Spolight: Friday the 13th

Some horror films have become like monsters in a way. Bigger than the britches of the people who made it and the people who first praised it. Friday the 13th is in fact just a little low-budget popcorn slasher film. That was its destiny. To be a product of the drive-ins and grindhouses. To make back some money, little more than what was put into it. That's the reputation horror films had in the industry. The only genre of films to make you back at least what you put into it- so you can't lose. In fact, that's even what drove some of the cult classics of the 1970's into production, including Don Coscarelli's Phantasm and Wes Craven's immortal The Last House on the Left.


But the times changed and that hint of bloodhound, of what would be 80's opportunism... a drop of blood in the spring pond, and a producer at Paramount saw this and decided- it could be as successful as John Carpenter's Halloween, which by 1980 had begun to amass its' great fortune (though I'm told Carpenter saw nary a dime of most of that money). So Paramount snatched up this gritty little thing, slapped on a schlocky trailer and pumped up the advertising campaign with one of horror's all-time greatest posters (scarier than the movie itself when you look at it close).


I'm told when it was released into theaters, it did so well that it made more money than whatever Star Wars film was playing, Brian DePalma's Dressed to Kill, and... maybe Kubrick's The Shining? It's possible that they meant for certain weeks, it was higher on the box office returns chart. What the movie left behind in its' wake, however, is what makes it too big to contain. What suggests that this little Ten Little Indians slasher movie was a much bigger deal than it was. Its' legacy is still so massive that nearly 30 years later, the casts of the sequels can't believe how cult this series has become. Fan love for movies like these doesn't really die.


It doesn't always become stronger. But sometimes it does. Home video has kept these movies around and made them widely available. For me- it's made this franchise a minor obsession of mine. Little things about it have become fascinating. The Paramount logo on everything, those awesome VHS boxes, holding the tapes in my hand- and you should have seen me in October 2006 when I finally stopped dragging my feet and ordered the From Crystal Lake to Manhattan: Ultimate Edition boxset. I knew I was going to be let down by some things. But I learned to ignore that in favor of the little pleasures I could get from the bonus features and the excitement of flipping through the chapters. Don't ask me why- I'm obsessed with chapters on DVD's. It's always been my dream job (if one person does it) - aside from doing the voices of cartoon characters (easiest way to earn a fat paycheck?).


I have nothing but admiration for the advertisers and these very silly trailers. I want to know how they did it. What they did it with. I want to see audience reactions during the previews for these movies. These are just minor curiosities I have when I'm thinking a lot. I'm not that obsessed or anything. But of all the movies to come out and franchises to find big success- other people are probably fascinated by Star Wars or the 007 / James Bond films. Those surely have their followings. But for my money, I want something more simple. Not just to see, but to understand. This franchise is both stupidly insulting and good, simple entertainment. It was started by people with very little ambition. And not expecting that it would go on and on like it did.


Paramount saw it as getting totally out of control right away. We all know the short story about Paramount being reminded that they were making buckets of money off this "horror" franchise: dirty word in Hollywood everytime one of their Ordinary People's, Children of a Lesser God's, or An Officer and a Gentleman's turned out to be an Awards or Guild group favorite. They wanted it dead, and tried to kill it themselves several times. But though they are notorious for putting all of themselves into classy productions (unlike the majority of studios which tried to balance their dramas with their less sophisticated fare), it was the 80's and everyone was greedy.


When you really look at these films, and especially this one that started it all, there isn't much going on. That is the key to both its success and what makes it fall apart. In the 80's mainly brainless horror films came out and didn't have the disadvantages this one has. For 1980- these gore special effects are top of their class. The blood is the only thing that holds up though. The gore here is too cheap and the shots are too close up. You can see every fault, especially in Jack's world-famous arrow-through-the-neck death. On the VHS (not sure if this is true for DVD), Annie's throat during the slitting murder is very off-color and shows of how fake the skin texture is. During the reveal of Bill on the door, he blinks. This would be charming however, were it the only thing really holding this film back.


What really gets me is the acting quality. God is it low! Some of the actors here are from the theater, where... now remember: this is coming from someone who doesn't know shit about theater, but the one I always hear is that the quality of a performance in a play or musical focuses more on how loud you are and how much of an impression you can make on the audience. Overacting. Where on the screen, you have to play down because the relationship between the viewer and the screen is closer and more intimate. What we get here are a lot of people who sound like they're so cold, that they can't keep their voices straight. Barely a single line is spoken with any kind of natural feeling to it. People scream and screech. And these characters are supposed to be Camp Counselors. They act more like the kids they're meant to be taking care of! Especially Ned. If this is supposed to be like a party- it's more fun for the characters than for us.


We can't really lie and fluff up the reputation of these films. In some circles, they are seen as purely exploitational gorefests. As a matter of fact- the violence in these films seems to bother more people than the pointless, gratuitous nudity. The killings in these films are often brought up when they're being criticized. But as any horror fan who loves this period in the genre knows - violence is a necessary ingredient in the horror film. Not because death makes movies scarier, but because most horror films are about death. The threat of dying. We can't lose sight of the need for that threat. The acting's always been one major flaw. Another is all the incredibly cheap sex / undressing scenes. Now that's exploitational. And I can't ignore it or write it off. But hate it or like it, it's there and has to be recognized.


The plot a Friday the 13th film has almost become a joke. As a fan, I've always put more emphasis on and been more attracted to the fact that it takes place at a summer camp, most of the scenes are at night, and there is a systematic one-by-one series of murders. With a little atmosphere, natural surroundings, creepy music (if you're lucky), and a slow pacing that sets this movie apart from the later installments (especially when New Line Cinema bought the rights to the franchise and tried to make it their new Freddy Krueger by turning it into a shitty Evil Dead II clone - if you can make sense of that, than finally one of us understands New Line's thinking patterns). Where this movie really cooks is when no one is talking.


But that changes when Betsy Palmer's Mrs. Voorhees character steps onto the scene. This has never been my favorite movie in the franchise, but it becomes the best "movie" in the franchise when she's onscreen! Which is technically intermittent as the final survivor has to hide in corners and run and run from cabin to cabin (this is almost where I can see the mindset of the Nintendo video game kicking in - geography is important to the films as well, but not realized in any kind of complex design; there are no maps anywhere in the movie), and during most of this- the killer is (though by now their identity has been revealed and we know who they are) being hidden behind things or is just lurking outside...somewhere.


Point is: this is now twice as interesting as it was before because we know who is chasing her and why. And we get these awesome shots of the killer's face melting through the sky and the moon- all of this overlapping the final survivor running to hide someplace. The music is shrill and high-pitched and SPOOKY AS HELL in this moment, as it goes the killer says in their insane talking-to-themselves in-the-voice-of 'Jason', "she can't hide... No place to hide..." This is incorrect, but it suggests that she won't make it. Hence again, the threat of death. And one of the things I've always been most found of in scary fiction is the suggestion that the character(s) you're following are probably going to die.


Another reason I hate those survival-horror movies. In most of them- the trend may be that they die but the feeling you always get is that they're going to live. I'm not too biased to accept people doing this a different way. I'm just really scared more by the odds being slim. Depending, of course, on the story as we know it by the time people are put in physical jeopardy onscreen, and the way the horror is set-up. If it's a bloodbath and the point is the fear of hopelessness. It's more intense and scary that way. But most true horror movies operate entirely within the spectrum of the unknown. And it's good not to know or be-told most things. Unpredictability. With just a hint of you can read the people making the movie. Get a feel for what they're trying to do. So you're not being manipulated.


Since the VHS releases (and I have all 8 of the original Paramount boxes - well, they're not completely original, they are re-releases of the same artwork and everything on the back is the same), Paramount worked to make these movies sound mysterious and scary while glorifying the bodycount aspect. I hope some of us remember the VHS days, renting from Blockbuster (or your local hometown video store), checking out the boxes to these movies. I know some people remember the pictures from the movies they would put on the back. These things become very influencial and informative to some of our pasts. One of this franchise's greatest legacies to me will be the glory days of VHS rental and how surround sound and widescreen and 'digitally remastered' didn't usually matter (though it sure as hell did a lot for the Nightmare on Elm Street movies when they finally hit DVD in the late 90's).


If we take these movies at absolutely dead-serious face value, what features all too prominently are characters being obnoxious, drinking, making really stupid sex / scatological jokes, doing harder drugs (cocaine, marijuana, perhaps other things), and taking their clothes off and humping, squeezing things. Of course some movies are sleazier than others- often losing sight or not being aware of the potential they had to keep people interested because they're in a creepy place (because it's dark and this music is very unsettling / unusual) and horrible things can and do happen. There's an art to that when it's done well. Lots of T&A was never a strict essential (Jason Lives proved that in spades). And God knows- nudity isn't a scary thing. But since we have to look at that, one seeks to find a bright spot to it. Thankfully, it doesn't look like they hired any women who were starving themselves slowly to death (remember the bathtub scene in The Shining?). I'm not a woman. But if I were, I would want a healthy, curvy body. I wouldn't want to look like a tiny stick.


What's most essential to Friday the 13th is that classic one-by-one isolation of characters. Soon it's a formula that becomes comfortable, and disappointing if it's ever missing or underplayed. It's also a great opportunity to get the more annoying characters to finally shut their mouths. Though in sequels, some of them would go on talking to themselves (Pete in Part V: A New Beginning, for example). Except for the occasional, "Andy... Ben... ?" (my inclusion, none of the characters in the series were named Wanda) or the always popular, "stop fooling ( /messing / screwing) around!" Are you alone right now? I am. On a primal level, in the dark watching a horror movie, you can relate to never wanting something bad to happen to you under these circumstances. And in these circumstances, no one can claim this movie isn't a scary idea.


These characters don't know what's going on. And there's almost an Argento connection of the killer being supernaturally or psychotically smarter in planning to be in exactly the right place to know exactly what each person is doing. To be 2 steps ahead of them. Of course this is unrealistic. And if you can plug into that, you can suspend disbelief. Another of my all-time movie rules is that: you can't rely on being scared. But you can relate to something being scary to someone else, even if you don't personally feel threatened. If you pay attention, you will still be riveted by a good horror film. Not that that relates much to Friday the 13th. More to this time period in horror.


Subconsciously, filmmakers always put more into their films than they know about at the time. But consciously, most horror films were elemental and aimed at popcorn audiences. With the goal to entertain them. What makes them fascinating is how they don't try to explain the things other people have latched onto over the years. To explore subtext right away. While some newer filmmakers have been using the idea of their movie means-more-than-it-actually-does as a selling point gimmick. Or, like some of the pretentious exploitation filmmakers (chiefly Ruggero Deodato and Meir Zarchi), to give them an excuse to wallow in pointless depravity. Even if this movie was just an excuse to workout the makeup special effects of Tom Savini and his crew- it ends up being more valid than the bloated shock films of the time made by hacks (The Prowler, Maniac). By no mistake of course- no element of this movie is posing.


As for Friday's placement in the genre... Because of its' success, it's been viewed as a classic. Perhaps a horror film being successful makes it worthy enough to call it a classic. In the sense that it's immediately a relic of its' time. And I've said before, Friday the 13th is a product of the 80's and belongs there. It never got a reputation among moviegoers as a Halloween rip-off. Because a summer camp was wholly original and speaks to Americana, as does the killer's identity and their motivation - revenge. And certainly what it became eclipsed what Halloween became as a franchise. Starting out as a whodunit and becoming a schlocky "You know who's doing it- now watch 'em do it again!" Yet, in these early films; Jason is a device of mystery, drives the final survivor to hysteria and disassociating with reality. Something to divert your attention away from reality. This was really fresh and fun to watch especially for me. Jason began as a tragic figure and turned into a monster for the Hall of Fame. That's what I meant before when I said I respected the advertisers. They did as much for Jason as that hockey mask did.


To bring back up the subject of Harry Manfredini's score. Truly in the mode of a classical suspense "picture," orchestral with swelling, heavy strings and bass, I can hear the influence of Psycho (and especially in the first 2 sequels, Jaws). This may have been an attempt to skate away from horror (neither of those 2 films are actually horror films). Horror highlight atmosphere and brooding mystery instead of pinpointing dramatic highs and creating multiple themes for the highs and lows of the main characters. With me, the music design and visual imagery are incredibly important. Without serious consideration for them, you have no effectiveness. And Friday the 13th almost makes up entirely for its' lack of intelligence with an abundance of effective mood. The feel of dialogue shifts to something more interesting as I mentioned before when people stop talking. With the occasional (and in hindsight, very intriguing) references to bad luck and things like the full moon, which of course is still unlucky. Who knew that was a considerable build-up to the entrance of Betsy Palmer's character?


When you consider that this movie ends in the hospital with the last survivor not knowing what the hell is going on- well I value this movie at least as a scenically dreamy movie that shows us the crisp, idyllic days of early summer. It's remarkably well shot for such a cheap little thing, the cabin interiors and woodsy outdoors. Coming from someone who absolutely hated to go camping as a kid- this movie actually makes me reconsider that position. Because this looks like it was a lot of fun to be there. Is this why there were no adults or people to bother them other than Crazy Ralph, the killer, and that doofy deputy? Whenever a movie is fun to watch, sort of touring the sights instead of having to be there just to get into it - it's special. And the slow pace reveals itself to be deliberate not just because that's how Halloween, Carrie, and Suspiria did it, but as you see in the now legendary (and masterfully executed) scene over the lake at the end, because there's a payoff. Where the movie radically improves at about the halfway point, that's where it does pay off.