Friday The 13th Blog

This mostly flew under the radar for the longest time, but the most unplugged feature of the new DVDs are a series of short Friday The 13th tribute films called Lost Tales From Camp Blood. Akin to fanfilms, these are much more elevated due to them being officially sanctioned and exclusively featured for these DVD releases. Hence, it is essentially DTV Friday The 13th spinoff series!

All are directed by Andrew Ceperley and seems reminiscent of the spirit of the original Friday The 13th in that the killer isn’t Jason, but many of the elements that made the original special seem present.

Part 1-3 can be found on the corresponding Deluxe Edition DVDs with more on the way for the later rounds of DVD releases. An article with a grand gallery of shots both in-film and behind-the-scenes appeared on Fangoria today:

Ceperley, the creative director of King Media, got involved when the company was initially approached to work on the FRIDAY THE 13th project last summer after having handled other Paramount DVD features including material for the STAR TREK series. “One of the concepts we pitched was a series of short ‘kill scenes,’ which went over quite well.” he tells Fango. “After a few meetings, they evolved into their own little short films. Being the horror fan that I am, I was lucky enough to be put in charge of writing, directing, and shooting the 3 shorts in just three days (being young and stupid, you tend to agree to things like that). The idea went from just being a few simple death scenes to trying to create little stories very much in the spirt (both in tone and visual presentation) of FRIDAY THE 13th.”

Our own Tony recently reviewed the first Lost Tales From Camp Blood in his review of the Friday The 13th Part 1 DVD & Blu-Ray but I’ll present it again below:

Lost Tales from Camp Blood part 1 (DVD and Blu Ray) – Written and Directed by Andrew Ceperly, Lost Tales from Camp Blood is a pretty interesting addition to the set. Though it’s not directly part of the Friday the 13th saga, it is a short film, shot in Friday the 13th style with a Jason-esqe killer (probably due to rights issues). When a noise startles awake, she sends her boyfriend Mark to investigate. As you can imagine, things don’t turn out so well. It’s rather well done and manages to capture the feel of the early Friday the 13th movies. The killer, while Jason in form, has a different look, bald, but wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He’s even listed as “Killer” in the closing credits of the short. Helping to make this feel like a mini Friday film is the score. Lifted directly from previous Friday films, it really adds to this special feature. Running at 7 1/2 minutes, you can tell that Ceperly is a genuine fan of the series and that he had done his homework when it comes to the Friday the 13th series.