Sunday Classics-Friday the 13th

Friday was, of course, the 13th, so in honor of the most dastardly day of the year, this week’s Sunday Classic is, well, you know.

Is Friday the 13th really a classic? You might ask, to which I would respond with a robust f*cking a!. Many people just shrug it off as just another slasher movie, but Friday the 13th is an over the top, fun-and-blood packed horror film of Greek Tragedy proportions.

It starts out in Camp Crystal Lake when irresponsible, fornicating camp counselors let young mongoloid Jason Voorhees drown. Years later, the camp re-opens and the new irresponsible fornicators are horrifically murdered one by one.

Not to totally spoil the movie for you if you haven’t yet seen it (you should have by now, so I feel no guilt), but Jason actually isn’t the killer in the movie. Jason doesn’t show up until part two, when he stumbles around with a pitchfork and a bag on his head and is kind of incompetent. No, Jason’s mom Pamela is the one chopping up the early twentysomethings, a kindly old lady in a grandma sweater…that stabs Kevin Bacon through the throat with a spear.

An interesting thing about watching the film now is how tame it seems. The violence and gore comes and goes pretty quickly and is fairly understated compared to a lot of what we watch today. Back then, it was fairly intense and I would go so far as to say that the effects of the film are better than the gorier, more complicated films of today, because none of the effects were done with computers or high technology; it was all sort of like a magic trick, utilizing common sense and misdirection.

But what I like most about Friday the 13th, and, indeed, the horror genre, is the way it subverts viewer expectations. Especially with the reputation the genre has built up of being low-culture, exploitative and totally without merit. When really, upon any sort of closer inspection, these films are full of commentaries on the nature of death, feminism, hegemony and other power struggles, capitalism, the objectifying male gaze…it goes on and on. Not to mention that most horror films seemed fundamentally based in the tragedies of Ancient Greece and adhere to a strict 3-act based structure. But mostly, horror films reflect and deftly criticize the times in which they were produced.

Friday the 13th was a product of the Reagan era, drawing the viewer in with the vice of the camp counselors and then punishing him or her as the film punished the movie characters. Some people argue that in this, the film is actually fairly conservative – punishing kids for pre-marital sex and drug use. But I think it is a little more subversive than that. It shows how greatly the punishment does not fit the crime and makes you side more with the irresponsible counselor than it does with the psychotic mother.

Not, of course, that I’m saying you necessarily root for the counselors and want them to live. In fact, horror films are so much fun because you kind of root for the killer, right?

[Photos courtesy of wikipedia.com]