His Name Was Jason: 30 Years Of Friday The 13th

His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Daniel Farrands

Starring: People from the franchise being interviewed

From: Masimedia

So yeah, I DID watch something Jason Voorhees related, but this is a documentary about the franchise. I figured I should revisit this as when I return on Friday night (hey, tomorrow night is a UFC show on TV and Thursday night is the Chicago Bears playing so I'll be busy on those nights) I'll talk about watching Never Sleep Again, a 4 hour (not including special features) documentary from most of the same people involved with this which I have never watched before. Eventually (hopefully it's soon rather than later) I'll watch the latest effort from that core group, the 400 minute (!) without special features documentary known as Crystal Lake Memories. I'll explain...

The feature documentary is only 90 minutes, which when you consider covers like a dozen different movies, that's pretty short and it's far from comprehensive. I discovered this after the fact from listening to podcasts which featured the core people who ended up making Never Sleep Ahead and Crystal Lake Memories, but there was strong interference from an unnamed producer who caused a lot of problems with His Name Was Jason, and that's why you ended up with a 90 minute documentary feature that was fine as a cursory glance at the franchise but it was far from being awesome in covering such a colorful and storied franchise.

If you do decide to watch this, try to find it on DVD in a 2 disc collection, as while you may be disappointed with the documentary itself (why some people not involved with the franchise were interviewed, I am not quite sure; Seth Green is but one example), there ARE special features which I've seen before (but not yet this week; I'll do that tomorrow) which are interesting as they are additional interview time with the people involved in the films and in an ideal world, they would have been in the docu, but alas... at least I do hear that with the meddlesome producer out of the picture, Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories are definitely better and worth seeing if you enjoy both Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.

Like I said, I'll be back Friday night.