The Friday the 13th series is loaded with entertaining characters that are not hulking behemoths in hockey masks. Whether they be good, bad, or completely incompetent, those that stand out are always worth watching. Many of them were sadly killed off too soon. As such, there are plenty of people that have appeared over the course of the series we wish could have gone on to greater things.
What we’ll be looking at are best-case scenarios. If all of the actors could come back, if we could pretend their characters somehow escaped their fate, if all of the great victims of the Friday the 13th movies had the chance to achieve greatness, we hope that greatness would look a little like this.
A Footloose-esque Dance Picture Starring Jimmy from The Final Chapter
The Final Chapter is pretty well regarded as one of the best of the series, if not the best. It has Tom Savini returning to do some of his most impressive effects work. It has Ted White’s unhinged, feral performance as Jason. It has an early appearance from Corey Feldman. And it has Crispin Glover’s immortal dance sequence. Apparently he was listening to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” during his spastic, flailing antics but that’s no excuse. There’s no reason to think that’s not simply how Crispin Glover dances. What I would like to see is a film in which Jimmy escapes his tragic fate with the corkscrew in The Final Chapter and instead moves on to a repressed small town that has never known dancing. Enthralled by people who actually want to see his brilliant dance moves, Jimmy flails his way into their hearts. He brings the whole community together by teaching them all to dance exactly like him. Presumably it would then end with the town being quarantined to prevent an outbreak of arm waving, air kicking and general motions that accompany dancing like a dying bird.
A Movie Where Ethel of A New Beginning Partakes in a Stew Cooking Competition
So, world-class stew competitions probably don’t exist, but in this movie one would. And it would be perfect. In this Ethel-starring spinoff, she would be taken out of her rural shack when her locally sold stew is nationally discovered. Ethel is then taken to New York to compete in a competition against the best stew makers from all over the globe to determine if she actually does make the best stew in the whole wide world. She would clean up in a series of Miss Congeniality style events, in which she maybe changes her shirt to a different color of flannel. Maybe there would even be someone plotting to take out the competition, and Ethel is on the case to make her stew and save the day at the same time (unless she just kills everyone). Ethel did spend half of Part V threatening to murder everyone. Maybe it was only a matter of time, or maybe she would eventually discover the hero within.
A Film About Eddie from Part VII and the Rise and Fall of His Writing Career
Eddie was known as the resident writer in The New Blood, but it was a joking title. Everybody made fun of him. What if his writing was actually good? We would start out with Eddie having just published his promised novel, Star Mummy, which would naturally become a worldwide bestseller. Having never really been noticed before, Eddie finds himself addicted to the fame. He loves it. He eats it up. He becomes the next George Lucas and encompasses all that comes with that. The real money is made in the Star Mummy advertising and he loses the integrity of his vision as he becomes focused solely on the money, eventually succumbing to hard drugs and all manner of debauchery. After a public meltdown, Eddie has to start all over again as a struggling writer, using Tina—the telekinetic protagonist of Part VII—as inspiration for his “first” novel under his new pseudonym, Stephen King.
Duke: The Bounty Hunter
Jason Goes to Hell tells us that bounty hunter Creighton Duke has been at this a long time. He’s a master at catching serial killers for money and has had at least one run in with Jason Voorhees before the first time we see him in The Final Friday. The character is too rich and there are too many possibilities, so a film about Duke’s bounty hunter past is simply a must. Ideally, this would be in Duke’s younger days, as he tracks Jason for the first time, only to actually find himself facing disgruntled imposter Jason Roy Burns, from Part V, who is up to his old antics. The Duke would naturally consider one hockey masked killer as good as another. Maybe he would be visited by the spirit of Roy’s dismembered son Joey, looking to stop his father’s reign of terror, a wailing spirit forever searching for the other half of his candy bar.
Follow us on social media: Twitter and Facebook.
Liked it? Take a second to support Nat Brehmer on Patreon!
