A Friday the 13th falling in October can only mean one thing: an absolute Friday the 13th marathon.
The series began in 1980 with the original Friday the 13th and eventually sprawled into a 12-film series, complete with a reboot, and a showdown movie with another 80s horror icon, Freddy Krueger. With each film, the mythology deepened, the canon expanded, and the iconic slasher in the hockey mask racked up a staggering body count as he consistently killed groups of teens who simply couldn't stop visiting Camp Crystal Lake.
Below, A.frame takes you through the whole series from start to finish to celebrate Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th.
Friday the 13th follows a group of teenage counselors attempting to reopen Camp Crystal Lake after a past tragedy. But instead of summer fun, they’re stalked and murdered one by one by an unknown killer (but not Jason — not yet). Directed by Sean S. Cunningham and starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, and a young Kevin Bacon, it's the one that started it all and still holds up with its signature killer POV, stalking sound effects, and bloody kills.
Arriving only one year after the original and taking place five years later, Friday the 13th Part 2 premiered and marked the official debut of the slasher Jason. A group of teens returns to Camp Crystal Lake for counselor training, where Jason Voorhees and his mom have become a campfire legend. But of course, a killer wearing a burlap sack on their head begins stalking the group and killing them one by one.
The third entry in the franchise finally gives Jason his most iconic accessory: the hockey goalie mask. Set immediately after the events of Part 2, a group of unfortunate teens stay at a house near Crystal Lake, unaware of the fact that Jason has taken refuge in the barn nearby. The mayhem begins once again, and Jason cements his status as a horror film icon.
As the title indicates, the fourth entry in the franchise was actually meant to be the final film and close out the story of Jason Voorhees. However, the introduction of Tommy Jarvis (played by Corey Feldman) only added to the character's mythos and helped lead to additional sequels.
In The Final Chapter, Jason escapes the morgue after the events of Part 3 and returns to Crystal Lake once again. He goes on to stalk a group of teens who are renting a house near Crystal Lake. The teens meet a few locals, including the Jarvis family. Then the murders begin anew, with young Tommy Jarvis in the mix and key to (apparently) ending Jason's killing spree.
Set years after The Final Chapter, A New Beginning follows a now teenaged Tommy Jarvis as he deals with the trauma of killing Jason in the previous film. When murders begin happening around the institution where Tommy is being treated, people begin to suspect Jason of having returned. But the reveal is more surprising than that, and Tommy seems to be headed down a darker path.
Jason gets a supernatural boost in this installment, becoming an undead monster after he's accidentally resurrected by Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews). The undead Jason returns to Camp Crystal Lake, eventually followed by Tommy, who must face his fear of the monster as he stalks the unsuspecting people spending time in the woods nearby.
If Jason can get an assist from the supernatural, why not the final girl? In The New Blood, protagonist Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) has telekinetic abilities that accidentally resurrect Jason from the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake. She’s able to use those powers though to make a final stand against the hockey-masked killer, but not before he gets his requisite killing spree out of the way.
Jason finally leaves the murky waters of Camp Crystal Lake aboard a cruise bound for Manhattan after being resurrected by accident (this time through underwater electrical cables). On board for the slasher is a group of high school graduates taking a cruise to New York to celebrate, only to have Jason chase them around the boat and then the big city.
The mythology of Jason Voorhees gets even more complicated with this (supposed) final entry in the series. After his Manhattan adventure, Jason is once again resurrected. He returns to Camp Crystal Lake, where he is lured into an ambush. Although his body gets shot many times, his heart is still beating when he's sent to a morgue. There, Jason's soul possesses the coroner's body. He heads right back to Camp Crystal Lake to commence another massacre. The film's ending features a teaser of Freddy’s knife-gloved hand pulling Jason's hockey mask into hell, leaving horror fans hoping for a showdown.
Almost 10 years after the seeming end of Jason Voorhees, the slasher icon gets a chance to take his murderous tendencies to space. Jason is cryogenically frozen on Earth, which humans abandon after it becomes uninhabitable. In the year 2455, humans return to conduct research. Jason is found and taken aboard the spaceship to be transported to Earth II. Jason is accidentally awakened on the spaceship and he, of course, begins wreaking havoc.
Ten years after the tantalizing teaser from Jason Goes to Hell, fans got their showdown between Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, two of the titans of '80s horror. Freddy (a returning Robert Englund) is weak and needs Jason's help to stir up fear and give a fresh batch of teens (including Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, and Kelly Rowland) nightmares to return to strength. But Jason has his own killer plans, and the two end up facing off against each other. Despite an epic battle, the match isn't truly settled, and the audience is left with a winking tease for a sequel. (The sequel has yet to be made.)
An official reboot of the original, with elements of some of the early sequels, Friday the 13th both revamps and honors Jason's origin story. The film stars Jared Padalecki as a young man searching for his missing sister (Amanda Righetti) at Camp Crystal Lake, where Jason is working through some issues with a machete and a group of unsuspecting teens.