Thursday Movie Picks: The Woods

This week's topic for Thursday Movie Picks, hosted by Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves is simple: The Woods. No problem. Let me explain why. For the thousandth time, I grew up in New York City, Queens to be exact. We had more trees in Queens than most of the city, but were short on actual woods. I didn't really encounter any until coming to visit my grandparents in North Carolina in the early 1980s. They're backyard stretched out about twenty/twenty-five yards from the house. At the end of that was a creek about four feet wide and three feet deep. On the other side of that creek was a stretch of woods I dared not enter to find out how deep they went. In the quiet of the night, whatever creatures it held were in full throat. This was unsettling to a city kid like myself. It didn't help that in concert with all the buzzing, humming, and rustling I was watching this...

By now, you know the story. Back in 1958, a couple of summer camp counselors were off somewhere trying to make little campers of their own when someone brutally murders both of them. Fast-forward to 1980, or the present as we called it. The camp, Camp Crystal Lake, had been closed since that fatal day, and is about to finally re-open. Before it does, there is lots of work to be done. To do it, a group of counselors show up to get the place up to snuff before the kids arrive. Little did they know someone else was hanging around the place. This mysterious person starts knocking them off one by one. Most notably, a young Kevin Bacon gives us one of the franchise's most memorable deaths.


Five years after the event of the first film, the ever mysterious "they" decide to give it another go and open a summer camp. Of course, some mysterious person was also present and starts killing off counselors, say it with me, one by one. The difference is that this time the identity of the killer was no secret. It was guy we would all come to know and love. Okay, he's a guy I came to know and love. The one and only Jason Vorhees. The most memorable scene this time is not a killing, but our final girl fooling Jason into thinking she was his mother.

This time around, no one is dumb enough to suggest re-opening Camp Crystal Lake, aka Camp Blood. Instead, we get a group of people who live nearby along with some derelicts who hang out there. Sure enough, our boy Jason shows up and starts slaughtering them, once more with feeling, ONE BY ONE. This entry is significant for a couple of reasons, For one, just look at the title of this film and the previous one. That one was "Part 2," 2. Just plain ol' 2. This time, they classed the joint up a bit by dropping a sparkly...er...blood-soaked, Roman numeral on it. Yeah, "Part III." They also made it the first and only 3D entry. More important than any of that, this is the movie in which Jason donned his iconic hockey mask for the first time. Oh, most memorable scene? Take your pick. I did mention this was in 3D, right? There's the arrow Jason shoots straight at the camera which plants itself in an attractive young lady's eye. Speaking of eyes, there's the guy who gets his head squeezed so hard by Jason one of his eyes pops out the socket, directly at the camera, of course. The best part of that is seeing the metal coil attached to it as it dangles about the screen.

You know what? Just go watch them all.