Hey there Los Angeles Fright fans! Time for another Friday Night Frights! (like us on Facebook, if you dare!)

It’s here! October is here! And my cohort Sebastian and I are going all in. We wanted to do something special for the Halloween month, and found inspiration right here on CHUD.com — my Franchise Me column! That’s right, we’re doing franchises! And to kick shit off, this Thursday the 6th, 7:30pm at The Cinefamily, we’re reveling in the Big 3: Michael, Freddy, and Jason. (Doing triple features necessitated that we do our shows on Thursdays this month.)

So, why of the nearly thirty films we could select from these collected franchises did we choose Halloween II, Nightmare on Elm St 3 and Friday the 13th IV? Well, our first criteria was simple — it had to be a sequel; we are talking about franchises after all. Our second criteria was also simple — the Big 3 had to be in the films; sorry Halloween III. Beyond these reasons, esoterically we were interested in looking at when the respective franchises “clicked.”

Halloween II had it the easiest, as it picks up immediately after the end of the first film and just keeps running with the ball — wisely following the if it ain’t broke rule of thumb. Conversely, Nightmare on Elm St 2 made a wild series of blunders, such as choosing to focus on the Elm St house instead of our previous characters (even though the house had nothing to do with anything in the first film), and having Freddy be able to affect the real world and not just dreams. Nightmare 3 brought things back into focus, and more importantly it built upon Wes Craven’s ideas in the first film and expanded the Freddy mythology; this is also when the gigantic set-pieces and whimsical humor that would typify the series for its remainder were introduced. Friday IV is the most obvious, as this was the first film marketed with the newly iconic hockey mask Jason had acquired near the end of Friday III (the first two sequels’ marketing still followed the faceless man holding a knife image from the original film’s poster). Also, IV is the first film in which it is specifically declared that Jason died at the end of the previous film, as he finally winds up in the morgue... ever so briefly.

So come kick off October and join us for a gory good time!

For theater info or ticket purchases go here.

CONTEST

As always I am giving away some free tickets (each with a +1) and a super comfy couch to the first place winner. To enter all you need to do is send an email to wormmiller@gmail.com with BIG 3 in the subject line and tell me which of the Big 3 Slashers is your favorite, and why. Include your full name. I will only be contacting the winners.

Good hunting!