Just like every other budding horror fan in the early 80's, I was acutely aware of the impossible-to-ignore impact of the Friday the 13'th film series. Unfortunately, as a kid growing up in a small town, I couldn't sneak into the theater or rent these movies from my local video store. All I could do was sneak an occasional peek at the lurid VHS box covers, which immediately caused my prepubescent brain to squirm with discomfort at the very thought of the taboo-violating horrors that haunted the magnetic tape inside.
At the center of my fascination was Jason Voorhees, the through-line killer of the series. His evolution from deformed, mentally-challenged drowning victim to sack-faced, back-woods trapper to Ken-Dryden-meets-Rasputin brute to undead juggernaut really fascinated me. It didn't hurt that I was obsessed with goaltenders at the time and my favorite hockey cards were the once that featured netminders wearing olde skool fibreglass masks, often jazzed up with terrifying, kabuki-style paint jobs.
Unable to see these movies first hand, I turned to my beloved horror movie books for some insight, but they failed me as well. Most of these stuffy tomes were written by octogenarian film snobs who were loathe to talk about any film lensed after the mid-Sixties.They seemed to reserve a particularly vitriolic brand of disdain for the Friday the 13'th movies, either choosing to ignore them or dismissing them outright as degenerate "video nasties" that scarcely deserved a mention.
Eventually I did see a few of the Friday films, completely out of order, mind you, but what I saw was enough to warrant further exploration. Then, when Gun Media released their video game tie-in, I bought it, played the crap out of it and immediately became obsessed. I rushed out and acquired the first eight Paramount movies on Blu-Ray and I've been plowing through them in chronological order from start to finish.
Here then are the results of these viewings. Be warned, spoilers abound!
Let me make this crystal (lake) clear: the very first Friday the 13'th movie isn't very good. I give it props for kick-starting my favorite slasher franchise but, beyond the origin story, there really isn't much to recommend here. In fact, after you learn about the film's cynical origins, it's easy to understand why this movie feels so slapdash.
After Halloween (1978) emerged from the fringes of Hollyweird to become the most lucrative indie picture in the history of cinema, it was followed by a slew of copycats. Enter producer / director Sean S. Cunningham, who'd previously given us The Art of Marriage, a thinly veiled porn flick disguised as an educational film, as well as Wes Craven's wince-inducing exploitation flick Last House on the Left.
Anxious to replicate the success of Halloween, Cunningham started fashioning a script called A Long Night at Camp Blood which, let's face it, is a much more appropriate title. Not long after, Cunningham decided to go full rip-off and re-name his script after another nominal holiday. Paranoid that someone else was going to beat him to the punch, he then took out the the following speculative ad in Variety:
To his surprise, Cunningham suddenly found himself inundated with a slew of financing and distribution offers. There was just one wee little problem: this "currently in production" fright fest which was "available in November of 1979" didn't even have a completed script yet! With his bluff duly called, Cunningham lit a fire under screenwriter Victor Miller, who completed the screamplay in the summer of 1979, just a few short months before cameras started to roll in September!
Whether it was foresight or happenstance, Miller certainly came up with a mise en scène that was rife with possibilities for expansion. Even though the film's plot is threadbare at best, you have to concede that the isolated setting, combined with the methodical and creative kills, results in a reasonably suspenseful and atmospheric whodunit. That is, until they reveal who actually done it but, I'll get to that.
First off we get a flashback to 1958, featuring two horny camp counselors understandably abandoning their lame "Kumbaya"-style group sing-along in lieu of some secret snoggery. Naturally, this results in both of them being murdered POV-style without a shred of context. Flash forward to present day (read: 1980) and Camp Crystal Lake is slated to re-open, despite falling prey to multiple pitfalls that reek of sabotage and the locals colorfully referring to the place as "Camp Blood."
What follows should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever seen a slasher flick or had one poorly described to them. A parade of nearly interchangeable "teen" staff is (very) slowly picked off, one by one, in creative ways by some unseen stalker. This all leads to a big reveal of the killer and a final showdown that rivals the on-screen tilt between "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Keith David in They Live.
Actually, I'm totally lying. It's bad. Like, real bad. Again, more on that later.
At least the environment gives the movie a gritty, realistic feel. This wasn't shot on some fake-ass, sun-kissed California back lot, this sucker was lensed on location at "Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco" (seriously, you can't make this shit up) in Blairstown, New Jersey. As such, the buildings all look shabby, ramshackle and decidedly lived-in. One can only hope that the place has been refurbished at least once in the past thirty-plus years.
Factor in the adjoining Crystal Lake (named Sand Pond in real life) and the distinctive woods of northern New Jersey, and you've got yourself a pretty decent l'il horror movie setting. And there are times when director Cunningham and his cinematographer Barry Abrams really take advantage of this, such as when a storm starts to whip up midway through the film. Notwithstanding the laughably low-fi "lightning flashes", the approaching storm is well-documented with a series of moody and atmospheric shots.
But even the best setting in the world won't help you if your script is a dud and, sadly, Friday the 13'th dangerously flirts with that descriptor. There's so much filler in the film's 95 minute run time that it's downright ridiculous. And, for the record, I'm not including Walt Gorney's appearances as "Crazy" Ralph in this assessment. That man is a gorram institution and, except for some "For-the- love-of-God-call-'CUT!' already!" scenes of him peddling around on his vintage bike, his frequent prophecies of doom really add to the film's Scooby Doo-ish, camp *slash* creep factor.
I'm also not talking about scenes where the characters are running around the camp in a vain effort to account for their progressively-evaporating pool of friends. That's actually reasonably well done, especially when accompanied by the musical stylings of composer Harry Manfredini. Sure, many of his stings are cribbed directly from Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score but, honestly, without it, Friday the 13'th would be even more turgid than it already is.
No, what I'm talking about are the lingering shots of Annie Phillips (Robbi Morgan) slooooowly strolling through Blairstown, New Jersey. Or that borderline-inappropriate but ultimately dead-end conversation between the camp's new owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) and his much younger employee Alice (Adrienne King). Or when Ron Millkie shows up as a comically-unconvincing motorcycle cop named Officer Dorf (!). Or what about that riveting scene where Alice single-handedly brings the film's momentum to a screeching halt by making a cup of coffee in what feels like slow motion?
But, by far, the most egregious and unforgivable example of this is when Alice, Brenda (Laurie Bartram) and Bill (Harry Crosby) all sit down to play a game of Monopoly on screen. And, let me tell ya, folks, if there's anything more boring than playing Monopoly it's watching someone else play Monopoly. Look, I love board games as much as the next guy, but if I ever wanna watch a play though video, I'll just cue up an episode of Shut Up and Sit Down, thank you very much. Granted, it's supposed to be a game of strip Monopoly but after sitting though multiple turns of this shit without so much as a revealed bum or side boob, I'm forced to declare that this is the worst example of board game-related blue-balling in cinema history.
The actors, bless their hearts, do what they can with the wafer-thin material. Adrienne King is charming enough as Alice, but many of her line deliveries are incredibly self-conscious, as if she's trying too hard to EMOTE. Harry Crosby is perfectly milquetoast as Bill Brown and Laurie Bartram is watchable and charismatic as Brenda Jones, even though she's scarcely given anything to do. The same could be said for the incredibly winsome Jeannine Taylor as Marcie. Frankly, a compelling case could be made that she should have been the final girl instead of Alice.
And although he's clearly written that way, Mark Nelson's Ned Rubenstein is the prototypical Friday the 13'th irritant. Between flagrantly disobeying the archery range safety rules, cracking incessant Dad jokes, performing shitty impersonations that were hideously dated in 1980 and dancing around in an embarrassingly-racist caricature of Native Americans, Ned is nothing but a Class-A choad. He's the first in a long, unwanted line of annoying, self-pitying asshole that became a regrettable trope in the series. Frankly, the less said about this lazy excuse for characterization the better.
Much hay has also been made of Kevin Bacon's feature film debut here and, honestly, he's perfectly fine. Truth be told, he doesn't exhibit any more star power than say Laurie Bartram or Jeannine Taylor, but it's also easy to see why he went on to bigger and better things. His death scene is still one of the highlights of the entire series and he does a great job selling the effect, which, sadly, hasn't aged all that well.
Contrary to the harshness of that last statement, I still maintain that the make-up work provided by the legendary Thomas Vincent Savini is still one of the bright lights of an otherwise "M'eh" movie. You have to keep in mind that, prior to the universal application of CGI, practical makeup effects were designed to be fleeting illusions. They were never meant to be paused and closely scrutinized years later on high-def video by nitpicky assholes who gleefully like to point out that the proportions and skin tone for Kevin Bacon's fake torso doesn't even vaguely match his face.
But who cares? Jack's arrow-through-the-throat demise is imaginative and gross. Sorry, but I'll take the artistry of practical makeup effects any day over troweling entire scenes with a spackling of uncanny valley CGI. Having said that, the most harrowing scene in the movie is one that Savini's effect sadly had nothing to with. The film features a truly disturbing moment of animal cruelty in which Bill hacks a real, live snake to pieces with a machete. Speaking as someone who's completely desensitized to the most depraved gore effects imaginable, its the only moment in the movie that I watch thru a web of interlaced fingers.
Beyond Kevin Bacon's iconic demise and the murder of an innocent reptile, Marcie get's "axed" a question, Annie's throat gets slit, Steve gets strung up like venison and Bill gets pinned to a cabin door like a moth to a killing board. Sadly many deaths, including poor Brenda's, happen off-screen. I'm not sure if this was done because of budgetary concerns or because Cunningham was legitimately worried that the film was going to get slapped with an "X" rating. Whatever the reason, you have to admit that the film is pretty tame by today's standards, almost quaint.
Mercifully, the last fifteen minutes of the movie goes to great lengths to redeem all of the pedestrian crap that came before it. As soon as Betsy Palmer arrives on the scene, the whole movie just shoots into the stratosphere. To Cunningham's credit, selecting the former American sweetheart for this role was a masterstroke of stunt-casting. When Palmer suddenly goes from matronly and helpful to menacing and deranged, I can't help but start shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
Yes, I know that revealing Pamela Voorhees as the killer wasn't earned at all. Yes, I know this results in an awkward exposition dump that grinds everything to a halt. Yes, I know the logistics of a middle aged woman effortlessly murdering people who are half her age, hurling them through windows and / or stringing them up like pinatas all over camp strains credibility, but I don't care. As soon as Betsy Palmer starts saying "Kill her, Mommy! Kill her!" in her dead son's voice, I'm instantly creeped out to the max.
So, yeah, as it turns out, this murder spree is motivated entirely by the sort of grief that can drive a mother mad. Presumably, back in the summer of 1957, Pamela was hard at work cooking a meal for the camp's residents when her special needs son, Jason, drowned while swimming in the lake. By her account, the councilors were off bumping uglies instead of watching over her special boy.
In my opinion, this gives Pamela all of the fevered motivation she needs to go a little coo-coo for cocoa puffs. Fearing that the same thing might happen to someone else's child, she's determined to make sure that Camp Crystal Lake will never re-open. Not only does this account for her murderous prologue at the start of the film, she's also the one who's been sabotaging the site for the past twenty two years. Is it logical? No. But, since the death of her beloved boy is clearly the reason why she veered off the I-95 into Crazytown, that's all Victor Miller needed to make her one of the most sympathetic loons in slasher history.
Jason might have been mentally disabled and hideously deformed, but his mom loved him somethin' fierce. And, as it turns out, making Pamela Voorhees the killer actually sheds some real-world insight into screenwriter Victor Miller's complicated relationship with his own mother.
"I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun," he's been quoted as saying. "Mrs. Voorhees was the mother I'd always wanted, a mother who would have killed for her kids."
Kind of a sweet sentiment. In a clinically dysfunctional sorta way.
Regardless, this all leads up to a barely-choreographed and embarrassingly-bad slappy fight between Mrs. Voorhees and final girl Alice, which further calls into doubt Pamela's ability to physically murder so many hearty and hale victims. It ends with one of the most memorable and notorious on-screen decapitations since The Omen.
But's that's not quite the end. Because of the impact that Carrie's final cemetery scene had on viewers back in 1976, horror movies to this day still feel obliged to end off with what amount to a cheap YouTube screamer. Fortunately, as Friday the 13'th proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, this can still be done with a lot of impact and panache.
So, after Alice takes about a foot off the top for Mrs. Voorhees, she climbs into a canoe and pushes herself out into the middle of the lake. Dawn breaks and we get a lovely montage of artsy shots showcasing a battered but victorious Alice languishing in the boat, her hand creating gentle ripples in the cold lake water. All the while, this florid, pastoral and soothing composition by Harry Manfredini is playing in the background. The cops show up on site and wave to her from the shore. Alice, seeing this, perks up and goes to wave back.
And then, from out of phreakin' nowhere, a rotten, desiccated, naked Jason pops out of the fucking water, grabs Alice by the neck, and then drags her off the boat and into the water. It happens so quickly, so unexpectedly and so expertly that the viewer is left feeling as if they've just been smoked upside the head with a Louisville Slugger.
But then Cunningham goes ahead and ruins everything with a stupid coda of Alice waking up in the hospital. *bleargh*
But, hey, in the long run, that coda turned out to be a good idea. That way when smarmy dick-heads ask "Hey, how did Jason go from a gnarly rotten lake kid to a full-grown, overall-wearing, bag-headed, pitchfork-wielding troglodyte in the sequel?" the writers can push their glasses back up on their collective noses and say "Well, actually, the thing that popped out of the lake wasn't actually Jason, it was just a figment of Alice's traumatized imagination!"
And that's all well and good. So long as no one bothers to ask why Jason didn't drown in the first place.
But, hey, that's a question best left for a sequel review!
Friday the 13'th scores two and a half stars out of five, with a very charitable tilt up.
