Happy Birthday Friday the 13th Part V, Blade II, & the Resident Evil series!

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Today is March 22.

One of the bigger days in Horror History. On this day in horror history we saw the theatrical releases of: 

1985 – FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING

and 

2002 – BLADE II

Along with the premiere Japan Playstation release of the first

1996 – RESIDENT EVIL (Video Game)

Yes, the RESIDENT EVIL mega-franchise started on this day, along with Jason's (or should that be Roy's?) new beginning, after being machete-f*cked by Corey "Tommy Jarvis" Feldman, and Blade battled the Reapers, Reedus (Norman), and Ron Perlman under the direction of Guillermo Del Toro.

Here are rundowns on the three releases via Wikipedia:

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning opened on March 22, 1985, on 1,759 screens. The film debuted at number 1 on its opening weekend with a gross of $8,032,883, beating the teen sex comedy sequel Porky's Revenge, the biopic Mask, Berry Gordy's martial-arts action musical The Last Dragon and the Disney dinosaur fantasy Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. By the end of its run, the film would earn $21,930,418 at the domestic box office, placing it at number 41 on the list of 1985's top box office earners.

BLADE II

Blade II was released on March 22, 2002. This was during a period of the year (months March and April) considered to be a bad time for sequels to be released. Despite this, the film became the most successful film of the Blade series, making $80 million in the United States and $150 million worldwide. In its opening weekend, the film earned $32,528,016 from 2,707 theaters but dropped 59% of its earnings in its second week, which brought in $13.2 million. The intake is believed to be affected (in part) by the pull of NCAA basketball Final Four games. The film debuted in the United Kingdom at number one, making $3.6 million from 355 theatres and held the spot for the following week, where it had earned $7.9 million, despite a 47% decline. The film was also number one in Singapore, making $214,000 from 30 theatres.

RESIDENT EVIL

Resident Evil, known in Japan as Bio Hazard, is a survival horror video game developed and released by Capcom originally for the PlayStation in 1996, and is the first game in the Resident Evil series. It is Capcom's best-selling debut game, with sales of over 8.5 million copies worldwide.

Conceived by producer Tokuro Fujiwara as a remake of his earlier horror game Sweet Home (1989), the development of Resident Evil was led by Shinji Mikami. 

Resident Evil was very well received critically and commercially, and is often credited for defining the survival horror genre. Its success has spawned a multimedia franchise including video games, films, comics, novels, and other merchandise. The game has received dedicated ports to the Sega Saturn, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo DS. In 2002, a remake of the same name was released for the GameCube featuring updated graphics, sound, and changes to the gameplay and story. A high-definition remaster of the GameCube game was released in 2015 for modern platforms. A direct sequel titled Resident Evil 2 was released in 1998, and a prequel, Resident Evil Zero, was released in 2002.

Yes, without March 22nd, the horror genre would be missing some of its most classic entries.

Happy Birthday FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING, RESIDENT EVIL, and BLADE II.