Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

 "Planning on smoking dope, having pre-marital sex and getting slaughtered?"

So it's the '90s, as the fashions and the cars clearly indicate. I turned sixteen in 1993, and can attest that this way of dressing was once considered normal. This feels odd, of course, because this is the decade's only Friday the 13th film. And the first one not to feel like a regular instalment- despite the sequel-stealing final scene, this film has a blatant self-consciousness that it may be the last one that no previous instalment has had.

It isn't, of course. Nor is it the promised exploration of Jason's backstory, which is superficial indeed. It's a B movie. Yet, in the context of this franchise which, in an inversion of the usual pattern, started as nothing special and took until the sixth instalment to get good, this is fairly decent in context. It has no stars, no actors I recognise whatsoever, nor does it have anthing other than B movie performances, yet it pretty much manages to be entertaining enough.

It makes token attempts to be self-referential, most notably the opening sequence with a trap for Jason, but ultimately relies on the conceit of Jason (only briefly a returning Jason Hodder) jumping from body to body. It also relies on both melodrama and the intriguing, behatted, moderately charismatic, if cliched, character of Creighton Duke, as much as it relies on the usual jump scares.

It works. It's not a bad film. But I wouldn't use higher praise than that.

iZombie: Max Wager

"Aren't Brits supposed to be repressed? What would Judi Dench say?"

Liv and Major are now publically a couple again, and the episode pretty much revolves around the question of whether they can have any kind of sex which doesn't end in Major acquiring a sudden taste for brains. There's also a murder mystery, of course, and a brain that turns Luv into an inveterate gambler. It's also an episode that gave me great difficulty in choosing the opening quote: "That is the sound of a man's sphincter shrinking" came a close second. Just so you know.

There's a scene where Peyton is visited by the hitherto mysterious but very menacing Mr Boss. I love that they've cast a short actor to play him as a jovial and superficially nice guy who is clearly deeply terrifying underneath it all. I also love the strip poker; the sexual tension between Liv and Major is really quite palpable.

There's a nice resolution, much as its a bit soon after the basketball episode: the murder was ordered by Clive's basketball hero. Less nice is Blaine killing and eating his vegetable of a grandfather, but it's interesting to end with Blaine's zombie father being kidnapped by Major as another one for the freezer..

Yep. More good stuff.