I Can’t Explain Friday the 13th
The slasher formula in horror cinema has its roots in the ’70s with movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas and Halloween. While the ’70s were the formative years of the tropes and ultimate cliches that are now often mocked it was the ’80s when the slasher subgenre became ubiquitous. Copycats of Halloween longed for its commercial success, attempting to create their own iconic bogeymen, often associated with a date in the calendar. The ’70s era characters Michael Myers and Leatherface also made their return to capitalize on the golden age of slasher horror to varying degrees of popular reception.
During this time two horror franchises rose above all others in their success and pop cultural legacy. A Nightmare On Elm Street featured an original concept and a menacing, smart-mouthed killer with knives for fingers. Freddy Krueger became the literal face of nightmares who derived a perverse enjoyment dispatching the children of Springwood over nine installments, including one reinvention, one cross franchise death match and one failed remake. The other franchise, with its hockey-masked murderer preying the camp grounds of Crystal Lake, was Friday the 13th.
Pamela and Jason Voorhees are the enduring titans of the Friday the 13th franchise, which has to date spanned twelve movies, played an opposing side in the 2003 cinematic battle Freddy vs. Jason, and like A Nightmare On Elm Street has been subject to a 2000s era Platinum Dunes remake. My brother and I have had a dedication to the series since we were kids too young to know better. My teenage niece has more recently become an avid viewer and years ago my younger brother was in Jason costume for Halloween. The late, great comedian Patrice O’Neal was a fervent fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of every installment much to the delight of others.
There are horror conventions where the actors and crew from throughout the series are met with delight and ardour from fans. People cosplay as Pamela Voorhees and Jason around the world. There are websites, comic books, fan fiction stories, fan made films, action figures, t-shirts and fine art prints available for purchase on Etsy. My brother and I both own Crystal Lake Memories, the book and seven hour documentary about the complete history of the Friday the 13th franchise. The movies have produced a colossal industry and fanbase that continues to thrive to this day.
And I can’t explain or understand why.
Truth be told the reason for the series’ pop cultural significance to me is inexplicable. And this is coming from someone who loves the movies and has seen every one at least 20 times. If you were to ask me why Friday the 13th is so special to me, my brothers, my niece and fans the world over I would have to shrug my shoulders in response, because I can’t tell you why.
The first Friday the 13th was a cash grab for the Halloween audience. It was made cheap and given a wide theatrical distribution for maximum financial return. Mrs. Voorhees was replaced in the second movie with her son, Jason (having been decapitated at the end of the first movie), who would become the immortal slasher/mascot to the franchise thenceforth. The movies are at best competently written and frequently delivered with poor acting. With the exception of Part 2 the installments of Friday the 13th aren’t overly scary, but instead compensate with violence, gore and premarital sex. The movies are famous/notorious for the inventive ways in which characters are killed by the silent hulk Jason, and his actions are frequently associated as a response to on screen promiscuity. The locations remain largely the same, the plots (what little there is) remain similar, and the characters are thin caricatures of teenagers, eccentrics and stoners. Painting this unflattering mental picture of the movies will only confound those who have never seen nor share the fandom for the long running series. I’ve had time to try and conjure up an answer about why I enjoy this series in a way that people might understand, but to no avail. I can only provide vague posits of ideas.
I speak as a Friday the 13th fan who has lived with the movies decades after their initial releases. Horror filmmakers have since pushed the boundaries of violence and gore as censors have become more lenient of such graphic material. The same filmmakers have also adapted to a maturing audience who expect original content that still delivers on scares. In The Simpsons’ first “Treehouse of Horror’” episode Lisa, having just read Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, reckons it was probably easier to scare people in the past, to which Bart replies “like when you look at Friday the 13th Part One — it’s pretty tame by today’s standards.”
It’s possible that the younger viewers of the franchise watch the movies with some level of irony. Jason Voorhees’ exploits have become the textbook of slasher movie conventions and cliches; my enjoyment of the early entries in the series may derive from their original status as genuine horror being transformed into a parody of themselves with my critical postmodern lens.
Several of the later installments take on a more entertaining and self aware approach compared to their earlier roots. More humour was injected into the formula and character deaths had become absurd and even slapstick — a fan favourite from Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan features a sports jock goading Jason to take his best shot after his own prolonged assault; Jason replies by punching his victim’s head clean off his body into a dumpster. Part VI: Jason Lives was the first to embrace and openly mock the tropes established in the series’ previous movies, and Jason himself is introduced in the title sequence mirroring James Bond’s signature entrance.
Where before the kills were visceral and intended to scare many of the deaths post Jason Lives were played for laughs and positive audience reactions. The tone of the movies had changed to acknowledge the surreal spectacle of what slashers had become during the ’80s — open celebration and enjoyment of cinematic murder and mayhem. With successive installments fans were anticipating what novel and inventive ways the filmmakers would contrive for Jason to kill his unsuspecting prey, culminating in Jason X when a woman’s head is frozen in liquid Nitrogen and smashed into a thousand pieces.
Throughout the series there have been repeated attempts to alter, redefine or expand the simplistic concept of the movies and of Jason Voorhees’ character.
- Part V: A New Beginning attempted to make a Friday the 13th ‘whodunnit’ story without Jason Voorhees physically appearing
- Part VII: The New Blood featured supernatural elements such as telekinesis
- Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan relocated the action to a ship and New York City in the final act
- Jason Goes to Hell imagined Jason as a body-hopping demon with a family curse
- Jason X saw the carnage unfold aboard a spaceship 500 years in the future
- Freddy vs. Jason made Mrs. Voorhees’ special boy a sympathetic antihero fighting against the machinations of the Springwood slasher
It’s a tell tale sign that each new concept would be abandoned in the following movie. Among the fandom the more popular installments adhere to the established formula where from the woods Jason stalks the new arrivals of Crystal Lake to terrorize and massacre. Many fans are also reluctant at the prospect of unraveling or fleshing out Jason and Pamela Voorhees’ past beyond what is mentioned in the first and second movies.
The formulaic structure of Friday the 13th can be observed as being comfortably familiar. In the same way people may enjoy a simple meal or watch Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote horror fans want their Friday the 13th free of embellishments or twists to the recipe. The idiom of ‘I know what I want’ seems appropriate when applied to fans of Jason and his franchise.
As I said before, I have no definitive answer. The Friday the 13th series is not in my estimation a good one, and yet I find myself watching them all the time. Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th are part of my geek fandom that I share with my family and like-minded individuals as entertainment. I sometimes view the horror community as carrying some camp value because of the nonsensical adoration and heightened devotion we bestow to such unsuspecting material. Together we have made Friday the 13th special, together we have made Friday the 13th part of our cultural language. And I’ll be damned if I can explain why.
Coming soon: No Art is Perfect, No Artist is Infallible
