Campfire Scary Stories: My History with Friday the 13th

Quick - name the movie that has had the most profound effect on your life.

If most people were asked this question, they would probably wrack their brains for some intellectually stimulating, deep, culturally enriching film that fits into...well, the stuff that makes Roger Ebert masturbate. Like, oh, I don't know, The Social Network, or something. If someone were to ask ME that question, however, I could only have one answer. I'd give very brief consideration to Reservoir Dogs or River's Edge, two movies that I watched countless times during middle school and thus have a sentimental, almost parasitic bond to your host since they accompany some very lonely years. But as for sheer impact...I've gotta go with Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.

Yeah, not the first one. Or the second, or the fourth, which fans typically think are better (and I've come to agree with that sentiment since, by the way). Nope, the movie that has altered the lifescope of Jon Lickness more than any other is the SIXTH sequel in a slasher movie series about a demented, mentally challenged backwoods killer who wears a hockey mask and dispatches of copulating teenagers in ever-inventive, ever-bloody ways. So what the f*** does that say about me?

That I'm awesome, that's what.

Kidding aside, Halloween day of 2011 is a scant five days away. The holiday has always had a strong importance to yours truly, since I live on a street that is just unreal for atmosphere on October 31st. We get more than 500 trick or treaters at our door every year. It's just like TV, and it's incredible. And while every Halloween is special, it just isn't quite AS special without one additional thing in the background as I pass out candy to the countless Marios, Disney princesses and other assorted crap (example: I saw one kid last year dressed as a CELL PHONE) parading around. Namely, a Jason movie.

Word of warning: don't expect any sort of analysis with what you're about to read. I've already reviewed EVERY movie in the Friday the 13th franchise. More than once, in fact. If you want the best versions of those reviews, just go to the February and March of 2010 sections of the blog (and if you're reading this on the FAN or on Facebook, said blog is located at http://bloodgutstears.blogspot.com). There also shouldn't be anything in the way of overall series description, because, let's face it, if you don't know that Friday the 13th is about a bad motherf***er in a hockey mask and his holy quest to avenge his mother and/or be the best damn spokesperson for waiting until marriage there ever was, you've been living under a rock. This is going to be more personal.

Ladies and gentlemen, Friday the 13th the way I experienced it. Odds are nobody will find this interesting...but tough. You are all my therapists now. [/Freddy Krueger]

In retrospect, my brother introduced me to a lot of things that I have a passion for. Old-school hip hop, Denver Broncos football, and, by proxy, horror films. The first scary movie I ever saw was Gremlins, but, for some reason, I never really saw that flick as an out-and-out horror movie. Hell, I thought Stripe was cool, even as a snot-nosed five-year-old. But the first movie that I saw that actively scared me was a movie that my older brother taped off of local television sometime in 1991 - Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. See? We're coming around full circle. I was eight at this time, and for a couple hours one Saturday afternoon sat enthralled watching this big, hulking guy in a blue suit and hockey mask knock off person after person until finally meeting his match - a young girl with telepathic powers. Since hockey mask guy terrified me to my very core, I was oh-so-firmly on telepathic girl's side all through that amazing third act, as she threw obstacle after obstacle at this monstrous brute only for him to keep coming!

Of course, it also had a scene where hockey mask guy whipped a girl head first into a tree that made me laugh my ass off, only adding to the movie's cool factor.

I had never seen anything like this...ever. It was a roller coaster ride that I had loved, no doubt, but one that I didn't want to experience again for a while.

Flash forward three years. By this point, I'd seen a few other horror movies (Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the original Corey Haim Watchers were favorites around this time), and now knew that the actual DAY Friday the 13th had negative, superstitious connotations to it. Well, sooner or later the day rolls around on the calendar, and as I'm perusing the TV listings...the USA network is having an honest-to-goodness MARATHON of movies all sharing the title of that awesome flick I'd seen a few years back in the basement with my brother. A whole marathon! It didn't get any more awesome than that.

Well, those of you in my age bracket (I was born in 1983) may remember that Friday the 13th movie marathons used to be a much bigger deal than they are now. For an indication of just HOW big a deal they were, the good folks at the USA network gave us a whole WEEKEND's worth of the films during that May 13-15 time frame of 1994 (yeah...I did some research on this). And over the course of 72 hours, I got all six of the movies that were broadcast on tape - all in glorious EP speed and all gloriously edited for content. And man, you have never seen a sadder sight in your life than 10-year-old Jon Lickness half-watching, half fast-forwarding his way through F13 movies. All alone in the basement, constantly looking at the stairs to make sure my parents wouldn't catch me watching these nasty flicks, watching the boring talking and sex scenes (remember...sex scenes were boring to a ten-year-old, and I guess technically we're talking "making out in bed" scenes since these were TV edits) and either leaving the room or outright fast-forwarding through the most gut-wrenching stuff. It wasn't the kills. Oh, no - it was the stalking and music stingers BEFORE the moments where Jason would gut someone. That stuff was the WORST.

For those who want to keep score, the six movies shown that weekend were Parts I, II, III, V, VII (got to see it again! Alright!) and VIII. That's an education you CAN'T get in Catholic school, bitches. For starters, I was quite shocked to learn that Jason wasn't always the bad guy. In fact, back then, I thought the back story and tragedy involved in the creation of Jason Voorhees was both terrifying and heartbreaking. But that was just one of many things that seemed so EPIC about this series. The first movie with the demented mother, the genesis of the hockey mask in the third, that wacky fifth movie that made no sense considering that I hadn't seen the fourth, the reincarnated terminator-like Jason in the latter movies...it all added up to one gargantuan, interconnected tale that would make J.R.R. Tolkien piss himself.

It was also due to these movies that I saw a very different representation of high school (and, in some of the movies, college years). As a kid, I had a fascination with high school. If there's one thing Saved By the Bell taught me, it's that young adulthood was just this amazing time where everyone got to hang out in hip diners and talk endlessly with a comically mismatched group of friends. Friday the 13th movies often showed this same high school archetype to me with the variance of characters (almost every movie in the series has a jock, a good girl, a nerd, etc.), only now some very bad things were happening to them. I felt for these people, I really did, and masterfully conveyed my empathy via the following bit of dialogue from myself to a friend at the time - "Yeah, I like Jason in these movies, but I like the people who kill Jason, too." Yup, my ability to provide EXPERT analysis goes back pretty far. ;)

Really, though, EVERYTHING about these movies was awesome to me at this time, and I couldn't get enough of them. Action movies had nothing on this stuff - every one of these films ended on such a cliffhanger! And not in the BOO-SCARE variety that horror films attempt to provide us with nowadays just before the credits. They'd leave us with these tantalizing hints that Jason was still alive - the ripples of water in the lake where he supposedly "drowned" in the early movies, the "eyes opening" thing at the end of Part VI, that same familiar "ch ch ch ch" music heard over the ending credits, and whatever it was, they would ALWAYS deliver on it in the next movie as I'd sit there and PRAY that Jason wouldn't be resurrected, yet secretly hoped that he WOULD to give me another round of "half-watch/half fast-forward through the bad stuff." I loved noticing the differences in Jason's look through each film, as well, and patted myself on the back for catching that the unmasked Jason in Part VII had wounds from the axe to the head in III, although I still had no clue what the hell the big, long, running gash on the side of his face was from. Perhaps something to do with that ever-so-mysterious Part IV: The Final Chapter that USA NEVER seemed to air? More on that later.

Shown above is the evolution of Jason Voorhees in films I-X, from dream figment demon child in the first film to half beast/half cyborg in the tenth.

These things were my Star Wars.

Unfortunately, if you're expecting some big epic conclusion to this story of my losery ten-year-old self's love affair with Friday the 13th, there isn't any. The truth is that I kind of grew out of the phase...well, actually, that's a total lie. The REAL truth is that I finally scared myself so damn much, and cost myself so much sleep that I swore the movies off and vowed to NEVER watch them again. And I didn't. For about four years.

FORTUNATELY (capitalized because...just look at the first word of the previous paragraph - parallelism, dammit), it was now 1998, meaning that I was now 15, had seen quite a few horror movies, built up an excellent gore and scare tolerance, and even done some reading up on the genre by this point. And just like if you were a kid in 1994 you knew what Friday the 13th on the USA network meant, if you were a teenager in 1998 and you were a horror fan, you knew what Saturday nights were all about.

Oh yeah - Joe Bob Briggs. Check this one out, aardvarking, "fu" being the substitute word for "kill," and approximately 78,000 other awesome phrases all brought to life live and in person by my beer drinking uncle every Saturday night on TNT. It was here where I REALLY got my education, as classic horror movie after classic horror movie played out before me all with a guy who was funnier than most stand-up comedians giving the totals and straight-up info on the films in question as if we were old chums.

During that mystical year of 1998, Halloween day fell on a Saturday. What I expected from Joe Bob was more of the same - maybe a couple of the Michael Myers flicks in place of his usual fare. What we actually got was the greatest thing that anyone has ever done in the history of man. A mammoth Friday the 13th all nighter, from 7:00 p.m. until dawn the following morning, all hosted by Mr. Briggs. I made quite the spectacle of this ordeal, inviting a couple friends over and setting my VCR to tape the whole thing (I had to switch tapes sometime around 12:30 a.m.). To say that I was excited was an understatement; I'd finally get some insider info on these movies...and best of all, I'd finally get to see Part IV!

The marathon didn't disappoint, as Joe Bob put in, in the humble opinion of this writer, his absolute best performance as a movie-show host. All the drive-in totals were spot-on, the comedy skits were a riot, and the rant about why Part IV wasn't included in the marathon...legendary. This is something that confounds me to this day - they show The Final Chapter on TV NOW whenever these sporadic mini-marathons pop up. Why was it SO taboo to broadcast it back in those days? Alas, my quest to see the final movie with "Human Jason" remained unfulfilled, but that night was absolutely perfect other than that.

And then, once again...nothing. For whatever reason, Jon Lickness fell off the Friday the 13th wagon, becoming a huge Quentin Tarantino fanboy and then becoming obsessed with the rival Nightmare on Elm Street franchise to the point where I once wrote a (horrible) fan script that would have featured Freddie Prinze Jr. as Freddy Krueger's honest-to-christ SON. Folks...I wish I was making that up. All throughout high school, other things occupied my time, and it wasn't until my first year of college (so we're talking 2002 here) that Jason Voorhees resurfaced in my life. The date was, of course, Friday the 13th, and out of nostalgia I took a gander at the TV listings to see if any movie channel would give in and show a few F13 movies. And one did. Only ONE, and I'll admit to being saddened by the fact that what had once been a HUGE deal on TV was now limited to a showing of Parts I-III on a late night block on Cinemax. Of course, Jason X (a.k.a. Jason in Space for the uninitiated) had just been released earlier that year, so I partially chalked it up to some sort of TV rebellion as a result of that flick's...uh, quality.

Nothing new in the viewings of the first three movies in the series came about, but it did result in one thing...it whet my appetite to FINALLY see the movie that had eluded me for all these years. I could have just ordered it on Amazon...but no, I had to do it the REAL way. The ONLY way. The BEST way to watch a Friday the 13th movie, and that's on an old, dusty, dirty, grainy, watched-a-thousand-times rental copy. So, after almost ten years of waiting to see it, I trekked out to one of the local video huts and located a copy of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (note to you non-horror fans - that actually is the title, despite the fact that it's the fourth movie in the series and approximately 19 movies proceed it).

I knew a little about this movie, but not much. I knew that Jason had been human in the opening cycle of films, and technically died in this movie before being brought back to life as an undead zombie in Part VI, and I had read in a few places that it supposedly had the absolute BEST gore makeup and effects in the entire series. With a pounding heart, I popped that sucker in the ancient VCR and let it whir, and for 93 minutes I was 10 years old again. Not including the deleted footage from Part VII, it IS the bloodiest movie in the series...but that's not what makes this flick memorable. The kills in the movie are just BRUTAL, and look like they really friggin' HURT. It's "Human Jason" at his most pissed off, and strangely enough, we really don't even SEE him that much until the final act.

One thing I didn't count on was just how FUNNY and ENTERTAINING the film would be. It's helped immensely by a cast that seems to actively give a damn about it despite the expectedly inane script, with Corey Feldman (Mouse from The Goonies) as a young child who somehow winds up being the one to draw the "Jason slayer" honors away from big, buff, outdoorsy Rob Dier. And it's got Crispin Glover, one of my three favorite actors ever, playing the most goofy, oddball horny teen-ager in ANY Friday movie. Once you've seen his legendary dance scene in this movie, you will never forget it, for better or worse.

And Jason's death? While I'd seen more extreme things happen to him in later films, by that point he was superhuman and NEEDED bigger deaths. As a fitting end to the non-supernatural version of Jason's evil exploits, Corey Feldman stabbing Jason headfirst with a machete, only for him to fall onto the ground and slide down the blade ever-so-slowly...graphic, long, absolutely perfect.

And still one of my ten favorite movies of all time.

With my love for the Friday the 13th films now fully restored, I embarked out onto the interwebz and found a lot of other fans of this silly slasher movie series from the 1980s. Fans that I didn't even know the series HAD. And, man, does this series have fans! Dedicated ones, even. This coincided with the time when the main topic of discussion for Friday freaks (other than the upcoming Freddy vs. Jason movie, which was loads of fun) was the ever-present question of the BOX SET. See, Nightmare on Elm Street had a BOX SET - a nice, big, snazzy one with loads of special features and nifty packaging. All the Friday movies got was bare bones DVDs released singularly. We wanted a BOX SET, and we wanted it now!!

Two years after that, we got the BOX SET, and I got my best friend.

At the time, many horror fans hated this set (which promised "EIGHT FILMS, FIVE DISCS, NO MERCY!!" on the back). Upon its release, I wasn't especially pleased with it either - compared to the Nightmare set that we'd used as a template during the constant message board discussions, it was indeed pretty short shrift. The extras, while informative, were a little scarce. The first four movies, considered by many fans (including yours truly) to be the best movies in the series, only featured one commentary track between them. And two movies per disc?? How cheap were these guys??!

That didn't stop me from enjoying it, however, as every so often I'd dig the set out and give the movies a quick gander. I didn't even care that the New Line movies weren't a part of the set. The Paramount movies were (and still are, really) the series to me. The set was also a MUST during Halloween season - atmospherically, they just radiate falling leaves and harvesting even more than the series starring that guy in the William Shatner mask. You know the one.

Then, in 2007, my entire world was rocked, and the event that would quite literally make this box set my best friend transpired when my big brother - the one who had introduced me to this madness in the first place - passed away.

I really don't want to go into specific events of this or the inner details of my mind during this time, but in many ways, it made me regress. My present world didn't make sense anymore, and as a result, I reached increasingly into things from my past for comfort. While I'd grown from Friday scaredy-cat to fan to genuine aficianado over a period of almost 15 years, I was about to become legit obsessed.

The DVDs went into my player almost every night for the better part of six months, and I'd fall asleep with the films on repeat, looping over and over like some kind of never-ending blood-soaked soap opera. Oddly enough, the thing that most fans hated (and that I had, too, at one point) - the two movies per disc format - was now a Godsend, as I could sit through one movie half-asleep and switch to a new one without having to get up. I'd seen countless films during the several years prior that were technically scarier, and my tolerance had reached its peak - the Jason movies of my youth were fun to me now, and as a result, they became my therapist.

Without exaggeration, that box set saved my life.

Which is really what prompted this whole sad story in the first place. Over the past couple of years, Paramount has been re-releasing those first eight classic Friday the 13th movies in "Ultimate Edition" DVDs, chock-full of special features, interviews, documentaries...hell, the third movie is even out there in 3D! I realized that eventually they would release all of these discs in a new box set, and also realized that eventually I would buy said new box set, but in some way I wished this day wouldn't come.

But...well, it did. Just last week, as I snatched up a copy of the Ultimate Edition DVD set for a scant $32. THIRTY-TWO FREAKING DOLLARS. That's even less than I paid for the "two movies per disc" set. Eat me, Blu-Ray - because everyone else is paying $25 a pop for your goddamned HD picture, I'm getting Jason F'n Voorhees in his prime for thirty bucks.

So that's where we're at now in this long journey, and if you don't mind, allow me to play like Lance Storm and be serious for just a moment. It's always fashionable to say something along the lines of "I don't know WHY these movies fascinate me," and apparently I'm not too sexy for my shirt because I know EXACTLY why these movies fascinate me.

People have different definitions of what a horror story should be, and none of them are inherently wrong. Some want all sorts of unfair treatment and disproportionate punishments, and, in essence, maximum sadness and true-life horror. Some want as much red stuff as possible. Me? I want a good, simple campfire scary story where we also get the morality play of "be a good person or else bad things will happen to you." And that's what the Friday the 13th movies are all about. You have a past evil in the form of Jason's drowning setting the whole thing in motion, you have a cast of rowdy young people in the woods partaking in sex, drugs and all other manner of immoral behavior, and you have the unscrupulous characters getting picked off one by one by the unstoppable villain while a virtuous character is able to survive the unholy night.

The story of Jason - a handicapped child left to drown by inattentive counselors - is one of those things that is just so inherently tragic that it is almost impossible for someone to not feel SOME degree of sympathy for him. But he becomes a monster, irredeemable, and complete, absolute evil. And it was up to the one or two GOOD teens/college students to stop him. Even as a child, those were the kinds of scary stories that hooked me the most - simple, uncomplicated good versus evil. Less is more, after all. Obviously, the formula must work on many others, as well. How many sequels again?

And it's the reason why, to this day, I can still watch a lame movie about a guy in a hockey mask gutting people every time it's on television despite the fact that I have the DVDs sitting within ten feet of me.

Happy Halloween, and may your days be as long as the surviving final girl in one of Jason's movies...assuming you've been avoiding the pesky sex and drugs, that is.