God. Ok, so you might of noticed that I posted that INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS piece at like 6:20am today, and that I stopped writing on talkbacks around 7:40am today. I actually went to sleep around 8:20am today - and found myself waking up to a phone call at 5pm from Lionsgate. They were calling to see if I had received a BLACK ROSE they had sent me. Apparently - it was a Happy Anti-Valentine's Day gift they were sending to remind me that this Friday the 13th & Valentine's Day Weekend - that all of you could still see MY BLOODY VALENTINE in 3D.

That was nice of them, but frankly... had they not called, I could have missed seeing FRIDAY THE 13TH tonight! And that really would have pissed me off, cuz I've been looking forward to this reboot of the Jason series. Of all the modern horrors, the one I'm least sensitive about is FRIDAY THE 13TH and JASON. I love the iconography of the series. I think JASON is an immense horror character. The idea of Camp Crystal Lake, Alice Cooper singing "He's Back! The Mannnn Behind the Mask! And he's out of control HE'S BACK!", that KI KI KI KI MA MA MA MA... and that goddamn awesome machete. He's fun. That said, recently I've just dove into the first 3 Jason movies, which I have to confess. I'm relatively unfamiliar with. I've seen the first two before, but it has been a long time. And I'd never seen the 3rd till I invited a friend over, put on our Jason glasses and watched it.

The shocking thing I realized as I watched the first 3 is this. They're pretty damn chaste. In the 3rd film, there's no 3D boobies - and pretty much across the board, the kills are weak. The first two - well, Kevin Bacon's kill is awesome, but hell. Jason doesn't even have the mask. And he's just not as iconographic without it.

For me - FRIDAY THE 13th and JASON has always been Quint's thing. In many ways, Quint is like the younger brother I never had. Instead, I had Sister Satan - and the only hockey mask she had was signed by Nine Inch Nails. Quint was the JASON freak. That said, other than JASON X and FREDDY VS JASON - we've never watched a Jason movie together. So when I read his mostly approving review on AICN, I was excited. You see - Quint isn't a big fan of the remake wave of horror. So much so, he's out there trying to make exactly the sort of horror he wishes was in theaters.

I wasn't really throwing the event tonight, it was actually something that the Producers, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form had put together with the Alamo Drafthouse - and then invited me in on. Actually, there was some last minute issues that I got called in on, that I helped iron out to make the screening happen - and when I found out that the new Jason (Derek Mears) was coming... I got really jazzed.

So flash back to 5pm, hanging up with Lionsgate and realizing that I had to call up my friends that were going and make sure everything was set up for the screening to go smoothly tonight. And due to it taking place at the Alamo South - I had to head out, as 5 o'clock traffic is terrible here in Austin.

We get to the theater and everyone is all lined up and excited to be seeing a new start for JASON.

Of everyone that has played JASON - Derek Mears is the most adorable and huggy Jason I've yet met Kane Hodder & Ken Kirzinger. Of the three, my personal favorite person is Kane Hodder. Derek and Ken both have a rather large physical presence. An awesome physicality - and without a doubt, I think Derek adds a performance level that textures Jason like we've never seen before... But Kane. I can't really put my finger on what he brought to the character... there's just a lethality to Kane's eyes, and his stocky compact frame is just the perfect Jason body in my mind. He's my Jason. That said, Derek delivers a really wonderful take on the character. But more on that later in the review.

The film starts off a little chaste. There's a desaturated sequence that shows the death of Mama Voorhees. It stay faithful to her decapitation, but you never see the head actually being cut off the body - nor anything approaching the glory of those hairy man hands trying to grasp her own head... like at the end of the original. Sadness.

Then we flash forward to current times. There's this group of backpacking hiker kids questing for a legendary field of green gold ganja... Legend has it that there's a free-growing field of tree sized shrubs of pot growing somewhere around Crystal Lake. Now it is never implicitly stated that Jason is a pot-farmer. In fact, Jason is only ever portrayed as a traumatized mentally iffy killing machine in the film... BUT - I like to think that Jason isn't a retarded traumatized oxygen-depleted man-child killing out of a mommy angst, but rather... that he's is a brilliant killer that plants pot to attract idiot no-good fornicating pot smoking slackers that have given up on traditional society and that society has given up on as well... all to disappear in his killing fields of psycho sativa. Sigh. What a masterful killer!

Anyway - even here - the killing isn't quite up to the standards that I've come to expect from Jason. There is a sleeping bag kill, but it isn't nearly as awesome as the Sleeping Bag Body meets Tree kill. It's actually more horrific, just not as downright inhumanly brutal. But there's a reason. This is Baghead Jason. He's still human. In this film, we're dealing with Human JASON, not the supernatural super-inhuman Jason. So all the kills are basically going to be within the realm of possibility. This sequence is pretty damn cool, but still... No Iconic Jason.

About 20 minutes in, we finally get the title of the film - and the movie starts off proper. In this sequence we're introduced to a group headed up to this rich asshole's father's lake cabin. We are also introduced to the cooler than cool rebel on a motorcycle who is searching for his sister Whitney, a girl from the previous sequence, who has gone missing for the past few months. The police apparently did an investigation - turned up squat. And now he's riding his motorcycle around the area trying to get a clue.

That other group is the interesting group though. You see. They have breasts. Wonderful breasts. Something you need to know about this film. There's spectacular boobage. No scene on par with that MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D full frontal sequence, but frankly this film has more hotties getting naked, and one gal in particular... SPECTACULAR BOOBS! Really.

Now - probably the most important fact about this FRIDAY THE 13TH is that it contains perhaps the single most perfect moment in Jason killing history. There is a death that takes place on a dock. That dock death is the sweetest coup de grace of any kill Jason has ever made. It has the kill - and then a payoff so exquisitely perfect that... well, the only proper response is applause... because this is the exact sort of death that we, those that love Jason, love to see.

Overall, there's a lot of good kills, a lot of great boobs and it's a damn fun film. The teenagers are entertainingly worthy of Jason's expertise - and watch for the bitch scream. FUCKING AWESOME. Is it the best Jason movie ever? I'll leave that for Quint and the hardcore Jason base. All I know is it was certainly a good time tonight.