Alright folks, its that time of year again around here when we put up our Kung fu kicking, machinegun shooting, bullet ballets and break out the machete wielding, chainsaw toting, hockey mask wearing teenage bloodbaths. That’s right, October is officially here, and at the Sutton household it is pretty much going to be nonstop blood and guts for the next few weeks, and I’ll be watching movies too. Seriously though, I love getting revved up for Halloween by breaking out my personal favorite fright flicks like John Carpenter’s original Michael Myers killing spree and Dario Argento‘s Cult classic Suspiria.
This is also a time when I play catch up with the Horror genre. As much as I love it, I wasn’t always allowed to watch these various massacres when I was growing up, so unlike Action and Sci-Fi, where my geek-cred is pretty legit, I feel like I got a ways to go to be amongst the Horror elite around here. I also like to get back to basics with a few scary movies that I’ve seen, but maybe just caught them on late night cable, with all the good parts cut out. Seriously, why do they show those movies when they’re so heavily edited? Without gore and nudity, what are you left with except poorly constructed movies with terrible acting and plots?
As a shortlist, I know we’re going to watch as many Halloween (disregarding the crappy remake) and Friday the 13th sequels that we can get in in the time allotted, as well as The Omen, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels (disregarding the remake and its abominable offspring of a prequel), and whatever Zombie movies I can think of. I honestly can’t wait to throw off the bombast of the summer in favor of some good, old fashion scary movies. And seeing as my viewing schedule will be inundated with Horror movies, so will this column for the next few weeks.
This year, my Horror movie mania even got a early start out of the gate, with Scarefest not only putting me in the mood for macabre a little early, but also giving me the opportunity to see the original Friday the 13th in the theater for the first time. To be honest, the original is the one of the films of the Voorhees saga that I’ve probably seen the least in my lifetime. I’ve always preferred the films at their gimmicky best/worst, with entries like the used-to-be-3D-but-now-isn’t-so-it-looks-kind-of-stupid Friday the 13th, Part 3 or the Carrie-esque battle with the psychic final girl of Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood.
The first film, and the second movie to some degree, have always been in my mind to just kind of be like the bastard cousin of Halloween, being works that weren’t as artistically sound in any area of comparison. These were just the schlock mirrors of Carpenter’s masterpiece so I never gave them as much consideration as the exploitation excess of the later sequels. To my surprise though, watching Friday the 13th in the theater opened my eyes to just how fun the movie really is. Yes, the movie can’t stand up to Carpenter’s film or a lot of similar classic Horror fare, but with a raucous crowd full of fans this was one of the best film experiences I’ve had in a long time.
Friday the 13th Starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Jeannine Taylor, Kevin Bacon, and Mark Nelson. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham.
Before I get started, this discussion will be pretty spoiler laden, so I don’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen this movie before. Besides, you don’t want to read this column anyway, it’s got a death curse!
Ahem…
This ends your warning…
The first thing to really note about watching Friday the 13th is noting just how well the movie really moves. There’s not much of a plot to speak of; a bunch of counselors decide to reopen a camp with a terrible past and reputation, only to realize why exactly those things are the way they are when they start dying one by one. There’s not much time for character development or getting to really know camp counselors like Harry Crosby’s Bill or Robbi Morgan’s Annie because pretty much as soon as you meet them, they’re dead shortly after. The carnage is pretty swift and pretty often, and honestly that is to the movie’s credit.
Not having seen it in some time, it actually surprised me a lot just how effective Friday the 13th really is. Sure it doesn’t have the cinematography or atmosphere of a Dario Argento film, but its not really trying for that either. The movie is really simple and effective in its formula; titillate you with sex and get your guard down with some really broad comedy and then try their best to terrify you with some decent “boo” scares and some pretty terrific gore.
I know the industry has gotten a lot more sophisticated in the years since this movie’s release, but Tom Savini’s work on this movie is still pretty phenomenal. The gore effects throughout this picture are topnotch, especially the neck piercing doozy that kills Kevin Bacon’s Jack. The visual trick of the blade coming up through the bed and through Bacon’s body is one we’ve seen since this movie, but its done so well here that you can’t help but especially admire it in this film.
On a tangent, what’s up with Kevin Bacon disowning this movie? When it comes down to it Mr. Bacon, I’d put the fans of Friday the 13th up against the admirers of Footloose any day. Is it really that bad? This movie is way more entertaining than Hollow Man and much less repugnant in my opinion. Just saying. End of tangent.
Another thing about this movie is just how well it is able to establish its formula. The rules set fourth by Scream are pretty true for the most part, much like it is in Halloween. The beginning of the movie is like a pretty fun game of guessing whose going to be able to survive to the end of the movie, and while its not as obvious here as it is by say, the third movie, its still not that difficult to tell who the star of the picture is going to end up being.
Plus, it’s tougher to find these types of movies these days where my suspension of disbelief isn’t hurt by character’s stupid decisions. A lot of Horror films that come out these days end up making their characters so unbelievably stupid or puts in plot machinations that are so unbelievable (ex. 28 Weeks Later) that it takes out of the film that I’m watching. Now perhaps its nostalgia or lowered expectations, but I never felt that way during this recent viewing of Friday the 13th, especially when it came to the final showdown with Adrienne King’s Alice Hardy.
To her credit, Adrienne King is actually pretty terrific as the film’s final girl. She never gets too shriek heavy and never really turns stupid, and in the end you even care whether she dies or not, which I’m not sure you can really say about the rest of the cast at all. As she fights for her life at the end, she especially goes through quite a lot of brutality, due mostly to Betsy Palmer’s commitment to method acting in which she insisted on putting a pounding to Adrienne.
Speaking of Betsy Palmer her reveal to the world as Pamela Voorhees is handled very well in the flick and Palmer herself plays the role just crazy enough. Sure she straddles the line of being laughably over the top, but for the most part she keeps it pretty creepy, particularly when she tells Alice that “She’s not afraid” or when she goes into her little soliloquy about how her little Jason wasn’t a very good swimmer. The way she smiles just a little when she talks about her son is kind of mesmerizing to watch in fact, and as she transforms in front of you into a full blown killer, you pretty much buy it.
The whole thing is helped immensely by Harry Manfredini, who takes a lot of this motif from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, but manages to makes the entire thing pretty much his own. Arguably, the “ki ki ki, ma ma ma” refrain from the film’s score may actually be as famous now as sounds from any Horror films. It is so singularly a part of the fabric of this series that you wouldn’t want to watch one of these films without hearing it.
All in all, Friday the 13th is a movie that simply works. It’s simple formula tells you all you need to know about its characters before the movie utterly destroys them, and the film’s suspense is much more effective than I suspected it would be after all these years. While unable to perhaps stand with Halloween, Friday the 13th is still a genre defining moment for the Slasher film, and may have actually been more responsible for shaping 80’s Horror than even Carpenter’s film was able to. While its difficult to call the movie a classic, its not difficult to see its appeal and why it has stayed with us for so long. In the end, it’s a movie that deserves its notoriety and has kept its fan base happy enough to keep coming back.
