John Carpenter's Halloween is
undeniably one of the most influential films of all time, doubling as
one of the most ripped off as well. In reality, one can make the
claim Halloween ripped off a 1974 indie horror flick called
Black Christmas, but that's an article for another day. The
fact of the matter is Halloween is the movie EVERYONE saw, and
the one everyone attempted to emulate. Sean S. Cunningham, a
producer and director, was one such person that viewed Carpenter's
classic and thought “Hey, why not me too?”.
Cunningham already had some minor
success with his own knockoff versions of the hit 1976 film Bad
News Bears, Here Come The Tigers and Manny's Orphans, so
he was no stranger to emulating superior movies. Cunningham and his
writing partner Victor Miller set out to directly copy all of the
signature techniques that made Halloween so original: their film
would use a first person view to put audiences behind the eyes of
their killer, the killer would get a signature theme that would play
whenever he was about to kill, the cast would be a bunch of unknown
teenagers that would get killed off one by one with the exception of
the Final Girl, pretty much everything Carpenter thought of, they
imitated.
Their
ONE innovation in the script was to include bucket loads of blood
and gore, because Halloween
is actually one of the most bloodless horror films ever made. In
this aspect, Friday The 13th
ALSO became one of the most ripped off films of all time because
after it was a hit EVERY slasher film turned into a bloodbath with
severed body parts flying everywhere. With all these elements in
place, all they needed was a title for their upcoming production.
Originally it was going to be called Long Night At Camp
Blood, but Cunningham decided to
change it to Friday The 13th,
which oddly enough was the working title for Manny's
Orphans.
This
proved to be a genius idea, as the synergy with the infamous
“holiday” would go on to drive the film, and the eventual series,
to becoming one of the highest grossing horror franchises of all
time. Shot on a budget of half a million dollars, the film opened on
May 9, 1980 and would eventually earn nearly sixty million dollars
worldwide. In 1980 terms, this was a certifiable blockbuster and
guaranteed we'd be seeing the twisted world of Camp Crystal Lake for
many, many more years to come. Speaking of that camp, let's journey
there and see Jason's origins in A Ghoul Versus Friday The
13th!
The
film opens exactly as Halloween
did: a point-of-view shot of SOMEONE watching some horny teenagers,
lumbering up a flight of stairs, and then killing them. This
immediately sets the tone for the movie, because while Carpenter's
film relied on nuance and a slow burning pace, this is just flat out
stabby stab and blood. We also get to hear the killer's signature
theme play in the buildup to the murders, the “ki ki ki ma ma ma”
sound effect. The score for this film was handled by Harry
Manfredini, who would go on to provide music for eight of the twelve
chapters in the series. Manfredini was definitely one of the few
people involved in making the movie that wanted to give it some
depth, as he worked very hard to make his score effectively raise the
tension of the film. He made the decision to cut out music in
certain scenes completely instead of relying on cheap jump scare
chords, so maybe he's one of the people who saw Halloween
and understood WHY it was so scary.
The
horny teens in question are camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake,
circa 1958. Two of them sneak upstairs to have some good ol'
fashioned premarital sex, but the only penetration that occurs is a
butcher knife through their skin. This kicks us to the opening
credits, highlighted by the appearance of the Godfather of Gore
himself, Mr. Tom Savini. Savini is nothing short of a legend in the
horror genre, rocketing to fame in 1978 with his groundbreaking
makeup effects in George Romero's Dawn of the Dead
and continuing to build his legacy with films such as Maniac,
Creepshow, and the sequel to the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He is
also responsible for the ending of this very film, but we'll get to
that later.
The credits bring us to the present day on Friday the
13th,
as we see a female backpacker making her way through the small town
of Anywhere, USA. This is Annie, a camper trying to find directions
to nearby Crystal Lake where she's been hired as a cook. She enters
a diner to ask for help, her question drawing stunned looks from all
the patrons. A trucker named Enos agrees to drive her there, filling
her in on the history of the camp and why everyone was so surprised
she was going there. We learn the camp, nicknamed Camp Blood by the
locals, is considered to be cursed since a boy drowned there in 1957
in addition to the two stabbings we saw earlier. Annie isn't the
only new hiree heading to the camp as we see in the next scene where
we meet Ned, Marcie, and Jack.
This is by far the biggest role for
the actors playing Ned and Marcie, but you MIGHT have heard of Jack's
actor: Kevin Bacon. He's kinda sorta famous, it's safe to say you've
seen a movie of his... or twenty. He's also yet another megastar to
have his career launched in part by a franchise-in-the making horror
film, joining the ranks of Halloween's
Jamie Lee Curtis and A Nightmare On Elm Street's
Johnny Depp. They all talk about sex, because none of them want to
make it to the closing credits.
They arrive and
meet their boss, Steve Christy, who has been said to spending a great
deal of money to reopen the camp. They're introduced to the other
counselors: Alice, Bill, and Brenda, and I think we finally have our
entire cast of Dead Actors Walking. Steve and his chest hair
creepily flirt with Alice, talking her into staying on for another
week as it's pretty obvious she wants nothing to do with the camp and
wants to go back to California. Steve then leaves to go into town to
buy some supplies, giving everyone instructions on what to do until
he gets back.
The movie returns
to Annie, who is trying to hitchhike her way to the camp since Enos
couldn't drive her all the way. She gets a jeep to stop for her, and
I can't help but notice the camera is going out of its way to NOT
show the driver. Hmm, what could THAT mean? My suspicions grow as
the jeep drives past the entrance to the camp AND dramatic horror
music kicks in when Annie notices this. Well, I didn't say EVERY
scene Manfredini scored was going to be subtle. Annie asks the
driver to stop, but instead the jeep begins to accelerate. Annie
displays some gumption and jumps out of the vehicle, running into the
woods with the driver chasing on foot. This is done through the
driver's eyes until the respective changes to third person in a bit
of jarring editing. Annie thinks she's home free until she takes a
knife to the throat in a FINE bit of Savini bloodletting.
Hopefully you
enjoyed that scene, because it's the only interesting thing that
happens in the film for awhile. The next few scenes are the
counselors doing their best to reenact every Horny Teen Camp movie
ever in what's supposed to be character building so we care about
them when they eventually die, but EVERYONE is the same. I guess you
could say Alice is the innocent one, Ned is the prankster, Brenda's
the brain, and the rest are... uh, people? There is the highly
memorable scene where a cop named Dorf shows up looking for Ralph,
the town nut job, and swallows the entire set with his rapid fire one
liners. I REALLY wish Dorf was the star of this film.
Ralph shows up in
the camp kitchen later, warning everyone they'll die if they stay
there because of the curse. Well, that was fun now back to nothing!
And do I ever mean nothing. Things start moving again later on as
Jack and Marcie have sex in a cabin, unaware Ned's dead body is in
the bunk above them. A few scenes earlier Ned saw someone at the
cabin and went to investigate, but the movie thought it'd be much
more interesting to listen to Marcie describe a dream she had about
rain for five minutes. After they finish, Marcie leaves to use the
nearby outhouse cabin and Jack gets a blade shoved through his throat
from behind, as the killer was under their bed the entire time.
Another beautiful Savini effect, as they are really the ONLY reason
to watch this movie.
We
catch up with Marcie in the outhouse, and it's worth noting she's not
wearing pants... just like Annie Brackett in Halloween.
She even looks similar to Annie and has the same kind of outgoing
personality. “Ki ki ki ma ma ma” fires up, like THAT'S any kind
of a surprise. Marcie goes to investigate a strange noise, and gets
AN AXE TO THE FUCKING FACE! GODDAMN! Brutal, brutal shot here and
easily one of my favourite kills in any movie ever. Whatever they
paid Savini for this film, it definitely wasn't enough. It looks
like Brenda is going to be next to the Killin' Party, as she heads to
her cabin alone to close her windows as a massive rainstorm is
beginning to break out. She settles into bed to read a book when she
hears a voice screaming for help, running outside with a flashlight.
The voice leads her out to the archery range, where floodlights turn
on and blind her. We hear her scream as we cut back to Alice, who
tells Bill she thinks she just heard Brenda scream in addition to
seeing the lights come on.
The two go out
together, surprisingly enough, but find nothing. They search
Brenda's cabin and find an ax lying in her bed, which panics them so
they go to Jack and Marcie's cabin. This cabin is also empty, as it
seems like the killer is moving the bodies. You know, just like
Michael Myers did? The two, now very worried, break into the locked
office cabin to call for help. The phones are dead though, because
Michael- I mean, whoever the killer is cut the phone lines. They try
to drive away, but the truck has also been sabotaged. Bill concludes
the best thing to do is return to their cabin and wait for Steve to
come back, since walking to town is out of the question in the storm.
Unfortunately
Steve's a little too busy getting stabbed by the killer on his way
back to the camp, so that plan's no good. Sure is a good thing the
killer thought to hang out at the front of the camp after taking out
Brenda, or else Steve would have messed everything up! Our killer
then warps back to the cabin containing the camp's generator,
shutting it off and eliminating all power. This cues up Bill to
“check on the generator”, because one thing this film definitely has in
spades is repetition. This scene is interesting because it's a
locked down shot of Bill working on the machine, with the dark
doorway behind him dominating the left side of the frame. This draws
your attention to the door, as you're just waiting for Michael-
DAMMIT, I mean whoever to emerge and kill Bill. Volume Two.
What's
interesting about that, you ask? IT NEVER HAPPENS. This could be
viewed as a subversion of one of Halloween's
most memorable shots where Michael Myers did what I was just talking
about, so it's Cunningham playing with our expectations. The PROBLEM
with this is the movie isn't exactly riveting, so even another
ripoff shot would have been preferable to absolutely nothing. What
do we get instead of seeing Bill meet his end in a stylistic shot?
We quick cut to Alice, who is now officially our Final Girl. And
definitely one of the poorer Final Girls out there, as we've spent
almost no time with her so we know nothing about her except she's a
really good artist. Laurie Strode wasn't exactly the most layered
character in all of cinema, but at least she was in the majority of
the scenes so we had a bond with her and gave a damn when shit went
down.
Alice
gets up to... make some tea, and we get to watch every single step in
mind numbing detail. There's no “ki ki ki ma ma ma” playing, so
I don't care in the slightest. She finally gets as bored as the rest
of us, so goes outside to find Bill. And does she ever find him!
He's pinned to the outside of the door to the generator cabin in a
shot that TOTALLY ISN'T LIKE Bob being pinned to the wall in
Halloween. Alice
freaks and runs back to her cabin, trying to barricade herself in for
the next five hours, or at least that's how long it feels. I think
at this point Cunningham got tired of “borrowing” from John
Carpenter so switched gears to George Romero, as the vast majority of
the original Night of the Living Dead
is people covering doors and windows. And yet that movie had WAY
more characterization than this one, which is saying something
because the Final Girl in that one was borderline comatose for most
of the run time.
This whole exercise
proves to be in vain as Brenda's body gets hurled through one of the
windows, which pretty much causes Alice to break down. This is where
I'm pretty much rooting for the killer at this point, because Alice's
whimpering is UNBEARABLE. She sounds like a cat in heat, only
infinitely more annoying. Spotting a jeep pull up outside, she tears
down her makeshift wall and runs out to get help. It's a kindly
older woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Voorhees, a friend of
Steve's. She's played by Betsy Palmer, who was very famous in the
1950s thanks to her appearance on the hit quiz show I've Got A
Secret. The only reason she agreed to do this movie was because
she needed money to buy a new car, famously quoted as calling the
script a “piece of shit”. She talks down the hysterical Alice,
entering the cabin to see Brenda's body. She starts ranting about
how Steve never should have opened the camp back up, going on to talk
about the young boy who drowned, who was named Jason. Her tone
beginning to get downright sinister, she says he'd still be alive if
the counselors hadn't ignored him to go have sex.
She
starts to advance on Alice as she talks about Jason's death, Alice
starting to get the hint and slowly back away. Her fears are
confirmed as Mrs. Voorhees pulls out a knife, yelling at Alice for
letting Jason die. Alice grabs a fireplace poker and expertly
defends herself, but instead of going for the kill chooses to run out
of the cabin. She jumps into the jeep, but exits just as quickly
when she sees Annie's body riding shotgun. Starting to head for the
woods, her path is blocked by Steve's upside down hanging body which
suddenly dangles down from a tree branch. Do I even have to SAY
“just like Halloween”
anymore? There's “ripping off” and then there's “lawyers
probably should have been called”. Mrs. Voorhees comes to and
stumbles outside to see Alice running away, talking to herself in a
DISTURBING voice meant to be Jason's and saying “Kill her mommy,
kill her!”. Incidentally, this line is where Manfredini got the
idea for “ki ki ki, ma ma ma”.
Blessed with the
magic Voorhees gift of teleportation, Mrs. Voorhees catches up to
Alice in no time at all. They take turns beating the shit out of
each other, which is awesome, but then Alice fucks it up by taking
off again. STAND YOUR GROUND WOMAN! Eventually Laurie hides in a
closet with louvered doors while Mich- awww, I did it again, didn't I?
Actually Cunningham did it again, I'm just calling the action.
Alice grabs a frying pan and brains Voorhees with it, knocking her to
the ground and causing blood to pool under her head. Alice
cautiously kicks her to make sure she's dead, then goes back outside.
Yeah, I'm SURE she's dead.
Wow, she totally
isn't. What a shock. She follows Alice to the lake for Round 3,
which is just as entertainingly visceral as the other ones. I really
like that Voorhees isn't some super strong brute but just an
everyday, normal person. It really adds a lot more tension to these
fight scenes, making them totally believable that we have two people
literally fighting for their lives. I sure wouldn't mind more movies
doing this. Alice decides she's has enough of running though, so
grabs the machete Voorhees tried to kill her with and turns it on
her, CUTTING HER FUCKING HEAD OFF! Team Alice, motherfucker!
Killing
a psychotic sweater wearing mother with a split personality can
really take a lot out of you, so Alice takes a canoe out into the
lake to clear her head. Sure, why not? She ends up falling asleep,
getting woken up the next morning by a pair of police officers
yelling at her. She lifts her and and smiles, relived to see them.
And then JASON VOORHEES LEAPS OUT OF THE LAKE and pulls her under,
but this turns out to be a dream as she wakes up screaming in a
hospital. Did you like that ending the first time you saw it at the
end of Carrie? This
was all Tom Savini's idea, as he was a fan of that ending and felt
this movie needed a similar jump scare to close out on. The police
officer that gave Steve a ride is at her bedside, asking what
happened. When she asks if they found Jason he says no, Alice
concluding that he's still there as the movie gives us a final shot
of Crystal Lake.
Cue the credits.
Friday The 13th
is my absolute FAVOURITE horror franchise of all time, but that love
doesn't begin until this series devolved into kill porn and got
incredibly silly. Just like early Star Trek The Next
Generation episodes featuring a
beardless Riker are unwatchable, early Friday The 13th
movies featuring a mask-less Jason are unwatchable. Ironically,
these movies had to get a whole lot worse until they got better. I think it's pretty
obvious that outside of Tom Savini's AWESOME special effects, I
can't stand this movie. It's a terrible Halloween knockoff
that completely missed the point of why Halloween was so
popular, as it traded all of the off the charts tension for off the
charts BOREDOM. Cunningham was too busy cribbing Halloween's
biggest scenes to worry about crafting an actual movie, so once those
scenes were done he just threw in ENDLESS scenes of the counselors
babbling on about nothing.
But it was enough
to catch the attention of movie goers, as it grossed nearly sixty
million dollars against a budget of around half a million. Critics
HATED it, and I mean that without a hint of hyperbole whatsoever.
The most famous example of this is Gene Siskel, who responded to this
film with such vitriolic anger one must wonder if Sean S. Cunningham
ran over his dog or something. In Siskel's review for the Chicago
Tribune, he started off with spoiling the ending to hopefully prevent
people from seeing the film. He then called Cunningham “one of the
most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business”, and
then gave out the contact information of the chairman of the board
behind the movie's studio as well as Betsy Palmer's home city. He
encouraged people to write both to complain about how awful the movie
was, which is PURE FUCKING CLASS. Siskel's partner, Roger Ebert, was
also not a fan of the movie but sure never dragged the addresses of
actors into it. Could you imagine of his stature pulling that shit
today?
I really can't
recommend this for any reason beside to see Savini's craft on full
display, as this is barely a Friday The 13th
movie compared to what the franchise would become. I really did
enjoy the realistic fighting at the end, but it doesn't have much of
a place in a series like this. But I'm sure you've seen the movie a hundred
plus times, and probably just got done watching this before reading
this review. This is quite possibly the only time in a horror
franchise I can say IT ONLY GETS BETTER FROM HERE, because this
series does get quite awesome in a few films.
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