Last night I hit the launch party for the brand new deluxe edition DVDs of Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Dan Farrands, the guy who produced all of the brand new special features on these discs, was on hand to present a look at the new three part mockumentary – spread across all three discs – The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited.
The mockumentary is almost worth the price of the DVDs alone; set in-universe it examines the first six films in the series as if the events actually occured. The almost hour long (in total) mockumentary is very funny, making loving jabs at some of the sillier aspects of the series, as well as some continuity issues. And it’s jam-packed with inside jokes and references; some will be obvious to any horror fan – Haddonfield is revealed as Crystal Lake’s neighboring town, and Crystal Lake has a Craven Road – while some will be only obvious to the hardcore – a character named Danny Zito, or Elias Voorhees as Jason’s dad, or a Crystal Lake resident not being able to remember if the hockey masked killer is named Jason or Josh (he was Josh in the original draft of the first film). There is also some really delightful PhotoShop work, like baby pictures of Jason himself. And then there are the serious Easter Eggs – cameos by a number of horror website and film luminaries, including Ryan Rotten, Uncle Creepy from Dread Central and Stuart Gordon (as the grieving father of Shelly from Part 3!).
The discs themselves have even more goodies, such as commentaries (look for Adam Green, director of Hatchet and Joe Lynch, director of Wrong Turn 2 on a fan commentary for Part IV), deleted scenes and the lost ending of the fourth film. There’s also a featurette that’s just about Crispin Glover’s dance in The Final Chapter. Farrands and his team were given unprecedented access to the Paramount archives and it looks like they’ve used that to really stack these discs (Farrands didn’t do the first three deluxe editions, which were released to coincide with the remake).
On hand at the party was a delightful ‘who’s that’ of Friday luminaries – Barney Cohen (Screenwriter of The Final Chapter), Shavar Ross (Reggie from Part V), Camilla and Carey More (Terri and Tina from The Final Chapter), composer Harry Manfredini, Larry Zerner (Shelly from Part 3). And yes, you read that right: Shavar Ross! I ended up standing next to Dudley from Diff’rent Strokes, but I didn’t have the guts to approach him.
The DVDs are available now; I imagine they’ll be on Blu-Ray in a couple of months. I can’t wait to dive into the rest of the special features – each of these babies is packed with good stuff.
Click here to order the new deluxe edition DVDs through CHUD!