Originally written by Ian Chainey
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FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)
Synopsis: Created to cash-in on John Carpenter’s Donald Pleasence crush note and subsequent revival of the slasher flick craze, this opening installment was made on the cheap ($550k), but went on to eviscerate the public for all of their dollars. The reason for the success varies depending on your fanboy level. Let’s just say it truly codified the rules of the style, making sure every pot-mad, teenage horn-dog tasted steel from there on out.
So, how’d all this get started? Well, back in 1958, two Camp Crystal Lake counselors decided to bone down instead of doing camp things like…cum…bayaing. Hey-o! Anyway, they got gutted for their moist explorations. The location, understandably, closes. 21 years pass. Then, realizing murder never strikes twice (what do you mean “lightning?”), the son of the original owners chooses to reopen the sleepaway destination. He hires a herd of new counselors and they make their way to the woods, though not before Annie runs into Ralph who offers a startling premonition: y’all are toast. Annie jukes him and hitches a ride with a truck driver that offers the same words of foreboding horror. You know-nothin’ rascals! Tell ’em, Reagan’s America!
Shaken but not stirred, she meets up with the other CL employees down at their scenic workplace. Cue shift whistle, they start renovating the facilities. (How can you tell it’s 1979? No one is 45, holds a Ph.D., and is working for minimum wage. Boom, economy!) After a spell, those crazy kids start rutting, doing “the drugs,” and getting into other uncouth behavior. Oh lawd! Upon running that through the puritan processor in our mangled minds, we know they’re totally deserving of their impending violent fate. Lo and behold, we get wish fulfillment: They’re picked off one-by-one by a myssssssterious killer. From there, it’s like And Then There Were None with the boobs you drew in the margins in middle school.
Finally, the last femme, Alice, is saved by Pamela Voorhees in the nick of time. Hold your horses, though! (Just…not in the Mr. Hands way, okay?) Pam regales Alice with tales of her son’s passing. (Alice has that Ira Glass face.) In 1957, little Jason glug-glug-glugged in the lake while counselors were, uh, occupied. Turns out, Pam’s still pissed and has been the br00ful badass exacting revenge on Steve and his underlings. (Wonder if libertarians cry a few for Steve, the put-upon small business owner?) Following a chase, Alice eventually lops off P-Viddy’s noggin with a homerun swing. (Someone get that girl a Cubs uniform.) She freaks, climbs in a boat, pushes off from dock, and takes a snooze because she was probably on Ambien and that shit is INSANE. She awakes the next day to see the police. Then, in a scene still super surprising if you have Alzheimer’s, the rotten cadaver of Jason becomes animate, leaps out of the water, and tackles her. He either whiffs (someone get that kid a Bears uniform) or it’s all just a dream due to the reveal of Alice, alive, in a hospital. There, she asks the interviewing sheriff about “the boy.” “What boy?” he responds. Huh, I wonder if there will be a sequel?
There you go. That’s the mythos. And we’ll never write so much in the synopsis section again.
Memorable Moment: In one of his earliest roles, Kevin Bacon puffs on a joint so puny, it would make a cop sigh during a stop-and-frisk. Post-exhale, special-effects master Tom Savini harvests the lump in his throat. Bacon passes on. Good news: If that’s the three word criteria currently creating separation, we’ll all be bonded with Bacon one day. That’s nice. I guess this “life” thing isn’t such a raw deal after all.
Metal Album Spirit Animal: There are a million ways to go here. For one, it’s the first in a series that would get progressively shittier (so a non-debut hardcore album, really). It’s also a blatant rip-off of a much better entity (Skinlab, Pissing Razors, and any other Pantera/Exhorder clone, come on down!). And, it was written by a member of Kowloon Walled City‘s dad (Erik Highter said so!). However, I’m pretty sure we’ve gotta go with:
Probot – Probot
Why: Dave Grohl is the Kevin Bacon of music. Sure, there are other reasons to draw a line from Friday the 13th to Probot. Dave Grohl isn’t a metaller, yet constructed a pretty decent banger, just like how screenwriter Victor Miller preceding project was the G-rated Here Come the Tigers. Grohl also picked off legendary singers one-by-one. (Oh, the moment when you quietly admit “My Tortured Soul” is Eric Wagner’s greatest song and you kind of hate yourself for it.) But, c’mon, it’s really because you can link every goddamn person to Dave Grohl ala the Six Degrees of Bacon nerd-bacchanalia once popular in college-adjacent Denny’s back in my day. Check it out: Dave Grohl was the devil in Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny which starred Jack Black who booted Ron Burgundy’s mutt in Anchor Man which got a cutting-room-floor sequel named Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie that contained a bit part from Maya Rudolph whose mom was Minnie Ripperton who was in Rotary Connection with Marshall Chess who was the son of Leonard Chess who owned Chess Records which signed Sonny Boy Williamson II who hung out with Robert Johnson, the guy that sold his soul to the devil. Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981)
Synopsis: Alice gets an impromptu lobotomy with an ice pick in the first scene. Why? Well, it was in the interest of limiting her screen exposure to dissuade other real-life, would-be stalkers. (No, really.) Five years later (1984, for those keeping track. The future! It sucks and not much is different! Just like real life!), another set of counselors and entrepreneurs ignore Ralph (R.I.P.) and convene at Camp Crystal Lake for the Grand Reopening Mach 2.0. Sex n’ death ensues. Except, this time it’s actually Jason perpetrating the murders because OH CHRIST WHO STOCKED THIS LAKE WITH SNAKEHEADS? THIS IS MY HOME. Or, it’s something about his mom. The movie should’ve addressed this.
Memorable Moment: Mark, whose script introduction probably just read “disabled,” gets a machete to the face for finding depth/redeeming qualities in a thankless role. (And, possibly for being a one-time Marlboro Man. Dude had a neat life, minus the last bit.) That said, the real winner is the final scene where last-woman-standing Ginny discovers Jason’s altar to Ma Pam and, using her knowledge of Freudian psychology, dons Mrs. Voorhees’s sweater to convince the burlap-sack bedecked murderer to take a time out. (Can we talk about how long it took for Jason to get his iconic look? Here, he looks like a hayseed’s birth-control method.) It’s like the movie finally peaked on its psilocybin edibles.
Metal Album Spirit Animal: Okay, it’s an awful sequel, so Operation: Mindcrime II is in play. It’s also a flubby rehash of its forbear, making it fairly easy to tie this to Exodus‘s Let There Be Blood. That said, neither of those really get at the amount of straight money-hungry DGAF on display. With that in mind, we’ll have to tap:
Discharge – Grave New World
Why: After pioneering their own rhythmic brand of punk (now you know where the term d-beat comes from), Discharge‘s second LP, Grave New World, gave all of it up to go glam. Defenses were made for the change (the singer blamed his rediscovery of Led Zeppelin for his falsetto, the band was sorta fed-up with the “scene”), but, when you hear it, the staccato crash of cash registers creeps into every riff. Still, though every punk will tell you otherwise, you learn to love it after awhile. It’s so bad, so ill-conceived, it has a certain charm. That’s Part 2 to a T.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 (1982)
Synopsis: In the cold morning light, Jason is back on the prowl for young blood. Luckily, lots of lambs have shacked up in a nearby cabin to help fragile Chris get over her traumatic experience of two years prior when she was attacked in the woods by a disfigured destroyer. My, my, Friday: Mommy issues and exposure therapy? Dio, did the DSM ever get a writing credit on these?
Memorable Moment: For fans, this is the flick where our man finally finds his favored facial protection. Gorehounds also approve of the increased brutality. (The hand-stand hacking is like America’s Funniest Home Videos as judged by Eli Roth.) Be that as it may, the snarky stand-outs are whenever the perspective is pierced by ordinary objects. See, Part 3 was filmed in 3D, so, to properly utilize the technology, there are a bevy of shots where folks precariously hold stupid things up to the camera stupidly. It looks ridiculous on the 2D transfer, but it must’ve been more so in 3D theaters. “OH SHIT, WATCH OUT FOR THAT RAKE BUTT.” That eyeball scene, though.
Metal Album Spirit Animal: You could make a case for Part 3 being the best of the first third of the series since it does away with any pretense of motivation and just let’s Jason do his thing. So, there’s a bridge to avant-heads like Mike Patton and Ihsahn if ever there was one. That angle, though, doesn’t account for the woeful integration of the 3D gimmick, which means, drumroll please:
Menmic – The Audio Injected Soul
Why: The Audio Injected Soul was purportedly the first album to be recorded with binaurual techniques. Remember it? No? That’s because, unless you’re Lars Ulrich who thinks smegma tastes like cabernet sauvignon, you couldn’t possibly have given a shit.
FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984)
Synopsis: Jason is not dead! No, he returns to torment yet more teens as they prepare for a party. Then he’s killed for good. (Spoiler: Nope.)
Memorable Moment: Number four skewers a soft spot on my heart for actually trying. Granted, it’s not quite Oscar Wilde’s Fuck Tales in the smarts department, but it goes the extra inch, if not the extra mile. And, the cast gives it the ol’ we’re-out-of-college-yet-we’re-playing-teens try. That “acting” acumen filters down to even the youngest of players. Somehow, Crispin Glover’s real-life wackiness is outshone by a baby Corey Feldman who haphazardly shaves his melon to resemble Jason as a child, or Billy Corgan. One of the two. Corey’s wild-eyed machete wielding is also especially impressive, considering he was probably only on a baby-aspirin-sized line of powder. Ah, the ’80s!
Metal Album Spirit Animal: If this was Yo! Last Rhymes! Jay-Z’s The Black Album would fit here like a knife in the backs of kids engaging in coitus, mostly for incorrectly prophesying the series’ finality. That said, I think that’s the wrong association. We should be positive. (Smarm alert?) While it’s not the best, The Final Chapter is up there as one of the most watchable. Therefore, we should sniff out a vet who dropped a dozy later in their career. Naturally:
Riot – Thundersteel
Why: While Riot was super consistent, I’m not sure anyone saw Thundersteel coming. After splitting in ’84, sole-founding member Mark Reale assembled a new Johnny Voltron for this ’88 release. And, man, does it smoke. On it, the vestiges of embryonic NWO have been bulked up for modern muscularity, kinda like the Jason to come. Both Riot and the Big V would prove they could learn new tricks despite getting up there in dog years.
There we go! The first four beheaded. When June 13, 2014 rolls around, maybe we’ll do this again. Until then, I’ll just ask, “Is that all you’re gonna do this weekend? Smoke dope?”
Got some goodies that would fit better than my pitiable four selections? Let us know in the comments.
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