Friday the 13th

Despite how the general population tends to view movie drinking games as simpleton swill-athons, a proper set of film-themed sipping rules requires painstaking research and methodical formulation. Pick the wrong title and you’ll either lose an audience to boredom or be stuck finding consistent throughlines in a movie that’s 100% certified messiness. Any selection should have an acceptable level of schlock, gooey “cheesiness” dripping off its sides, but it shouldn’t be an unwatchable dumpster fire. You’re not drinking to make something watchable, but to enhance the communal appreciation of a midnight-friendly romp that might go down even easier with liquid lubrication.

One of the earliest memories as a child was when my parents used to run the Halloween haunted hayride in my hometown. At the end of the ride, the tractor malfunctions, the driver leaves to find help, and suddenly “Jason Voorhees,” aka my own father donning a stained hockey mask and a fake chainsaw (continuity be damned) appears and kills the driver in front of us. With the riders stranded, Jason jumps on the wagon to terrorize everyone on board.

On June 13, 1946, Jason Voorhees was born, and so today we celebrate his birthday … and also his death day, since we learned in the first movie based on the arc of his infamous life (Friday the 13th, 1980) that he drowned in 1957 at Camp Crystal Lake. Even though it was actually Jason’s mother knocking off all those kids who tried to get the camp going again in 1980, it was Jason who haunted the dreams of survivors.