The slasher genre is so irreparably intertwined with Friday the 13th, it makes for a great starting point. But there’s a massively complex history preceding it. Settle in, all you who’ve undoubtedly heard this in every write-up of Friday the 13th ever made…
(Or for those not wishing to waste their time, please skip on down past the first pic.)
In 1960, easing restrictions on American film censorship (at last!) resulted in Marion Crane getting stabbed to death in the shower. Arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s finest moment, Psycho also arguably marks the division between classical and modern film. For our purposes, it allowed more on-screen violence than ever, and defined much of that violence’s aesthetic. Knife murders were in, augmented with an equivalently jarring visual (and aural) approach.
It was Italy that ran with Hitch’s lone shower scene, transforming it into an entire genre: the giallo. Pioneered by Mario Bava with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Hitch reference!) and Blood and Black Lace (that is, when Bava wasn’t in a peplum frame of mind, these gialli are essentially detective mysteries. They just happen to feature exceedingly stylish murders. One could spend days discussing this stream of cinema alone, so I’ll let it be.
A few American (and Canadian) efforts took giallo ideas and married them with more domestic Psycho-sis. Thus we see the aesthetic of violent murder applied to pure horror, in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas, and also et cetera. This starts the basis for a narrative structure utterly distinct from the giallo’s murder mysteries. Americanized proto-slashers (and more so slashers themselves, obviously) tell of a condensed group, a short time frame, those group members picked off one-by-one by a probably-human menace. This is not a slasher invention. Agatha Christy’s “And Then There Were None” is perhaps the originator. (Jumping ahead, Friday the 13th even names a character “Christy” to show its hand.) Films like The Bat or Thirteen Women (1926 and 1932) strongly telegraph later formulae; even dreck like the Charlie Chan movie The Trap are pretty damn “slasher” in everything except ultra-violence.
Exploitation, splatter, and pseudo-gialli dominated the ‘70s American horrorscape. And then John Carpenter’s Halloween came out in 1978, not so much as a pioneer, but a brilliant stylistic summation of all which preceded it. Behold tropes, soon to be formula: Teenage victims, silent and unseen killer, holiday, whittling down, Final Girl…Again, days could be spent (as I’m probably about to do) chronicling the malleability of these formula elements. And Halloween was hugely successful on the cheap. So between repeatable elements and ease of production, it’s no wonder imitators came about.
The lesson learned from Halloween was that a sufficiently money-desperate producer could in essence duplicate it for easy cash. A shame the artistry was largely ignored. That man was Sean S. Cunningham, a horror producer (for instance, Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left) looking in vain to disassociate himself from the genre. But his kind-hearted, yet utterly sucktastic Bad News Bears rip-off, Here Come the Tigers, was a substantial failure, and Cunningham needed to make amends. Forget the Bears, Halloween was the latest rip-offable property. Get on that, Cunningham! And hire that fairly crappy soap opera writer Victor Miller to pen your buoy, called…Long Night at Camp Blood.
That is a dinky name…and sounds rather like one of the reissues of Bay of Blood. According to apocrypha, Cunningham separately conceived of the title Friday the 13th – undoubtedly a good horror title. So certain of this name was Cunningham, he even bought out trade magazine ads to trumpet this brand new “ultimate experience in grueling terror”…wait, that’s Evil Dead. Whatever, Cunningham promised a horror classic even before a plot was in place, and a horror classic he created…in spite of its many, many flaws.
Friday the 13th takes the gist of Halloween, and recontextualizes it in the forest. The central notion is remarkably simple – streamlined even – even within its own subgenre. Naïve young camp counselors-to-be alone in the woods, an unseen killer whittles them down, a final confrontation against a Laurie Strode stand-in. Conceptually, Friday the 13th is bare bones and minimalist. As opposed to Halloween’s Euro horror flavor, Friday the 13th simply wants to be a fun, even funny, roller coaster ride – Cunningham’s own admission, in his capacity as director. Friday the Thirteenth the “holiday” (an irregular, North American concept) is a remarkably pale red-haired stepchild to the stately tradition that is Halloween; the movies share the same relationship, but it was never meant otherwise.
Slasher movies are not often well regarded, and Friday the 13th (though a towering monument in its field) is largely responsible for this effect. Commonly, these ratty little flicks are dismissed as misogynistic, sexist, overly-violent, generally misanthropic. These are moral accusations which exist to sidestep questions of quality, to dismiss a work of fiction for unfair reasons.
But as quality goes, these things aren’t often much better. Something not often remarked upon in slashers (perhaps because it’s so obvious) is how bizarre their structure is. To effectively dramatize a single murder-filled night, the victims must remain in the dark for some 80% of the picture. As the ostensible “protagonists” (in the least accurate use of that word), our attention remains with them, and their inane foolishness – Even though we, the audience, are forever aware of a killer lurking. It’d take a remarkably deft hand, like a John Carpenter, to make a compelling movie out of idiots acting blasé. We need to be led separately from the characters, kept in suspense by hints of impending doom.
There’s something almost Godardian about the slasher, in this format. If these things were art films (HAH!), a clever director could highlight the irony of normalcy contrasted with sudden, random, purposeless violence. Of course, such a thing would be very audience-unfriendly. Halloween is not unfriendly, as Carpenter achieves momentum through by communicating its threat visually (I swear, I’m not trying to write a Halloween consideration here).
Friday the 13th, and damn well all other slashers, chooses (through creative desperation) to keep its killer completely unseen until absolutely necessary. Oh, we do get occasionally a key grip’s arm, pushing aside a branch or some such. There are the murders, of course, done by disembodied hands. Otherwise, the killer is nothing more than a POV shot (easy to do, and it doesn’t even need a competent cameraman). This is rarely effective (Halloween aside, naturally – and just assume this parenthetical from now on), as it’s hard to be frightened by bad cinematography – unless you’re a critic.
So this is how Friday the 13th withholds its antagonist for much of its run – partly justified due to Friday the 13th’s silly quest to be a whodunit as well. Good thing the setting is unusually atmospheric. The New Jersey woods are nicely visceral, even if you (like me) has absolutely zero fear of the wilderness. Thus, they work in Friday the 13th, in spite of Cunningham’s best efforts to diminish their effect through bland images. We get a cinema verité thing going here, perhaps unintentionally (film theorists, go nuts!), as the movie almost nears documentary through sheer cheapness. (This is usually a good factor in horror films, as with the intentional snuff crumminess of, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.)
Yes, a lot of Friday the 13th, with the brutal simplicity of a campfire tale, works in its limited way far more than it ought. Among those who genuinely champion it as a classic, they’ll point to these same effects, and often overlook certain damning faults. Faults like the writing, acting, plot, lighting – Yes, the lighting, as so much of Friday the 13th is so damned dark, it goes beyond even the stifling inky blackness which benefits horror. Do not watch this movie with glare!
Okay, I guess I oughta address the story – for as copycat as these always are – since we’ll be seeing variations on it for the next dozen movies. Well, back in 1958, over at Camp Crystal Lake, two counselors snuck away for a ‘50s-style snog. And were murdered by a camera operator. Because most every fright flick needs an opening wake-me-up.
Heading now to “the Present,” which actually means either 1979 or 1980 – we’ll go with 1980, as it did boast a Friday the Thirteenth in June. Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), he of the pornography mustache and shirt allergy, is reopening the decades-closed Camp Crystal Lake, for the untold riches a shoddy summer camp no doubt holds. Suuuuure. To this effect, a manageable number of teenagers are in town, to fix the camp up, or otherwise to die.
Slashers are oft populated by unenjoyable ciphers – our superiority over them doesn’t help matters. Of course, watching jerks act pointlessly to no ultimate end isn’t very much fun for anyone. Hence many problems people have with these things. With limited time, we must meet a vast amount of people, vaster still when the movie aims for a large body count – as the Friday the 13ths invariable always do. Besides, when death inevitably awaits damn well everyone (except for a lone female survivor), it’s just as well we don’t like ‘em. Otherwise the murders become even more distasteful, and there’s a distinction between a silly thriller and a pessimistic dour-fest. So Christy’s buffoon brigade can be summed up entirely as follows:
Jack (Kevin Bacon, ‘cause every known actor’s gotta start someplace): Male…has a girlfriend…um…
Marcie (Jeannine Taylor, whose otherwise-nonexistent career is far more typical for these casts): Jack’s girlfriend. Thus, a female. And…they’re both horny. Allowing for an eventual sex scene…Oh!, and Marcie has a “shower dream.” Er?
Ned (Mark Nelson): The Practical Joker. A common genre fixture, as is the Horny Couple. Ned is ostensibly “funny” (i.e., you wish he’ll die sooner rather than later, a desire they do oblige). Still, no real life jokester thinks pranks should involve nearly killing someone with an arrow – bye-bye verisimilitude.
Brenda (Laurie Bartram): Another female. Though seemingly worldlier (i.e. sex-crazed), she doesn’t engender a sex scene or nudity (a barely-clothed wet T-shirt moment, however…). Vegan. Sardonic.
Bill (Harry Crosby, Bing’s son): Male. Is…physically present. Later on, gets assorted red herring moments, but ones which barely register assuming you don’t presume the whodunit element.
Alice (Adrienne King): Female. Shy and reserved, which is the movie’s way of saying “virgin,” which is its way of saying “Final Girl.” As such, she gets a few more personality tics beyond mere existence. Namely, she paints, and she “has a problem.” What it is never manifests, though it creates the appearance of drama.
And Annie (Robbi Morgan): Female, destined to be the camp’s chef, hates calling kids “kids” yet hilariously does just that one scene later. Annie is also chirpy, apparently drunk (or that’s just Morgan), and also has a might slit across her throat, because Annie doesn’t even make it to camp before the roving camera grows a knife-wielding arm and does her in.
And about that throat slitting (what a lovely segue!)…It is reasonably graphic. I mean, it looks realistic, for as long as the MPAA allows it to be on screen (not long). We can owe this moment’s success wholly to makeup artist Tom Savini, undoubtedly the most talented person on production (look to his glorious splatterfest that is the original Dawn of the Dead). Thus Friday the 13th earns its mightiest reputation, as a purveyor of gore effects. For other examples of what Savini serves up, we have (with character names removed) an arrow through the throat, an axe to the noggin, and a decapitation of a different noggin, alongside others.
Though as Bart Simpson once said, the original Friday the 13th is “pretty tame by today’s standards.” If you were watching the right (i.e. wrong) movies in 1980, the vilest exploitation then available (that is to say, movies from Italy), you’d’ve already seen much, much worse than what Savini delivers. Hell, some of that would’ve been different Savini films. But somehow Friday the 13th changed the presentation of gore on screen, for one simple reason…
It was the first slasher flick to earn a mainstream release.
Despite its independent origins, Paramount Pictures picked up Cunninghams’s completed film, and spent double its production costs on distribution. As public zeitgeists evolve, the timing was right in 1980 for it to become a substantial hit: $39 million 1980 dollars, which is still well behind what Halloween did. And Halloween has barely a milligram of blood. For audiences seeing Savini’s auteur work in Friday the 13th (I hesitate to attribute its success to Cunningham), such viciousness was a revelation – be that good or bad. When all these factors add up, it means Friday the 13th’s impact (beyond inspiring a deluge of similarly cheapjack slasher wannabes) was to propagate gore. Eh, that and codify the formulaic slasher elements, which weren’t really formulae yet.
While I’ve essentially summed up the movie’s importance, as though concluding this consideratioon, I’ve more plot to get through – Consider it a tribute to the movie’s own choppiness that I’m writing in this manner. Events transpire, with nary a reference to anything having to do with Friday the Thirteenth (it really is just a generic slasher). Then Alice alone remains alive. Well…her and the killer obviously. Later still, just Alice.
This is the most effective bit of horror/suspense in the film, as Alice learns her friends are all dead. Oh, and it’s pitch black, an unseen murderer clearly wishes her dead, and there’s no one else around for a good twelve miles. These moments show the promise of the subgenre, even when it often turns out cheesy and cheap. So Alice goes about fortifying the main cabin, in mostly a single, unbroken take – very nice. Then the killer shows…
Jason? Oh, come on! Didn’t you see Scream?! Don’t anticipate! Nope, the killer is…(and forgive this essential thirty-year-old spoiler)…Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy “Mr. Roberts” Palmer, taking a hated role to buy a new car).
Okay, this woman has never appeared before now, so that whole whodunit angle has just accidentally slit its own throat – why most slashers don’t really attempt it. And with Halloween having already established the superhuman killer, why did Friday the 13th posit a mere old biddy as its stabber? For the shock, party, and partly because it gives the movie a – however tenuous – connection to real life, to the notion that anyone might snap and go on a formula-driven killing spree.
Mrs. Voorhees’ motive is pretty danged wonky, which is maybe intended, to show just how nutbars she is. For her son – the Jason – drowned in Crystal Lake back in 1957, the year of Sputnik. Hence those introductory stabbings, of Jason’s neglectful minders. And Mama’s logic is so skewed, she in turn blames these counselors for an event some twenty-three years ago. Even so, she’s logical enough to predict exactly what her victims will do, to accommodate the grandest gore effects.
So the Mrs. Voorhees thing doesn’t particularly stand up to scrutiny. Ignore even that her modus operandi changes entirely upon meeting Alice, as she doesn’t immediately do Alice in, but rather gives her a good, lengthy chatting, slowly revealing her (Mama’s) insanity. How exactly has Alice warranted such specialized treatment? Oh, and when the two are good and fighting, it’s no better. Imagine the world’s least sensual catfight, staged with the grace of a Three Stooges routine, which somehow intends to be the capper to a night of stealthy terror.
And Mrs. Voorhees dies. Unequivocally dies! No doubt if Sean S. Cunningham intended a sequel – not that he could’ve anticipated Friday the 13th’s success – he wouldn’t have ended the story so distinctly.
But wait, a person now says, there is a sequel tag. Oh yes, there is a capper ending, and the film’s most (or only) effective shock moment – no surprise it was Savini’s idea. Here it is:
BOO!
That’s young, waterlogged Jason there. By admission, this is where the movie apes Carrie. And for his (Jason’s) sudden, effective gotcha to have any pertinence in the greater context of its own movie, you have to chalk it up to a hallucination on Alice’s part. The dénouement which follows does as much. But we know better. I speak of Jason with a familiarity not befitting a single jump scare in an old slasher film (and without a moment spent honoring Dorf, or Enis, or Crazy Ralph, or Clown-Looking Waitress).
We know there are sequels coming (hence why it’s on this blog). It is really hard to judge Friday the 13th without reference to the future. As its own thing, it’s mostly a standard example of certain other Hallowannabes: Driller Killer, Tourist Trap, Prom Night, Terror Train, Maniac (where Savini outshines himself), Bloody Birthday, Don’t…Go in the House, …Go into the Woods, …Open the Door, The Day After Halloween (seriously?!), by all accounts several dozen more. And that just from the 1979/1980 crop; it says nothing of the ungodly mass which Friday the 13th ITSELF inspired. Oh, but it did inspire a phenomenal pile of cheapozoid stabathons, owing to its promise (even more enticing than Halloween’s) that an inexpensive slasher needn’t even be good to do well. A gore gold rush grew, all hoping to seize miraculous distribution. In this context, Friday the 13th was in the best position of all. A brand name wins out. With a winning title, audience support, and prominence of place. And so it goes…
RELATED POSTS
• No. 2 Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
• No. 3 Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
• No. 4 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
• No. 5 Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
• No. 6 Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
• No. 7 Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
• No. 8 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
• No. 9 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
• No. 10 Jason X (2002)
• No. 11 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 12 Friday the 13th (2009)
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