COMMENTARY CLUB 025 - Friday 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

It's the dreaded crap movie point of our podcast cycle, and in this episode we are delving into the murky world of 1980s slashers and one of the worst outings for Mr Jason Voorhees esq.  Yes, it is the infamous Friday 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, in which the iconic killer visits New York in circumstances that beggar belief! 

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JASON IN SPAAAAAAAAACE!

There will be spoilers and there will be blood!

The days are long at the Famous Monsters Retirement Home, but it’s the evenings that stretch on forever as the assorted ghouls and creatures cluster around the TV, all harbouring in their rotten hearts the forlorn hope that some obscure channel may rerun of one of their movies in the dim watches of the night, and maybe, just maybe new fans will be created and one day, one glorious day, there will be enough demand for a return to the silver screen…

And Jason wasn’t happy. He’d been here for years, freaking years now; so long in fact that now the Old Boys, even that stuck up Count, who had been so hostile when he’d first washed up here were looking upon him with sympathetic eyes. And while he’d been delighted that his great rival, Krueger had wound up here too, the warm fuzzy glow of schadenfeude had long since paled, as now if was ever to escape this genteel hell it would be for their long promised, but never materialising Freddy Vs. Jason. Their fates were now bound together and furthermore they were both united in their anger that that Shatner faced goon Myers kept on getting released time and time again. It just wasn’t fair dammit, and there’s only so many times an undead psychopath can visit the Giant Radioactive Monster petting zoo…

Then after nearly nine years since the disastrous Jason Goes To Hell, the call at last came. There was a new script in the offing and much to his pointy fingered friend’s chagrin it wasn’t a treatment for their epic clash. A young writer called Todd Farmer had pitched a concept to New Line, a fresh film that would bring Jason back to the movie goers’ attention while Freddy Vs. Jason writhed on Development Hell…

Now hang on, had he heard this one before? Jason was sceptical and made sure he asked all the right questions this time… Would there be young scantily clad fools to slay? Yes? Ok, but did he actually get to do the slaying? Yes? Great! What? It’s set in space? Well as long as he wasn’t demoted to a demonic slug again, what the hell!

So then in 2002, just shy of a decade since his last taste of freedom, Jason X rocketed onto our screens. Well actually ‘rocketed’ is going a bit far – meandered onto them briefly and quickly off again is nearer the mark judging by the dismal box office takings. This movie saw the lowest takings of any of the Friday 13th series, just managing to claw a meagre couple of million in profits worldwide.

So what went wrong? Now the obvious answer is that the film was ghastly beyond belief, and it is true that Jason X was panned by the critics. However this is largely par for the course for a Friday 13th flick – indeed given the outsider status of horror films, a bad review from a mainstream critic is almost a badge of honour. However the movie wasn’t exactly keenly embraced by the Friday faithful.

Essentially before anyone had even seen Jason X, the film had three big hurdles in its path. Firstly the name – although the committed horror fans would know that this was the latest instalment of the Friday 13th series, New Line didn’t actually have the rights to that title and be able to label it clearly as “part 10”. There had been the same problem with the last movie but at least they got “The Final Friday” in the title. Now as we all know branding is important, and although they couldn’t use the franchise’s name I think a better title could have been found. The problem is that by 2002, an X in your title would not make the causal movie goer think of roman numeral but the recent box office smash X- Men (2000) or The X Files TV series. And with a poster design featuring a fairly unrecognisable Jason – seriously just look at him, he looks more like a lump of coal than sporting the iconic hockey mask - and looking very sci-fi flavoured you can understand why people may well have assumed that this was some knock-off cash-in rather than the latest adventures of Mrs Voorhees’ little boy.

Secondly I can quite understand that having suffered through the somewhat lacklustre Part VII – The New Blood, the appalling Jason Takes Manhattan and the misbegotten Jason Goes To Hell, even hardcore fans of the series were reluctant to spend their hard earned on a ticket for this movie; I imagine “I’ll catch it on cable or maybe rent it” was the battle cry of the all but the most committed fans. And if the last two flicks in the franchise hadn’t kicked all expectations into the gutter, our final third factor was guaranteed to plunge them into the sewers…

Basically setting the movie in the future was widely received as a sign that the movie would be awful and that it was time to unplug the life support systems on the series. Back in 1996, Hellraiser: Bloodline took the Pinhead and the Cenobites into the starry void, and this fourth entry was such a mess that Alan Smithee ended up directing and was the last film in the series to receive a theatrical release. Similarly a year later, the already gone straight to video series Leprechaun squeezed out a further helping of Oirish slashings by sending the wee fellow into space with the imaginatively titled Leprechaun 4: In Space. You see, in the world of horror, space isn’t the place where no can hear you scream, it’s where franchises go to die; a portent that all the ideas are exhausted and somehow pairing your villain up against spacemen and robots is going to get the creative juices flowing again… And if you really believe that, may I interest you in some magic beans?

So then with all this against the movie before a soul had seen a single frame, it’s hardly surprising the film fared so poorly. Now of course some would say that there is a fourth factor to consider; that Jason as a character had simply lost his appeal. However considering that little over a two years later Freddy Vs Jason made profits in the hundreds of millions, it’s clear there was still an big appetite for everyone’s favourite psychopathic slaphead.

Admittedly Freddy Vs Jason was a better flick but although Jason X is still something of a divider of fan opinion, it’s fair to say that his interstellar antics are a dramatic improvement on the previous few entries in the franchise. And weirdly enough, it appears Jason X plays very well to non Friday 13th fans – I’ve met numerous people who in general have no time for slasher films but thought this entry in the series was a hoot.

And I’d have to agree - Jason X is marvellously silly fun. While it never quite exploits the knowing ironic humour as well as Scream, or ever be held up against An American Werewolf in London or Shaun of the Dead in the bestest horror comedy ever stakes, this movie is very entertaining. It doesn’t quite capture the mix of horror and laughs that Part 6 – Jason Lives does but it comes very close.

The premise actually works quite well here – in the then future year 2008, Jason is captured, later cryogenically frozen and subsequently awoken in 2455 where he finds himself on board a starship bound for a distant Earth colony and surrounded by his favourite prey, teenagers! In this case, the teens are students who have been on field trip back to Mother Earth to salvage artefacts from the smoking ruins. However just ensure maximum mayhem there’s also a compliment of space marines and the ship’s cyborg to contend with.

Now although the plot plays exactly like every other Friday 13th i.e. Jason slaughters every one bar a couple of survivors, the fact that the action takes place on space ship does actually freshen up the format. As all the victims are actually crew members gives the cast more character and depth than usual, admittedly not a lot more, this is still a Friday 13th film after all, but they do have roles to fulfil and duties to perform which spares us the typical filler scenes of characters clowning around in the woods. And also as some of the crew are military types, we have characters who can fight back – and as we saw in Part 6, Jason seems all the more menacing when we see him taking down tough cases with guns as well as the usual screaming airheads.

Setting the majority of the movie on a ship in deep space also brings back a theme that has been mostly missing from the preceding two entries – isolation. As you may remember from the earlier entries this mammoth retrospective, original screen writer Victor Miller has always said that the key element in Friday 13th is that the characters are cut off from the rest of society. And Jason X plays this card rather well; rather than have our anti-hero just picking off the cast one by one, the plot gets great mileage out of the complications of having Jason Voorhees running amok on your ship and makes its characters smart enough to realise that the sensible thing is to try and contain him until they get to Earth 2. Plus the sci-fi setting introduces the opportunities for some original and fun kills, such as death by liquid nitrogen.

Now I do understand why this film leaves some fans cold, as sometimes the humour is very broad, with characters uttering blatant one-liners. However there are not quite enough of these gags throughout the running time to properly qualify as a horror comedy. Similarly although Jason X plays the irony card much like Scream did, and has a lot of fun with some of the clichés of modern science fiction, there isn’t really enough of it either.

And this is where Jason X falls down – the humour and irony stop it working as a straight horror film, but there’s not enough laughs to qualify as a spoof, nor enough post modern toying with the clichés to do for sci-fi horror/action what Scream did for slashers. It’s not just falling between two stools but three as it were.

However director James Isaacs and Todd Farmer’s script has the action solidly romping along none the less. OK it’s not a brilliant picture, but it works well enough; it’s undemanding fun and while it may be cheesy it is still competent despite the stumbling with the overall tone and the comedy not being quite smoothly integrated. As I remarked earlier it does go down well outside the Friday 13th faithfully, who largely aren’t upset by the inclusion of humour and are often surprised by what a good fun flick it is.

Of course for Jason fans, there is another divisive issue other than the humour – Uber Jason – which bring us nicely round to our customary look at how the character is handled. Now before we get to his cybernetic incarnation, let’s check the background continuity levels with our faithful tricorder…

Now this movie was specifically designed to not to mess up the end of Jason Goes To Hell which set up the then forthcoming Freddy Vs Jason. So then according to the plot, Jason was captured in 2008, and given the lack of any other evidence, Freddy Vs Jason takes place in the year it was made (2003). Hence logically Jason X chronologically actually occurs after the then still forthcoming clash of the slashers. However there is an interesting alternate interpretation…

Now when we discover the imprisoned Jason, scientists (including legendary director David Cronenberg in a cameo) are very keen to find out what makes him tick. However at no point do they ever mention that he is a walking corpse… Yes, you guessed it – we have yet another return to the old question of Is Jason Alive or Dead!

From what we see and hear on screen, the boffins only keep referring to his ability for rapid cellular regeneration – which would suggest that this Jason is in fact still alive. There’s no mention of demons slugs, or the general decay he’s been sporting for the latter half of the saga. There’s no sign of any post Part 8 toxic waste burns, the mask though battered is the right size again, but most importantly, Jason has hair again. And in addition to resprouting locks of sparse lank hair, also the tattered jumpsuit he’s been wearing has been replaced with a mountain man jacket and trouser combo.

So then you could read this movie as being an alternate sequel to Part 2. OK I know he got the famous mask in Part 3 but barring that the version we see in Jason X is most similar to his appearance in the first sequel. Certainly if we assume that this is a separate time line, branching off from either Part 2 or Part 3 it certainly would explain his Timex constitution (i.e. he takes a licking and still keeps ticking).

Of course this isn’t the only look he models for us in this film, as after a nanotech make-over he becomes Uber Jason. Now there some who love the new robo-slasher incarnation, and there are those that see his transformation as needlessly messing up an icon. And personally I tend to agree with the latter – the augmented Jason design is good enough but my big problem is that it’s has lost the iconic hockey mask, which strikes me as superfluous tinkering with his trademark look.

But if you take this entry in the series as an alternate timeline story - a What If…/ Elseworlds issue as it were - then we needn’t get too hot under the collar about this cyber redesign. It’s a one off stunt - – after all there were no sequels * – that works well in the film as a surprise twist in the last act. And let’s be honest here, New Line weren’t exactly planning on relaunching the series as a cyber-splatterpunk franchise, this flick was intended as another placeholder entry until they could get Freddy Vs Jason into the theatres.

And although ultimately Jason X failed to find much love at the box office, it did get the character back on track. Despite the shift of setting to deep space in the far future, the movie still delivers a better Jason than either of the previous outings, proving that if you stick with the essentials of the character you can place Jason anywhere and just turn him loose. Admittedly by this stage of the game, there isn’t a great deal of terror to be wrung from the character but Jason X does use our favourite slasher effectively.

While the inclusion of humour freshens up the somewhat stale same old scenario of killing off victims one by one, the movie is smart enough to know not to send up Jason himself. And although by now as a villain he’s too familiar to be terrifying, Jason can still be threatening – you might not be able to generate much fright from a figure that the audiences now love but if take him back to being an imposing physical presence and make him an unstoppable killing machine again – no satanic slugs or random ghostly teleporting – Jason can still conjure up the thrills.

So although Jason X may have failed to ignite the box office, undoubtedly this outing won him some brand new fans and in a small way perhaps did keep the legend alive. Certainly I feel that Jason X, while not hitting the heights of the best in the saga, is still highly entertaining; far better than a premise makes it sounds and definitely far better than a Part 10 of anything should be.

And surprisingly an even better film was yet to come…

* Although there were 5 books from Black Flame and two comics from Avatar Press that continued Uber Jason’s story.

FRIDAY 13th Part 8 - Jason Takes Manhattan...Allegedly

There will be blood and there will be spoilers

“Dear God no! For the love of Christ no! You can’t do this to me! Make it stop!”

No, that’s not a quote from the movie – that was me when I realised I was going to have to watch this flick yet again before penning this review. If you were wondering exactly why it’s taken so long to get through this marathon of Friday 13th reviews, you can lay the blame squarely on this movie; or rather my reluctance to slip this particular cinematic atrocity into the old DVD player once again.

Yes, this is the film that stank so bad, Paramount finally pulled the plug on the franchise. And it is truly horrible. Yes, they kept cutting back the budget and forcing director Rob Heddon's script through the rewrite mangle, but even so the frequent changes to the story line don’t excuse the huge swathes of nonsense this flick delivers. It’s easily the worst film in the franchise, severed hands down. And while there are a few memorable scenes, on the whole the film is so irredeemably shoddy it doesn’t even cut it in the so-bad-its-good stakes. It’s just plain bad and the only way to get any enjoyment out of this one is to drink heavily and merciless mock the nonsense as it unfolds. So then, let's cry havoc and unleash the dogs of sarcasm…

Right from the start, you know you are in trouble when instead of a proper opening theme we have a very ‘80s slice of pop-rock tosh blithering on about life in the big city. And as we see more of New York in this credits sequences than we do in the rest of the movie, I can only assume the decision to play this even then terminally uncredible song over the top of it was just a vain attempt to justify the film’s title. Look we're in the big city! The electro funk man says so!

You see the biggest problem for this outing is that Jason doesn’t really take Manhattan, in any way, shape or form... And not just because the Muppets had already beaten him to it, or that Leonard Cohen had proposed a similar manoeuvre the preceding year either.

Thanks to Paramount’s budget cuts, scene after scene in the original script were axed. So sequences of Jason wreaking havoc around the Big Apple landmarks, such as Madison Square Gardens, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State building and Broadway, were sliced away one by one until all we were left with was a quick stroll through Times Square in the film’s finale. So instead, we spend most of the running time stuck on a boat. And it is a huge let-down - really this one should have been called Cruise-Alonga-Jason.

Now when you hear the title Jason Takes Manhattan, you instantly start imagining scenes of colossal carnage. Up until now our slaphead anti-hero has been confined to the American backwoods; an isolated milieu where he only ever encountered small numbers of people. And every single person he's ever met, he's attempted to brutally slay. Hence the title of this flick has you picturing him going completely berserk in the metropolis; with tens if not hundreds of people falling to his machete. Entire squads of police dying while trying to halt the unstoppable undead killing machine. The National Guard are called into no avail. CIA, FBI, NSA and sundry other acronyms mobilised and the carnage all builds up to an apocalyptic finale where they have to airstrike a large area of Manhattan in order to stop the tsunani of slashing.

Alright, the studio coffers probably wouldn’t have stretched to all the above mayhem but you get the idea. Jason turning up in Manhattan should have been one long killing spree causing a city wide panic. So then having him stuck on boat for three quarters of the movie was a big disappointment – and for me, more of a slap in the face than The New Beginning and its-not-the-real-Jason Scooby Doo twist.

But it’s no use crying over spilt milk and pondering what could have been. However what we did get unfortunately just doesn’t really cut the mustard either. Now in terms of the direction, in fairness the film is better shot than the hobbled by 3D Part 3, but unfortunately the story contains far more stupidity than Miner’s second Friday flick – some mean feat as that wasn’t going to win any awards for coherence either. Now I’m reliably informed that in the commentary for the US DVD release, director Rob Heddon tells us that his first cut was around the two hour mark, so you may be thinking that in pruning it down to the more acceptable 90 minutes mark accounts for some of the outright weirdness in the plot. However judging from the list of cut scenes on the IMDB trivia page, although the excised material may have built up the characters more, as far as I can see none of the missing material would make sense of some of the highly annoying loopiness the film delivers.

Lordy lordy, where to start… Right, first up the damn boat. Now I can ignore the thoroughly bizarre bending of all the laws of geography of having a lake that leads to Manhattan. We’ll just let that one go, along with the fact that judging from the exterior shots of the ship we see and the interiors we are shown, it would appear that this craft was built with Time Lord technology. Nope, the thing that bothers me most is what the hell happened to the swarms of kids on board? We see a few minor cast members despatched by Jason but the rest vanish into thin air never to be mentioned again. Not even when the ship sinks. What was going on there? An oblique reference to the Marie Celeste?

Next up, why can Jason now teleport? Slasher films are notorious for having their usually slow walking killers catching up with their sprinting prey and popping up in unexpected places, but in Jason Takes Manhattan he does literally appear to have gained to the ability to materialise anywhere he damn well likes. Now presumably this ties into Things That Make Don’t Make A Shred of Sense - Even For This Series #3…

..Which is the whole business of Rennie and her visions of Jason. At first he appears to her as a normal little boy and then throughout the course of the film proceeds to gradually mutate into his more familiar monstrous form. Now firstly in the original movie, we are shown a flashback of Jason drowning and despite the brevity of the shot it is clear he was deformed then, so where on earth this normal Jason fits in is anyone’s guess. The implication seems to be that Rennie has some psychic connection to some deeply buried good side of Jason and that hulking killer we all know is some kind of revenge driven ghost. Yes, I know that sounds nutty but it’s the only thing I can think of to explain what we see on screen. Hedden has stated that the end where we see Jason seemingly transform back to a little boy is meant to represent his spirit going to rest, which sort of fits. I get the impression that this element of the film was meant to clear up the long standing questions over when Jason actually died, and how come if he died as a boy he reappears as a full grown psycho in Part II.

However none of it adds up – if Jason is some vengeance powered apparition, as his teleporting suggests, how come he has a body, which has been buried, sunk at the bottom of a lake and twice revived by electricity? While I applaud the attempt to make some sort of sense of the series’ mythos, it is done in such a way as to actually confuse matters further rather than clarify anything about Jason’s back-story. From the finale, you could be forgiven for thinking that as well as killing him, the toxic waste has caused him to physically regress in age. Indeed on my first exposure to this scene – I caught the second half on late night TV – I assumed that either a) the first half explained this or b) The New Blood - which I hadn’t seen at the time - had something to do with it or finally c) I’d had a bad pint down the pub and was now mildly hallucinating.

And if this wasn’t enough to contend with, there is also the utterly bonkers circumstances leading up to it. According this film, New York flushes its sewer system every night by pumping the afore-mentioned toxic waste through it. Yes, you did read that right! Flushes. Sewer system. With toxic waste. Every damn night. To CLEAN it!!! A large pint of WTF please barman! Considering that the New York Tourism Committee complained about the posters which featured Jason popping through the ‘I heart NYC’ logo, I’m amazed they didn’t sue when they saw the movie itself. One wonders why not … does Heddon know something we don’t?

At this point, I think we can safely say that the case for the prosecution now rests, and this flick is guilty as charged on numerous counts of Grievous Intellectual Harm, and Assault and Battery With A Deadly Weapon to whit the script. All that remains now is sentencing…

Now when watching horror flicks, you do not apply the same laws for assessing story credibility or narrative logic as one does when watching serious cinema. And when watching entries in the Friday 13th saga, we usually are not even apply a version said laws revised for the genre. After the first few entries, this franchise is operating in a bubble universe of its own making, complete with its own rules of cinema. And while the better films in the series, like the original, Final Chapter and Jason Lives, may be fit enough to survive outside this pocket critical environment, most do not. They may only be judged in relation to the following criteria - how cool is Jason, how spectacular are the deaths, is the acting competent rather than howlingly bad, and can you stand any of the characters for more than 10 seconds without wanted to machete off their heads yourself.

So then, is Jason cool is this flick? Well largely no. Kane Hodder stalks and looms well enough but the teleporting antics are frustrating and his look in this movie is frankly poor. After the superb bone-tastic Jason of The New Blood, this rendition just looks cheap - no visibly decay, just a bit of token tattering on his outfit, and mainly he just looks a bit soggy. And as for the unmasking scene, oh dear Lord! Not only does the toxic waste appear to possess the power to restore ones youth, it also has trans-species mutagenic properties too! For when the hockey mask comes off, it appears that Jason is now a melting albino chimp! Were they planning a cross-over with Planet of the Apes? Or was he trying to blend in Manhattan’s Muppet overlords?

In the absence of any sensible answers, let’s move on to the slayings. On the whole, they are fairly standard fare, nothing too shabby but possessing no real wow factor either. That is, apart from Julius’ death. Credit where credit is due, not only is this the best scene in the movie, but one of the best kills in the entire series – Jason literally knocks his block off, decapitating him with a single punch. It’s beautifully set up and executed; spectacular, very funny and a satisfyingly ironic end to Julius, one of the most annoying characters in the movie.

And speaking of which, I’ll also have to give some credit to the characters and acting. The script attempts to give our protagonists some depth and the performances are too bad either. Yes, Julius is a monstrous arse but I think he was meant to be. Jensen Daggett and Scott Reeves are pretty likeable as a leading pair, and special mention must be made of Peter Mark Rickman who has good fun hamming it up as the harsh and overprotective Uncle Charles. As well as chewing the scenery, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Harris, in both looks and performance, which just adds to the fun – indeed, on the first viewing I was convinced I was watching Jason hunting down evil Dr Zachery Smith from Lost in Space.

But the trouble is despite trying to create proper characters, the script is so full of errant nonsense, they get very little to do that passes for basic common sense. Even Jason himself acts very out of character on a couple of occasions. As he normally slays anything or anyone in his path, it is somewhat perplexing him to see him seemingly rescue Rennie from those muggers fresh out of Clichéd Street Punk School. Similarly when he encounters the Times Square hoodlum wannabes, he scares them off by raising his mask. While it's understandably they'd leg it sharpish considering the terrifyingly poor make job lurking under there, and it's meant to be a funny scene, it's not nearly as hilarious if he’d kebabbed them all in one go.

And this is another major problem the film has; although there are flashes of humour, there are not nearly enough gags to indicate that we shouldn’t be taking anything that happens on screen too seriously. On the contrary, the stream of nonsense that is masquerading as a plot, with its psychic visions and psychological elements of Rennie’s story arc suggests that Heddon and co. set out to play this straight.

There was a decent concept behind the film which Paramount's budget cuts scuppered, and the script shows some signs that there were some interesting ideas that were mangled on route to the screen. But the problem is, Heddon is simply too competent a director to make the film so bad it’s unintentionally funny, which may be the biggest back-handed compliment I’ve ever given out. All of which adds up to a film that is very unsatisfying and the few good moments in it taunt you with what the movie could have been.

And this is the crux of the matter, Jason Takes Manhattan is just annoyingly bad rather than entertainingly so. It isn't directed with an ironic trash aesthetic which encourages us to laugh WITH the movie, nor is it such misbegotten dreck you can laugh AT it. Admittedly with a few beers, a few chums and an ample supply of Mystic Jim’s Patent Michaels Remover, you could enjoy this flick as a piece of comically bad cinema – but you will just be laughing NEAR the movie and have to supply most of the comedy yourself…

Friday 13th Retrospective Part 5 - The Beginning of the End?

There will be spoilers and there will be blood

The year is 1984 and Jason is dead once more. However after The Final Chapter raked it in at the box office, in a textbook example of money talking, Paramount decided that the franchise should continue. Hence a year later Friday 13th Part 5 – A New Beginning hit the theatres. And lo, the fans were delighted…

…Until they saw the movie, that is. And then the howls of protest and outrage were loud and long. Louder even than the censorious moral guardians who wanted such films banned. So loud in fact, that my sources in NASA inform me that they can be now heard on Saturn, and officials at CETI are concerned that the first thing an alien civilisation will detect from us is the cryptic message “Fuck Roy!!!”.

Yes, this is hands down the most unpopular film in the series and is routinely nominated as the worst film in the franchise. The director, one Danny Steinman, never helmed another feature and, I’m guessing is this glancing over his shoulder for irate machete toting Jasonites. And what is the reason for all this ire? Well, this episode of the saga doesn’t feature Jason as the killer. He appears but the film has a twist ending in which it is revealed that the slayings have been committed by a copycat killer, the afore mentioned Roy, whose significance is puzzling the scholars on Yuggoth even as we speak.

In hindsight, you can understand the intentions behind the decision not to feature everyone’s favourite slaphead as the author of the carnage. The first movie after all famously didn’t feature Jason as the killer and in this instalment they were attempting to recreate the same murder mystery vibe of the original. They figured as long as there were plenty of killings and some nudity ‘da kids’ would be happy. And though these elements are undoubtedly a part of the appeal, however what the studio failed to appreciate was the popularity of Jason himself.

And there was a precedent for this, which considering its source is harder to understand why the makers of The New Beginning overlooked. In 1982, Halloween 3 – The Season of the Witch was released which bombed appallingly when movie goers found out it didn’t feature another round of stalk and slash with Michael Myers. Screen Nigel Kneale (who asked for his name to removed from the film after they bastardised his script) has a rather telling story about its production –

I said ‘Don’t you want some kind of suspense at the beginning? A zero point from which to build?’ ‘Oh’ no,’ they said. ‘You must start tearing off heads off. We’ve got to keep faith with the kids’.

However as Universal bosses discovered the kids actually do care about story and character, and all the head ripping in the world would not compensate for seeing a sequel that had no connection to the previous two films and didn’t feature the villain they’d paid to see.

While The New Beginning does clearly establish that it is a continuation of the Friday 13th saga by making the Tommy Jarvis character from The Final Chapter its focus, really the audience reaction to a Halloween movie sans The Shape should have really flagged up the fact that not having Jason as the killer would not go down well.

But in all fairness, the movie does deliver more Jason action than it is usually credited with. To begin with, it opening with an excellent scene depicting a returning Corey Feldman witnessing two chuckleheads fresh out of Lobotomy High (where all slasher teens go to school) digging up Jason’s grave and prompting receiving a machete thank you from the worm riddled revenant. Later on we get equally creepy scenes where the grown up Tommy (now played by John Shepherd) is haunted by visions of Jason.

Most of the killings however are shot in such as a way as to keep us guessing as to who the killer really is. It is not until the last 20 minutes we see that the murders are being carried out by what appears to be a returned Jason.

And this is the problem - it’s not that there’s no Jason in this flick – it’s that fans just weren’t happy to discover that the Jason on screen was not the real McCoy, but the Real McRoy, your friendly neighbour psychopathic ambulance driver.

Now considering the very negative reputation this movie has garnered over the years, I was somewhat apprehensive when cracking open the jewel case for this one. I’d only half seen once before it, many moons ago and what I remembered didn’t inspire with confidence: indeed the only thing I remembered with anything approaching clarity was the infamous outhouse scene. The outlook was bleak but what the hell, I’d survived Part 3…

And I was actually very surprised by The New Beginning. Admittedly it’s not the greatest entry in the series – the script is patchy, the characterisation thin and the logic behind the mystery of who’s doing the killings owes more to Scooby Doo than Agatha Christie. But I was rather entertained from start to finish. Sure it’s as dumb as a bag of hammers but it was nowhere near as awful as I expected.

Steinman, while not having much in the way of directorial flair, keeps the film zipping along at a tremendous pace. With a high body (twenty by my count) you’re never much more than five minutes away from the next piece mayhem with some inventive kills (road flare in mouth, leather strap around the head) thrown for good measure. Any characterisation is quickly sketched in between the action scenes and considering the swift production of these films that’s probably a good thing – characters simply don’t have the screen time or enough lines to highlight the deficiencies of either the actors or the script.

And actually there are some good performances in this movie. Though often slammed by fans, John Shepherd puts in a great turn as the disturbed and mentally scarred Tommy and achieves a lot considering his character only has twenty four words in the entire flick. And Shavar Ross (better known to the world as Diff’rent Strokes’ Dudley) keeps plays Reggie the right side of brat, and plays well off the rest of the cast.

While Steinman may be best categorised as capable and competent, he does have some good tricks up his sleeve. There are plenty of call backs to the previous films, such as impalement from below, a body in a bunk bed, corpses both nailed and thrown through windows, a battle in a barn and rain soaked finale. It seems like the script is really trying to prove its Friday credentials.

Another touch I particularly liked was the fact that Roy’s hockey mask is actually different from Jason’s – sporting two blue triangles rather on large red one. And interestingly it’s in this movie that the slow walking, slow stalking Jason first appears. Up until now he’s galloped about the place like a homicidal Duracell bunny, and it’s in The New Beginning he gains his iconic form of locomotion. It’s somewhat ironic as it’s not Jason at all…

Which brings me to the whole matter of the twist ending. Now I can’t really judge how effective the murder mystery element is as I was well aware that the killer was Roy before the film’s original theatre opening in the UK. On the plus side though, the film doesn’t actually cheat like the original did by revealing a character we previously hadn’t been introduced to. On the down side though, the exposition from the Sheriff detailing Roy’s rationale doesn’t really add up – from the sound of it we are meant to believe that Roy went on this murder spree to avenge the death of his estranged son Vic. But if this is the case his choice of victims makes little sense, as he seemingly targets several people not connected with the youth care centre. A better interpretation would be that his son’s murder has unhinged him and inspired him to take a leaf out of Jason’s book, and kill every damn thing he meets.

However I suspect the sloppy rationale isn’t the real problem for those who loathe this entry in the series, and furthermore I’d guess that if the movie had had Tommy revealed as the killer, it would still play badly with the fans. The real trouble simply is the feeling of being let down and ripped off when you discover that it isn’t the real Jason after all. And arguably Steinman made a rod for his own back here; the atmospheric dream resurrection that opens the film and the ghostly Jason plaguing Tommy are so effective, fans were set up for the real Jason to rise from the grave.

And the close of the movie is somewhat botched. It’s put together effectively enough but the final scene of Tommy donning the hockey mask is just echoing the close of The Final Chapter with its shot of a positively psychopathic looking Corey Feldman, and leaves you with a sense of being back to square one plot-wise. Did they really think we’d accept Tommy Jarvis as a new Jason? It’s hard to see where they were going to go with this and thankfully the film’s poor reception ensured that this direction was never followed.

I don’t know whether it’s because I went into this already knowing the twist or simply because I had my expectations set to ‘gutter’ that I enjoyed this episode in the saga. I even enjoyed the outhouse scene, which like the grungy rednecks Ethel and Junior, is there purely for a spot of comedy. It’s not a perfect film by any means and it’s not even a stand out entry in the series. But at the same time it’s nowhere near as bad as Part 3, and if you can put aside quibbles of the real Jason being missing in action, it’s a fun way to pass eighty minutes if you are in the mood for some standard slasher fare.

Finally though, there is a certain irony in that The New Beginning was so poorly received that it nearly finished the franchise. As we will see next time, the next instalment Jason Lives would have to fight its way out of Part 5’s long shadow…

Friday 13th Retrospective Part 4 - Jason Goes Fourth

There will be spoilers and there will be blood!

More scarred than Blofeld! More cunning than Kojak! And yuckier than Yul Bryner! Everyone’s favourite psychopathic slaphead is back! And this time - it’s final!

Apparently tired of catching grief from the bosses at Paramount, series producer Frank Mancuso Jnr. decided enough was enough and it was time to wrap up the Friday 13th saga. Although Part 3 has out performed it’s predecessors during opening weekends (handy box office league table here fact fans!), the general critical climate was mounting against the franchise and slashers as whole. Plus there was the beginnings of a backlash against the increasing sequelitius infecting studios at the time – audiences were starting to learn that often a sequel’s worth could be calculated by divided the quality of the original by the number in the title.

Hence The Final Chapter appeared in theatre sans numeral. And apart from hoping to avoiding ending up in the comedy sequels league tables that were fast becoming a staple of end of the year film round ups, one does wonder whether it was also an attempt to airbrush the 3D fiasco out of history. Certainly Mancuso seems to have recognised that Jason’s latest screen adventure needed to raise its game and so set about assembling a quality crew for the picture.

His first shrewd move was to get Tom Savini back on make-up duties. The man who Fangoria had dubbed ‘the sultan of splatter’ was an immediate box office draw, and horror fans had already proved they’d endure the most incompetent cinematic dreck just to see Savini’s wizardry. With Steve Miner not wishing to return to the director’s chair, Mancuso then hired Joseph Zito, who had recently proved his slasher credibility with the fan favourite The Prowler. Finally though, demonstrating he’d learnt some most important lessons from Part 3, he hired some decent actors – netting up and coming stars Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. All was set to give Mrs Voorhees’ little monster a spectacular send-off.

And indeed The Final Chapter is a rousing return to form, working the slasher formula to fine effect. All the usual elements here, but where this movie scores over the previous outing is they utilised in a story that actually makes sense, and even contains some characterisation.

In what is rapidly becoming traditional in the series, we are introduced into yet another previously unknown settlement on the shores of the geographically morphing Crystal Lake. However in this flick, we are shown a brace of houses nestling in the deep woods, one is a family home and the other a holiday property – a far more believable setting than the crowded Higgins Haven milieu with its multiple stores and that crazy farm stocked up on hay for non-existent horses. Zito returns the basics of the first two films, heeding Victor Miller’s wise words that a key plot mechanic is that the character should be placed in an isolated setting. Hence we get some good use of location filming and some nice camera work that emphasises the vast brooding woods that surround the houses.

In addition to creating a more effective location for the action, from the first shots of the hovering police helicopter and emergency services gathering at the aftermath of the Higgins Haven, The Final Chapter establishes a firm sense of reality. This time around it feels far more like the events are unfolding in the real world, rather than the Scooby Doo-esque universe of Part 3.

And also unlike the last instalment, the script writers actually seem to be familiar with real teenagers. Obviously in such in a Friday film the majority of the cast are just there to be Jason fodder, but the screenplay actually does bother to try and give all the characters some individual stories of their own. Certainly a lot of these are merely sketched in, such as the tension between Sam and Paul over his attraction to one of the twins, and the tentative romance between Sara and Doug. But these little touches make the characters believable and the group of teens a realistic dynamic. Plus they are not saddled with a pair of aging potheads in a ‘why they hell are they there?’ fashion.

Some of the group may be a little anonymous but the script avoids the tar-pit Part 3 sunk into -reducing the cast to a bunch of archetypal clichés i.e. The Goofy Joker, The Good Girl, The Bitch & The Smug Bastard Who Walks On His Hands. Indeed the script actually sets up two possible Final Girls and a number of potential male survivors, ensuring a pleasing element of suspense. It’s one of the challenging entries in the series for the game of Who Dies Next – admittedly it’s not massively taxing to guess correctly but it’s refreshing that Zito and co made the effort not to be totally predictable.

But where the film shines is the characters it follows most closely – Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), Ted (Lawrence Monoson) and Jimmy (Crispin Glover). The mere fact that I’ve bothered to credit the actors should give you a clear indication of how well the characters work. Ted and Jimmy have a convincing friendship in the film with real chemistry in the performances. The script deftly captures exactly the kind of banter between guys their age and avoids the stereotypical jock and his nerdy friend path. They have real character and heart and are scripted as if they were in a John Hughes movie. But best of all we get to The Glover throwing some shapes!



Now when you’ve all stopped laughing, I’d like to point out that Zito doesn’t play it as a comedy scene – rather we have a rather accurate portrayal of a young fella trying and rather making a mess of pulling some cool moves to impress a lady. Perhaps only Crispin Glover could ever capture the required mix of weird gawkiness and attempted cool. It’s nice touch of verisimilitude which in the hands of other directors would have descended in slapstick. And, for you trivia fans out there, apparently the music in this scene was originally AC/DC’s mighty ‘Back In Black’ – and believe me it’s well worth the bother of syncing it up! Start the track at the 5 second mark of the above clip and watch the fireworks!

Corey Feldman also turns in a great performance; he’s cute without being cloying, smart without coming over as a wise ass, and most crucial for a child actor, natural. His character hits the right marks and come off as charming and relatable rather than an annoying brat. It’s often claimed that Tommy hobby of monster making is a homage to Savini – and indeed the masks and creatures that fill his room are mostly from Savini’s own works. But actually in addition to providing a plot point for the final showdown with Jason, Tommy’s love of all things monstrous instantly endears him to the target audience of horror fans.

Also having a family, and specifically a child in the plot adds greatly to the film’s dynamics. Firslty it helps establish a more realistic setting for the action, rather than the usual bubble universe s of slasher film where adults are nowhere to be found and teen do what ever they like. But more importantly we expect that all the teens are fair game for Jason, as are any adult characters who cross his path. But placing a kid in Jason’s sights, and particularly the well drawn and likeable Tommy, significantly ups the levels of threat and the horror quotient, making Jason all the more threatening and monstrous when it becomes clear he has no qualms about butchering children.

It’s exactly this sort of well considered plotting and characterisation that makes this film such a success. You can adhere to the slasher formula as faithfully as you like, but if you neglect the setting and the characters, all the gore and nudity in the world will not prevent your film boring the audience.

Of course, being both a Friday 13th movie and the fourth part of a franchise there are some weak points in the script and perhaps inevitably some plot holes, but mercifully none of the yawning logical abysses of Part 3. One example is that we never see what happened to Mrs Jarvis – we see her encounter an unseen Jason but we are never shown a body later; it feels almost like there is a scene missing here. Another is that Jason seems to get away with dispatching the teens in the holiday house without anyone else hearing a sound – although to be fair this is a classic suspension of the normal laws of sonics prevalent in horror movies.

The big plot niggle however is the film’s timeline. Conventional wisdom holds that the events in this movie take place the day after Part 3, which leads to awkward questions about Rob, a character who has come to Crystal Lake to seek revenge on Jason who killed his sister in the previous massacre. If this is the day after, he must be particularly revenge fuelled to leave his family’s side so soon and why are his newspaper clippings – some of which presumably from that morning’s paper - so tatty.

However the film never actually explicitly states it is the day after. It makes more sense to assume that a few days at least have elapsed since the end of Part 3, and would explain why Tommy doesn’t get more of a roasting for leaving the door unlocked after there’s been a mass murder down the road the day before. But the bottom line is I’m inclined to forgive this logical lapse purely on the ground that the script succeeds on most other levels.

There is one other problem with Rob though. I did feel that the movie somewhat fumbled his story’s conclusion. Considering he’s been set up as the avenging hard man, he goes down very easily. Which in itself is no bad thing, but it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. I think they could have set up more effectively as a surprise twist. And we certainly didn’t need as much dialogue from him while Jason’s killing him – “Aargh he’s killing me!” is perhaps the dumbest line in the movie and stands out in a script that has largely avoided such lazy hokum.

With Savini back on board, obviously the make-up effects are to notch. Sadly a lot of his work has suffered from the censors’ scissors, but the scenes left in still pack a punch. As it stands, as the cuts are generally to the earlier gore set pieces, and so we are left with the most graphic splatter in the final act. This gives the movie an decent curve of escalating mayhem which culminates in the grand guinol killing of Jason. In Going Pieces – The Rise & Fall of the Slasher Film, Savini reports that audiences went berserk when they saw his epic tableaux of Jason falling face first onto the machete and sliding down the blade. And you can still see why today – it’s a fantastic effect and a satisfying piece of poetic justice for the villain.

And speaking of the villain, it time for our traditional look at Jason himself. As you’d expect with his creator Savini on the makeup duties, this Jason is easily the best so far. He’s still powerfully built but the lumbering quasi-hunchback look is gone, and rather than the rather pink and rubbery flesh as been replaced with a far creepier frog belly white skin and nasty blackened fingernails. And he’s far better served by the script, rather being seemingly retarded he’s smart, cunning and menacing. In The Final Chapter, he moves with swift shark-like deliberation instead of shambling about as he did in Part 3.

As mentioned earlier that he’s as keen to kill Tommy as anyone else really ups his villainy and fear factor. But it also nicely scotches the myth that his killing is a form of punishment on teens indulging in the old sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Also this is probably the last time we see Jason portrayed truly as the evil monster. Sure, he doesn’t have a road to Damascus style conversion, mends his ways and I looks after injured wood land animals in later films, but by his resurrection in Friday 13th Part 6: Jason Lives, he definitely become the anti-hero, the monster the audience loves.

And speaking of resurrections… Yes it the Dead or Alive question again. Now if previous entries have had fans debating Jason’s status, in this entry things become really murky! At the film’s start he is seemingly dead. Now the Alive camp could argue that he’s just in death-like coma, but there’s a fantastic shot when his (possible) corpse in placed into the morgue cabinet. Just before the door closes, we see a sudden plume of breath arise in the frosty air. Is it normal breathing returning to our hockey masked friend or him literally getting a second wind?

Of course such questions don’t really matter – what is important though is zombie or not, he does die at the film’s close. Not only do we have the marvellous Savini shish- kebab bonce sequence, but after this when he is showing signs that even this isn’t doing to stop him, Tommy Jarvis does thing we’d all do if faced with a slasher villain… Keep hacking at the creepy masked bastard, just be sure he can’t pull that “Haha I’ll not dead routine!” and impale us with a sharp implement of his choice.

Again it’s the great combination of action, character and performance that make this one of the most satisfying Jason defeats in the series. An iconic monster like Jason needs an equally iconic death in the last reel. And it also nicely sets up the interestingly downbeat ending. It’s a final nod to reality, showing us that triumphing over Jason has come at a great cost.

Friday 13th – The Final Chapter is one of the finer entries in the series and indeed one of the better slashers of the period. In many ways is it quite predictable, but while it doesn’t break new ground, it does deliver the fun and thrills in a deft fashion. Indeed this film’s strengths ensured the best yet box office figures and predictably the franchise would return again…

Friday 13th Retrospective Part 1

THE FRIDAY 13th RETROSPECTIVE Part I

A little before the release of the Friday 13th remake, I decided it was high time to acquire the full original series. Originally I intended to watch the entire eleven film saga before going to see the new version, but then it struck me that perhaps a better option would be to watch them afterwards. That way if I loved the new film, I’d have a boatload of Jason action to follow it with. And if I hated it there’d be the originals to console myself with. So effectively the ‘watch after’ option promised a win-win situation.

Plus, as I planned to write a retrospective, seeing the new film first would allow for some interesting critical angles. One of things which interests me about the Friday saga is how they developed; unlike a lot of other franchises the formula wasn’t delivered fully formed but gradually evolved through the series. So on this journey from Crystal Lake to deep space, we will be noting where key elements appeared first, and which of them the new film has picked up.

Now before we get started, a few words about my own relationship with this series. Now as a dyed-in-the-wool lover of the weird and macabre, obviously I have a soft spot for this series but I must confess it’s not my favourite horror franchise of all time. I was always more of an Elm Street man back in the day, but Jason does have special place in my heart – after all, like his arch rival Freddy, Mrs Voorhees’ son is a truly iconic monster. And as Freddy Vs Jason proves, they have become the modern equivalent to the classic Universal monsters.

Also I must point out that my previous viewing of these movies is somewhat patchy. Although I’ve seen them all and a few several times over, some I’ve only seen once, and others I’ve not seen in a long time. Plus some of these movies I only saw on worn rental video copies in a room full of people yakkin’ and messing about. Hence I’m looking forward to seeing them all back to back, in the proper order, and in some cases not through a hazy of smoke and ale.

There will be spoilers and there will be blood! So settle back in your armchairs, put Alice Cooper’s He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask) on repeat and step back in time to a little place called Camp Crystal Lake…

FRIDAY 13th (1980)

Now this movie holds a lot of fond memories for me – apart from its huge impact, it was the first modern horror film I ever saw. Indeed it was one of the first movies I ever saw on video. Up until then I’d only seen old movies on TV but the dawn of the video age was about to change all of that. For younger readers, I can’t stress enough what a revolution video was. I know that in these days of downloads, DVD and TV on demand the following all sound like tales of when dinosaurs ruled the earth, but don’t panic, I’m not going to start offering you all Werther’s Originals! The humble home VCR changed everything - if you didn’t see a movie in theatres, or like in this case were too young to be allowed in to see it, you’d missed it and it would be a good few years before it was likely to turn up on television. So suddenly gaining access to movies, that only a few months ago were in theatres, was incredibly exciting. Even more thrilling was that video rental was being picked by garages, off licences and convenience stores - and most of them were only too happy to ignore a movie’s classification, and therefore kids everywhere were waltzing home with adult fare such as Dawn of the Dead, I Spit On Your Grave and Driller Killer.

So when ever I think of this movie, I still vividly recall the massive buzz I got when my mate rang up and said ‘We’ve just got a video player! Wanna come over and watch Friday 13th?”. Man that was so exciting – I was going to see an X film! Thank you space age technology and the lapsed morality of the local rental store!

And needless to say I loved the movie. I was somewhat surprised that generally the gore quotient wasn’t much higher than late Hammer flicks such as Hands of the Ripper, but I was totally blown away when Savini pulls out all the stops with Kevin Bacon’s impaling and the beheading of Mrs Voorhees. However what really impressed me was the atmosphere and suspense; there was a lot more to this film than just the much talked-about splatter, it had a story to tell and built to a truly thrilling climax.

So many years later, would the original hold up? It had been a long time since I last saw it, and I hoped this wouldn’t be one of those occasions where you revisit something from your youth and end up wishing you’d stuck with your original memories of it. And thankfully that wasn’t the case. In fact, I came away rather impressed!

Although director Sean Cunningham and write Victor Miller have both admitted that they conceived this movie as purely as a cash-in on Halloween, in the end they delivered far more than just a cheap knock-off. The easy route would have been to simply to recreate Halloween in a different location, with the biggest creative choice being the new killer’s mask. But Miller’s decision to keep the killer’s identity secret until the finale adds a whole different dynamic to the film. In Halloween we not only know who the killer is right from the start but also his motivations, but in Friday 13th we don’t know the killer’s identity or why it’s all happening. So while Halloween creates its tensions and atmosphere with shocks and jump scares, Friday 13th builds up suspense with its mysteries. The whodunit plot allows Cunningham a broader directorial palette than just rehashing Halloween’s cat and mouse antics. In fact, the film actually owes more to Psycho than Carpenter’s opus. In terms of plot and structure there are many similarities; both are whodunits, Mrs Voorhees’ derangement is pretty much an inversion of Norman Bates’, and Harry Manfredini’s score more than echoes Bernard Herrmann’s famous music to murder girls by.

And although he may be just borrowing from Hitch and Carpenter, I was impressed with Cunningham’s direction. And I didn’t expect to saying that! Not only does he deliver a film with a solid accumulating pace, he actually delivers a fair few shots that go above and beyond the call of duty for an exploitation film. Particularly whenever Crystal Lake is in view, Cunningham has gone out of his way to frame some simply beautiful scenes using the reflections in the water. And considering the low budget and short shooting times you really have to give the guy a lot credit for making the effort. It’s true that Cunningham isn’t a world class director and you could say his motivation for making this movie was purely commercial, if not actually cynical, but in spite all of that the film shows that he approached the actual direction with some artistic vision.

The famous end sequence of the film showcases both this visual flair and his ability to craft a story. A real hack wouldn’t have bothered giving us the memorable set-up shots of the drifting canoe against a backdrop of trees displaying the first touches of autumn, never mind considering to catch the reflections. Equally other journeyman directors would have been content to close the film with the jump scare of Jason leaping out of the water. Cunningham however continues and follows this final scare up in great style with the hospital scene and the “Boy? What boy?’ routine. Again I really didn’t expect to be saying this, but the film’s conclusion shows considerable directorial finesse. He’s delivered a Carrie-inspired final shock to get you jumping out of your seat but then with the coda he attempts something more ambitious; he wants to give the audience one last unnerving chill that will have them nervously looking over their shoulders after they leave the theatre. He pulls in closer and closer through the hospital scene until Adrienne King’s eyes are filling the screen as she delivers the last haunting line “Then he must be still out there…” and dissolves back the placid lake.

It’s not only brilliantly eerie but it also lends weight to the Jason scare as it quite cunningly opens the door for audience interpretation. Although Jason’s appearance was conceived as a nightmare sequence, the coda doesn’t just write it off as ‘it was all a dream!’ which always diminishes a scare. Instead the audience is left wondering “was it a nightmare?” or “Was it Jason’s ghost?” or even “Holy Jesus Living Fuck! Is there a scabby slaphead kid living in that fucking lake?!?”

It’s also important to remember that no one was expecting this movie to be that successful, let alone make enough money to warrant making a sequel. When this movie was made sequels were generally not nearly as common as they are today, and at this point no one was even talking about a follow-up to the mighty Halloween - indeed it was only the slew of imitators that kick-started the development of a sequel. So Friday 13th’s ending was constructed this way purely for the sake of freaking out the audience.

And I’d suggest that it’s the finale that really made this movie. In his epic ramble through the horror genre Danse Macabre, Stephen King defines three categories of scares, which he handily summarised recently on Twitter - 

"The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there..."

Tweeted 13th January 2014

Now the climax of Friday 13th scores a triple whammy. First we have the gross-out of Mrs Voorhees beheaded, then the horror of Jason rising from the depths and finally the terror of the “what if?” close. Cunningham and Miller not only hit all three, but got them in the most effective order too, ensuring that their movie would linger in the minds of the audience long after the countless other Halloween clones had been forgotten. And as we’ll see later, subsequent movies in the series attempted to replicate the success of this ending but failed to grasp the key elements that made it work so memorably.

And speaking of key elements, what is established in this first film? To begin with the most important thing is the bare bones of the formula laid out here –

teens + killer x gore + nudity = box office hit

This is the template not only for the rest of the series (including the remake) but for the slasher genre as a whole. But note that there’s still a key phrase in the equation missing. Can you tell what it is yet? We’ll come back to this in Part II…

Admittedly the amount of flesh on show here is coy by today’s standards and even tame compared with the grindhouse pictures of the time. Quite possibly Cunningham had his eye on the mainstream market and so resisted the temptation to shoot as many bare breasts as possible, but the concept is still definitely there.

Similarly the gore is pretty restrained compared to the splatter that soaked subsequent movies. Now this wasn’t just down to the advances in special make-up effects pioneered in the ‘80s; Tom Savini had already provided some jaw dropping gore in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead. But Romero’s movie had gone out unrated by the MPAA – a risky proposition for any film-maker. So considering that the point of making Friday 13th was to emulate Halloween’s box office success, you can understand why there wasn’t more gore.

Also it’s worth noting that the actual kills are fairly straightforward in this movie. They are mainly all slashings and stabbing and even the standout deaths, such as Kevin Bacon’s impaling and the beheading, though stunning are still treated as realistic murders. It’s only in later films do we get the gimmicky set-piece kills with odd implements being utilised and Jason punching holes in people.

But despite these qualifiers the formula elements are definitely in place, including the most iconic of all – the use of the killer’s POV. This is one of the biggest steals from Halloween, although to be fair it wasn’t exactly new when Carpenter got his hands on it. But it is one of the defining structures of any slasher movie. And aside from it’s ‘straight’ usage to, this first movie uses it to toy with the audience – sometimes when we think we are being shown the unseen assailant stalking the shreddies, it turns out that it’s actually just one of the other characters. It’s a classic fake-out, one that ranks right up there with the spooky noise turns out to be the family pet routine, and we’ll see it turn up many times later in the series and indeed countless other slasher flicks.

The next key feature is isolation. As Victor Miller explains in His Name Was Jason the camp deep in the countryside provides a plausible reason for the kids to be alone and for the authorities to be too far away to save them. And more generally, a small band of characters cut off from the rest of society is a classic trope in not only horror movies but thrillers and action-adventure films; any plot threat soon loses its credibility if the characters can just hop on a bus and get the hell out of there.

This feature is well set up in the first movie. As well as the afore mentioned artistic shots of the surrounding landscape emphasising the remote location, other features such as the hitch-hiking girl’s death also establish how far away from the rest of civilisation Camp Crystal Lake is. Later films didn’t pay nearly as much attention to the plot’s geography – indeed as the series progresses Crystal Lake becomes a very crowded place. But love it or hate it, one thing the remake got right was recreate the same sense of wilderness of this first film.

Finally we come to the last key element – Jason himself. This movie sets down the classic mythos for the series, establishing the origin story. Interestingly though, considering how Part 2 and subsequent sequels have Jason as the killer, it could be argued that in terms of narrative that this movie feels more like a prequel. Considering how this year’s reboot chose to set up the mythos, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are tentative plans to do a straight remake of the original as a prequel at some point.

However the big fan-divider with the story presented in the original is whether Jason is alive or dead. And to be fair, the series as a whole isn’t sure itself – the earlier films are going with the idea that he was only presumed dead, but once we have zombie Jason the later films seem to switch to the idea that he did die and rose again with the death of his mother.

This was one aspect of the saga, I was very intrigued to see how the reimagining would handle. As it turns out, they fudge the issue – when we get the camp fire retelling of the tale, all that’s stated is “that Jason came back” – so we still have the same question of whether he died or survived. Presumably these details were left vague to allow narrative room for future resurrections but I’d also suspect they were trying to please all the fans of the franchise – after all Friday fans can be divided as to whether they prefer Jason as mutant mountain man or rotted revenant. (I’m just glad there’s isn’t a sizeable fan base for the death worm from Hell variant…)

However to get back the original, I think the ambiguity works well in context. Although in the terms of the series it leaves the kind of continuity holes that drive fanboys round the twist, looking at this film in isolation, it doesn’t matter whether he’s alive or dead, and it adds a pleasing final mystery to the conclusion.

So then to wrap up at last … Bet you didn’t think I’d find so much to write about did ya? No, nor did I! But that I think is testament to how good this movie actually is. Although it may seem slow moving compared to modern films or even later entries in the series, I think this works in its favour - remember it’s actually a more of a murder mystery than the usual slasher fare, so the extended focus on the characters and the slow build towards the climax is very fitting for this type of story. And it’s refreshingly different from what you expect from either the franchise. In many ways, it’s only in Part 2 that the series ventures fully into the slasher genre…

JASON AD 2009

So at last it’s here - the long awaited reboot/reimagining/remake of the seminal slasher Friday 13th! And while it’s cleaning up at the box office, this film seems to have sharply divided horror fans right down the middle as cleaning as a machete blow from Jason himself…

Now it’s fair to say we’re currently living through a period of Hollywood remake hell. Recent years have brought us a plethora of needless remakes from the competent but pointless new version of The Omen to outright atrocities like Neil ‘I should have known better’ LaBute’s The Wicker Man. So when it was announced that Friday 13th was getting the remake treatment, many were quick to cry foul. And when it was revealed that Michael Bay was to have a hand in the production and Marcus Nispel, who has previous form in the remake game, was to direct, a lot of fans were bracing themselves for the worst.

However, for me these announcements actually gave me some hope for the project. Bay’s involvement at least guaranteed a decent budget and for all the flaws of 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nispel demonstrated a confident feel for the genre. While his film falls squarely into the superfluous remake category, it was well constructed with a decent pace, suspense and a gloriously grimy, grungy atmosphere.

Of course it couldn’t hold a candle to the 1974 original, but that film is a truly unique piece of cinematic savagery that no director could ever possibly hope to match. Even director Tobe Hooper couldn’t ever replicate its intensity in his other works. It really was a case of catching lightning in a bottle. But Nispel gave it a shot and gave it his best. He wisely didn’t attempt to catch the same gruelling documentary feel of the original and instead retold the story in a more conventional horror idiom. If the original is like finding yourself trapped in a deserted house which you discover is really haunted, Nispel’s remake was like going on a high end ghost train ride.

Now the original Friday 13th ranks alongside the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the Great Horror Movies Hall of Fame but it is a very different kind of bloodbath. Although it is an undoubted genre classic, it isn’t the unique cinema experience that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is.

Although it’s often written off as a Halloween knock off with extra added gore, the 1980 film is more accurately a splatter version of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. And in terms of its construction, it’s a horror rollercoaster ride. So considering what Nispel delivered with his previous venture in the remake field, to me at least, he seemed an ideal candidate to helm a new version of Friday 13th. If he could bring the same high production values and direction to the table, then surely we’d get the remake we’d all like to see…

Or would we? Judging from the mixed critical reactions, it would seem that for a significant proportion of viewers simply recreating the original with a modern gloss is simply not enough. Now before getting on the actual review of the movie, let me lay out what I wanted from this remake.

Firstly, although generally the announcement of a remake makes me groan, I actually thought the idea of remaking Friday 13th was a reasonable proposition. And here’s why – remakes can be divided roughly into three categories. The first is what I’ll term the ‘Blasphemy!” camp, where studios decide that it would be a great idea to redo a classic and fail to realise that some films are unique. Films like Wings of Desire, Psycho or The Wicker Man are classic because of their originality of vision and construction and you’d be an idiot to try. You can’t top perfection which is why even the most coke addled movie exec would shy away from attempting a remake of the likes of Some Like it Hot, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music or Casablanca. And even if you do manage to turn out a decent new version like, for example, Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead, everyone will say it’s not a patch on the original and still wonder why they bothered.

The second camp is what I’ll call ‘the Retold Tales’. These are the endless versions of well known stories – you can remake Frankenstein ad infinitum. Now we are not just talking about multiple adaptations of a same literary source here. Generally when studios decide to do another version of a novel generally they refer back to the original adaptation rather than the literary source. If you hunt through the archive and have a gander at my review of James Whale’s Frankenstein, you see how the 1931 film creates the template for all subsequent cinema adaptations of Mary Shelley’s gothic tale. Similarly the 1939 Basil Rathbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles sets out the blueprint for all following Holmes films.

Some stories you can tell over and over again. Naturally this will yield mixed results but you can end several films that may lay claim to be the best version. For example which of these are better - the Siegel or Kaufman version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Which vision of The Thing do you favour – Hawks or Carpenter? Or which of the three editions of The 30 Steps?

Now the third category is the most nebulous - “The Recurring Formula”. Here we have movies and whole series of film that all feature the same basic plot outline and/or the same character. The good illustration of this category is the canon of Mummy films. The original 1932 Karloff picture created the bare bones of the Mummy concept and storyline, it was then semi-remade, or rather what we’d called rebooted these days as The Mummy’s Hand which gave us the classic bandage wrapped horror. Now it’s subsequent Universal sequels are all basics further remakes. The later Hammer Mummy cycle repeats this trend of sequels being essentially a new film from the same template. And nearly all other Mummy flicks, bar the handful drawing on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, are pretty much reworkings of the formula perfected The Mummy’s Hand.

Now it’s into this category I’d place the new Friday 13th. As great as the original is, it isn’t a complete and original cinematic vision which places it safely out the ‘Blasphemy’ camp. And we are not dealing will a “Retold Tale’ either as the Nispel version doesn’t recreate the plot of the first movie. Now the first Friday does have a cracking plot – the whodunit element really adds to the suspense and lifts the film from being a knock-off of Halloween to standing alongside it as a seminal slasher. And it’s the strength of the story that would qualify as remake in the second the category. But they couldn’t retell the original story without risking alienating their prospective audience. Partly this is because the original twist ending that it’s Mrs Voorhees carrying out the slayings is now just too well known, but more importantly, in the public consciousness the formula for a Friday 13th is firmly established - for the average cinemagoer Friday 13th = Jason + hockey mask.

The thing about formula derived movies is that it’s the way you tell ‘em that counts. Or to put it another it ain’t what you do, but the way that you it do. It doesn’t matter how hoary the formula is provided you can use it effectively or inventively. For example, Alien uses the same formula as 1958’s It! The Terror From Beyond Space but to wildly different results. So all I really expected from the Nispel version was a good solid rendering of a Jason rampage, well shot and directed with plenty of kills and thrills. I wanted to see the formula treated in a serious rather hokey manner. I wanted to see inventive kills and most importantly to Jason to be a threatening figure. What I didn’t want to see was the formula broken with needless reimaginings such as recasting it in a torture porn mould. I didn’t want any oh-so post modern semi-ironic humour. And I definitely didn’t want a long examination of Jason’s backstory that destroys the character …. Rob Zombie I’m looking at you!

And thankfully the movie lived to all these expectations! I really had a blast with this flick. It takes plot elements from the first few films in the original franchise and weaves a solid story from them. Its dynamically shot and builds a great atmosphere, with the locations really giving us the sense of being out in the wilderness – the original’s screenwriter Victor Miller stated that an important element for any Friday 13th story is that characters should be isolated.

More importantly Nispel executes the formula perfectly; the film moves at a cracking pace and you’re never left waiting long for the next slice of action. – avoiding that the perennial pit fall of slasher movies. The characters may be slight but they are well sketched in and have a few more dimensions that the usual shreddies that populate such movies. And their performances are good too, Travis Van Winkle plays a perfect prick and Jared Padalecki makes a sympathetic hero.

Now it’s true that the movie is pretty predictable – indeed trawling various reviews on the net it’s probably the #1 complaint. However with a formula-based film of course it’s going to be predictable and partly that’s the point. We go to Jason movies to see him slice and dice, in same way we settle down with a Sherlock Holmes to see him solve a mystery. The formula doesn’t really make a big deal of the game of guessing who will survive - the real surprises in a Friday film are he carries out the kills, not which order it happens in. In this new version we get a fine mix of kills that are both inventive and pay homage to the franchise’s past classics. And although if you are familiar with the slasher genre, you’ll have no trouble guessing who’s for the chop next, the movie does manage to throw in a few surprises in when they happen.

Of course the real key to the formula is the portrayal of Jason himself. Derek Mears throws himself into the role and really brings the character to life with his subtle body language. Some fans seem to have had a lot of problems with the version presented in this film, but personally I really liked the leaner and fast moving Jason. I also had no problem with him laying the odd trap as it gives the character a sense of intelligence and cunning. Some fans though have felt it was adding Jigsaw elements to him. Now if he’s been creating elaborate Dr Phibes styles kills, fair enough but the occasional man trap fits in with the concept of Jason as the ultimate hunter of humans.

Similarly I didn’t have any beef with Jason having a network of tunnels under Camp Crystal Lake. Jason may have started life as just another masked psycho but now he’s a truly archetypal monster with more in common with a fairy tale ogre than Norman Bates. And as such it’s appropriate that he has a lair beneath the earth. For me these new additions add a just the right amount of freshness to Jason, without damaging the character concept and ultimately enhance his menace.

SPOILER WARNING!





The most contentious issue of the new Jason however is that fact that he took a hostage. Now there are those who have denounced this for as sheer heresy, but I felt in the context of the plot it provided a genuinely unexpected twist. And while I agree on principle that Jason wouldn’t take hostages, I wouldn’t say the abduction is this movie was entirely contrary to his character. It’s well established that Jason has a powerful connection with his mother so it does make psychological sense that he would kidnap a girl who he thinks resembles her. And it’s no more illogical than Ginny being able to impersonate Pamela Voorhees in the finale of Friday 13th Part 2.





SPOILER OVER

All in all, this Friday 13th was a great deal of fun and promises a bright future for the franchise. Now it’s not really that scary – but hey I’m a desensitised bastard and in the packed theatre where I saw it people were jumping and screaming like crazy. And in all honesty I didn’t expect it to really give me the chills. But it did deliver the thrills and kills I wanted. And I did have a few niggles with it. To start with there’s the usual dumbness of the characters but that’s such a very common failing in horror movies it doesn’t really count. Secondly I would have liked more use of the Manfredini’s iconic ki ki ki … ma ma ma music, but I understand why they didn’t use it more – you really don’t want the soundtrack telegraphing Jason’s presence all the time and wrecking the he pops up from nowhere moments. And finally, it could have been bloodier. But considering that Jason is the MPAA what nunchucks are the BBFC, I’m not surprised they kept the gore brief. But I understand that the DVD will feature an unrated cut the splatter left in. (Incidentally the production blog here intriguingly announces that the DVD release will feature an alternative version of the film …)

Overall I’d count this remake a real success. It’s not the perfect horror movie but it’s a terrific Friday 13th movie and paves the way for future instalments. My only real criticism of the movie is that it perhaps just played too safe and I think the formula could stand being a little more edgy, with a little more character developments and a little unpredictable. But I do respect the fact that Nispel and co. chose not to take too many risks and stuck very closely to the classic elements of the original films. However I do wonder whether the alternative DVD cut mentioned above will rectify this. As it stands though, this is a movie (or perhaps I should say ‘the theatrical cut’) not only honours the spirit of the franchise but has Friday 13th written all the way through it like a stick of rock. It’s a solid addition to the canon and a great start to a whole new saga…


PS On the way I earwigged the following mind-mangling exchange …

Girl 1– I’m glad we didn’t see this at Halloween!
Girl 2 – Why?
Girl 1– Because that’s when he comes out isn’t it!
Girl 2 – Err I think you’re thinking of Michael Myers from the … well, from the Halloween films…
Girl 1– Oh so that wasn’t Michael???
Girl 2 – No, that was Jason. Michael’s a different film series. The clue’s in the title…
Girl 1– Oh I see … I was wondering why they’d turned into a redneck….

PPS Paramount & New Line – YOU STILL SUCK!!!