Mommy Issues: Friday the 13th Part 2

            What makes a sequel?

            Marvelous question, don’t you think? Our culture is saturated with them. They aren’t a new thing, especially in the horror genre – The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) anyone? Have they always been born out the need to make money? Was a sequel ever warranted in its own right? Even The Empire Strikes Back (1980) wasn’t planned way back when George Lucas was creating what he thought would be his one and only chance at a trip to a galaxy far, far away.

            Yet there are many sequels that are just as iconic – even more so at times – than their namesakes. Care if I name a few examples? The Godfather, Part II (1974), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Aliens (1986), and even The Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1990). So we can definitely say that sequels have been a part of our cinematic world for just about as long as film itself has been around.

            Still, no one would argue that the sequel is an art form, even in light of the blockbuster giants I have just listed. By and large we can all agree that part 2s, and 3s, and 4s, and so on do not typically achieve the thrills, spills, and chills of that first big surprise. Even so, I’m sure everyone has their favorite sequels too.

            There is, to me, one particular film that stands out in its ‘sequelness’ because it is more responsible for the creation and endurance of its franchise than the act it follows: Friday the 13^th Part 2 (1981).

            This particular Part 2 does not stick out because it is especially great, or even better than the first. It simply embodies all that a sequel is supposed to be.

            It builds upon the first film whilst remaining true to the original formula. It increases the body count (especially crucial for a slasher sequel!). And probably most important of all, it consistently strives to ‘top’ its predecessor in every way: More blood, more jumps, faster pacing, higher budget… All around its aim is on more and bigger payoffs.

            Of course, that doesn’t make it a better film that the first Friday the 13^th (1980) by any stretch of the imagination. The first film is better constructed, acted, directed. It is more suspenseful and definitely more creative. And in that light, Friday the 13^th Part 2 really is a bonafide sequel in every sense. It doesn’t try to be better than its progenitor, it just tries to out-do it.

            On Friday, May 9, 1980, Paramount Pictures unleashed Friday the 13^th on an unsuspecting public. Made on a shoe-string budget of $600,000, it was a smash hit in a way no one could have expected; grossing nearly $6,000,000 it’s opening weekend and almost $40,000,000 during its entire theatrical run! To put that in perspective, the only film to beat Friday the 13^th in summer ticket sales for 1980 was The Empire Strikes Back!

            What did that mean? A sequel of course! Production of Friday the 13^th Part 2 was underway by October that year, mere months after the first movie ended its tenure in the box office.

            When asked to return to direct the sequel, Sean Cunningham declined because he didn’t want to make the same movie over and over. The directing job fell then to the previous film’s producer Steve Miner. Along with screenwriter Ron Kurz (taking over from writer Victor Miller), Miner would decide to make the villain of Part 2 the boy Jason Voorhees, whose supposed drowning in Crystal Lake was the impetus for his mother to murder eight good-looking teens in the first installment.

            Unfortunately, bringing Jason Voorhees back was the primary reason effects guru Tom Savini declined to reprise his talents for the picture. He opted instead to work on another slasher, The Burning (1981). However, Savini was a student of Dick Smith (famous for the make-up effects on The Exorcist (1973) among others) and referred Steve Miner and Co. to fellow pupil Carl Fullerton, who agreed to do the work.

            The set-up was essentially a carbon copy of the first script: A bunch of clueless teens go to work at a summer camp at Crystal Lake (across the lake from the original camp this time, which is off-limits and condemned). Unbeknownst to them, Jason Voorhees survived his drowning 20-odd years earlier, and he is ready to continue his mother’s gruesome legacy!

            In the same way that its predecessor laid the future groundwork for stereotypes in the horror genre, Friday the 13^th Part 2 is responsible for many of the tropes now found in horror sequels. Chief among these is the device of killing off the last movie’s heroine before the opening credits. This proves fairly effective because it resets the clock, so to speak. Once again, no one is safe because the previous survivor’s luck just ran out!

            In addition, the cast of Part 2 is bigger, offering our killer more victims and therefore more kills to creatively stage and execute on screen. The picture also added a love interest for the heroine Ginny (played by the goddess Amy Steel) that acts as a counterweight to the audience’s expectations that only the final girl will make it out alive.

            More characters, more blood, one turn deserves another. Ergo the other attribute we get more of is T & A. Not much more, mind you, but Friday the 13^th only featured one very brief shot of the ta-tas and Miner and Co. decided there was ample room for improvement. And though there is still only one moment of nudity (and a pretty funny one at that), the sequel is drenched with sexual tension. Just check out the moment when Jason shish-ka-bobs two kids with a spear while they’re in the sack! Can it really get more Freudian than that? Hey, it was marketed to teenagers!

            But in spite of all these characteristics, the thing that makes this sequel work is Jason. When one thinks of Jason Voorhees, typically the first thing that comes to mind is a 6’ 4” titan in a hockey mask with a machete. That is not the Jason of Friday the 13^th Part 2. Here, Momma’s little boy is hunched over, feral, and wears a burlap sack over his head. The fabled hockey mask would not appear until Part 3 (in 3-D no less), and is about the only thing that installment really has to offer.

            Strikingly, the wildness and griminess of Part 2’s Jason is often scarier and more effective than the lumbering hulk that pervades the rest of the series. The decrepit shack he’s built. The shrine to his mother’s decapitated head, ringed with burning candles and flanked by her sweater and machete… The film definitely takes great steps to blend the slasher formula with traditional gothic horror, something subsequent episodes would eschew entirely. The burden of success certainly rests on the shoulders of Jason Voorhees.

            Sean Cunningham originally wanted to continue the series as a name brand. The idea was that every year a new Friday the 13^th movie would be released that deals with some other sort of frightmare. One can see how well that worked out when Universal Studios attempted something similar with Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982). Paramount wisely opted to instead create a slasher franchise that has proliferated endlessly for the past thirty years.

            They must have gotten something right, because when Friday the 13^th Part 2 hit theatres on May 1, 1981 (less than a year after the first!) it grossed $6.5 million its opening weekend! If that doesn’t mean a threequel, then what does?

 If something has remained even more consistent in these films – beyond the formula of randy teenagers, bad luck, and an undying supervillain – then it must be the wink-wink attitude of fun. We always want to revisit these movies because we just know that we will get a kick out of that rollercoaster!

So turn out the lights, grab your popcorn, and hold on tight!

We’re going back to Camp Crystal Lake!

Long Night at Camp Blood: Friday the 13th

            What is horror?

            Is it atmosphere? The macabre? Death? Some combination of all of the above? Or perhaps it is something darker, sinister, a Freudian synthesis of our fears seated deeply in the recesses of our consciousness.

            How do we outlet this need? How do we manage this emotion we call fear without letting it control us? What is it about the horror film that attracts us, so that even as we are repelled by it, we are inexplicably drawn to the darkness?

            Many would say that the horror film is a way to process fear as an emotion; to experience the thrilling rush of the fight-or-flight response without placing ourselves in true immediate danger.  Contrary to the stereotype, horror as a genre is strikingly diverse. From the paranormal to the everyday, scary movies cover a wide variety of topics, settings, cultures, and worldviews. Moreover, it very well may be the oldest of genres, dating all the way back to the bare beginnings of cinema with films such as L’Inferno (1911) and even farther back, Le Manoir du Diable (1896).

            The result of such a storied and wide-ranging history is that the annals of horror generally have something for everyone. We all have a favorite, whether it be sci-fi like Alien (1979), paranormal á la The Exorcist (1973), or on lighter side with It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (1966).

            Like everyone, I also have my personal favorites and they range across the board. But at the top of the list is a little low-budget gem from 1980 that spawned eleven sequels and a genre icon: Friday the 13^th (1980).

            The slasher subgenre of horror is generally accepted to have begun with John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Some place the genesis as far back as Psycho (1960) and include several subsequent films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976). But regardless of the origin, it can’t be denied that the slasher’s heyday came in early 1980’s, roughly from about 1980-1984.

            During that time literally hundreds of films were made, all practically using the same blueprint: Get a group of attractive teens/20-somethings, put them in an isolated situation, and pick them off one by one using a killer with a unique modus operandi. Typically, the outline functioned as a sort of morality tale: Don’t have sex, don’t do drugs, and definitely don’t go out alone. Marry that with a unique mythology surrounding the killer and there you have it! A slasher film.

            While Halloween is generally held as the best of the lot, Friday the 13^th is arguably the farthest reaching, longest lasting, and most influential. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham and released in May of 1980, the film followed all the basic guidelines that Halloween had set down but for two.

First off, John Carpenter’s film found evil stalking babysitters in suburbia, the idea being that the danger was in our own backyards. Friday the 13^th instead places the action at a summer camp – Camp Crystal Lake! – far out in the woods where no help can be reached.

            Secondly, where Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence gave grabbing performances with an emphasis on character development for Halloween, here Cunningham’s focus was on, as he put it, “good-looking kids you might see in a Pepsi commercial.”

            Both of these departures from the early formula became staples in the genre. Isolation is arguably much more frightening than familiar surroundings if only because there is no possibility of escape. And, as politically incorrect as it may sound, attractive people are simply fun to watch. It makes sense that audiences would more willingly trade their hard-earned bucks for a chance to see cute and determined Adrienne King as opposed to the pudgy and world-weary Donald Pleasence.

            In practice, Friday the 13^th claims one more notable, and this time perhaps most important, difference from Halloween that may be the number one reason for its success. It is gory. More specifically, it features absolutely astounding practical make-up effects from SFX master Tom Savini (famous for his work on Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Maniac (1980) among others).  Where Halloween achieved its shivers from suspense and build-up, Friday the 13^th goes for the jugular, making it a more visceral and primal experience.

            The grue isn’t tasteless either. Where many famous gross-out pictures rely on the messiness to carry the excitement, here the blood-letting is simply a dot on the ‘i’. Rather than being the focus, the gore is a nuanced touch designed to be the push that sends your nerves over the edge! The violence isn’t lingered on, and aside from two or three moments, we see only the aftermath. The result is strikingly effective, keeping every moment of violence fresh and shocking, rather than numbing the audience and thereby stalling the picture.

            There is also something to be said about the look of the film. Though it may only be an unintentional byproduct of time and place, as well as budget, the grainy ‘80s film stock and stripped down aesthetic give the film a gritty and realistic tone that many modern films simply cannot replicate. The natural lighting of the cabins and woods are also a factor, contributing a murky darkness in the nighttime terror that comprises the second half of the film.

            In conjunction, no analysis of Friday the 13^th would be complete without a mention of Harry Manfredini’s score. The stripped down minor-second stings played on violin and cello are obviously inspired by Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho. But the score’s kicker comes from Manfredini’s notice of Betsy Palmer saying “Kill her mommy! Kill her!” He spoke the primary syllables ‘Ki’ and ‘Ma’ into a microphone, and then looped the recording and ran it through an echoplex. The result is the highly chilling “Ki-ki-ki-ki… Ma-ma-ma-ma..” now so iconic in pop culture.

            All of these factors combine to make Friday the 13^th a memorable and terrifying thrill ride. But none of it would be half so effective without one specific performance: Betsy Palmer as the psychotic killer Pamela Voorhees.

            Though she has insisted time and again that she thought the script, “A piece of [bleep]” and only agreed to do it because she needed another car, the casting of Betsy Palmer is a stroke of genius. She was fairly well-known by that time thanks to her roles in several television shows such as Murder, She Wrote, Studio One in Hollywood, and The United States Steel Hour. But she had not acted for several years.

            She has also been on record saying that she thought her reveal at the end was a cheat; her character never being introduced beforehand and the killer only in point-of-view sequences during the majority of the film. But she’s wrong. It plays off beautifully! The refusal of the film to give a reason for the mayhem until the very end simplifies and streamlines the events. This is not a Hitchcockian exercise in red herrings and Macguffins. To add that dimension would mire the script in unnecessary details.

            Ergo the reveal of Mrs. Voorhees at the finale introduces an opportunity for Palmer to give the craziest and most memorable turn of her career. Her monologue about her son Jason (THE Jason who would return in the sequels as the hockey-masked titan of terror!) is the highlight of the film. Doubtless she thought that the little-picture-that-could would never be seen by such a wide audience, else she most likely would have never let loose with such a deranged and undignified performance.

           

            Without spoiling the deliciously inspired (and endlessly imitated) final scare, Friday the 13^th ends on a razor’s edge. It manages to conclude in an incredibly satisfying way, yet leave room for a sequel and subsequently a franchise that has stubbornly refused to die over the past thirty years. It is also surprisingly accessible. The gore is wince-inducing but not extremely off-putting. The suspense is spine-tingling but not overly unbearable. And most of all, it is undeniably fun – that most important of aspects at the core of cinema.

            The attractiveness of the flick is perhaps best described by the omen delivered by another memorable character: Crazy Ralph.

            “You’re going to Camp Blood ain’tcha?” he says to a hapless teen early on, “You’ll never come back again! It’s got a death curse!”

            And like the unfortunate teenagers who ignore his warning, we cannot help being sucked in. We just have to see more of Friday the 13^th!

Living on the Edge: Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy

            From the opening frames of Shinjuku Triad Society (1995), with its bustling montage of crime, fringe-dwellers, and illicit back-alley liaisons, to the melancholy downpours of Rainy Dog (1997), and the closing song and sunset of Ley Lines (1999), Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy is a gritty, uncensored journey into the abyss of alienation and loneliness that lies at the very edges of society.

            The ‘yakuza’ film is as entrenched in Japanese culture as the ‘gangster’ film is in ours. Movies like Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966), and Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel (1948) have cemented the genre’s staying power just as well as The Godfather (1972) and Goodfellas (1990). However, Japanese gangsters have a distinctly different way doing things that makes their world seem all the more seedy and sinister to Western viewers.

            And beyond this difference even further we find Takashi Miike. Where before was a shady, but structured underworld of crime bosses and foot soldiers, cops and dealers, pimps and prostitutes, we now find under Miike’s direction a blur of lines and a frightening chaos that mimics the real world perhaps a little too well on the one hand, and yet seems directly out of a cartoonish nightmare on the other.

            Although now well known for his shocking depictions of horror and violence in films such as Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001), as well as historical epics like 13 Assassins (2010) and Harakiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), Miike’s first work was a redefinition of this yakuza genre that had been so well established in Japan for decades. The Black Society Trilogy is comprised of these three films: Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines. This trilogy is not one in the traditional sense. Unlike Star Wars or Jurassic Park, Black Society is not a film and its direct sequels. Rather, in the tradition of Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, or Kieślowski’s Three Colors, it is a trilogy linked by themes and motifs. Here specifically, the chief theme is alienation.

            The first, Shinjuku Triad Society, follows Tatsuhito, a dirty cop who is working to bring down a gay crime syndicate known as the Dragon’s Claw Society, only to find out that his younger brother has become the group’s lawyer.

            Rainy Dog centers on Yuji, an abandoned foot soldier for the mob who must now take work in the form of a contract killer-for-hire. Things only get more complicated when a woman he hasn’t seen in several years saddles him with a young boy she claims is his son.

            Finally, Ley Lines finds three mixed-race youths struggling to make ends meet by selling toluene. They finally discover a possible way out of their dead-end existence by robbing the crime boss they supposedly work for.

            Takashi Miike explores alienation and loneliness throughout each of these films in three distinct methods. These methods are present in all of the films, each in their own way, and never are they mutually exclusive. It is in this way that the director ties the trilogy together by its themes.

            The first is a marked separation of the main characters in each film from the society around them. Every character has traits that contribute to his/her alienation. In all cases, the result is not ‘me against the world’, but a profound loneliness that permeates every decision, every action taken. Often, this culminates in the worst of choices predicated on the desperate hope of a connection with someone, something, somewhere.

            In Shinjuku Triad Society, Tatsuhito is outside of every norm. He is a detective, but corrupt, and therefore outside the law. His is half Taiwanese, half Japanese, and therefore has no national identity. His brother works for the crime syndicate he is trying to bring down, which tears his family apart. He very literally has no place to call home. This emptiness drives him to the most reckless extremes in an attempt to reconcile his broken relationships.

            Rainy Dog sees Yuji expelled from the organization he has always worked for, perhaps the worst disgrace for a gangster! To be considered so utterly useless and unthreatening as a henchman that you aren’t even whacked, you’re fired! This is compounded by the obviously empty proclamations of love and kinship that his new employer professes when contracting Yuji to kill this person or that one. The disconnectedness of it all is underscored by the blithe muteness of Ah-Chen, his son, who follows his father everywhere but never says a word.

            The three youths in Ley Lines find their separation from society in their fractured nationality – half Chinese, half Japanese. It is startling to find such discrimination in this cinematic underworld where a gun is all that is needed make every man equal. Indeed, the group believes this to be true, only to find out firearms aren’t all that rare. What happens when the other guy has one too?

                As a sort of counterweight to the traits that force each character into alienation is Miike’s juxtaposition of this solitude with the acceptance and cohesiveness of groups just out of reach. These arise in the form of those who lead and follow. There is an eerie and agonizing similarity between Yuji’s son as he draws a gun in chalk on the sidewalk (Rainy Dog) and the mob boss Wang’s ‘pet’, who scratches a phallus into the desk, chanting about his ‘favorite thing’ (Shinjuku Triad Society).

            Often, we have to question the desire for belonging in Miike’s world, where unity and brotherhood seem to go hand in hand with murder and betrayal. It seems as though the striving to part of something is the driving force behind the pain, suffering, and inevitable downfall suffered by all of our protagonists.

            It is the camaraderie of the Dragon’s Claw Society that takes Tatsuhito’s brother away from him, just as it is the desire for a family that drives Yuji to confront the enemies hunting him, and three friends to risk everything for a chance to escape their situation.

            Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, Miike explores alienation through the past, present, and future. At last we see the prime difference between each film.

            Shinjuku Triad Society examines the past. Tatsuhito battles aggressively throughout the film to regain the family he has lost. He dwells in what was before, and it informs all of his actions. He gives his money to his parents, he chases his brother to the very depths of the criminal world just to bring him back and make his family whole again. In many ways, this is the most desperate and angry of the three pictures, as though nothing can equal the fury of a man who has lost grip on all that was dear to him.

            Rainy Dog is the present. Yuji has the opportunity here and now to forge a connection, a family to belong to. Who cares if that family consists of a mafia hitman, an orphan, and a reformed prostitute? Yuji’s persistent attempts to get out of the rain whenever it falls symbolizes his need to be sheltered by someone, anyone. But he finds his purpose, in the end, is to be the one who shelters someone else. He embraces this even with his final act, the shielding of his son from a hail of bullets.

            Lastly, the future. Ley Lines is built upon the quest for something better, somewhere else. It is most fitting that the ending of this film is the most uplifting. In spite of the death and loss, the last remaining character, with his new love interest, rows out to sea singing an old nursery rhyme. The gamble of robbing a crime boss could only be thought possible by the ignorance of youth, yet it is this zeal for the future that sets them apart. There must be something better around the bend.

            Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy does not really offer much in the way of answers to the questions it poses. But maybe that is okay. The struggle against alienation and the desire to belong are forces within each of us. Perhaps that is the reason these films resonate so well with us when we see past the violence and grittiness. Deep down, Miike seems to say, we all need to care for something.