tug of war defending champions of the past four years.  We didn't win and our opponents went on to retain the championship for the fifth consecutive year, but we put up a good fight and it was a lot of fun.  I'm going to consider it a moral victory for the fact that none of us fell down.  Huge thanks to Zach for the pics.


Our friend Brittany and some other folks came up with an awesome idea to set up a friendship bracelet-making station at the back of the lot.  It's an extremely cool idea, and one that I hope becomes a part of Camp Blood every year.  Brittany gave me this very cool Mahoning bracelet complete with a popcorn bucket charm!
 

There were a lot of incredible cosplays on the lot over the weekend.  I wish I had gotten pictures of more of them, but these four were my favorite.  They must have taken at least 20 pictures with different folks.

And now, onto the movies...


Night One - Thursday, August 29

Thursday night was a single feature of the iconic film from 1980 that kicked off a franchise: Friday The 13th.


Friday The 13th is an excellent horror film that was destined to be a classic even if no sequels followed, and there's no better place in the world to see it than the Mahoning.  There's something about being outside, with the chill of the air and the sounds that fill the night sky from the wildlife around the lot that makes you feel like you're in Camp Crystal Lake.




The 1981 film Friday The 13th: Part 2 is the first in the series that features Jason Voorhees as the killer, but he hasn't yet adopted the look that the character would become famous for.  The horror super villain wears a burlap sack as a mask throughout the film as he slaughters the camp counselors, and anyone else in the vicinity, as an act of vengeance for the decapitation of his mother in the first film.  It's one of the greatest sequels in horror history, and a rare instance in which the second film is better than the first.

Someone on the lot who was sitting fairly close to our group had brought a bicycle bell with them to the drive-in, and they rang it every time that the bicycle-riding Crazy Ralph character was on screen.  I'm not usually a fan of folks who try to interject their own comedy into a film, but this was an exception.  I don't know who it was, but they had incredible timing.  They didn't overdo it... just one ring for each of his screen appearances, and it was never immediately as the character came on screen.  The best one was during Crazy Ralph's death scene.  Everyone in our group was waiting for the bell, and it didn't ring until the absolute last second of his time on screen, at which point everyone within earshot burst out into laughter and applause.  Whoever this was, well done my dude!

Tom shared an interesting piece of trivia about this film after the credits rolled.  They had originally shot several nude scenes of the Sandra Dier character, who is one half of the couple in the film who Jason impales with a spear while they're having sex.  However, this footage was cut from the film and destroyed by Paramount Pictures when they discovered that actress Marta Kober had lied about her age when she was cast as Sandra.  She was only 16 years old.  Yikes!


The 3-D chapter in the Friday The 13th series was next up.  Friday The 13th: Part III was released in 1982 and it's the movie where Jason gets the iconic hockey mask that has come to symbolize the character and the franchise.  He gets the mask from one of the most irritating characters in the history of horror films, Shelly Finkelstein.  

I first saw Friday The 13th: Part III at the Mahoning when it led off Night Two of Camp Blood VIII, and while that night was a hell of a lot of fun, this screening topped it.  The version we got to see on both occasions was 2-D, but this is one of those movies where it's obvious which moments were shoehorned into the flick to give it an excuse to have something pop off of the screen in 3-D.  At this past Friday's screening, the crowd erupted into a "woooooah" every time one of those 3-D scenes hit the screen, and it got progressively louder as more folks joined in.  The crowd responses had a very VHS Fest vibe to them, and it was awesome!


Last up on Friday was one of my favorite movies in the series, Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter.  This film from 1984 introduced arguably the most well-known character not named Jason in the franchise, Tommy Jarvis, who was played in this film by Corey Feldman.

One of the highlights of this film is Crispin Glover's performance as Jimmy Mortimer.  He's an awkward dude who is teased at the start of the film by his douchebag friend Ted.  Later in the film, Jimmy hooks up with one of the twins while Ted is rejected by every woman that he makes a move on and is left by himself to get high and watch porn.  Jason ultimately gets the last laugh by killing them both, but hey, at least Jimmy died happy.  There's also a revenge subplot in this film that you discover about halfway through.  Rob Dier, played by actor Erich Anderson, is the brother of Sandra Dier, who was killed by Jason in Part 2.  He wasn't successful, but he held of Jason long enough for Tommy Jarvis to finish the job at the end of the film.

This was my second time seeing The Final Chapter on the big screen at the Mahoning.  They played it last year on the second night of Camp Blood IX... and if they play it again next year, I'll be back then too!




Before I get into the movies, quick shout out to Dave for this incredible slide that honors one of the greatest characters in the history of horror films, Ethel Hubbard.  She was played brilliantly by actress Carol Locatell, who just passed away last April at the age of 82.  If you've never seen the movie, picture a violent, psychotic Thelma Harper.  She steals every scene that she's in, including her own character's death.


Speaking of Ethel Hubbard, the first movie of Saturday night was the fifth film in the series and the one that includes her character: Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning.  This is the second chapter in the Tommy Jarvis trilogy and it's my favorite film in the franchise.

This movie was released in 1985, a little over three months before my fifth birthday.  It's another one of those movies that I saw for the first time when I worked for Blowout Video when I was a teenager, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't watched it from start to finish in about a quarter century since that first time.  Seeing it on the big screen at Camp Blood X reminded me of how much I absolutely love this movie.  It's a perfect blend of sex, horror and comedy, with a side of mystery that is missing from the rest of the franchise.  If you've never seen the movie before, Jason is not the killer, and you won't find out who it is and what their motives are until the end of the film.

If they ever show Part V again at Camp Blood, I'm going to suggest that one of the pre-show camping games is port-a-potty singing contest in honor of the great Miguel A. Núñez Jr. and them damn enchiladas.


The 35mm print of Part V that was screened during Camp Blood X had Spanish subtitles.  I'm not good enough to hold a conversation in Spanish, but I know enough to recognize that the subtitles are not an exact translation of what is being said in English on the film, which added another element of fun to the experience.

The scene in the photo above is the only part of the movie that Corey Feldman appears in.  He was filming The Goonies at the time, so this was shot in his back yard with a rain machine on his day off.  The movie jumps ahead in time after that first scene, after which point the adult Tommy Jarvis is played by John Shepherd.


The second film of Saturday night, and the final chapter of the Tommy Jarvis trilogy, was the 1986 film Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.  This is widely regarded as the best film in the series, and is absolutely one of my favorites, though Parts 5 still tops this one for me, just by a little bit.

Thom Mathews takes over in the role of Tommy Jarvis in this film, which begins when he and a friend who he met while incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane take a trip to the graveyard to dig up Jason's body so that Tommy can prove to himself that Jason really is dead and hopefully put an end to the hallucinations he's been having since he killed Jason when he was a child in Part IV.  In a fit of rage, he stabs Jason's corpse with a long metal rod from the cemetery fence.  Soon afterward, the rod is struck by lightning and Jason is brought back to life Frankenstein-style as an undead killer with superhuman strength.  The rest of the movie is spent following Jason's killing spree, and Tommy's attempts to stop him and to convince everyone in town that the iconic killer has returned.

This film is iconic for many reasons, including its theme song He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask) by the legendary Alice Cooper.  We saw this for the first time at the Mahoning during Camp Blood VII back in 2021.  It was Night Two of that year's event, and it was also my 25th visit to the drive-in.  My second Mahoning screening of this film for this year's Camp Blood X is my 236th night at the drive-in.  I'm going to have to think of something to do to celebrate on the lot when I get up to my 365th night, at which time I will have spent one full year of my life at the greatest place in the world to watch a movie.  What can I say folks... you've got your goals, and I've got mine.


Last up on Saturday night was the 1988 film Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood.  This is the one where a telekinetic young woman named Tina Shepard revives Jason from the bottom of the lake when wishes to bring back her abusive father who she accidentally killed when she was a child by causing the dock over the lake that he was standing on to collapse.

The concept behind this film is "What if Jason battled against Carrie White", with Tina standing in for Carrie.  It's a fun movie, but I think this is one of the weaker films in the series.  


Night Four - Sunday, September 1

The last night of Camp Blood X was a triple feature of the 8th, 9th, and 10th Friday The 13th movies, along with an awesome secret feature which I got to see for the very first time.  I'm not going to mention by name or review it here, but there's a pretty good chance that you'll be able to guess what it was.


The first movie of the last night of Camp Blood X is the only one that was shown on Sunday night that I had seen before; the 1989 film Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  This is the one where Jason is electrocuted back to life by an underwater power cable before hitching a ride on a ship that has been chartered by a high school senior class for a trip to New York.

Horror fans are in almost unanimous agreement that this is the worst movie in the Friday The 13th series.  I'd still rank it slightly higher than Jason Goes To Hell, if only because it holds true to Jason as a corporeal being, but it is definitely among the weaker films in the series.  It's still fun to watch, but it doesn't pack the same punch as the films that came before it.
 

The ninth chapter in the franchise came next.  This was my first time seeing Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, as it was for my friend Anthony who joined us on Saturday and Sunday night.  His immediate reaction was that this was "the Evil Dead chapter" of Friday The 13th, and I can totally see what he's talking about.  In this movie, 

I'm going to say the same thing about The Final Friday as I did about The New Blood and Jason Takes Manhattan.  After watching all ten films over four days at the drive-in, I think that those three films are the weakest in the series, and that The Final Friday is the weakest of those three.  I don't mean to say that I didn't enjoy it because I did, but if you have a list of things that you enjoy, something on that list is going to be your least favorite.  Having said that, in my opinion, the worst Friday The 13th movie is better than the best film in a lot of other horror movie franchises.


Last on the official Camp Blood X, but certainly not least, was Jason X.  This is the movie that I was most looking forward to seeing this past weekend.  The only thing I had seen of it before this past Sunday was the trailer, and the only thing that I knew about it was that Jason was killing people in outer space.

Jason X begins in 2010, which is nine years in the future from the 2001 release of this film.  Jason is being held by the US government in the Crystal Lake Research Facility.  They have spent the past two years trying to kill him, but he keeps regenerating.  The plan is to cryogenically freeze him until they can figure out what to do, but a rival opinion in the government is that he should be transported to a different facility where they can study his rapid cellular regeneration so that it can be replicated and used by the medical industry.  Jason briefly breaks free during this disagreement, but is ultimately trapped and cryogenically frozen.  His rampage results in the project leader, Rowan LaFontaine, also being trapped and frozen with him.

The story picks up in the year 2455.  By this point, the Earth has turned into a poisoned wasteland that can no longer support life, but a college professor and his students discover the cryogenically frozen bodies of Jason and Rowan during an intergalactic field trip, and they bring the two of them on board their spaceship to be brought back to Earth II.  They first revive Rowan, who warns everyone about the danger Jason poses, but the professor comes to the realization that he can sell Jason to a collector to pay off his massive debts.  I think you can probably guess where the story goes from here, so I won't spoil it any further.

Jason X was slaughtered by critics and fans alike when it was released 23 years ago, but I must respectfully disagree with the entire world on this one.  I absolutely loved this film!  It's a fusion of the plot devices from Futurama and Alien with Friday The 13th, with the end result being a futuristic sci-fi slasher flick that is unlike anything I've seen before.  It's also just the latest in a string of lessons that I have been taught - don't ever let the reviews of others prevent you from seeing a film and making up your own mind about it.  Sure, you might end up watching some bad movies in which you're in complete agreement with popular opinion, but there will be times like this when you find something that you enjoy so much that you can't imagine why others don't seem to appreciate it.


In the aftermath of Camp Blood X, the question in my group of friends on the lot was where each of the movies in the Friday The 13th series would rank.  In most horror franchise, my favorite film is the first one, but that's not the case for me here.  Personally, I don't think that there are any bad films in the series, but here is my list in order of favorite to least favorite, with an added blurb to make it a bit easier for folks like me who have a hard time recalling the plot from the title alone.
  1. Part V: A New Beginning
    The one with the mental home

  2. Part VI: Jason Lives
    The one where Jason is dug up and struck by lightning

  3. Part II
    The debut of Adult Jason

  4. Part IV: The Final Chapter
    The one with Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman

  5. Jason X
    The one in outer space

  6. Friday The 13th
    The first one

  7. Part III
    The one with the biker gang in 3-D

  8. Freddy vs Jason
    The one that doesn't need a Friends-inspired subtitle

  9. Part VII: The New Blood
    The one with the telekinetic girl

  10. Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
    The one on the boat

  11. Part IX: Jason Goes To Hell
    The one where Jason is a spirit that can go into different hosts
And that's a wrap on Camp Blood X.  I don't know how they're going to top this next year, but if I know the folks who run the Mahoning Drive-In Theater, they will find a way!