Everything that follows is genuinely true.
From the outset, let me assure you that I love horror movies. It started by sneaking peaks at the old Hammer classics on TV through a crack in the living room door when my parents thought I was in bed and long asleep. I was at just the right teen age to appreciate all the gore classics released on tape in those wonderful early days of video stores. We paid extra money to bribe the guy behind the counter to let us rent Cannibal Ferox and I Spit on Your Grave. Weekends were spent with a hot VCR and buzzing television watching everything we could get our hands on. As I got older, I travelled to film festivals, traded tapes with fans across the world, saw Nekromantik in a theatre in Berlin, defended Lucio Fulci to those who couldn’t believe. Now I’m a married man with two kids, a regular-type life and a mortgage. But still I have an Evil Dead poster in my hallway and a shelf in my bathroom with a collection of movie maniac figures. Yes, Leatherface sees me shower everyday. My passion hasn’t, and will never, fade.
I love horror movies. But I really hate Friday The 13th.
I guess you weren’t expecting that. How can a self-proclaimed horror film fanatic level such a statement at one of the most iconic film series, and maybe THE most iconic film psychopath of our times? Like a good chef who doesn’t like garlic or a sailor that’s scared of water, it’s just not right.
I saw Friday the 13th and Part 2 together one weekend in 1983, following the second film’s recent release on video. Back then I read Fangoria constantly - it was pretty much a bible for the young gorehound in those days - and Friday was all over every issue. From the glossy, splattery stills it looked to be pretty much the greatest film I was yet to see. Arrow through the throat of the dude from Footloose, killer in a burlap sack, and that creepy deformed kid rising out of the water to attack the chick in the boat. Fangoria described all the kills, all the gore, all the horror. I spent weeks reading about Camp Crystal Lake, and I thought the name Jason Voorhees was the best thing I’d ever heard. The name was mysterious and weird and could only belong to someone who delighted in giving teens a hard time should they decide to have sex. I was sold, and needed to see it.
So I loaded part one into our suitcase-sized VCR that Saturday night with literally trembling fingers. Me and my buddy Chris looked at each other with nervous anticipation as the opening credits rolled. Ninety minutes later we ejected part one and loaded part two. And another ninety minutes later we ejected part two and turned the tube off. I sat back on the couch and looked at Chris. “What did you think?” I asked.
He was silent for a moment. Finally: “I thought that was shit. You?”
I agreed. Dull, boring and bloodless, the last three hours had been spent watching kids run around in the dark with so little light that I could barely see what was happening, with some creepy music on the soundtrack to let me know when we were in for screaming and some death. That was fine, except for I’d seen no death. None. Where was the shocking gore that I’d been reading about? I knew it existed; those Fangoria articles and pictures were burned into my subconscious. Where was the teenage nudity? I’d seen pictures of tits, and I wanted to see them moving on my screen. Where was the terrifying killer, this Jason? Regardless of if it was him or his Mother committing the kills, I wanted some slaughter. I’d seen more blood the day I fell off my bike and split my chin open on the road.
To be fair, it wasn’t really Sean S Cunningham’s or Steve Miner’s fault. Warner Home Video had totally butchered the video releases of the films, cutting out all the blood, until the censor hacking the footage was the only hacking that was going on. The nudity had also hit the cutting room floor. 1983 in the UK was a tough time for the video industry. Where there had previously been no legislation on what was released, now moral guardians led by middle-class daily newspapers were calling for horror films - the so-called Video Nasties - to be removed from the shelves. The likes of Suspiria and The Evil Dead were being pulled from stores and owners were being prosecuted for stocking them. Warners, sensing disaster, had released tame, censored versions of their money-spinner’s. Horror films with all the horror missing. They had also, as I discovered in later years, taken the video prints from a poor original negative, resulting in the dark, almost unwatchable picture that I’d barely seen.
Now just for a moment stop, and ask yourself how much you’d have actually liked Friday The 13th originally if all the death had been missing, if the atmosphere had been reduced to nothing and if the only way you knew the kids were by a lake at night was if you heard a stone landing in the water? I’m willing to bet we’d be reading off the same page at this point. Particularly if you’d been anticipating this slice-and-dice extravaganza as long as I had. I was more disappointed than when I found out there was no Santa or that professional wrestlers pull the punches.
So as people began to talk-up Friday The 13th, I trashed it wherever I could. My words mostly fell on deaf ears, but not long after I discovered European cinema and started to worship at the alter of Argento and Bava, and I had no reason to care for a slasher movie where I couldn’t see the slashing. The problem was that Fangoria still ran the articles and I still read them, gazed at the forbidden gore. Look, here comes Friday The 13th in 3D! Holy shit, he’s wearing a hockey mask! And I hated myself, owing to the fact I’d been so badly burned on the previous instalments, but I wanted to see it so bad it hurt. Pictures showed spears and guts just flying out the screen. Problem was hardly anywhere around by us showed 3D movies (how I dream of that scenario now…) and I wasn’t old enough to get into it even if they did. I would have to wait for video. Without the 3D. Which was the only reason I wanted to see it in the first place. I decided to forget it. Better to read about the flick than watch it.
So obviously the weekend it was released to video I rented it. Damn sucker. I could see what was going on this time. And what was going on was nothing. No death, destruction or shaking breasts anywhere. I didn’t even make it to the end of the film, just turned off in disgust and went upstairs to write a letter of disgust to the British Board Of Film Censors. Probably.
Fast-forward a couple of years and me and buddy Chris are at Zoe Bradshaw’s house. In our world this is a big deal. It’s maybe by some act of God we’re there, neither of us are that great or successful with girls, and Zoe and her friend Louise are probably two of the hottest girls in our year. People know we like horror flicks, that we know a bit about them, but it’s usually guys wearing trench coats trying to look like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club who approach us in the corridor and ask us what’s worth seeing. Girls like Zoe Bradshaw don’t look at me, and yet I find myself talking film with her while trying not to get lost in her pale blue eyes, or notice the way her white shirt stretches over her chest, or the pale skin of her long legs beyond the shortness of her skirt. I manage to keep my tongue working and my mind running while we talk, and when she tells me her and Louise have got the house to themselves Friday night and would Chris and I like to come and watch a movie I nod and smile in reply because my throat has closed.
We’re watching Friday The 13th : The Final Chapter, and I obviously know all about the film from the pages of Fango. And despite that one of my heroes, Tom Savini, is back on board for the makeup effects I have SWORN that I will not see this film. Naturally, all my principals have left the building when Zoe and Louise decide this is what they want to see. And aside from my Friday hatred, everything could not have been set-up better. Two boys, two girls, wine sneaked from her Father and a horror movie. The film starts and I look at Chris. We’re looking vaguely human and staying cool. Zoe sits on the sofa next to me and she looks amazing, and it’s not long before the chills start and Jason’s Ki-Ki-Ki music begins and she’s moving closer to me. On the other sofa Louise is doing the same to Chris. I’m drinking wine and feeling a buzz and I can smell Zoe’s hair, clean and fresh. At this point in time Jason Voorhees is the greatest fucking thing on the planet. Her skin brushes mine and she apologises, I say no problem, and next time she doesn’t move away, and if fact we’re actually leaning against each other…
And then the doorbell rings. Louise gets up to answer it, and I hear voices in the hallway, male and female, and my heart sinks and a sickness creeps into my stomach. In to the dimly lit living room comes Ellie and Sarah, two of their friends, and two other guys from my year, Sam Henstock and Jason Hampton. My heart hits rock bottom. Sam and Jason are everything that Chris and I aren’t. They’ve got style, decent haircuts, good clothes, could easily pass for extras in Miami Vice. I know them and like them, and vice-versa, but that fact remains that they are better than me. I know it and they know it. Unfortunately so does Zoe and Louise. These are the kind of guys girls like them go for, good looking and athletic, not someone who finger-combs their hair and regards Bruce Campbell as a fashion icon.
Suffice to say, my imagined hot and steamy fumblings with Zoe Bradshaw never came to anything. I sat there with my arms folded, scowling, and by the time Jason slid his brain-pan down Corey Feldman’s machete I was sat on the sofa next to my best friend while listening to the sounds of Zoe and Jason sucking face in the Kitchen. I don’t think anyone even noticed us leave after the credits. I stood outside on the street with an equally miserable Chris and shivered in the rain.
“If we’d have been watching any other movie this wouldn’t have happened,” I said.
“Don’t be stupid. Just bad luck is all.”
“Yeah? It’s the curse of Friday The 13th, I’m telling you. I’m going home.”
I have never watched another Friday The 13th movie. Not the much-adored part five, or Jason Goes To Hell, or Jason Of The Jedi (or whatever that space one was called) or even the Freddy Vs Jason flick. I’ve read about them, seen the stills, have even watched the splatter (including what I missed from Parts 1-3) on YouTube. But the truth of it is as a kid they caused nothing but disappointment. They kicked me in the nuts on more than one occasion, and after several shots to the jewels you’ve got to turn away for your own self-preservation. I don’t get involved in discussions, and rarely reveal my dislike for Crystal Lake. Friday The 13th doesn’t figure in my life.
Until last year. My wife loves a good horror film, and decided she’d like to see Marcus Nispel’s remake, a friend of hers had seen it and said it was frightening and loaded with atmosphere. I did my very best to persuade her otherwise - she’d hated the Chainsaw and Hitcher remakes, and I assured her this would be the same re-fried, MTV-styled crap. She didn’t care, wanted to see it. And because I love my wife very much, would do anything to make her happy, I found myself walking into a late screening one cold Wednesday night. The lights dimmed, Hannah took my hand, and I returned to Crystal Lake for the first time in twenty-two years.
If I liked or hated the film is immaterial. For the record, I thought it was slick, glossy, and totally devoid of any entertainment value. My wife liked it, so she was happy, which means I was happy. Or I was, until we returned to our car, sitting alone under a streetlight in the far corner of the multiplex parking lot. And as we approached I could see something was wrong, that the rain was pattering against the front passenger seat and the yellow light was glinting of shards of broken glass where it lay on the upholstery and the tarmac. Someone had took a brick or bar to my window, got into my car and ripped my stereo from the dash. The stereo was a piece of shit and pretty much worthless, but I’d also stupidly left my new Ipod in the glove box, and the thief had been thoughtful enough to take that as well, just to make the job worthwhile. For the next couple of minutes Hannah heard words that would make Devil-Regan in The Exorcist blush.
Jason Voorhees? My drowned, resurrected, impaled, burnt, zombiefied friend? - You can kiss my fucking arse.
Rich Wilson
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