Post by ronnierocketago on Oct 31, 2008 20:04:08 GMT
FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) - ***1/2
In the very least, Sean S. Cunningham's FRIDAY THE 13TH captures perhaps arguably a primal fear we all would rather not want to face: to be walking alone in the dead of night in the woods during a rainstorm, cloaked in pitch darkness, with only the weak glare of your lantern lighting your world. That may sound very elemental, and yet you would be shocked with the filmmakers influenced by FRIDAY over the years usually fail at such a simple task because they're worried about filling out their gore and titty quotas, which seem to be what only concerns only horror fans these days.
Which is ironic, considering that Cunningham was a plagarizer himself. He had produced Wes Craven's infamous rape-sexploitation thriller THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (an unofficial remake of Ingmar Bergman's JUNGFRUKALLAN) and shot the shameless BAD NEWS BEARS rip-off in HERE COME THE TIGERS, but when Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS and John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN murdered at the box-office, Cunningham famously took out a full-age ad on Variety announcing his own slasher holiday-based movie in FRIDAY THE 13TH....before he had a script, much less an idea for the plot.
If anything, the title makes no sense in relation to the storyline. Unless I'm mistaken, none of the murders ever took place on the 13th day of the month, a day before the Weekly Sabbath, and the characters never mention the date. More or less Cunningham came up with a cool title and then built everything around it. Yet it's interesting how Cunningham studied slashers like Tobe Hopper's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, and Mario Bava's "Giallo" works from Italy to emulate their success, and yet it's the smash success of FRIDAY THE 13TH that made the 1980s the Decade of the Slasher. If HALLOWEEN and previous efforts established certain trends and traditions of the genre, then FRIDAY firmed up permanently for better or for worse such genre cliches and "rules." I would even argue that every subsequent slasher wasn't xeroxing HALLOWEEN, but in fact FRIDAY THE 13TH, what with that early scene with the stupid hitchiking camp counselor who makes the fatal mistake of running into the labrynth woods instead of the highway road leading back to town.
The forgery became more valuable perhaps than the original.
In re-watching FRIDAY THE 13TH after all these years, I was shocked to realize how Cunningham had shot a much better picture than I had previously given him credit for. In fact, it's a surprisingly effective thriller, if at least because Cunningham doesn't drag down his economical narrative with stupid bullshit. A mistake that many imitators have made is trying to cram a square peg into a round hole in such movies by scripting pointless sub-plots and insufferable melodrama sequences that go nowhere, or what hacks call character development. Save a scene over the heroine (Adrienne King) squabling with the camp owner about their uselesss relationship, Cunningham's characters are never fleshed out, but such disposable archetypes are probably pretty appropriate for a slick genre exercise like FRIDAY because they actually don't get in the way of the movie, if that makes any sense.
Let's put it another way. The original FRIDAY, unlike the rest of the franchise, doesn't focus on the killer. Think about it, people watch the sequels mostly to see new and creative ways that Jason Vorhees chops up the kids. He's the star, and technically the protagonist, since he kickstarts those plots by being resurrected or whatever. But with the original FRIDAY, the killer is a mere shape, a suggestion, a shadow, we don't know who or what this murderer is until the big climatic reveal*. This gives power to those POV shots, where the victims see who this psychopath is, but we aren't ever allowed to, that adds a tinge of mystery and suspense beyond horny teens trying not to become maggot food.
Another mistep that other thrillers make is that they want to foreshadow the identity of the suspect by rather, how shall I say, clumsy and idiotic manners, ala the "Swerve" (i.e. evidence ridiculously piles up against one character, then with a Vince Russo-esque swerve, its actually someone else!) So we must give a tip of hat to FRIDAY scripter Victor Miller for cleverly giving away a vital clue early on without most of us realizing it. Watch it again, and you'll know what I mean.
I like Cunningham's random touches here and there. From the girl talking about her bizarre dream of the rain turning to blood to "Strip MONOPOLY" (what if a player landed on "Go To Jail"?), but consider too the scene with the snake. At first it's played off as goofy fun as the gals screech and guys try to flush it out of the cabin, until someone takes a machete and decapitates the reptile, at which point the atmosphere immediately becomes grim. Not necessary really, but it re-enforces the finity of life, and how quickly it could end at the swipe of a blade. Also when the body crashes through the window onto the feet of King, look at her response. It isn't a shriek or screaming, but Cunningham directs her to panic. She is immediately numb with brain freeze, then basically she shits herself scared, or at least I assume that's the look.
This reminds me of my reaction to when I witnessed on YouTube the awful footage from the TWILIGHT ZONE movie shoot where actor Victor Morrow was killed by a falling helicopter. I didn't cry, I didn't yell...I just fucking sat there in shock and awe[/b], and not in a good way.
People have also commentated, seriously and not, about how the killers in most slashers dispatch people who commit "sinful" actions like smoking dope, having premarital sex, etc. With Cunningham's FRIDAY, this oddly gives off a theme of symbosis between sex and violence. From a point-blank shot of a woman grabbing a man's bare-ass while her bossom is exposed to the counselors in erotic frolocking at the lake where the camera unintentionally captures an erection in a tight speedo (which I DIDN'T need to see), for all of the bloody destruction that will occur, there is also simultaneously symbolism of procreation, life and death, especially when a young Kevin Bacon after mating gets impaled through the neck by a phallic arrow. Though honestly, I doubt make-up master Tom Savini or Cunningham had that in mind.
Anyway, Cunningham also presents the threat credibly of a stalker out there somewhere on that rainy night at this summer camp. Again, sounds obvious duh, but when is the last time in a film that in a dimly-lit bathroom when a shower curtain moves, you worriedly ask yourself: "Is he there?" Slashers are parodied for being so predictable, so its nice that in the early days, that a genre entry actually made you sometimes nicely miscalculate. Credit must be given to composer Harry Manfredini for giving us not just that iconic score ( "Cha-Cha-Cha...Ah-Ah-Ah"), but also for playing Bernard Hermann to Cunningham's Hitchcock in having fun at just finely manipulating the viewer's expectations.
And yet Cunningham can build that tension without music, for take when the heroine (Adrienne King) is in the cabin making tea. It's a lengthy considerable sequence of silence, under minimal lighting, and you probably assume something will happen. It doesn't, but the anxiety and worry within you nearly boils over. Now that's good filmmaking.
Yet the most memorable moment in FRIDAY THE 13TH for me might just be the legendary ending. It riffed off Brian DePalma's CARRIE, but Cunningham actually one-ups DePalma(!) by afterwards returning the camera after the last jump scare to that lake, for a good minute before that dissolve. With Manfredini's music, we aren't left as terrified as much as we are left uneasy with this eerie conclusion, with the suggestion that while the assaulter may have been defeated, there is still....something out there at the bottom of that lake, an enigmatic curse of dread and expiration will forever always hover around these lands. That last shot is like how the jungles of deep Africa and the Amazon Basin was represented back Europe during the Age of Exploration ...."Trekkers beware!"[/b]
With Michael Bay's upcoming-produced FRIDAY THE 13TH remake, such subtle jarring psyche-emotionalism will be lost in favor of apparently dumb(er) victims, more complacent and uninspired filmmaking, and an awkward bullied-emo storyline that explains away Jason's murdering tendency, which makes no sense to me. I mean I would assume that kids both were screwing around when he was drowning and decapitated his mother were enough motivation, but hey what do I know compared to the director of ARMAGEDDON. right?
Those FRIDAY THE 13TH movies have a global fanbase, and while I'm indifferent to that series, I must respect them in that the original FRIDAY was pretty good, just shy of being totally awesome. With Bay's knives pointed in the direction of FRIDAY, me and those fans must ask ourselves in regards to our baby:
W.W.P.V.D.? (What Would Pamela Voorhees Do?)