T w e n t y S i d e d

No matter how much one likes any given Friday the 13th film, no matter how creative or how well it performed in theaters, you can always make an argument for some other slasher film doing the same thing but better. The original movie can be excused from this somewhat, as the intention from the beginning was to use the emerging “slasher” formula but crank up the violence and sex. Of course, you still have to ask “Does ‘do the same, but more so!’ count as ‘doing something new?'” Conversely, even if you can find a movie that does the theme better, the Friday the 13th series can legitimately be considered the most “pure” slasher series. Or at least, the first four films certainly fit that description (there are caveats, of course.) And speaking of caveats, Friday the 13th introduced the concept of the “paranormal” slasher. IN THE TERMS that we consider a slasher to be “paranormal” today, to be clear. Both Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger, in their original portrayals, bring paranormal features to the table. However, as I discussed last time, Michael in the first movie, or “The Shape” as he was more commonly known then, was an abstract; a representation of an idea. Freddy was originally written as some form of psychic force…or any number of other ways you want to explain his “dream infection” ability, who could be defeated simply by NOT LETTING him bother you. Or at least until the last scene of the movie was added, which required explanation in the future. I personally view Freddy in his early incarnation as “an unexplained supernatural phenomenon.” I say he is supernatural rather than paranormal because we’re still operating on a basis of “you have to believe in him for him to have power.” And this largely holds throughout the franchise. You don’t “have” to believe in Michael or…the killer…in Friday the 13th; they are functionally physical. As I pointed out, Michael was “made real-real” in the second movie. But the killer in Friday the 13th; they were just a serial killer. At least at first.

I haven’t said this hardly at all so far, if even once. But if SOMEHOW you don’t know there is a “twist-ending” in the original Friday the 13th, and you DON’T want it spoiled until you can watch the movie, don’t read this. OK?

I’ve hinted at this already, but the original Friday the 13th *is not* “genius;” but it *is* exactly what Sean Cunningham set out to create. So at least in that regard, it can be considered “well-made.” This movie is the definition of “formula” film-making. Cunningham was inspired by the success of Halloween and literally advertised for someone to help him make a similar movie but with more gore. The back-story, which we’re given early in the film, reveals that Camp Crystal Lake was the location of an accidental drowning of a young boy in 1957. Allegedly while the camp counselors were “busy” with each other in private. The following year (1958 if you’re keeping track…the timeline gets screwy) an anonymous killer murders counselors who replicate the “private” behavior of the previous years’ counselors. Camp Crystal Lake is closed. Until 1979 (according to this movie), when a new owner starts refurbishing the camp. New counselors arrive to help with the refurbishment and opening of the camp, only to be murdered one-by-one by an anonymous killer. Surely it couldn’t be the same murderer who made an appearance in 1958? Turns out, yes it is. Pamela Vorhees, the mother of the boy who drowned in 1957, murdered counselors for having sex instead of monitoring their charges in 1958. And now that the new owner, Steve Christy; plans to re-open the camp she has returned to…stop him? By murdering him and all his counselors? I mean, once you meet her it’s obvious she is VERY disturbed and not in full control of her thought processes. We do actually see throughout the movie that the likely killer (unidentified until the final confrontation) is seen as friendly (and “normal”) to everyone, and is also known to, for example, Christy. This unexpected ending works well and caps a generally well-executed, if gross for the time, horror movie. The “final girl,” because there’s no-one else left, literally chops Pamela Vorhees’ head off before climbing into a canoe to distance herself from the scene of all the murders by floating to middle of the lake. A final jump-scare scene depicts a rotting “Jason,” Pamela’s drowned son, leaping from the lake and dragging the final girl into the water. Then she wakes up in the hospital believing “Jason” is still in the lake despite hearing that she WAS NOT found in the water, she was asleep in the canoe in the lake.

Friday the 13th was a success. A *huge* success. A “made-back-one-hundred-times-its-budget” success. So a sequel was requested, quickly. In fact, Friday the 13th Part 2 (that is the ACTUAL name of the film) was released a few days SHORT of a year later. “Must’ve been a cheap, rushed production,” you say. Hey, they DOUBLED the budget, to one and quarter million dollars. Halloween II, released FIVE MONTHS AFTER Friday the 13th Part 2; had a budget *twice that,* two and half million. As a cheap cash-in on Halloween‘s break-through, Friday the 13th was proving its point. Considering the second movie would make $21 million on its $1.25 million budget and Halloween II would generate $25 million off a $2.5 million input, technically the Friday the 13th series would be a more efficient “producer.” But that’s a nit-picking comparison.

The more important problem with creating a sequel was that the filmmakers had definitively “killed off” the perpetrator of the first movie’s murders. It should be noted that even 20 years later, chopping off someone’s head required a new direction or a re-write/retcon to continue from. This is important. But first…a super-popular idea in the late 1970’s-early 1980’s was the “anthology” film series. George Lucas envisioned any continuation of Star Wars as an anthology production. John Carpenter, when approached about Halloween sequels, started thinking the franchise should be an anthology of horror films centered on the “Halloween” holiday. And the original idea behind calling Friday the 13th…er, Friday the 13th; was to make future productions part of a horror movie anthology based on the unlucky day of Friday the 13th. I mentioned Sean Cunningham was convinced from the beginning that Friday the 13th was an epic title (like Halloween); this is why. But because studios were risk-adverse even back then (although I have no doubt they would advise modern studios to take a Xanax and get a hobby before they explode) Paramount wanted to revisit the same concept and story as the first movie. There was, actually; a simple and direct path: the drowned “Jason Vorhees” is real, and *not* dead.

While the viewer assumes Jason actually did drown in Crystal Lake around 1957 as the previous movie explained, the second movie changes one detail: his body was never recovered from the lake. “Never found” is how it’s presented, in fact. It turns out Jason survived the drowning and has been hidden, for some reason, by his mother for the past 20+ years (different movies add or subtract details to this period) in the Crystal Lake area. No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Don’t think about it. Now that his mother is dead, there’s nothing to stop HIM from…killing camp counselors and anything else that strikes his fancy around Camp Crystal Lake. Also, the deformities depicted at the end of the first movie because Jason is an imaginary rotten corpse become congenital deformities and associated developmental disabilities. (I will point out that Jason is occasionally described as having some kind of special needs as a child, but skull deformities are a grey area at best.) These change from movie to movie as they become increasingly less-important, but considering story-wise the Jason depicted in the first movie WAS NOT REAL anyway, this is really an unnecessary plot point. Explaining all this is most of what Friday the 13th Part 2 does, around Jason doing the same thing to counselors-in-training that his mother did to counselors in the first movie. In the end the final girl pretends to be Jason’s mother, which almost works but doesn’t, then he gets whacked in the shoulder by a machete (a machete was used in the first movie, but it’s this movie that connects Jason to his signature weapon) and the final girl and her guy run off, then a fake-out ending shows the girl getting pulled through a window by Jason before she wakes up in an ambulance the next morning. Confusingly the theatrical release doesn’t address whether “guy” is actually alive; he’s not shown being loaded in an ambulance (there’s separate confusion about the dog that’s part of the ending that I won’t get into). Word-of-god confirms the fake-out ending didn’t actually happen; it’s just a fake-out like the ending of the first movie. Everyone left alive is actually alive.

Including Jason, who only nearly had an arm cut off; you can’t even see that under his clothes. This is one of those injuries that, “if you can’t see it, it’s not a factor.” Michael Myers is stabbed repeatedly in the eyes in the Halloween movies, but that’s the kind of injury, like a deep shoulder wound, that you either have to effectively ignore or incorporate into EVERYTHING. So, this injury just “goes away.” Friday the 13th Part III, like many Friday the 13th movies, was meant to complete the franchise. Heh. We’ll get right back to that. This story-line features young twenty-something vacationers, an affronted biker gang, comedy antics, bad editing, and was structured for and *filmed in 3D*. Critics hated it. Yet it made 15 times its budget and was, once again, a successful and popular movie. Oh, and Jason finds a hockey mask in this movie. The film ends with Jason Vorhees laying dead in a barn, a fake-out ending showing him running toward the surviving final girl, which ends to show Jason *still* lying dead. Like I said, it was supposed to end the series.

Guess what?

The fourth Friday the 13th movie, subtitled “The Final Chapter” instead of Part 4, was released one year later. As you can tell from the name, this movie was meant to kill off Jason for good and end the series. The Producers actually wanted this, and Paramount wasn’t opposed. Horror movies were declining in popularity and people involved with the series felt no one took them seriously when it was discovered they were the people who made the Friday the 13th films. In fact, the entire plot is built around doing away with Jason and selecting a “new killer”. Friday the 13th Parts 2, 3, and 4 all take place in one not-so-long series of events, over a few days. Technically. Jason, shown to be “dead” at the end of Part 3, is taken to the morgue. Therein he revives and returns to the Crystal Lake area post-haste, getting new clothes to cover his wounds from the previous movie, EXCEPTING of course a huge divot taken out of his re-claimed hockey mask, marking it as the “same” mask worn in the previous movie. The Jarvis family is introduced, especially pre-teen Tommy Jarvis (played by Corey Feldman). This family lives on Crystal Lake, among the numerous rental and vacation homes that dot the areas not filled by lake-side camps. Tommy, his older sister and mother become targets of Jason through their coincidental connection to the series-typical horny young people renting a home near the Jarvis’s. After Jason does or does-not kill the mother, he is finally beaten by Tommy’s sister followed by a berserk Tommy himself repeatedly stabbing Jason in the torso. It’s no head removal, but the scene is meant to convey Jason’s real, actual, no-kidding death. This is punctuated by a final scene (unless you’re watching one of a handful of alternate endings) meant to construe that Tommy’s absolutely-decimated psyche may be so damaged he is now “just like Jason,” in a way.

SO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was released a year later. Set several years after the forth movie, the film starts with a teenage Tommy Jarvis (played by a different actor, as Feldman still looked like a kid) digging up the buried Jason Vorhees to burn the body, to “make sure.” Hi-jinks ensue, Jason is re-animated by lightning. Jason is now *officially* undead, making him a paranormal killer. You can’t kill him in any normal way, because he’s already dead. In fact, the lore would quickly settle on the idea that Jason Vorhees, at this point, *can’t* be killed. It’s actually an important plot point. But that also takes me pack to the initial claim: the March 1985 release of A New Beginning makes Jason Vorhees the first paranormal slasher franchise killer. Again, the other two major franchises introduce important arguments, as stated at the beginning. However, as the closest competitor in early 1985 would be Freddy Krueger, who was introduced only a few months before, this also introduces another idea. At this point, Jason is the *star* of the movies. You are watching these to see Jason survive and kill people in new, creative, and bloody ways. Freddy would add personality; this is true. But by Part V Jason has become the first horror celebrity killer. This was maybe a burgeoning idea in 1985, but would clearly be accepted by the early 1990’s. By the time we reach the seminal slasher of the next era, 1996’s Scream; it was clearly expected that the villain had to have personality in both appearance and attitude, and no established motive (this is complicated in Scream, actually. But the killer *seems* to have no motive.) Oddly, something addressed in the warm-up for Scream, 1994’s Wes Craven’s New Nightmare; that did NOT feature in Scream was the paranormal origin.

Considering both A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween would introduce and depend on paranormal and supernatural elements along with Friday the 13th over the coming years; why was this idea eventually dropped (for a while, anyway.)

Next installment: the paranormal killers.

Paige Francis He/him