Saturday, April 28, 2007
The original
Friday The 13th begins simply with a first-person camera (that's the hockey-masked Jason) lurking through a dark cabin in the woods. We don't see him, and miraculously the cumbersome masked man-beast is stealthy enough to hide in the perfect corner out of sight from his prey. In the opening sequence that prey happens to be a young boy and girl sneaking away from the group to make out in a lofty tool shed out back. Naturally, once the girl's shirt is halfway unbuttoned Jason decides to attack—you gotta get 'em in their most vulnerable moment after all. The guy gets it in the gut, but the girl is trickier to catch: we watch her fumble with her shirt and through the obstacle course of dusty tools, until whammo!
Surprisingly, though, the first
Friday The 13th doesn't reveal nearly as much skin as its successors. But that's okay. As far as I'm concerned the series had to build its graphic images gradually. We had just met Jason. As far at the 1980 audience was concerned he could have turned out to be another whacko schizophrenic a la
Psycho. But he is so much more. Jason is an indestructible bloodthirsty force—why? There is no science to explain how this human figure survives, because it's the legend of his gory past that keeps him half-dead with a bloody vengeance. Starting at age 8 a friend and I would have slumber parties every weekend, which would include a dose of rented horror flicks and an armload of candy from the drug store. We watched the bloodiest, most gruesome videos our parents would allow (and if it were my parents that would mean none, hence most sleepovers took place at
her place), including all current installments of
Friday The 13th. We saw them all. Though I hardly remember them now, I do recall wondering how Jason managed to survive so many kicks, stabs, axes, and later on, gunshot wounds. But he did!
He's still up to his old tricks, pushing spearheads through unsuspecting campers' chest cavities, landing axe blades in the foreheads of sex-crazed college kids; though it happens so quietly, and he really takes his time before the initial strike. I'm tempted to call the first half-hour of the movie boring, but its this serenity and lack of action that makes the bludgeoning, once we get to it, that much scarier.
The OnDemand free movie section is treating me well these days, and I recommend horror fans revisit the original slasher series for a surprise in the finale shot of the climax. It'll make you jump.
Having only seen a few minutes of the original 28 Days Later, I have no significant complaints about its sequel, 28 Weeks Later. In fact, I loved the latter horror flick. With a heavy splattering of blood, 28 Weeks gives us some of the best political commentary in recent horror history. In the context of the Iraq war and the indefatigable rhetoric of the U.S. military "surge," director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo asks the question, Where does insurgency end? Apparently, it doesn't. The quarantined area of central London a full 28 weeks after the first "rage" attacks (where infected humans transform into animalistic blood-suckers within seconds) is, as it turns out, unsafe: one human is discovered to have an immunity, but subsequently transmits the virus to the genetically weaker others and hell breaks loose. As the film ends (spoiler alert) silhouettes of the escaped infected tear across the screen, the Eiffel Tower stands firm in the background. In other words, the insurgency, like the "rage" virus, is not contained and is likely to keep on spreading. It's a comment that predicts doom for modern politics and civilization, and therefore provides a moment of pause to consider the consequences of our current actions.
The original Friday The 13th begins simply with a first-person camera (that's the hockey-masked Jason) lurking through a dark cabin in the woods. We don't see him, and miraculously the cumbersome masked man-beast is stealthy enough to hide in the perfect corner out of sight from his prey. In the opening sequence that prey happens to be a young boy and girl sneaking away from the group to make out in a lofty tool shed out back. Naturally, once the girl's shirt is halfway unbuttoned Jason decides to attack—you gotta get 'em in their most vulnerable moment after all. The guy gets it in the gut, but the girl is trickier to catch: we watch her fumble with her shirt and through the obstacle course of dusty tools, until whammo!