“Jason belongs in Hell. And I’m gonna see he gets there.”
JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI opens with some lightning, a full moon and fog rolling across Crystal Lake. And as Tommy Jarvis drives by with his institution buddy Hawes (Ron Palillo, SNAKE EATER) they scare away a dog who was in the street munching on some roadkill that I’m pretty sure used to be a rabbit. And you know my theory on that. Rabbits protect us from Jason. With rabbits being treated like this of course Jason is gonna fucking live.
(Note: Hawes is clutching Jason’s mask in his lap, for no reason I can ascertain other than the narrative requiring it to be returned to its original owner. Er, I mean, to its second owner, the one after Shelly but before Tommy. But remember, at the end of A NEW BEGINNING Tommy put the mask on and seemed to have snapped. So I’m glad that he has, for whatever reason, forfeited custody of the thing. As crazed as he is now, he seems to be in a better place.)
This time Tommy has been recast with Thom Mathews (Freddy from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD), who frankly is much more appealing than the last version (sorry, John Shepherd – not necessarily your fault). This time he’s convinced if he digs up Jason’s grave and destroys the body he’ll stop having hallucinations about him. Hawes goes along for support even though he says he doesn’t “get the therapy here.”
The grave is a professionally made tombstone this time (here’s someone who researched how much that would’ve cost whoever sprung for it), which I think confirms my suspicion that the Corey Feldman scene from A NEW BEGINNING was a completely fictional dream and not a memory of something Tommy really witnessed. This time he finds the body thoroughly rotted, more worms and webs than man. He hears his young Corey Feldman voice killing Jason as he watches them wriggle around. (read the rest of this shit…)
NEW YORK NINJA, which had its world premiere at Beyond Fest earlier this month, is a b-action miracle: a previously unknown and unfinished vigilante ninja vs. street punks film accidentally discovered by just the right people who would know how to treat it like a lost Orson Welles film. Shot but abandoned before completion in 1984, it was an American production starring and directed by Taiwanese-born martial arts star John Liu (SECRET RIVALS, SNUFF BOTTLE CONNECTION).
TITANE is the ferociously unbridled, Palme d’Or winning second film from 
In the tradition of the first two, the opening titles are what are known in the parlance of our times as “absolute bangers.” The logo looks really cool flat, and even better in the proper format, where it emerges from the screen at you. But the excellent graphic design almost doesn’t matter because the topper here is the synthy-disco-ish theme song, honestly one of the most badass horror themes of all time, at least if you like them danceable (which I absolutely do). It’s credited to “Hot Ice,” but it’s Harry Manfredini with Michael Zager, a producer who worked with The Spinners, among others.
“I don’t want to scare anyone, but I’m gonna give it to you straight about Jason.”
RAW is a 2016 French-Belgian movie I’ve been planning to see for years. All I knew is that it was something about cannibalism, directed by a woman (Julia Ducournau), supposedly made people faint at film festivals (haven’t we all?), and is beloved by many horror loving friends and critics, especially women. With Ducournau’s new one TITANE looking very promising even before it won the Palme d’Or (the trailer makes it look like Cronenberg meets Tarantino meets 
CASH TRUCK (Le Convoyeur) is a 2004 French crime movie I never heard of until Guy Ritchie remade it as 
