Editorials
13 Unlikable ‘Friday the 13th’ Victims Whose Deaths We Cheered
Because sometimes, a little machete justice is well deserved.
October this year not only brings with it the Halloween holiday we ache for 364 days out of the year, but a bonus Friday the 13th as well; it doesn’t get any better than that folks. And while Michael Myers eats up most of the glory this month, the Shape takes a breather for a day as our special, special boy Jason takes the reigns as we focus on one-third of the unholy trinity (Freddy, Jason, and Michael) on his day of reckoning. Also, let’s talk science here- some of that violent reckoning felt great to those who really had it coming.
Yes, like most horror films, you have a hero, best buddy, comic relief, and of course, a serious douchebag. Classic standards that make up the cast for a horror movie, right? And the beloved Friday the 13th franchise had more than its fair share of scum sharing the screen with Camp Crystal Lake’s most notorious mama’s boy, who when met face-to-face with the machete of justice, we cheered as if our hometown sports team won the state championship.
In celebration of one of our favorite ongoing (hopefully) series of slasher films and the second greatest day of the year, instead of weeping for the innocents’ fate at the hands (or power tool) of Jason, we rejoice in the much-welcomed departure of 13 of Crystal Lake’s biggest assholes.
13. Shelly Finkelstein
Some people love the character of Shelly, while some find him insufferable. I almost feel like a prick for putting him on this list, however, when I hear him speak after a recent rewatch, I don’t feel as bad for including the “Franklin” of the F13 franchise. His ongoing bad pranks of “the boy who cried wolf”, ended abruptly and ever so adequately with a slash to the throat rendering him unable to speak- thank fucks…
12. Axle Burns
Axle had a bit part in The Final Chapter, but the little time he spent on screen, made us hate this dirty creep enough to crack a smile when Jason served him his just desserts with a throat slash and bonus head twist. Sorry Axle, weirdo-sexy-booty-rump time is over. Jackass.
11. Tamara Mason
The mean girl award of 1989 definitely goes to Tamara Mason. This manipulative chick who also peer pressures her friend into using drugs, attempts to use her looks and sexuality to advance in life, giving zero fucks who gets hurt in the process. Ironically enough, Jason kills her with pieces of a broken mirror in her bathroom. Poetic justice? Absolutely.
10. Ethel Hubbard
Ethel Hubbard, the foul-mouthed redneck down the road brings the sanctity of bitchdom to a whole other level of crazy in The New Beginning. While her oddball mama’s boy of a son could rival Jason’s own admiration for his mother, he couldn’t even hold a candle to this broad. She acted as if the kids in the group home shit in her cheerios on a daily basis, and if ole Roy hadn’t killed the teens, she probably would have eventually. Also, I was pretty relieved once her shrilling voice fell silent in her soup slop.
9. Trent Sutton
Man, Trent was such a narcissistic douchebag. He’s like the popular guy in high school who got off on making people who he deemed beneath him lives so goddamn miserable, and you wanted to see the shithead trip and fall flat on his face, breaking his nose so badly. He’s a controlling boyfriend and a cheating scum. Jenna deserved way better- and Trent deserved that trip down Crystal Lake Justice Lane.
8. Melissa Paur
Snobby Melissa from The New Blood may have been a match made in Heaven for ole Trent before her on this list. How the people that had to be in close proximity of this character didn’t knock her teeth out, is beyond my comprehension. Manipulative and sneaky, this bitch tried to play all her cards to get her way; and that way resulted in an ax to her forehead. A glorious end to miss pink and pearls if you’re asking me.
7. Robert Campbell
This sleazy journalist from Jason Goes to Hell gives us all a bad name. Hijacking the body of his girlfriend’s mother for the purposes of fame and job advancement is pretty damn despicable. The guy never passed Ethics 101 I’m guessing. Campbell being possessed by Jason makes him just over the top cringe-worthy, if that were even possible, yet here we are. And his place, along with his body resulting in a puddle of melted goo per the Jason possession, is well deserved indeed.
6. Ali, Fox, and Loco
Three of the most memorable characters from the third Friday installment, wouldn’t have deserved their fate had they just left shit alone. But turning the other tattooed cheek has no place in the Crystal Lake universe! They roughed up Shelly, which was kind of refreshing, but they crossed the line when trying to burn down the barn that could have resulted in seriously hurting innocent people. Eh, they had it coming.
5. Charles McCulloch
Jason taking out the trash in Manhattan indeed! Ok, Canada but let’s pretend that wasn’t a thing. The abusive, cold-hearted uncle of the sweet Rennie almost let his niece who he retains guardianship over, drown as a young child; resulting in a crippling anxiety of the water Rennie carried into her young adulthood. Jason planting Charles headfirst into what looks like a toxic waste barrel from a TMNT cartoon, seemed like a suitable ending for this piece of shit.
4. Dr. Crews
Crews, the physiatrist of telekinetic Tina Shepherd is a flat out first-rate asshole. It’s pretty easy to hate the guy, as similar to Jason Goes to Hell douche Robert Campbell, uses others to gain notoriety; and he’s not even slick about it. Crews lures Tina and her mother to Crystal Lake for some special therapy, but he’s only trying to exploit the poor, damaged girl. Plus, he gets Tina’s mother killed due to his recklessness. Can’t say I didn’t chuckle when he got mowed down with a hand-held motor saw.
3. Junkie Criminals
I really don’t think I need to make too much of an argument here on these two pieces of sexual assaulting, junkie pieces of shit. The pair of junkie alleyway thugs that abducted Rennie, stuck a needle in her, and attempting to have their way with her, deserved much more than a needle through their back and a face smash into a pipe. However, Jason, albeit unintentionally, saves the day again by ridding the world of serious trash.
2. Raver Rapist
As if his clothing choices weren’t reason enough to kill this little shit, the raving rapist pretty much ties places here with the junkie thugs from Manhattan. The only difference here is the cowardly approach sneaking up on a girl while she’s indisposed. Although poor Gibb suffered in the crossfire between Voorhees and the raver predator, we can only look at it as taking one for the team for the greater good of humanity.
1. Roy Burns
Picking up right where Jason left off, paramedic Roy Burns loses his shit when he sees his son has been murdered quite violently by one of the troubled kids at the group home cabin. He snaps, grabs a hockey mask, and poses as Voorhees killing off anyone connected to his son, no matter how minor. So yeah, not only did he deserve his fate because of his wild killing spree, but where exactly the fuck was he when his son needed him? Allowing this poor kid to jump from foster home to foster home, never having stability? All of a sudden this dude wants to give a shit? Pfft, what a terrible deadbeat dad.
As I leave you here with one of the greatest musical contributions to horror movie history by the fabulous Metropolis, let’s talk below about Jason taking on the heroic role in the Friday films by ridding the planet of complete wastes of oxygen. Who do you think was the worst of the worst?
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
‘Sting’ Review – Throwback Creature Feature Entertains With an Impressive Practical Monster
“We Built Every Creature” – ‘Alien: Romulus’ Goes Heavy on the Old School Practical Effects!
‘Terrifier 3’: Filming Has Wrapped on Damien Leone’s Christmas Slasher Sequel!
You must be logged in to post a comment.