The 4th movie I chose to watch this week was the 1980 film Friday the 13th. I was about the say the "1980 classic" but after watching this dreadful film I could not bring myself to do so. I had seen it before don't get me wrong but it must have been a long time ago when I thought things were quite scarier than they really were. Below is my detailed review.
This will be a much shorter blog than most my others simply because this movie was not that great therefore I don't have that much positive things to say to fill up a blog. The cast was made up of actors and actresses that most people don't even know and the only one who really went on to be a major film star was Kevin Bacon who had the role of Jack Burrel. I did find it quite odd that Sally Field auditioned for the role of Alice Hardy. Thankfully she wasn't in this film because I couldn't see her and Friday the 13th ever belonging in the same sentence.
So this film is 30 years old and I think one reason I had originally thought it was a classic and much scarier than it really was is because I thought so highly of Halloween and all of the elements for a great horror picture were available for this film. Young kids at a camp site in the woods where there was past tragic history. I also for some reason remembered a stronger musical score for this film and more of a chhh chhh chhh chhh sound before the killings and during the intense scenes. I didn't barely hear that at all in this film.
The first victim we see is a girl killed in the forest and she is slit in her throat against a tree. D- for the makeup and special effects for this one and this actually made me dread what was to come in the film in that category. One bright spot was a creepy older gentleman who kept saying "your all doomed" throughout the film and even made his way to Camp Crystal Lake at one point to warn the camp counselors. He was pretty creepy and to be honest with you more so than any killer in this film ever was.
As I said before Kevin Bacon was in this film and his character, Jack, meets his final moments of life at an astonishing 43 minute mark of the film. It was a corny kill scene as an arrow is plunged through the bottom of his bed into his throat killing him. The whole scene was poor and even sadder that it took 43 minutes to get to that point. Meanwhile other counselors were playing Strip Monopoly and if the directors were setting out to shooting the more boring possible way to show young camp counselors playing a game of Strip anything they succeeded with flying colors! Job well done guys, terrible terrible scene.
More death and mayhem finally followed suite but was done so unfortunately in the same poor amateur method as before. One girl is axed to death in a very quick death scene that didn't scare one bit and then after one of the guys is arrowed to death and hanging on a door one of his eyes actually flinched. Terrible goof in a scene like that. After some investigating I found out that the actor twitched during this scene because the eye effect that the director's used for this scene caused extreme pain to the actor and I guess re-shooting the scene wasn't an option because that scene made it to the final cut, sad I know.
As the film nears the end we come to learn that Mrs. Voorhees is actually the killer in the film and her son Jason who had drowned years before was not even the killer. The Mom is creepy Ill give her that but it was hard to watch the scene where she is talking and it is supposed to be Jason's voice at one point telling his mommy not to let the girl get away. I don't know if it is because I just saw Psycho the night before and Anthony Perkins version of a voice over of his mother was so brilliantly done or what but this one was quite terrible in this film as was the eventual beheading of Mrs. Voorhees at the end of the film. Easily the scariest scene of the film was at the end when a deformed looking person emerges from the lake and pulls down one of the girls into the water. It turns out this was just a dream and I guess so was my thought that this was a good movie and a "classic" one in the horror genre. Sorry to have to do it but this one gets a D!
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