It’s that day again… The time of year when a gazillion Jason groupies shove their old VHS into the player and pay tribute to the family Voorhees and all of their unfortunate teenage victims. A bit luckier than Halloween fans who have an unmovable date but once a year.

Anyway, let’s share in my favourite 13 things about Friday the 13th and all glow with a sort of inner harmony. Or just go and watch one of them.

1. CAMP CRYSTAL LAKE

Oh how I love the very notion of Camp Crystal Lake. What a fucking amazing name for a summer camp. None of this patronising theft of Native American words to make it sound all rustic and wildernessy, pure and simple and yet just a little bit spooky, living up to its reputation as Camp Blood.

2. FLOATY HEAD MRS VOORHEES

Surely no one can deny the coolness of the blurry, floaty head of Mrs Voorhees at the climax of Part 2; “it’s all done, Jason… You’ve done your job well and mommy is pleased.” And poor, lost puppy-like Jay buys into it for a few moments, reminding us all that he’s only doing what he does because he misses his mommy.

3. REPETITION

Bodies are tossed through windows, blades shoot through bunks into victims and, seen here, trussed corpses spring from trees, but only when the final girl is about…

4. TALES ‘ROUND THE OLE CAMPFIRE

A favourite ingredient in the genre of mine, rooting from here I imagine, the scary tale around the fire, a telling of the creepy local legend. I was happy to see that they resurrected the scenario in the 2009 reboot.

5. AMY STEEL

THE Friday final girl of choice for many, Amy perfected the role of Ginny in Part 2, using her skills as a child psych major to best Jason and ultimately survive. Subsequent heroines of Crystal Lake were good but they paled in comparison to the powerhouse of final girl-dom that is Amy.

6. TITS! TITS! TITS!

I’ve never much seen the reason for the endless toplessness at Crystal Lake but it offends me not. I quite like the ridiculous scenarios that initiate the quick removal of blouses and bras. A New Beginning and the reboot are tied with the most nudity and, conversely to those only casually familiar with the films, there’s no skin at all in Jason Lives and only fleeting glimpses in the original, Part III and Jason Takes Manhattan. How the hell do I know this shit!?

7. RIDICULOUS METHODS OF RESURRECTION

So he can survive a machete in the shoulder and an axe in the head but once he was properly ‘killed’ by Tommy Jarvis, Jason found some obscure methods of coming back from the dead over and over – or rather these ways found him: lightning bolt, underwater electrical current and even psychic chick, proving you can’t keep a good psycho down.

8. THE SACK

Before the iconic hockey mask, there was the sack. Hell, it creeped me out big time when I first saw it. That lone eyehole combined with the dungarees and the check shirt making Jay look like some sort of mutant potato sack head farmer.

9. FACES OF THE FUTURE

Considering there are 12 films in the franchise to date, it’s a curiosity that there are only a handful of well known names dotted throughout its history… Kevin Bacon is likely to forever remain the most famous actor associated with the series prior to his fame ‘kicking in’. Little Corey Feldman debuted in The Final Chapter alongside Crispin Glover and sorta-famous Kelly Hu played Eva in Jason Takes Manhattan.

10. INTRINSIC 80′s STYLE

The 80s were littered with unique self-styling, from the mullets scarcely seen through the Jason movies to this, a whole look best summed up by punk guitarist JJ (Saffron Henderson) in Jason Takes Manhattan.

11. JUMP SCARES

Yet again I defer to Part 2 - my favourite – for the short, sharp shocks that punctuate it: this is a great case in point… Ginny (that lovely Steel woman again) shuts herself inside a small bathroom and waits…listens…slowly leans away from the door to try the window and then… ARGH!!!

12. THE LEGACY

The Burning, Madman, Sleepaway Camp (and its sequels), Cheerleader Camp, Bloody Murder (and its sequels) and Camp Daze all replicated the summer camp setting to slightly different effect. Some even had kids at the camps and opted killing them off. Proof of just how influential a critically panned $500,000 B-movie is.

13. JASON

Where would we be without Jason himself? The malformed 11-year-old who reportedly drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957 because the counsellors weren’t paying any attention, they were making love while that young boy drowned etc… He’s a true icon for a bunch of twisted reasons but who cares… Jason, we love you!

I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT I STILL THINK I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

2006/18/89m

“New summer. New secret. New slaughter.”

Director: Sylvain White / Writer: Michael Weiss / Cast: Brooke Nevin, Ben Easter, David Paetkau, Torrey DeVitto, Seth Packard, K.C. Clyde, Michael Flynn, Clay Taylor, Don Shanks, Star LaPoint.

Body Count: 7

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**WARNING** MAJOR-ass spoilers follow

So, news of a third Last Summer stirred around 2003-ish and soon it was confirmed that there’d be no Hewitt or Prinze returning to battle Captain Birdseye’s evil twin one last time and that things would start anew elsewhere.

Well, that’s mostly true. Unfortunately, the decision to resurrect The Fisherman as the choice villain tosses one fucking huge spanner into the works and thus summons up one of the worst reveals in horror movie history.

Far away from the fishing port of South Carolina and even further from the Bahamas, Broken Ridge, Colorado, is the setting for round 3, in which a quintet of teens-about-town share the legend of The Fisherman who hunts down teenagers on July 4th if they’re keeping naughty secrets. This occurs at the top of a Ferris wheel for some reason. About two minutes later, The Fisherman appears at the carnival and chases them away.

No… it’s all a prank, which was supposed to end with their bud PJ ‘falling’ off a building roof on to some pre-positioned mats. Instead, he lands on a tractor and, y’know, dies. His four friends decide to let the police go on thinking that a killer was on the loose, burn the costume and toss the hook into a lake.

One year later, they’re largely estranged in a retread of themes from the original film. Then evident heroine Amber receives fifty I Know What You Did Last Summer text messages, which serves to reunite the group to track down who sent them. More torment follows, one of the four apparently slashes his own throat with a hook and The Fisherman attacks Amber from on top of a moving cable car. Or gondola as they refer to it!??

Come July 4th, the teens decide to stay in town so that Zoe can mime to Weapons of Pleasure’s admittedly rockin’ Daredevil in the hope of attracting the eye of a talent scout, instead only attracting Mr Slicker, who begins doing away with the rest of them and anyone else who gets in the way.

OK spoiler time: with two major suspects deadified, who is it? Angry girlfriend? Boyfriend? Mom? Dad? Sister? Dog? No. It’s no one. It’s just The Fisherman. It’s the legend that kills. He’s some mouldy looking supernatural fella who can pretty much teleport where he wants and not die. Observe the film’s final shot, which I did not do anything to:

Who the fuck thought people would be happy with this ending? The whole winning aspect of the premise is that you don’t know who’s fucking with you, what they might do and when. Screw that, let’s make it a ghost of somebody with no stake in what actually happened. To make things worse, there are a couple of extra girls who appear a few times early on, either of whom would’ve been acceptable over this! One of them’s even on the cover and she doesn’t do anything except say things like; “He’s so cute, oh my God, I love your dress, Facebook!, Jay-Z’s so talented!”

Breathe. Until this disastrous turn, I’ll Always Know functions predictably but passably as a revenge slasher film. It’s palpably cheaper than its fore-bearers and the continual flash edits are annoying attempts to jazz up pedestrian direction and photography. The characters are largely anodyne fodder: good girl, bad girl, asshole jock, nice guy backed up by a group of red herrings.

Persistent rumours of a fourth film may well have been ass-raped by how maligned this stupid film is. My tolerance for crap means it garnered a more than generous two stars for being just about competent for a once over – but I wouldn’t fork out on the box set if you’re only really interested in Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs.

The next sequel will see the killer use a time machine to make pre-accident threats

Blurbs-of-interest: Paetkau was the ladder-eye victim in Final Destination 2; DeVitto was in Killer Movie; Don Shanks played Michael Myers in Halloween 5 and was in Sweet Sixteen.

HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS

1989/18/97m

“Michael lives. And this time they’re ready!”

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard / Writer: Michael Jacobs / Cast: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Wendy Kaplan, Jeffrey Landman, Tamara Glynn, Jonathan Chapin, Matthew Walker, Betty Corvalho, Troy Evans, Frank Como, David Ursin, Don Shanks.

Body Count: 17-ish

Dire-logue: “Stay away, OK, you know you’re really creepy filling that little girl with all that boogeyman crap!”

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1988 and 89 were notable years for the three big franchises, all of which saw releases in both years. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 raked in the most but all of the ’88 releases far superseded their 1989 follow-ups, all three of which paled both commercially and creatively.

In later documentaries on the series, cast and crew freely admitted that Halloween 5 was taken on too soon, entering the stage of pre-production before the script was even finalised and eventually competing with the home video release of the far more successful Halloween 4 in October of 1989.

Tuck it in, for God's sake, TUCK. IT. IN.

The narrative holes are evident from the outset, picking up immediately from the end of the previous instalment where Michael is gunned into the ground by the Haddonfield cops. He crawls off underground and tumbles into a river, eventually winding up at the shack of a hermit, where he collapses. One year later, we’re asked to believe that the hermit has looked after the comatose stranger for the whole fucking year without telling another soul! The ever grateful Michael, waking up on October 30th, kills his saviour straight away. How nice.

Little Jamie Lloyd is a patient of Haddonfield’s Childrens Clinic, is mute, and shares a psychic connection with Unkie Mike, aware he’s on the prowl again and coming back for her. Her sorta-sister Rachel and her good time gal friend Tina are dismissive while the increasingly loopy Doc Loomis plagues Jamie for information.

It's amazing the police still refuse to listen to Loomis when he's this convincing...

Michael kills Rachel and stalks Tina and her friends to a party at an old farm, casually killing off the bit-parters, a pair of ridiculously conceived “comedy cops” who come complete with their own circusy theme and chasing down Jamie, who eventually agrees to Loomis’ plan to bait Michael back to his old house “where it all began…”

Things climax at the Myers house, which has inexplicably morphed into a mansion-sized clone of Garth Manor from Hell Night, where Jamie is stalked and terrorized beyond entertaining parameters into the uncomfortable arena of cruelty over kicks. Then there’s some stupid twist about the newly introduced ‘Man in Black’, something that fans of the series would have to wait six years to get answers for.

Halloween 5 is probably the least effective of the Myers films; clunky and strangely paced that generates more questions than answers about stuff we don’t really care about. Does Michael simply deactivate on November 1st every year? Who killed those people at the clinic? Why the hell did nobody spot that his mask looks funky throughout and needs to be tucked the fuck in!!? Overlong sequences of soon-to-be victims wandering around pad out the already testing running time and the mean spiritedness of killing Rachel and subjecting a nine-year-old to an endless array of running and screaming trample over the atmospheric imprint left by Halloween 4.

There are some workable elements in the film; the first two thirds are watchable stuff and consistent with a lot of themes of the earlier films, stronger than a lot of low-rent examples of the same era and only really disappointing in contrast to the strengths of its parent franchise and it packs Kaplan’s Tina, a divisive character many believe to be one of the most annoying people to cross paths with Michael but is also kind of a fun diversion – and, hey, she dies so who’s complaining?

Blurbs-of-interest: Pleasence, Cornell, Harris and Starr had all returned from the previous film. Danielle Harris returned to the series as Annie Brackett in Rob Zombie’s re-imagining and its sequel and also played Tosh in Urban Legend; Pleasence was in five of the first six Halloweens, Alone in the Dark and also Phenomena; Don Shanks was a stunt double for Santa in Silent Night, Deadly Night, appeared in Sweet Sixteen and was the psycho fisherman in I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

 2000/18/92m

“True no one.”

Director / Writer: John Keeyes / Cast: Debbie Rochon, Brandy Little, Johnny Sneed, Rebecca Stacey, Heather Haase, Kenyon Holmes, Robert McCollum, Kristin McCollum, Kimberly Deanne Morgan, Scott Phillips, Chris Ryan, Brinke Stevens, Hayden Tweedie.

Body Count: 8

Dire-logue: “That’s the spirit of Halloween – kids in the hospital!”

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I was surprised by this Texas indie venture that takes the usual blueprint of all the post-Scream slasher films and bends it into an ambitious and intelligent variation.

A group of twentysomething friends gather on Halloween at a Friends-style coffee house where they tune into the American Nightmare pirate radio station that invites listeners to call in and admit their deepest fears.

Unknown to them, psychopathic ex-nurse Rochon is listening in and decides, for no particular reason, to kill them in the expected ironic styling. By complete coincidence, the nutty Nightingale slaughtered the sister of one of the gang the previous Halloween.

Instead of repetitive stalking and slaying according to whichever character’s fears, nurse from hell tempts final girl Jessie into a game of cat and mouse, promising the safe return of her other sister after offing only a couple of the others – one of whom is buried alive - and drugging a guy into stabbing his own girlfriend.

One of Rochon’s better performances, she makes the best out of caustic dialogue (“Trisha’s dead? Bummer!”) with sufficient malice and even sets up a website to show off her handiwork called iamkillingyourfriends.com! Z-movie prop Stevens has a couple of lines as a mom whom Jessie babysits for, while the kid watches Halloween on TV.

Things do fizzle out a little with a nonsensical conclusion that loses much of the tension but the intentions were good so its hard to write it off as a soulless cash-in.

One curious thing: Rochon’s character is named Jane Toppan, who, I think, was in reality a murderous nurse…?

Blurbs-of-interest: the Scream Queens Rochon and Stevens both appeared in Bleed; Rochon was also in Blood Relic, Final Examination and Head Cheerleader, Dead Cheerleader. Stevens was in Blood Reaper, The Cheerleader Massacre, Jack-O, The Slumber Party Massacre and fleetingly in Fatal Games.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES

1986/18/83m

“Nothing this evil ever dies.”

Director/Writer: Tom McLoughlin / Cast: Thom Mathews, Jennifer Cooke, David Kagen, Kerry Noonan, Renee Jones, Tom Fridley, Darcy DeMoss, CJ Graham, Vincent Guastaferro, Ron Palillo.

Body Count: 18

Dire-logue: “Don’t piss me off, Junior, or I will repaint this office with your brains!”

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The general rule of sequels – not least horror sequels – is that they get progressively worse. Although, it’s also worth pointing out that the more you make, the more likely it is that as quality spirals, there’ll be a pleasant bump along the way. Of course, loving slasher films means that I don’t subscribe to either of these theories and will watch any Revenge of, Return of, Rise of, Re-Return of sequel going, no matter what numerical suffix it has.

Friday the 13th Part VI is a case in point of the multi-sequel that takes its rinse-and-repeat formula and manages to make familiar territory interesting, thanks to director/scribe Tom McLoughlin’s energetic script, which was intended to feature an apt thirteen murders (extended to accommodate studio wishes and probably pad out the running time – it’s the shortest Friday).

Sometime after the events of A New Beginning, Tommy Jarvis (this time played by Thom Mathews), drives to Crystal Lake, now re-named Forest Green, to incinerate Jason’s corpse in an attempt to gain closure on his awful past. His nervous friend Hawes tags along to offer words of discouragement as a familiar storm blows in. In a fit of fury, Tommy jabs Jason’s corpse (strangely un-cremated as we were told in Part V) with a steel pole that is subsequently struck by lightning, reanimating the J-man yet again!

With his buddy becoming Jason’s first victim in X number of years, Tommy races into town to alert the cops and instantly makes an enemy of no-shit Sheriff Garris, who locks him away, assuming the boy is just acting out on his traumatic psychosis. Meanwhile, Jason takes out a few more people, including some dorky paintballing execs and the head counsellors of the recently re-opened Camp Crystal Lake, I mean, Camp Forest Green.

Yep, camp is back on and this time there are even kids about! This is one element that richly enhances the likeability of Jason Lives. While Parts 1 and 2 were set at camp, neither were operating and, summer camp is what Friday the 13th is all about. Trees, cabins, pontoons and open fires – it’s all here.

It just so happens that one of the four remaining counsellors is the Sheriff’s daughter Megan, who, unlike pop, takes an instant liking to Tommy, who is released and flees back to the cemetery to try and prove that Jason has risen, only to find the grave covered up, albeit now containing Tommy’s friend Hawes. Garris ejects Tommy from town and warns him to stay away permanently while Jason collects additional victims on his way back to the camp.

The murders are discovered and blamed on Tommy, who joins forces with Megan to entrap Jason and send him back to the bottom of Crystal Lake where he belongs. Once Jay finally encounters some horny teenagers, things kick in to gear. There are some creative murders and back to basics stalking sequences and, although the bloodletting is comic-styled and of reduced effect (despite still being cut down), the film plays well to its simplified approach.

Case in point is with the murders of counsellors Sissy and Paula. Jason is lurking around camp, scaring some of the little kids who inadvertently wake up and see him. We know he’s there. They’re paranoid that something’s up… They play a card game called ‘Camp Blood’… After Sissy disappears (snatched out of the window and beheaded), one of the campers discovers a bloody machete and brings it to Paula, who escorts her back to bed and returns to her own cabin to find that the machete has vanished and the phone is out… Then the door swings open…

It’s an excellently directed scene featuring a sympathetic character versus the boogeyman.

Obviously, Tommy and Megan return to save the kids and fight Jason, the Sheriff learns the truth and an Alice Cooper rocker plays out over the credits: He’s back! The man behind the mask! One of several Cooper songs to feature on the soundtrack.

Jason Lives is the (intentionally) funniest film of the series; wisely avoiding out and out parody - save for the ‘Jason does James Bond’ opening – and opting for a classic gothic feel to its horror opus: floating mists, the lightning storm, the creepy cemetery and the shadowy trees. Oddly, it’s about the one entry to feature no nudity but you’d hardly notice, even during the requisite sex scene. The characters are drawn much more sharply than other instalments, where they exist only to die gruesomely. McLoughlin largely avoids stereotypes, squeezing nice attributes out of even the bit-parters, although Cooke’s heroine isn’t ultimately successful in her role.

My third favourite of the series after the original two, things went serious again for The New Blood as theatrical grosses dipped further. But this one is 80′s slasher perfection: big hair, pop metal, and a horror icon.

Blurbs-of-interest: Tom Fridley was in Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge; Darcy DeMoss was in Return to Horror High.

APRIL FOOL’S DAY

1986/18/85m

“Guess who’s going to be the life of the party?”

Director: Fred Walton / Writer: Danilo Bach / Cast: Deborah Foreman, Amy Steel, Ken Olandt, Deborah Goodrich, Clayton Rohner, Jay Baker, Thomas F. Wilson, Leah King Pinsent, Griffin O’Neal.

Body Count: 7…or is it?

Dire-logue: “Three people are dead and you’re telling me to relax.”

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Paramount decided to add a touch of class to their mid-80′s slasher lexicon with this slightly more traditional murder mystery-esque light-hearted horror film to offset Jason’s ever-mounting body count over at Crystal Lake.

Rich girl Muffy St John (Foreman – excellent) invites eight of her privileged college friends to her island mansion for Spring Break. There’s kinky couple Nikki and Chas, meaty Arch (Wilson, who was Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future films), the elusive Skip, bookish misfit Nan, southern ranch rich boy Hal, and ‘nice’ couple Rob and Kit – the latter played by orgasmically good uber-final girl Dame Amy of Steel.

There’s a strange flashback-credits scene with some weird jack-in-the-box prank as Muffy clears out her basement in preparation for her friends and ‘the help’ goes home for the weekend. Meanwhile, on the ferry over to the island, Arch and Skip’s April Fool’s prank results in an accident that hideously disfigures the deckhand, who yells blame on the young people as he is zoomed away in a Zodiac by a handy cop.

Guilt-ridden, the group attempt to enjoy themselves as Muffy lays on food and unleashes some rigged chairs, water-pistols and exploding cigar gags. But silly soon becomes sinister as it becomes apparent they’re not alone on the island and someone is baying for their blood…

In the morning, the gang play around, talk about sex and explore the locale, which inadvertently leads to Rob and Kit finding what they believe to be the body of Skip floating by. They raise the alarm and split off in search of their absent friend, regrouping again to find that another couple of people have gone AWOL – and what’s with Muffy’s zombie-like behaviour? And her nurses shoes. Nurses shoes? What nurses shoes? Those clod-hoppers she’s been walking around in – crepe soles apparently. Shrug.

Anyway, when the water conks out, Nikki and Hal pay a visit to The Well with a bucket and Nikki somehow ends up climbing down and falling in to find herself treading water with the severed heads and slashed-throated-bodies of their missing friends, leading to a grimly comical moment where, recovering indoors, Muffy slams a glass of it down in front of her – “oh God, not the water!”) – before explaining it’s Perrier.

With the police called, who assure them that the wounded deckhand is still at hospital, the gang set about securing all windows and doors and begin uncovering some strange clues as Muffy’s demeanor becomes weirder and weirder. Suffice to say, more murders are discovered until the obligatory survivors are fleeing for their lives and…

Well, there’s the twist ending. I’m sure most people will know what happens but for those who don’t, I won’t be the one to ruin it for you. It works on some levels and fails on others, making enemies of the film out of some hardcore gorehounds. I like it, it bucked the predictable for a change, making April Fool’s Day quite the slasher film for scaredy cats and bloodshy saps.

The film scores high on the character factor, writing its generic-on-paper cast roster into deeper beings. The kinky couple have feelings too, the jock isn’t a macho asshole and the bookworm mightn’t be as dorky as she makes herself out to be. Walton, who directed both the original When a Stranger Calls movies, attempts to crank tension with moody shots of the island, the interior of the house and one of those creepy tick-tock clocks where the cat’s eyes move back and forth but when the film is as lighthearted as this it doesn’t work the same magic as his other, more brooding ventures.

An alternate, far more downbeat ending was shot and has yet to surface beyond some grainy stills on the web – but I like the film the way it is.

I confess my love for this one: one of the earliest genre examples I saw when it rotated on late night TV in the 90s, with most of the language cut out. Oh, what an eye-opening experience it was when I first saw the uncut version! Anyway: investable characters, nice story arc, polished production values and a real sense of fun going for it. Feel the love, AFD!

But avoid the ugly monstrosity that is the 2008 “remake“.

Blurbs-of-interest: I love Amy Steel – she, of course, was Jason’s best girl in Friday the 13th Part 2; Foreman and Rohner appeared together in Destroyer.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

1981/15/106m

“Six of the most bizarre murders you’ll ever see.”

Director: J. Lee Thompson / Writers: John Beaird, Timothy Bond, Peter Jobin & John C.W. Saxton / Cast: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane, Sharon Acker, Frances Hyland, Tracy Bregman, Lisa Langlois, Jack Blum, Matt Craven, Lenore Zann, David Eisner, Richard Rebiere, Lesleh Donaldson, Michel Rene LaBelle.

Body Count: 9

Dire-logue: “Murder…then suicide. Now they’ll all know just crazy little [SPOILER] really was!”

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One of the first genre films I saw on the back of reading Vera Dika’s Games of Terror book, which provided a deep formula analysis of nine early slasher films. This Canadian entry into the burgeoning trend is a comparatively lush entry for its time. Using experienced director J. Lee Thompson and starring Glenn Ford, Happy Birthday to Me used these advantages as wisely as possible.

The result of these impressive involvements is a mixed bag. On the one had, this is one handsome devil of a horror film, with well crafted photography and characters drawn beyond the airhead regulars associated with sharp-object wielding killers. The Yin to this Yang is that it thinks above its station to some degree, attempting to spread its wings beyond the boundaries of what the audience most probably expected back in the day.

Melissa Sue Anderson, breaking free of her Little House on the Prairie character with veritable gusto, is Virginia Wainwright, member of the preppy Crawford Academy’s ‘Top Ten’, the creme of the crop in terms of popularity, although why some of these twats are held in such high esteem is a mystery the film chooses not to deal with.

Virginia is new to the school and has some issues regarding amnesia and the death of her mother in recent history, one of the plot elements that is gradually unfurled throughout events, which follow the unidentified killer doing away with members of the Crawford Top Ten in black-gloved giallo style. To Virginia and pals, they’ve just taken off for reasons unknown…

Ford is her shrink, trying to help her recall the deep-rooted trauma that plagues her and suss out the connection with the disappearances. Suffice to say, it’s all tied up together for the Scooby Doo reveal at the end.

There’s a lot of good stuff going on inbetween the more unfitting moments of the film; the killer – who appears for the first few murders dressed in a sinister black costume – executes the spoilt teens in some inventive ways, including death by motorcycle wheel, barbell weights and shish-kebab. Midway through proceedings we’re shown the killer’s face, which is a pretty damning indictment – but you just know that there are further tricks up the sleeves of this one…

Interplay between the teenage characters also provides an interesting distraction from the trivial prank and sex-centric shenanigans that occur in your basic Friday the 13th wannabe. The Crawford kids have got rich parents and therefore their attitudes to the welfare of their missing buddies is intoxicated with a competitive venom: they swap lovers and stab each other in the back (not literally, quite yet) and evoke little sympathy from the viewer. Even Virginia is a flawed heroine, almost as unlikeable as the others from time to time. Alas, not all of them appear to be in danger… Hmmm.

Okay, so Dika’s book gave away the identity of the killer before I’d seen the film so the twist wasn’t a shock to me. On the road to the finale, which is fated to occur on Virginia’s birthday, we learn about the death of her mother, which evidently plays a large part in why the killer is doing what he or she is. Flashback scenes thus far have shown as a grisly close-up of Virginia’s post-accident brain surgery (including an icky brain-swell) but now we find out why. The scene is a sad one as Virginia is alone at her own birthday party, social death for any child, for sure! This results in a we’ll-show-them reaction from her jar-tapping mother and, well, you’ll see for yourself…

The ending to it all is a great scene: Virginia gets her party and those who snubbed her before will definitely show up this time. Confusion follows before the naff reveal, which is laughably realised but credited with a nice little exposition from the killer before the final twist is played out. The motive will be familiar to those of us who saw a certain genre revival flick some 15 years later, where it was slightly more credibly realised, though not as much fun.

In spite of its high(er) budget, there are some curious oversights in Happy Birthday to Me‘s continuity: the car that falls into the river, the body found in the bath – clear one second, bloody the next, the extensive damage sustained by Greg’s car that miraculously disappears five seconds later… Whether any of this stuff is supposedly attributable to Virginia’s damaged memory is unclear.

Nothing good can come of this scenario...

The DVD release for this film has garnered much complaint for switching the gorgeous score for a cheesy disco number at the start. The Region 2 disc has the original soundtrack on the German audio selection but Syreeta’s haunting end credits song is intact on both versions.

Blurbs-of-interest: Lawrence Dane later appeared in Bride of Chucky; Lesleh Donaldson was also in fellow Canuck slashers Curtains and Funeral Home; both David Eisner and Lisa Langlois were in Phobia; Lenore Zann was in fellow Canuck slashers American Nightmare and Visiting Hours. I love the Canadian casting love-ins!