CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES, THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF FRIDAY THE 13TH – The Blu Review

For more than thirty years, FRIDAY THE 13TH has proven to be as unstoppable at the box office as its hockey-masked villain Jason Voorhees, having spawned twelve feature films!

I’m not a huge fan of the FRIDAY THE 13th series. I was in college when the first one came out and was just a bit too old to get too excited about the many sequels. But I saw them all! Mostly at drive-ins. I saw part 3 in 3-D at the now-defunct Westport Cinema in ’84 (I also saw PARASITE in 3D there the same year) and always considered that my favorite of the series, probably just because of the gimmick. I really liked JASON X (the one in space) and think more highly of FREDDY VS JASON now than I did when I first saw it 10 years ago. The reboot was forgettable and I’m not surprised that it seems to have killed the whole series. Since I’m no F13 expert, and since I saw most of them stoned at the drive-in 25-30 years ago, they all sort of blend together in my mind. If I were so inclined, I could take the time to watch them all again, but now I don’t have to. I can just pop in my Blu-ray of the new documentary CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES, THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF FRIDAY THE 13TH, a 400 minute (! – That’s 7 hours kids!) incredibly comprehensive look at the influential slasher series. Each chapter on the disc (actually it carries over on two discs) is a documentary on an individual film. The first chapter covers the first film and runs 45 minutes. The subsequent chapters are all in the 35-45 minute range. CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES, THE COMPLETE HISTORY is an exhausting and ambitious project that fans of the F13th series should drool over.

Corey Feldman, who had a role in FRIDAY THE 13TH THE FINAL CHAPTER (aka F13 pt.4), narrates CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES, which features interviews with no less than 150 cast and crew members from all twelve F13 films and the syndicated television series, many of whom have never before appeared in on-camera interviews. Expected interview subjects include Kane Hodder, Tom Savini, Danielle Panabaker, Sean S. Cunningham, Derek Mears, Betsy Palmer, Wes Craven, Robert Shaye, and Alice Cooper as well as scores of forgotten actors and actresses who played Jason’s many victims over the course of the 12 films. Remember Jennifer Cooke, Melanie Kinnaman, and Rebecca Sharkey? Me neither, but they’re here (yet Kevin Bacon is not!). Crystal Lake Memories is written and directed by Daniel Farrands and produced by Thommy Hutson, who previously teamed up for the award-winning Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.

The interviews are slickly produced and the many clips shown to illustrate are all in HD. Some of the interviewees are more interesting than others (“I had to climb a tree and have a fear of heights!”) and there’s a lot of repeated info and anecdotes here, but CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES is an awesome experience clearly made with affection, enthusiasm, and respect for the series. There is an alternate commentary track by Farrands and Hutson but I did not listen to it. The four-disc set I received had two Blu-ray discs and the same content on two regular DVDs.

If you order CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES from the official website (http://crystallakememories.net/), you’ll receive a bonus DVD with “approximately four hours of extended interview material from cast and crew spanning the entire Friday the 13th film franchise and television series”, because I guess 7 hours is not enough for everyone!