“Camp Blood – they’re opening that place again?”
Before starting this feature, I had never seen Friday the 13th. There’s always a sense of trepidation when you first watch an old horror film that’s considered a classic: will it hold up? Will it be scary, or unbelievably dated? I had similar questions going into Cujo, and my doubts were quickly assuaged by the fact that Cujo is really damn good. Friday the 13th is not. Friday the 13th begs the question: can a film be a classic if it’s not any good?
We all know the plot by now. This is an assembly-line slasher flick, made somewhat more interesting by its remote location, Camp Crystal Lake (great name, I’ll grant the film that), the infamous location of a drowning in 1957 and a double murder in 1958. Twenty years later, a group of homogenous, interchangeable counselors show up to get the camp ready for operation, and they start getting picked off one by one.
And before I go totally gung-ho shitting on this movie – and I hated it, guys, hated it more than Pulse or Scream 3 – I want to point out a few things that I liked. The cinematography by Barry Abrams is at times painterly and gorgeous; one of the film’s last shots, of an exhausted girl passed out in a canoe, all of it reflected on the lake’s surface, is hall-of-fame beautiful. It belongs in a better movie, and seeing it makes you with that Abrams had shot more than six films. The score by Harry Manfredini is surprisingly unnerving and tactfully used. The overture in particular is jarring and discordant, and brings to mind Samuel Butler’s “Madea’s Dance of Vengeance.” It’s a shame that Manfredini has spent his career scoring B-movies like A Talking Cat!?! and Santa’s Summer House, because his work here is incredibly impressive, and arguably elevates the turgid, lifeless move it accompanies.
Okay, now that I’ve complimented some aspects of this film, can I go back to shitting all over it? I can? Good.
It’s hard to become invested in the proceedings of a horror film when I don’t even know the names of any of the people getting killed. Go ahead, describe any character in Friday the 13th without mentioning their race, gender, or hairstyle. The only one who sticks out is the camp owner Steve, and that’s because he looks goddamn ridiculous, in his Hall and Oates mustache, Fred-from-Scooby-Doo neckerchief, and cut off jean shorts (well, maybe him and local nutjob Ralph, who with his over-the-top proclamations of “You’ll never come back again!” make him a clear inspiration for the harbinger character in The Cabin in the Woods).
Each character is completely interchangeable, but on the plus side, the film makes a compelling if inadvertent case for more diversity in casting. Here are some notes I took to describe them, because I legitimately did not know anybody’s name until probably 70 minutes into a 90-minute movie. Brenda is “the one who looks like Cobie Smulders.” Alice is “the one who looks like the waitress from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Ned is “the weird goofy one.” Bill is “the other one.” Jack is “Kevin Bacon.” I don’t give a shit about any of these characters (another note I took was “This movie shouldn’t be so easy to not pay attention to”), and thus can’t get invested in the story. By the time Alice emerges as the prototypical final girl, it means nothing, because we don’t know enough about Alice to care that she’s the final girl.
About that – I will admit that Friday the 13th pulls a mildly impressive switcheroo, by first introducing us to Annie (Robbi Morgan), hitchhiking her way up to Camp Crystal Lake so she can start her job as the camp cook. Eventually she hitches a ride with the wrong person, and gets her throat cut as a result. It surprised me because the film killed off the character it was clearly setting up as its sole survivor. But it begs the question: why kill off the only character you give enough of a fuck about to actually develop? Guys, I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but the screenplay for Friday the 13th is a goddamn master class in ineptitude.
And it gets worse from there. Director Sean S. Cunningham operates with a point-and-shoot mindset, and it seem as though his cinematographer got shots in spite of him. The film’s two biggest gimmicks – the twists and the shots from the killer’s point of view – were ripped off wholesale from Psycho and Jaws, respectively. In interviews, Cunningham even admitted to coasting off of the success of Halloween. So why the hell is Friday the 13th considered a classic?
My guess would be the iconography. Jason Voorhees’ chilling hockey mask and machete doesn’t even make an appearance here (he wouldn’t show up until Friday the 13th Part II), but I think our collective memory convinced us that his origin story is worth watching. It’s not. Do you hear me?
IT’S NOT.
The killer is actually Jason’s mother, seeking revenge on any and all camp counselors, because her son died at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958. That would be a decent twist, if it weren’t an inversion of the same twist from Pyscho, and if Betsy Palmer didn’t straight-up act like Calculon from Futurama. She chews the shit out of the scenery so much that I’m convinced she was trying to save the production money on its catering budget. She has a few terrible fight scenes with Alice that are unmistakably the work of actors trying really, really hard not to hurt each other for realsies. When Alice finally cuts off Mrs. Voorhees’ head with a canoe paddle, it’s as dumb and inconsequential as the rest of the film.
There is a holy triumvirate of ’80s teen-slasher movies: Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween (which, yes, came out in 1978, but it’s close enough and did a lot to inform the genre, if not invent it outright). I’ve never seen Nightmare either, but it’s got to be better than this. Friday the 13th is a rote, disposable horror film that has aged horribly, and is only offered goodwill because of the staying power of its monster, which doesn’t show up until the goddamn sequel. The sequel, which, I might add, I now solemnly swear to never see.
I don’t care if horror films seem dated. I can let go of my cynicism and try to put myself in the mind of a filmgoer from that era. Hell, I saw Nosferatu on the big screen a few months ago and loved it, and Nosferatu was made in 19-goddamn-22. So, no, I don’t care if horror films are old. I care if they’re fucking stupid. Friday the 13th isn’t the kind of film that would be parodied by Scream – it’s the kind of film that would be parodied by Scary Movie.
10/1: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
10/2: The Exorcist
10/3: Pontypool
10/4: Hocus Pocus
10/5: The Orphanage
10/6: Rosemary’s Baby
10/7: Alien
10/8: Scream series
10/9: Scream series
10/10: Cujo
10/11: The Cabin in the Woods
10/12: Pulse
10/13: The Babadook
10/14: Friday the 13th
10/15: The Last House on the Left (both versions)
10/16: The Thing (both versions)
10/17: Little Shop of Horrors
10/18: Hush
10/19: Silent Hill
10/20: The Shining
10/21: Funny Games (2007)
10/22: Evil Dead series
10/23: Evil Dead series
10/24: The Mist
10/25: The Ninth Gate
10/26: The Fly
10/27: A Nightmare on Elm Street
10/28: The Nightmare Before Christmas
10/29: 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later
10/30: It
10/31: Halloween (either version)
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