By JOEL HARLEY
When this column first debuted back in January 2024, it did so as a thinly veiled excuse to read and write about every single one of Black Flame Press’ Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street books. Since then, I’ve become distracted by the sheer quantity of quality tie-in material out there – but the mission statement remains the same.
So too does that of Jason Voorhees, an eternal constant set only on death and destruction. Paul A. Woods’ HELL LAKE is the second of five Friday the 13th novels published by Black Flame Press. It’s also the most ambitious. Jason is in Hell, where he meets recently executed serial killer Wayne ‘Devil Boy’ Sanchez. Finding a kindred spirit in Sanchez, Jason agrees to join him on an expedition back to the real world – assembling an army of serial killers as they go.
This book finds Jason in a more collaborative mood than usual, although that’s not without precedent (see previous team-ups with Freddy Kreuger and Leatherface). Like Church of the Divine Psychopath, HELL LAKE uses the medium’s unlimited budget to take some wild swings – not least of which is its infernal setting. Sure, cinematic Jason went to Hell in 1993, but it was never explored. What does Hell look like anyway?
According to Woods, it’s a desolate place. Rather than lakes of fire and brimstone, its inhabitants are tormented more by their own boredom than by any devil. There’s no chance of the reader getting bored, though, and the book uses this premise as the jumping-off point for an epic battle through each of the circles of Hell. It’s Friday the 13th meets Dante’s Inferno.
Unfortunately, things get a bit stickier once we’re back in the real world. Woods’ proclivity for purple prose fits the underworld but works less well when it reaches Crystal Lake and the teenagers waiting there to be slaughtered. This ragtag group is led by jock Trey Leblanc, who’s suspected of murder when a recently resurrected Jason stages his latest killing spree. Trey’s successful in clearing his name but struggles with the police’s instruction that he and his cannon fodder pals shelter in place – making them sitting ducks as Jason, Sanchez and their army of killers stage their next attack.
This is Friday the 13th at its most apocalyptic, on a scale the series has never approximated before or since (save for the Freddy vs Jason vs Ash sequel, maybe). Unfortunately, Jason becomes somewhat lost in the scrum, playing second fiddle to Sanchez as the story progresses. Hell, as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, is other people. And there are a lot of other people in this novel. As if being sidelined wasn’t undignified enough, the hulking serial killer finds himself humiliated by wannabe ninja Trey (!), first suffering a throwing star to the eyeball before taking a gunshot in his bumhole (!!) and, uh, pubic region (!!!).
“Got ya, ya bastard! I hope that hurts like haemorrhoids from hell!” Shawna had lined up the sights of her .22 to hit the man-monster straight in the anus.”
That’s far from the only unexpected moment involving Jason Voorhees and a gun. In perhaps the book’s most jarring liberty, Jason also turns gunman himself, levelling an assault rifle (!!!!) at his latest set of victims. What had started as one of the series’ most inventive stories becomes muddled by increasing levels of silliness, with ideas thrown thick and fast, whether they make sense or not.
I’d spent years tracking down copies of the Black Flame books, to the point where they reached almost mythic status in my head. I don’t know what I’d expected from their Friday the 13th line, but a full paragraph on Jason getting his ringpiece obliterated by gunfire wasn’t it. Nor, for that matter, was an entire section on the 1983 David Bowie film The Hunger.
That said, this is a franchise which previously had its slasher villain body-swapping by vomiting his own organs (!!!!!) into the mouths of an unwilling host. Less than a decade after that, he was in space. By comparison, a bit of Bowie, butthole trauma and machine gun practice is par for the course.
HELL LAKE is one of the most bonkers Friday the 13th stories ever told. It’s a book that journeys to Hell and back – and only gets weirder from there. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s a hell of a tie-in novel.
