I watched both the original and the remade Friday the 13th last weekend; I had never seen either. The remake was pretty meh, as could be expected. The original was surprisingly shitty. It’s essentially plotless until the end, when there’s a twist. But it’s not like the twist is especially powerful, since you don’t give a shit about any of the characters.

You may have heard Psycho described as the godfather of slasher cinema, and Friday the 13th seems to be the missing link, as it’s heavily indebted to Psycho. Not to say it’s Psycho-good, it’s just clearly very much inspired by.

The film has a moment of beauty, though, right at the end. And it comes with some beautiful music. I felt inspired to do a little chop-up job on both, and here it is.

He’s Still Out There from dsankey on Vimeo.

I do read more sites than just the AV Club, although you wouldn’t know it today. Anyway, Book vs. Film examines the many film adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novella I Am Legend, which I found interesting because after many conversations with people about the latest film, I have yet to find anyone who’s actually read the source text – apparently for good reason.

That got me thinking: why didn’t they make an I Am Legend game? Gun-happy last man alive in a zombie/mutant/vampire plagued city seems like a home run when it comes to game plots. Well they did, sort of. They made a “multiplayer first person shooter RPG” in Second Life. Official page here, and IGN writeup here. Sounds interesting, because it seemslike there were no AI characters (you probably can’t do that in Second Life), and also since it had an end goal and when it was found, the whole thing shut down.

Incidentally, my favourite film is hands down Omega Man, although I haven’t seen the Vincent Price one yet. But how can you beat albino mutants with shades and a dodgy new religion? I doubt the cheap knockoff I Am Omega managed to. That’s from The Asylum, the studio known for cheap knockoffs that capitalize on enormous marketing campaigns. Check out their past films: Transmorphers, The Da Vinci Treasure, Pirates of Treasure Island, Snakes on a Train, AVH: Alien vs. Hunter, and my personal favourite Hillside Cannibals.

(As a cheap player, I’m always looking to pick up back catalogue games at bargain rates and I know many of you do the same, trolling the used aisles and “platinum hits collections” for sub-$30 game bargains. So it’s worth taking a look at some of these games and talking about them. Maybe they weren’t worth $70 a year ago, but are they worth $20 now? First up: Dead Rising.)

Oh Dead Rising, I really want to like you.

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