The Original Paramount Saga

This is the original Paramount run of Friday the 13th, the eight films that turned Camp Crystal Lake into the most reliable killing field in slasher history. It opens in 1980 with a quieter, whodunit-flavored entry, then quickly settles into the formula everyone remembers: teenagers, a remote camp, and a hulking masked figure working through them one by one.

Jason Voorhees took a couple of films to become the hockey-masked icon, and the saga never pretended to reinvent itself afterward. The pleasures are mechanical and proud of it, inventive kills and a body count, with the ratings sliding as the gimmicks escalate toward sending Jason to Manhattan.

It is a movies-only stretch, and a definitive document of how the 1980s slasher boom ran a single idea straight into the ground while staying weirdly watchable the whole way down.

The The Original Paramount Saga franchise spans 8 movies in the CrossBinge catalog.

Part of Friday the 13th.