Alright, horror hounds, we're going to try something different. For approximately three months, your humble host is going to slice, dice and machete his way through the entire "Friday the 13th" series for your amusement - or nonamusement, I'm not quite sure which. Either way, get ready to absorb a whole heapin' helping of everyone's favorite hockey-masked momma's boy, Jason Voorhees. And just so none of you get really annoying with nitpicky questions, I am covering EVERY movie in the series - the Paramount series (1-8), the New Line entries (JGTH, X, and F v J), and the 2009 remake. By the end of this experiment, I'm likely going to be so sick of this series that I could vomit with rage...but then again, I might not. After all, I've seen most of these films at least fifty times already, so what's one more go gonna hurt?Before we get this party cabin hopping (see, I'm getting in the "Friday" spirit already), some general series thoughts:
- Firstly, I LOVE the "Friday the 13th" series, and have a ton of personal history and nostalgia for the entire undertaking. As a fourth grader who was fascinated by horror movies but still young enough to be scared by them, they scared the HELL out of me back then. Now, they're calming, almost comforting; hell, I pop the damn DVD's into the ol' player when I'm trying to nod off during the daylight hours. These movies are like my best friend.
- Of all the home run horror franchises, this one is the best SERIES. Yes, "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning" is a truly wretched picture, but it's still loads better than the worst movies in other horror franchises ("Nightmare on Elm Street 2" and the direct-to-DVD "Hellraiser" films, I'm looking at you).
- On some level, I find it amazing, and awesome, that this series - so less cerebral than the "Hellraisers" and "Saws" of the world, is the one with the most sequels. And they've all been released theatrically.
- 1998 was the best Halloween in the history of mankind. Why? Because it fell on a Saturday - a Saturday when Joe Bob Briggs was still in the midst of his ungodly MonsterVision run. The result was legendary: the first six F13 films (minus "Final Chapter") all back to back, with a top-of-his-game Joe Bob popping off one liner after one liner during one evening of pure awesomeness.
So, without further adieu, the first film in the series, which I've never inducted into the registry. The only film, thus far, to be in the registry is my favorite movie in the series ("The Final Chapter"), and this movie is also getting the nod. However, none of the others will be - this particular three-month diversion isn't IHR-associated. This is just me punishing myself for all of you, so I hope you're happy - but in the case of "Friday the 13th" in its original incantation, no punishment is associated in the slightest, because this is just a classic, unbelievable film that never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes - and this is incredibly rare - a movie can be incredibly groundbreaking, innovative, and influential without even really trying to be. "Friday the 13th" was this film, and it is, without a doubt, the most important horror film ever made.
Without "Friday the 13th," think of what doesn't exist - there's no "Halloween" sequels, no "Nightmare on Elm Street," no early-'80s slasher boom, no "Scary Movie" or "Scream" series, no virginal heroine trend that continues to this day...the entire cultural landscape was altered because of this movie, ushering in a new era.
So there we were - this movie's release date. Friday, June 13, 1980 - the dawn of the '80s, the dawn of the modern slasher film. I'm often asked what I consider to be the first slasher film, because there are many different possible answers to that question. Some say that "Halloween" is the first great slasher film, and while it is indeed my favorite movie of all time, there's absolutely no blood contained in it. Others cite films from the earlier '70s like "Twitch of the Death Nerve," "Black Christmas" or "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage," while others list the proto-slashers of the '40s. To me, the answer to this question HAS to be "Friday the 13th." While "Twitch of the Death Nerve" was the first movie to take the truly grisly details of onscreen murder and be unafraid to show it in all of its excruciating glory, its storyline (a lame heist plot) was not befitting the slasher template. "Friday" MADE that template - it invented the formula. The cast of nubile, attractive teens, the remote forest location, and, of course, the moral that if you have sex, you will die, and very painfully.
"Friday the 13th" was actually released on the same day as "The Shining." Now I ask this - which movie had the bigger impact? Well? TWELVE MOVIES. I rest my case. "Friday" demolished Kubrick's film at the box office and, in fact, its box office take during that wicked summer was second only to "The Empire Strikes Back." Now there's a trivia fact that will amaze more than a few people. The reason? Go back to that last point in the previous paragraph - what this movie had going for it was, and this still holds true to this day, the single best ad campaign in the history of cinema. Everybody saw the television commercials for this movie, and everybody got it: kids having sex, and kids in turn being butchered for having too much sex. I know that this is so cliche now that it is laughed at, but every cliche came from somewhere - writer/director Sean S. Cunningham took the sex and death connection that he knew would be ripe for controversy and played it to its fullest, resulting in previously unheard-of buzz for this tiny movie that Paramount Pictures risked a fortune on by picking up and releasing nationally.
The film, finally: We open up at Camp Crystal Lake, 1958 - two attractive camp counselors retreat from a staff party to make out and, presumably, copulate. They are interrupted by someone they both appear to know quite well, and are both killed offscreen by said person. This opening is very effective because the killings aren't shown - the audience is lulled into a false sense of safety, almost saying to themselves "that wasn't that bad" after seeing the TV ads hyping the film's violence. These would be the only bloodless murders in the film, and from this point forward, the fate of every unfortunate victim in "Friday the 13th" is progressively worse.
Flash-forward 22 years to the movie's 1980 present day. Openly admitting that he cribbed from Hitchcock's classic "Psycho," Cunningham opens the present story with a character named Annie hitch-hiking to Crystal Lake Campground, where she is to be the new summer camp's cook for the oncoming open season. Within twenty minutes, she is dead, her throat sliced open by another unseen assailant.
Meanwhile, our principal cast - the counselors set to work at the just re-opened Camp Crystal Lake - have made their way to the site. Each has an instantly recognizable personality, and amazingly enough (especially for you younger horror fans used to the character-writing traits of today's screenwriters), all are likable and engaging. There's nice guy Bill (Harry Crosby, son of Bing - and that's no joke), practical joker Ned (Mark Nelson), lovebirds Jack (Kevin Bacon in his first starring film role) and Marcie (Jeannine Taylor, who has a smokin' body), ditzy blonde Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and shy, innocent Alice (Adrienne King). "Friday" was the first movie of its kind to use this technique which, once again, has been ripped off so many times over the years that it is now cliche - Cunningham paints many different archetypical kids, with the idea being that everyone in the audience can find someone to relate to. It's safe to say that since "Friday the 13th" still sees constant airplay on cable to this day despite the endless series of ripoffs and tributes, the technique works.
For the next thirty minutes, we are once again lulled into a false sense of safety after the death of Annie (which the remaining counselors are unaware of) - we watch these kids be kids, in essence. We watch them form quick friendships with their new co-workers, play jokes on each other, and enjoy a nice frolic in Crystal Lake itself. We wonder if Ned's clumsy advances on Brenda are going to pay off, and we find ourselves genuinely liking the onscreen couple of Jack and Marcie due to the actors' outstanding chemistry, and wonder if the two nicest characters are going to realize what they have in common. The key here is likability - we genuinely LIKE every member of this group, and there's a great effort by Cunningham, as the director, and Victor Miller, the screenwriter, to make us identify with these carefree souls cut off from the rest of society.
And then a thunderstorm signifies the ending of the day, and the coming of night. And then these kids begin dying, in incredibly gruesome, graphic, and gory ways.
Therein lies the horror of "Friday the 13th." It was described by one prominent film critic at the time as "the Pepsi generation gets hacked to bits," but this is an injustice to the dramatic arc that Cunningham was trying to accomplish. "Young kids," Cunningham said, "you know, teens and college kids, all seem to think that they're invincible. And usually, in most high schools, there's some incident, like a drunken car crash, that kills one of their classmates. All of a sudden, that feeling of invincibility is broken, and they realize that someday they will die. That's what 'Friday the 13th' was about - the fear of death before your time."
Truer words were never spoken, as the methods of death were re-invented with this film. In 1980, Tom Savini was a hot, up-and-coming makeup artist who had just completed work on the effects for the 1978 zombie epic "Dawn of the Dead." Cunningham called Savini, telling him that he wanted his death effects to look as realistic and horrifically bloody as possible, and Savini did not disappoint. In particular, Bacon's death - a spear through the bed/throat, complete with a geyser of blood emanating from the wound - is an epic kill to this day, and one of many visceral moments in this film that leave you wonder just how the hell the film-makers pulled it off without the aid of the lazy CGI that can be relied on today. Looking back at this film, after you've seen an axe to the head, an arrow through the eyeball, and a decapitation right before your very eyes, you're suddenly taken aback by the value of quality handmade effects. It looks real, because, at some level, it actually did happen. Savini's mastery of puppetry, facial molding, and, of course, the liberal use of stage blood is unparalleled in movie history, and it's no accident that his career skyrocketed after the release of "Friday the 13th" (to the point that he later was awarded the directing gig on the well-received remake of "Night of the Living Dead" in 1990).
In short, nothing as raw and savage as "Friday the 13th" had ever been seen by as many members of the American public before. I mentioned earlier in this review that Paramount Pictures took a huge risk on this movie. Before "Friday the 13th," horror and exploitation films were usually released in "rock and roll" fashion, playing in perhaps 30 theaters every week, and moving from one area of the country to the other. "Friday the 13th" did not have any big-name stars, a high budget, or a previously-thought marketable premise, and yet Frank Mancuso, the head of Paramount at the time, believed in this shocking little horror movie that he truly enjoyed and decided to give it the 2,000-theater release that major movies got. The move paid huge dividends, as evidenced by its box office take, never-ending series of sequels, and influence that continues to this day.
In all likelihood, I've seen "Friday the 13th" more than fifty times during the course of my life. It was one of the first slasher films that I ever saw, as my first viewing occurred during one of the USA network's Friday marathons in the fall of 1993. It scared the ever-living crap out of me back then, not only for the killings, but because I truly liked the character of Alice. It should come as no surprise if you're at all familiar with the slasher genre that Alice is the last remaining character in this film to face off with the film's villain. I knew that even THEN as a dumb fourth grader, and it didn't matter at all. I wanted Alice to succeed, and the first-ever slasher film "final girl" chase sequence is truly dynamic stuff, even taking into consideration Alice's ineffectual barricade against her assailant.
And yeah, that's right, casual movie fans who may not know what the hell I'm talking about when I call the villain in this film "the assailant" - the original "Friday the 13th" contains a mystery killer, and no, it ain't Jason. As played by Betsy Palmer, the character of Pamela Voorhees conveys to us a genuine depth in a monologue that gives us the reason why she kills - and, in essence, sets up the rest of the series. Of course, Palmer has been known for talking down this role and the film itself since then, saying that the script was "shit," but that still doesn't take away the fact that she truly went above and beyond in a bit part to make what could have been a one-note character a legendary horror villain that even has its own friggin' action figure.
"Friday the 13th" is a landmark in American cinema, and Leonard Maltin, I don't care what you say about this being a wretched film, or what you, Roger Ebert, have to say about this being a piece of theatrical trash. This is a great film. Not in the way that it should have walked away with a bagful of Oscars, but there can be many ways a film can be great. I find that the best movies are the ones that make you FEEL something, anything - they can make you angry, or happy, or sad, or, in this case, horrified and, at times, grossed out. Without "Friday the 13th," there is an entire genre that would not exist today, and we as horror fans (and movie fans in general) owe Cunningham, his production crew and cast, and the brave Paramount executive who chose to market this micro-budget film as a potential summer blockbuster a huge debt.
No comments:
Post a Comment