by Ian Watson
a porn grad looking to get rich.
Which is also true of Friday The 13th.
Having gained notoriety first as the director of Together (“Finally, an X-rated picture your wife or girlfriend can enjoy!”), then as the producer of The Last House On The Left, Sean S Cunningham turned out a string of flops before calling his friend Victor Miller in the summer of 1979 and saying, “Halloween is making a lot of money. Why don’t we rip it off?” Nobody who sought to imitate John Carpenter’s film did so because they admired its sophistication but because the $325,000 movie grossed $18,500,000 in North America alone, making it one of the most commercially successful independent films of the decade. Cunningham may not have been the first prospector at the site, but he was the next one to strike gold; when Paramount released Friday in May 1980, the $500, 000 quickie grossed $5.8m in its first three days. Of the studio’s pictures that year, only Urban Cowboy and Airplane! made more money.
For all its massive success, though, Friday’s most interesting aspects are what it blatantly copies (title, opening sequence, basic premise) and what it’s too unsophisticated to even attempt (widescreen cinematography, hiring name actors, slow-burn suspense). Every hoary cliché worked its way into Miller’s script: the scenic town with a Dark Past; the Prophet of Doom; the Comically Unhelpful Cop; the Car That Won’t Start; the Climactic Thunderstorm; the Talking Villain; the It-Was-Only-A-Dream Scene. You get a fair idea of what you’re in for when a camper approaches a dog and asks, “Do you speak English?”
Also, the fact that Friday was distributed by a major studio (rather than an independent outfit, as Shriek and Halloween were) cannot be overstated. Its success proved you didn’t need big stars, expensive effects or an Oscar-winning script based on a worldwide bestseller to enjoy a monster hit, just a good ol’ Drive-in movie that played to necking teenagers. This was ironic: Drive-ins, the home of B-grade horror, were in decline, and as multiplexes began inheriting their audiences – those that hadn’t been lost to VHS – studios catered for them with pictures that were slick, calculated and more than a little cartoonish.
All the ‘murders’ in Paramount’s April Fool’s Day, for instance, turn out to have been staged by rich girl Muffy St Clair, who plans to turn her home into a country inn that holds murder weekends with fake cops, fake clues and fake corpses. Scarcely more believable is the villain in Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning, who’s dressing up as Jason Voorhees to avenge his son, or the Sheriff in Slumber Party Massacre II who tells a group of meddling kids, “You jerk my chain in my town and I’ll rip your goddamn lungs out!” And we can’t forget A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge with its homoerotic subtext.
The 90s temporarily retired Freddy( in 3D!), sent Jason to Hell, shot Pinhead into space and linked Michael Myers to the Druids, so it was a relief when Scream arrived, but anyone who tells you that Wes Craven’s landmark movie changed the genre for the better is sadly mistaken. It was Halloween redux, the big success that opened the door for a series of laughably bad clones and rip-offs. No picture that considers itself ‘hip’ and ‘self-aware’ should be a remake, have a character named ‘Creepy Janitor’ or be produced by Michael Bay. Also, no more casting of Brad Dourif as the Weird Stranger, okay?
Things came full circle with Raja Gosnell’s live-action Scooby Doo (2002), whose casting gave horror fans a few chuckles. Freddie Prinze jr had played a very Fred Jones-ish hero/leader in I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, while his wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar, couldn’t set foot on a horror film set without being chased by a masked villain (Scream 2), creepy kids (The Grudge) or a sinister fisherman (I Know What You Did Last Summer). Linda Cardellini’s smart girl was appropriately taken for granted in Strangeland, while Matthew Lillard had been playing Shaggy for years in Scream, Dead Man’s Curve and 13 Ghosts (or Thir13en Ghosts, whatever), and would be playing him for years afterwards, voicing the character on numerous DVD movies as well as the Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated series.
Hollywood might be run by Devil worshippers, but they’re not without a sense of humour….