Every Friday The 13th Film Ranked From Worst To Best

Arguably no horror series better epitomises the slasher boom of the 1980s than Friday the 13th. It didn't kickstart the slasher trend (that honour goes to Halloween), nor did it advance the subgenre in a sophisticated way (as Nightmare on Elm Street did). And yet, it struck a chord that resonated with horror fans, and continues to resonate to this day.

Often with long-running franchises, conventional wisdom dictates that each successive film should strive to subvert audience expectation, twist the format, do things its predecessors hadn't. Not so with Friday the 13th.

From the beginning, the many various filmmakers to have taken on the property have tended to understand that all the fans really want is more of the same: college kids in cabins misbehaving, then getting colourfully slaughtered one by one, preferably by the hockey masked hulk Jason Voorhees (although, as fans will know, it isn't always him).

This basic set-up has been the backbone of 12 movies to date, the first 8 of which were made before the 1980s were over, and it's worth noting that the entries which tend to be held in a somewhat lesser regard are usually the ones that were trying too hard to mess with the formula. When it comes to Friday the 13th, innovation is a dirty word.

As easy as it might be to dismiss the entire Friday the 13th series as a cynical cash-grab, there's tons of fun to be had with all these films; even those that come out at the bottom.

Arriving in 1993, four years after the previous Friday the 13th (the longest gap between entries up to that point), Jason Goes To Hell was the first Friday produced at the franchise's new home of New Line Cinema. It always seemed a bit odd that the first thing New Line did after procuring the Friday the 13th rights from Paramount was to 'end' the series; but then, that's but one of the many decisions that don't make much sense here.

Directed and co-written by Adam Marcus, Jason Goes To Hell makes the classic horror sequel mistake of trying to explain too much away, worse yet with explanations that just seem silly. The movie posits that Jason Voorhees is not one man, but a demonic parasite which possesses different bodies. Subsequently, 'real' Jason is absent for the bulk of the action here; and when he is on screen, it's the ugliest make-up job of the whole series.

Nor is Jason the only one who's never looked worse, as the film itself is shot in a flat, unappealing fashion, and the bulk of the performances are bland and unendearing. Even so, the movie is not without its pleasures, including an enjoyably OTT opening sequence, and one of the most memorable kills of the whole franchise: the infamous, censor-baiting tent sex scene.

Oh, and title aside, there's little genuinely climactic here: as the final shot reveals, the film mainly serves to set up Freddy Vs Jason, though that wouldn't arrive for another decade.