Before we get to the supplements on the fifth disc which is comprised solely of extra features (and unlike the feature films does not have a French language option – just English audio with Spanish subs), let's take a look at the four commentaries that are on Part 3, Part VI – Jason Lives, Part VII – The New Blood and Part VIII – Jason Takes Manhattan.

Friday The 13th – Part 3 features a commentary track from Larry Zerner, Paul Kratka, Richard Brooker and Dana Kimmell that is moderated by Peter Bracke. First off, the recording quality of this track is pretty bad. The levels are way too low and at times it's hard to hear what everyone is saying. That aside, this commentary track is a lot of fun. It ranges from the technical to the anecdotal and covers everything in between. Bracke does a good job of keeping everyone on track as they discuss making the film in 3-D, some of the effects work, and plenty of interesting stories. Everyone seems to look back on the movie pretty fondly, even if they're very well aware of its weaknesses.

Director Tom McLoughlin is on deck for a solo commentary over Friday The 13th Part VI – Jason Lives. The man is not once at a loss for words during this entire track and he speaks not only of his experiences working on the film and with some of the actors in it, but of his love for the genre and how it affected the movie that he was trying to make. McLoughlin comes across as a very likeable and knowledgeable man and while this track may not have the 'fun' factor that the one on the third film does, it sure has a ton of information packed into it and plays like a veritable crash course in his experiences on the movie.

Director John Carl Buechler is joined by Kane Hodder (who played Jason in this installment) for the commentary track on Friday The 13th Part VII – The New Blood. The two have got a lot of stories about how things went on set, about how many cuts were forced upon the film (an obvious bone of contention for Buechler – he has no qualms about telling everyone how he feels about the trims made to the movie as required by the MPAA) and the pair obviously enjoy working together. Hodder seems to like looking back on the 'kill scenes' and has some fun stories about how those were pulled off.

The last commentary, for the last film in Paramount's chapter of the series - Friday The 13th Part VII – Jason Takes Manhattan is another solo outing, this time from writer/director Rob Hedden. Again, there is a lot of good information in this track and while the movie may be one of the least popular in the franchise, Hedden is very gracious to the fans regardless and delivers another top notch commentary track that provides a nice balance between anecdotal and technical. Much like Buechler did before him on the previous installment, Hedden also mentions some alternate death scenes that were trimmed in order for the MPAA to award the film an R-rating.

Now on to the actual fifth disc itself, and what Paramount has assembled for it…

The biggest and best of the extra features out of this entire set is hands down the fantastic new documentary, The Friday The 13th Chronicles. This bad boy clocks in at a whopping hour and forty-three minutes in approximate length and is an entertaining and comprehensive look back on the first eight films playable in either individual featurettes on each film or as one mammoth 'making of' documentary. Breaking it down chapter by chapter, the documentary plays like this:

Friday The 13th: The longest and most comprehensive of the segments includes interviews with director Sean Cunningham, as well as special effects guru Tom Savini and cast members Betsy Palmer (Mrs. Voorhees), Adrianne King (Alice Hardy), and Ari Leham (Jason Voorhees). Cunningham dominates the piece and is more than happy to discuss everything from his prior experiences in the film industry to the eye-catching marketing used for the film to the exploitative elements that work so well in the movie. Savini discusses his effects work and the gore scenes in particular as well as the reactions that they caused. The cast mainly discuss their experiences on the film and are quite friendly about it all, save for Betsy Palmer who is obviously not too happy with the movie and admits to taking the role simply for the pay This featurette, like the rest to follow, is spread out between interview footage, behind the scenes stills and the like, and clips from the specific films being discussed.

Friday The 13th Part 2: Cunningham and King are back, joined this time by actors Amy Steel (Ginny) and Warrington Gillette (Jason). Cunningham fills us in on how Paramount wanted a sequel after the unexpected success of the first film, and how he had problems coming up with a decent idea to make it all work. King is featured only briefly discussing her cameo role in the film, while Gillette and Steel fill in the blanks with all manner of stories about the production from their prior film experience to stunts to why they took their respective roles.

Friday The 13th Part 3: Larry Zerner (Shelly) and Gerald Feil (cinematographer) discuss this third film, originally shown theatrically in 3-D. The clips here as well as the discussion all pertain to the way that the film was written, designed, and directed to be seen in 3-D but sadly, Paramount didn't give us the movie that way, which makes this segment more frustrating than anything else. Aside from the 3-D discussion, they talk about how the hockey mask is introduced for the first time and Shelly is quite proud of the fact that by doing so, his character essentially made horror movie history.

Friday The 13th Part IV – The Final Chapter: Director Joseph Zito and superstud actor extraordinaire Corey Feldman (Tommy) are on hand for this installment. Zito discusses how he was more or less given free reign to do what he wanted with the character as the studio planned to end the franchise with this installment as well as how some of the scenes were created, and why certain actors were cast in their roles. Feldman discusses how he got the part and how he thought at the time that he had taken a part in another long running horror franchise and didn't actually know what the Friday The 13th movies were. He was also impressed with the fact that he got to see breasts for the first time in his life – a moment no young man ever forgets.

Friday The 13th Part V – A New Beginning: Feldman and Zito return despite the fact that neither of them really had anything to do with this fifth installment. Feldman had to bow out as he was shooting The Goonies at the time, despite the fact that the producers wanted to make him the central protagonist. Zito discusses how the writers managed to segue from the supposed Final Chapter into this film based on the way he ended the last installment of the series.

Friday The 13th Part VI – Jason Lives: Director Tom McLoughlin and C. J. Graham (Jason) are on hand for this installment's segment. Topics discussed include the specific look and feel that McLoughlin wanted for the film, how certain specific stunts were handled, the audition process an actor has to go through to become Jason Voorhees, and more. They also go into detail on some changes that the studio mandated after McLoughlin submitted his final cut, as they wanted him to add in more death scenes.

Friday The 13th Part VII – The New Blood: Director John Carl Buechler joins Kane Hodder (Jason) and the still gorgeous Lar Park Lincoln (Tina) for this seventh chat session. Topics at hand include studio objection to Hodder's take on the now famous killing machine, stunt work, and Jason's physical evolution over the first few films to how he ends up looking in this one.

Friday The 13th Party VIII – Jason Takes Manhattan: The last part of the documentary brings in Director Rob Hedden and sees Hodder return as well as the pair give us some detail on some of the difficulties encountered shooting the film in the urban setting, alternate title ideas, and the serious money problems that they encountered while shooting. There are also some great storyboards included for alternate scenes that were to take place in the city but were never shot because of the aforementioned money woes.

Moving through the features in the order they're presented on the interactive menus we next encounter Secrets Galore Behind The Gore, which if you couldn't tell from the title is a 'how did they do that' style piece on the gore effects used and created for the series. Sadly, only three of the eight films in the set get any screen time, and those are Part 1, Part IV and Part VII. Savini gives the details on the earliest two while Kane Hodder and director John Carl Buechler cover the later entry. Savini's segment starts off great but soon turns into an advertisement for his make up school (which isn't uninteresting but does feel out of place). Buechler and Hodder mainly focus on the cuts that were made to the effects footage that they shot, These pieces can be watched one at a time or all at once, just like the Friday The 13th Chronicles feature, and it runs just over half an hour in length.

Following the effects piece is a segment entitled Crystal Lake Victims Tell All that is comprised mainly of interview footage that feels like it was cut from the larger Chronicles documentary. Sadly, there's no Kevin Bacon footage here but there is more footage of pretty much all of the victims that appear in the other documentary giving some more focus to their death scenes and the like. Not a bad piece, per se, but it feels like leftovers from the main course.

Moving right along, we find the highly anticipated Tales From The Cutting Room Floor segment. Again, if you couldn't tell from the title, this is a few minutes worth of alternate and cut footage from a few of the different chapters in the series. First up, for Part 1 we get to see Kevin Bacon's uncut death scene, an extended cut of Annie's axe vs. face scene, and the full version of Mrs. Voorhees' decapitation sequence which features a little more arterial spray. These sequences are shown with their R-rated counterparts above them in a sort of split screen format, which means that you're seeing the uncut footage in a much smaller window than you would be if they were incorporated into the film. For Part IV – The Final Chapter we see some slightly extended character scenes involving some of the kids as well some more footage of Tommy in his bedroom with the Jason-Hunter guy, and one involving Tommy's mother. There's not a whole lot of extra gore here and the scenes are shown fullframe and likely taken from a tape source (though they're more than watchable). For Part VI – Jason Lives we're treated to an alternate and slightly gorier take on the paintball gun team's death scene, and a considerably gorier take from the death scene where we see the woman in the car lose her credit card into the mud puddle and the preceding death of her husband. Again, these are taken from a tape source and we're back to the split screen format that they used to display the alternate cuts from Part 1. Finally, John Carl Beuchler and Kane Hodder provide a commentary over some of the extended scenes that were cut from the work print of Part VII – The New Blood. While Buechler says the word 'attractive' far too many times in such a short period to describe the excised gore, the two of them do a good job of explaining the details behind the scenes. While they're taken from a VHS source (and a time coded work print at that), they look really rough and are in terrible shape and it's a shame that a cleaner version of this material wasn't found for this release as we get to see the full version of the sleeping bag beating scene, a scene that the commentators refer to as the coochie face scene in which a split face ends up looking rather vaginal, a slightly longer version of Robin's death, the heretofore unseen version of Ben's death, and a few other extended cuts of a neck cutting, the mother's death, and the Doctor's death. There is also some footage from an alternate ending that works quite well and was fun to finally see.

After that, there's a rather unusual feature entitled Friday Artifacts And Collectables which is a quick look at some of the memorabilia and whatnot from the series. A representative from NECA toys shows off their Friday The 13th lunch box set as well as their 18" Jason Voorhees figure, a fan shows off a custom guitar featuring an air brushed picture of Jason on it that was signed by every actor to ever play the role. Tom McLoughlin has got one of the hockey masks used in his film, and a left over slate used on set. Tom McLoughlin has the tombstone from Part VI – Jason Lives resting in his backyard to scare the meter reader as well as the coffin used in the film. Finally, Buechler has the sculpted head of John Otrin from Part VII – The New Blood that the studio decided not to use.

Finally, Paramount has supplied the trailers for all eight of the films in the set, which is sure to annoy owners of the single disc releases of Part VII and Part VIII which were released without even that much on the disc.

It is a shame though that Paramount either didn't make the effort to or wasn't able to include the commentary track (with Sean Cunningham, Victor Miller, Peter Bracke and Betsy Palmer) and the twenty-five minute Return To Crystal Lake making of featurette from the overseas release of the original Friday The 13th as they are both quite interesting.

Is this truly an 'ultimate edition' as the box proclaims? No. Not even close. There was a lot more that Paramount could have and should have included on this set that is conspicuously absent. What is included is good though – the movies look and sound quite nice, the commentary tracks are informative and engaging, and the fifth disc of supplements is nicely done and does contain some great material. Despite the absence of uncut versions and my objections to the way that the 'cutting room' footage was included, this set does come recommended.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.