For old school slasher movie and/or Scooby-Doo fans, the above embedded mash-up combining the two is nothing short of genius. Brilliantly stringing together audio from the first four Friday the 13th films with scenes from a couple Scooby-Doo episodes, “The Curse of Crystal Lake” plays like an authentic Saturday morning animated version of a Jason Voorhees murder adventure. Hey, they made kiddie cartoons out of the Toxic Avenger and Rambo, so why not Jason?

Of course, by using Scooby-Doo cartoons, there’s an absence of gore in this short animated film, with one exception if you watch all the way to the end. However, in that regard, “The Curse of Crystal Lake” resembles Parts 5-8 of the Friday the 13th franchise where, for the most part, all of the actual killing scenes were excised out.

I remember, as a teenager in the ’80s, reading about all the gruesome special effects being produced for each of these films in issues of Fangoria, then being completely angry and let down when the MPAA forced the filmmakers to cut it all out after they started cracking down on horror movies in the post-slasher boom. Plus, this was in the days before DVDs when I could expect an “unrated” version to eventually hit the shelves, like now.

I haven’t seen many of the Friday the 13th films since their original release, with the exceptions of Parts 1 and 4, which are my favorite. And despite being let down by most of them, I still have fond memories of going to see them in the theater with my friends. It was always a good time even if the actual movies stunk.

One last thing that “The Curse of Crystal Lake” shows is just how effective the music used in the series was. Even though this is goofy animated fun, when that familiar whispery “tick tick tick ah ah ah ah” music kicks in, it’s hard not to get a little creeped out and scared.

P.S. I just love how the filmmaker made Shaggy be the one against drug use and Velma the slut.