Sean S. Cunningham was a theater director, who went into film production in the late 60's. After directing and producing several low budget films, he hit gold when he produced The Last House on the Left in 1972, directed by a young discovery of his named Wes Craven. He went on to direct several other films through the 70's, all comedies, though none of them to success of Last House. Then, in 1978, a little film called Halloween came out. It became not only the 10th highest grossing film of that year, but the highest grossing independent film made up until that point. Cunningham wanted to seize on that success, by making his "own version", to put it charitably. Victor Miller, a playwright whom Cunningham had previously worked with one of those aforementioned comedies, a Bad News Bears rip-off called Here Come the Tigers , consciously made the decision to follow Halloween's example, churning out a script in two weeks. Originally named A Long Night at Camp Blood, Cunningham saw the title Friday the 13th as a more striking title, and, before the script was even finished, put an ad with that title, which did manage to get some of his old investors to cover the film's budget. (A reference to the date was later inserted at the request of Cunningham) Famed horror special effects maestro Tom Savini provided the effects for the film. With the exception of actors like Kevin Bacon (who had made his first appearance in 1978's Animal House) and veteran actress Betsy Palmer, the cast was mostly unknown. It was filmed on an actual, functioning campground in New Jersey, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, which is still around today. Upon release, it was savaged by critics. Gene Siskel, critic for the Chicago Tribune and the other half of Siskel & Ebert, hated the film so much, he put the addresses of both Charles Bludhorn (owner of Paramount, the distributor of the film) and Betsy Palmer in his review for people to complain. (Amusingly, the latter address was apparently wrong). Though, this may have only boosted sales, since it made nearly 110x it's original budget, and started off one of horror's most well-known franchises.
The film opens in Camp Crystal Lake in 1958, with two camp counselors (Willie Adams, Debra S. Hayes) having some "alone time", being murdered by an unseen assailant. Twenty years later, Steven Christy (Peter Brouwer) is attempting to reopen the camp, despite the rumors that it is haunted due to a number of strange occurrences happening at the camp over the years, including a young boy drowning in 1957. One of the counselors he brought in, Anne (Robbi Morgan) is undeterred by local warnings about the camp, but is killed on her way to the camp, once again by an unseen assailant. The assailant then observes as the other counselors. We watch as Alice (Adrienne King), Bill (Harry Crosby), Jack (Kevin Bacon), Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and Ned (Mark Nelson), settle in for some down time before the children arrive. However, they are warned by Ralph (Walt Gorney), that the campgrounds are haunted, and indeed, they are soon targeted for the next curse...
The effects for this film are great. As mentioned, Tom Savini, who was behind the make-up for many of George Romero's films, did the effects here, and they are very effective. It looks realistic, at least to me, and it helps increase the terror of those scenes. There are a number of good scares in this, and even some decent jumpscares. I'm going to spoil the ending for this, because I need to talk about this. However, given that my previous attempts at color-coding haven't gone over well, what I'll do is add two large bold Spoiler tags in front and at the end to indicate where a spoiler begins and ends. Ready? (Spoiler) Jason is not the killer in this movie. I know, I didn't even know this until several months ago. He's mentioned, and his drowning drives the real villain of this film, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). Palmer only took the role for money, deriding the script, but on screen, she actually is an intimidating presence, and she is legitimately menacing. Her warped mindset (where Jason seems to talk to her mentally) is incredibly creepy in and of itself. Not to say Jason doesn't appear at all. In fact, one of those jumpscares I mentioned is him jumping out of the lake at the very end to attack Alice, the last survivor. (Spoiler). Finally, the score is good, especially when scenes need to be spruced by a little terror.
Remember in the intro, when I said the filmmakers purposely ripped off Halloween. Yeah, it's obvious watching this. It rips off Halloween in so many places. The most notable is the fact the camera serves as the killer's eyes, which is cool when it's used sparingly, like in Halloween, but they use so many times here that the effect wears off, and it becomes dull. In fact, the movie takes the wrong elements of Halloween to rip off. It takes mostly superficial elements, like some of the kills and the camera shots, but not the way Halloween built up both Michael Myers and the tension that he evoked. This film has no real build-up for its villain and tension in any of scenes, which leads to my second problem. You notice how the synopsis of this was actually short and light on content. Aside from stuff that would spoil the film, there really isn't that much plot. It is mostly aimless and tedious, and most of it isn't particularly scary. I would've been fine that it had ripped off Halloween, had it been consistently scary or had a more condensed plot, such that the scares would have impact. As is, it just sort of rambles, until the third act.
I wasn't terribly fond of this. I didn't hate it, because it had technical chops and the acting was decent. However, it felt like very much like the knock-off of Halloween that it was intended as. Still, if you liked the technical aspects of horror films, this is a very good example, or if you just want a quick watch for Halloween. I might do the sequel next year, see if they improved. So, yeah, happy Friday the 13th, everyone.
Next, we begin the retrospective of the late George A. Romero with Martin, his personal favorite of his films.
The film opens in Camp Crystal Lake in 1958, with two camp counselors (Willie Adams, Debra S. Hayes) having some "alone time", being murdered by an unseen assailant. Twenty years later, Steven Christy (Peter Brouwer) is attempting to reopen the camp, despite the rumors that it is haunted due to a number of strange occurrences happening at the camp over the years, including a young boy drowning in 1957. One of the counselors he brought in, Anne (Robbi Morgan) is undeterred by local warnings about the camp, but is killed on her way to the camp, once again by an unseen assailant. The assailant then observes as the other counselors. We watch as Alice (Adrienne King), Bill (Harry Crosby), Jack (Kevin Bacon), Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and Ned (Mark Nelson), settle in for some down time before the children arrive. However, they are warned by Ralph (Walt Gorney), that the campgrounds are haunted, and indeed, they are soon targeted for the next curse...
The effects for this film are great. As mentioned, Tom Savini, who was behind the make-up for many of George Romero's films, did the effects here, and they are very effective. It looks realistic, at least to me, and it helps increase the terror of those scenes. There are a number of good scares in this, and even some decent jumpscares. I'm going to spoil the ending for this, because I need to talk about this. However, given that my previous attempts at color-coding haven't gone over well, what I'll do is add two large bold Spoiler tags in front and at the end to indicate where a spoiler begins and ends. Ready? (Spoiler) Jason is not the killer in this movie. I know, I didn't even know this until several months ago. He's mentioned, and his drowning drives the real villain of this film, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). Palmer only took the role for money, deriding the script, but on screen, she actually is an intimidating presence, and she is legitimately menacing. Her warped mindset (where Jason seems to talk to her mentally) is incredibly creepy in and of itself. Not to say Jason doesn't appear at all. In fact, one of those jumpscares I mentioned is him jumping out of the lake at the very end to attack Alice, the last survivor. (Spoiler). Finally, the score is good, especially when scenes need to be spruced by a little terror.
Remember in the intro, when I said the filmmakers purposely ripped off Halloween. Yeah, it's obvious watching this. It rips off Halloween in so many places. The most notable is the fact the camera serves as the killer's eyes, which is cool when it's used sparingly, like in Halloween, but they use so many times here that the effect wears off, and it becomes dull. In fact, the movie takes the wrong elements of Halloween to rip off. It takes mostly superficial elements, like some of the kills and the camera shots, but not the way Halloween built up both Michael Myers and the tension that he evoked. This film has no real build-up for its villain and tension in any of scenes, which leads to my second problem. You notice how the synopsis of this was actually short and light on content. Aside from stuff that would spoil the film, there really isn't that much plot. It is mostly aimless and tedious, and most of it isn't particularly scary. I would've been fine that it had ripped off Halloween, had it been consistently scary or had a more condensed plot, such that the scares would have impact. As is, it just sort of rambles, until the third act.
I wasn't terribly fond of this. I didn't hate it, because it had technical chops and the acting was decent. However, it felt like very much like the knock-off of Halloween that it was intended as. Still, if you liked the technical aspects of horror films, this is a very good example, or if you just want a quick watch for Halloween. I might do the sequel next year, see if they improved. So, yeah, happy Friday the 13th, everyone.
Next, we begin the retrospective of the late George A. Romero with Martin, his personal favorite of his films.
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