HOHC #215: Discusses 'Friday The 13th' (1980) Kevin Bacon. Betsy Palmer.

hi I'm actor Ian champion and welcome to history of horror Cinema my personal podcast tour of the Good Bad and the Ugly of horror movie history if you like what you hear please don't forget to hit subscribe Friday the 13th 1980 I'm not the biggest fan of the Friday the 13th franchise but I've always had an unusual personal connection to it I was actually born on a Friday the 13th but more relevantly back in the summer of 1989 I was a camp counselor at the idilic camp Starlight in New York state it had the lake and boating docks like the forbidding Camp Crystal Lake of the movie series vibrant young counselors in the bloom of Youth and even younger kids for us to protect so there's a certain nostalgic fondness for these films that I can't resist however I like to think I'm a fierce but Fair Critic of most of the franchise by the time I underwent the American Summer Camp experience Friday the 13th of ended its eighth Incarnation with the appalling Jason Goes to Manhattan and was about to literally go to hell but we need to go back before Mrs ves's pride and joy grew to marauding adulthood pick up that hockey mask and let me take you on a journey through the 80s The Good the Bad and the very ugly producer director Shan s Cunningham reached a transformational turning point in his life actually at the turn of the 70s before the age of 30 he had already conquered Broadway's great white way as a director and wanted to cross over into Cinema descended from first generation Irish he demonstrated the work ethic that Lin Manuel Miranda referred to in Hamilton immigrants we get the job done he benefited from the can do Spirit best exemplified by those who as he put it didn't know enough to be intimidated he was unfazed by having to slog through New York's exploitation scene in the 70s he said all you need in order to be a film producer is a telephone and some stationer his infectious enthusiasm attracted a core group of talents who would rise with him in the industry and testify to his loyalty among them were fellow filmmaker Wes Craven who's the last house on the left he would produce as I covered in episode 196 and Harry manfredini composer of Friday the 13th's hugely iconic soundtrack in the excellent volume Crystal Lake memories Cunningham recounted that his first feature film the art of marriage was a hardcore porn film that avoided sensia by being what they called a white coater presented as a faux educational film introduced by an equally fictitious medical expert which then served to excuse the tri XX material that followed Cunningham was ambitious enough to promote the film by telephoning New York movie theaters himself and cutting an exhibition deal from a budget of $3,500 he cleared $100 ,000 in profit from just one venue gaining in confidence and contacts Cunningham graduated to the better production values of a softcore film called together in 1971 starring a young Marilyn Chambers who of course would feature memorably in David cronenberg's second horror feature later in the decade it was here that he employed Wes Craven as assistant editor on their virtually Sleepless two we marathon of assembling together for release at the time it proved proved a relatively healthy distraction for Craven he had quit his job as a Humanities Professor to try his own luck in New York and also needed to recover from a debilitating failed marriage so what did he have to lose recalling their nightmare schedule of post-production Craven said we really became war buddies at the end of that process the trench's analogy was controversially used as a subtextual impetus for the notorious horror Revenge movie that the two would partner on Str after together had rewarded them with such a huge Suburban hit the year before deep throat turned porn into a fashionable pop culture happening that Cunningham was given $90,000 and a brief to make a scary movie he produced and Craven directed Last House on the Left written by Victor Miller which for all its faults launched them into careers as name horror meisters both men in later years regarded the film and its Legacy as what Cunningham admitted was a double-edged sword and for Craven represented a period of societal taboo breaking that he confessed gets very old very fast nonetheless the film's visceral Mayhem put them on the movie industry's radar while Craven went on to cement his reputation with The Hills Have Eyes which I covered in episode 197 Cunningham struggled to find his footing for a while helming the Bad News Bears ripoff Here Come the Tigers and the familyfriendly manise orphans but both written by last house writer Victor Miller for his directorial debut in the horror genre Cunningham then looked to the startling success of John Carpenter's Halloween in 1978 for how to create a lowbudget horror movie that might similarly catch fire with young Thrills Seeker audiences its template of restrictions on Budget locations and cast opting for unknown actors and a Simplicity of premise meant that its Break Even point for profit was much lower than a major Studio release Victor Miller spent a week just trying to come up with a physical setting where his young protagonists could be placed in Jeopardy until he recalled his Big Brother's stories of being away at summer camp Bingo a perfect location that say sealed off and focused as the world of a sitcom set it before the camp opens and you bypass any censorship concerns about children in Peril what Miller called long night at Camp blood for his first drafts soon became Friday the 13 when Cunningham recalled a short list of names he once invented for movies he thought could sell themselves he must have been as surprised as Carpenter to discover that the chosen date on which to hang his own horror conceit had also never been used before according to Wikipedia the fear of this date has multiple possible Origins across differing cultures 13 was the total number of Christ's disciples plus himself at the Last Supper to the Greeks the fear of Friday the 13th is par esid ketria phobia derived from the Greek Parisi meaning Friday and Decat trus 13 in the summer of 1979 Cunningham took a bold step of pre-promotion worthy of Israeli producers goolan and Globus when he took out a memorable advert in variety featuring the famous title smashing through a window the poster trumpeted the most terrifying film ever made available December 1979 the impact was so effective Ive that International Distributors beat a path to his door wanting in on this mouthwatering concept not knowing it wasn't even ready for production in the 1980s Golan and Globus developed this tactic into a hugely successful business model pre-selling their movies via multiple foreign Distributors based on nothing but a poster so that their films turned a profit before they even began shooting Sean Cunningham secured a budget of half a million dollars from his Boston investor Phil scary like many career turning points though it almost didn't happen scary's tough terms initially caused Cunningham to refuse after a sleepless night he bit the machete and finally agreed to them just as well if he'd resisted another 20 minutes the next morning scary would have plowed the investment into a shopping center Friday the 13th was now off and running such was Cunningham's still raw process as a director that he had never used a professional casting director before fortunately he enlisted Barry moss and Julie Hughes amongst some winning and wholesome choices they landed him future A-list Talent Kevin Bacon fresh from his snotty but hilarious fraternity pledge in National Lampoon's Animal House he had an unpretentious jobbing actor's approach to the work and simply took the role in his stride one casting choice that Cunningham always remained unsure about surprisingly was fan favorite Walt goury as the town oddball crazy Ralph the director wanted Ralph to misdirect the audience into suspecting him as a potential murderer and he felt that goury perhaps wasn't quite as Sinister as he'd wanted nevertheless watching paramounts first Friday the 13th again after nearly 40 years it holds up pretty well the pace is tight and the performances from the mostly very young cast of Camp Crystal legs councilors are engaging their late 70s innocence is plausible without being too cute aside from intended Camp cook Annie Robbie Morgan who is so naive that she throws her ruck sack into the back of a flag down Jeep without even vetting the driver this is a cleverly conceived scene actually as it disguises the driver's identity by being shot subjectively from their point of view spoiler alert well since the film has been out for over 40 years maybe I can dispense with the non-binary gender as horror fans will almost all know the Killer is ultimately female another smart plot decision noticed from this reviewing is that for the first two acts no impending victim finds the dead body of a previous one disabling them from knowing enough to Simply flee the camp in Terror not that this would really help mind you since it's a staple commandment in the genre that thou shalt disregard common sense and unwisely go toward whatever maketh dubious noises The Kills are well executed by much loved FX Gore supro Tom Sven inevitably though time has taken the edge off their shock value even in this uncut US DVD version the casting of Betsy Palmer as Mrs Vorhees in the third act proved a bonus she was a beguilingly wholesome actress whose career spanned over 50 years including 12 as a panelist on the TV game show I've got a secret an ironically preent title since part of this film's fun hinges on her hidden identity as the real serial killer she initially shows a disarming protective motherliness in front of Final Girl Alice Adrien King before crumbling into a deliciously batshit Insanity as the memory of how her son Jason was tragically neglected by counselors back in 1958 overcomes her Poise the resulting catfi climax on the shore is shoddily staged the two ladies wrestle like a couple of school girls squabbling in a sandpit but sevini and Cunningham give us a lovingly slowmo machete decapitation by Alice the some string Centric music score by Harry manfredini helps to differentiate the overall movie's production values from the slasher herd as being a major Studio release albeit with some emphatic nods towards Bernard Herman's psycho score his own compositions are attractive and the last one does much to augment the power of the contentious final horror setpiece taking its queue as it were from the erupting hand closer of Brian dep Palmer's carry in 1976 we are sold an idilic seeming end as a sleepy Alice drifts on the lake in a canoe as the sheriff's men arrive at the lakeside the camera slowly pushes in amid a manfredini romantic swell all is well at last until a deformed Jason bursts up from the water and pulls Alice to a watery grave it still hits the spot as a jump shock and would have been all the more powerful if Cunningham had then cut to Black and then the credits right there but but no maddeningly he sabotages its power by then cutting to Alice in a hospital bed epilog quizzing the cops about the mysterious boy whom they never saw when retrieving her from the lake what also doesn't help is that King's perplexity is her least convincing acting scene a bigger nitpicking issue however the type that horror fans like myself love to debate centers around Vorhees Junior appearing at all as someone points out in Crystal Lake memories if that was Jason where the hell has he been for 20 years and why hasn't anyone spotted him before now I had questions of my own why didn't he carry out his own Vendetta the rest of the time instead of his mom and what did he live on for two decades Plankton while swimming about undetected like the Creature from the Black Lagoon these questions naturally were never answered as a Friday the 13th franchise thus developed from this film's huge success to cover the next 29 years its runaway success surprised everyone not least its director a share of the credit for this can be given to Paramount head Frank manuso senior who threw his weight behind the kind of mass marketing campaign usually reserved only for major tent pole releases yet targeted very deliberately and shrewdly at the teen demographic the studio was to be richly rewarded Cunningham himself was hoping for maybe six or 7 million do at the box office so he could begin to make money the wide release and Stellar Word of Mouth gave Friday the 13th an extended life well beyond expectations rising to a final tally of $ 39.7 million beating its nearest rival Studios genre offerings The Shining and dress to kill the sequels continually tried to Tinker with the source movies Playbook and timeline what this original and intermittent sequels proved is that like any movie property it works only when treating the AUD audience with a little respect in choosing screenwriters and directors all too often behind the scenes the filmmakers behaved like trust aarian who inherited a Sausage Factory as we shall see stay tuned thanks for listening if you like what you hear please don't forget to hit subscribe