Editorials
Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake: ‘Friday the 13th’ Turns 40
One of horror’s most popular and enduring franchises began as a Halloween copycat. No, really.
Producer/Director Sean S. Cunningham sought to capture the same success of Halloween by borrowing its formula and applying it to a film title he thought audiences wouldn’t be able to resist. To drum up interest and test the waters for any similarly titled films, he put out an ad in Variety touting his idea as “The Most Terrifying Film Ever Made.” Never mind that production was still months away. His gamble paid off. Released theatrically on May 9, 1980, Friday the 13th wound up cracking the top twenty highest-grossing films of the year and inspired a slew of sequels, crossovers, and a remake.
With a modest budget, simplicity is key in this seminal slasher. Just before the summer season, a group of counselors prepping to open the long-dormant Camp Crystal Lake get picked off is grisly fashion by an unseen assailant. In the film’s final act, the killer is revealed to be an unassuming grandma-type, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), embittered and broken over the tragic drowning of her young son Jason.
Up until this reveal, Pamela’s identity is kept secret through the use of POV. The only hints to her identity stem from the reactions of her victims just before their deaths. Some, like plucky camp cook Annie Phillips (Robbi Morgan), react without a trace of the usual guardedness found in a hitchhiking female climbing into the vehicle of what we assume to be an unknown man. Others, like Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), react with recognition, followed by the shock of betrayal. The twist that the film’s killer isn’t the usual masked maniac type but an average, older woman went far toward the film’s overall memorability.
The simplicity and budgetary constraints meant development among the other characters was limited to nonexistent, with Adrienne King‘s Alice Hardy becoming the last one standing to take down Mrs. Voorhees after the dawning realization that all her friends had been brutally slaughtered. As the Final Girl, Alice was the most fleshed-out character of the bunch. Alice began her journey with one foot already outside the camp- she wasn’t even sure she wanted to stick around for the camp’s opening. Steve, hoping to woo her, convinced her to give him one more week to decide. This little character insight painted Alice as a more reflective type, but it’s also an interesting detail to note when compared to Mrs. Voorhees’s motivation to kill. Voorhees targeted those that attempted to return Camp Crystal Lake to its former glory, and Alice had no vested interest in the project.
Of course, the other major component of the film’s success was the special makeup effects by Tom Savini and his crew. Poor Annie’s throat is slit in the woods, Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) receives an ax to her face, and Kevin Bacon‘s iconic death, pictured above, saw his character Jack get an arrow driven through his throat post-coitus. Even the killer earned a rather bloody death via decapitation. The body count in a slasher film is crucial, and Friday the 13th came barreling right out of the gate with a whopping nine victims, not including Mrs. Voorhees.
The final component that contributed to Friday the 13th’s appeal with viewers was the hook scare ending, inspired by the jump scare conclusion of Carrie. Poor Alice wakes up alone in a canoe out in the middle of the lake, only to be dragged out and into the depths by Jason’s corpse. It’s all a dream… or is it? The final shot shows a couple of ripples that hint maybe it wasn’t a nightmare, after all. It’s something the sequel ran with and never looked back.
If ever there was a prime example of the disparity between critics and horror fans during the golden age of slashers, it’s Friday the 13th. The slasher might have struck a chord with audiences, but critics despised the film. Granted, that was par for the course in the golden age of slashers, but it’s interesting to look back and see just how much they hated this one. Notable critic Gene Siskel famously attempted to thwart viewers from seeing the movie by intentionally spoiling the ending in the first few paragraphs of his review before skewering the film for its “sickening attack scenes.” The real bread and butter of slasher films, fans of course understand.
Forty years removed, Friday the 13th looks and feels of its time. Its influences are worn plain as day on its ’70s-styled sleeves, and some of the low-budget seams show. Upon the first watch, it’s easy to focus on the blood spewing from the stump where Mrs. Voorhees’s head once resided, but multiple revisits make it easier to spot a man’s hairy hands standing in for Betsy Palmer’s. That the franchise has become synonymous with Jason Voorhees means that the original has become overshadowed by its sequels in the decades since, too. Still, Cunningham, writer Victor Miller, and the cast and crew turned what was initially conceived as a Halloween copycat into a surprise box office hit with legs. Outside of the 2009 remake and Freddy vs. Jason, the original film is the highest-grossing of the franchise.
Friday the 13th established the mythology and the groundwork for the sequels that followed. It perpetuated the hunger for slashers during that period, and delivered a few twists and jolts that caught viewers off guard. In the decades that followed this film’s release, young Jason has grown up, discovered his identity through various masks, slaughtered over a hundred erstwhile campers, died repeatedly, and found himself the subject of a custody battle that’s hung future sequels in limbo. All of which is owed to a foundational slasher film with a catchy and unforgettable title bestowed upon it by producer Sean Cunningham: Friday the 13th.
Editorials
‘Bloodstone: Subspecies II’ Revisited: A Bigger, Bolder Follow-Up to Full Moon’s Vampire Cult Classic
Horror sequels are a peculiar thing. In most cases, follow-ups to scary movies tend to retread the same formula with different victims and more over-the-top scares. This is because audiences tend to be more interested in the antagonists of these pictures than anything else, with even main characters becoming disposable when the time comes to produce a sequel.
That’s why some of the most memorable horror sequels are the ones that actually manage to hold onto interesting survivors from previous films while also pushing the story forward instead of having the same thing happen again to a different group of people. From Scream 2 to Dream Warriors (and arguably even The Exorcist III: Legion), there are quite a few of these innovative sequels to go around.
However, if there’s one franchise that deserves more attention when discussing bigger and better continuations that make the most of episodic filmmaking, it has to be Ted Nicolaou’s Subspecies.
The Full Moon classic spawned an indie horror icon, but bizarre sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II is even more beloved than its predecessor.
Building a Bigger Vampire Saga
While the film itself takes place almost immediately after the events of the first movie, Bloodstone only entered production a couple of years after the release of the original as both Charles Band and Nicolaou weighed the pros and cons of returning to Romania to continue the series. In an effort to maximize efficiency, the team decided to invest in a trilogy where parts II and III, now fully written by Nicolaou, would be filmed simultaneously over the course of a single grueling shoot.
Much like the first Subspecies, Bloodstone’s low budget meant that the filmmakers once again had to cut corners and re-use as many of their resources as possible. Thankfully, the process was much easier this time around as Nicolaou, with the help of Romanian cinematographer Vlad Paunescu and his wife Oana, became more acquainted with local customs and made new friends. Shooting abroad still came with its own unique set of challenges due to a lack of translators and the occasional safety concerns, but the crew managed to make things work by filming things guerrilla-style and setting up shop in abandoned caves and real medieval ruins.
The director’s newfound contacts, coupled with the relative success of the first movie, meant that he was basically given free rein over an assortment of shooting locations usually considered off-limits for indie horror. That’s why Bloodstone features insanely ambitious lighting and effects work even during scenes shot in the middle of a bustling Bucharest. The filmmakers went so far as to project Radu’s Nosferatu-like shadows over local monuments as if he were a Romanian boogeyman, an idea that was actually encouraged by local cinephiles.
In fact, many of the more elaborate scenes here had originally been planned for the first movie before being discarded due to the lack of available resources. It was only with the support of Romanian fans and filmmakers that Bloodstone was able to give Radu a chance to be even more menacing the second time around.
Michelle’s Transformation Takes Center Stage
However, when it came to the American part of the crew, not everyone was able or willing to return for another round of Romanian adventuring. That’s why Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) is unceremoniously killed off at the beginning of the film while the role of Michelle had to be recast. Denice Duff took over for Laura Mae Tate, with the character now being joined by her sister, Rebecca, played by Melanie Shatner (yes, that Shatner).
In the finished film, we follow Michelle as she awakens to her new life as a vampire and discovers that Radu has murdered her lover. Struggling with grief and her newfound bloodlust, Michelle contacts her sister overseas, with Rebecca soon travelling to Romania on an ill-advised rescue mission. Meanwhile, Radu (Anders Hove) reaches out to his undead Mummy (Pamela Gordon, underneath heavy layers of impressive makeup effects) and promises to deliver her the coveted Bloodstone artifact while also making Michelle his eternal consort.
Revisiting the movie, I was impressed with how introspective this story is when compared to the original. The sequel assumes that you’re already familiar with the previously established characters, so the story wastes no time in exploring the immediate aftermath of the previous film’s events. From Michelle’s reluctant transformation into a creature of the night to Radu’s obvious mommy issues, Nicolaou is way more interested in pushing these characters into new and uncharted territory rather than recycling existing plot points.
Practical Effects and Gothic Atmosphere Still Impress
Yet, much like the first film, it’s Romania itself that makes the movie worth watching. The ruins of Castle Vladislav are even more majestic now, and visiting the moody streets of Bucharest with its surprisingly punk-rock nightlife made for a nice change of pace when compared to the original film’s quiet village setting. Once again, the abundance of interesting locations makes the movie feel much more expensive than it really is, with the filmmakers surrounding our characters with a living, breathing environment that would be impossible to recreate in a studio.
The increased freedom also allowed Nicolaou to flex his filmmaking muscles and tackle more ambitious blocking/composition in the sequel. The low budget and tropey script mean that the visuals don’t always work, but it’s consistently clear that this neo-expressionist style could only come from a passionate team attempting to pay homage to the shadowy horror classics of yesteryear. If the retro atmosphere isn’t enough for you, there’s enough practical gore here to satisfy even the most demanding of horror hounds!
Radu himself is also far more interesting now that Hove is more comfortable working alongside an international crew, with the actor having gone on record explaining that, while he spent more time drinking vodka than working while shooting the first movie, the sequel was a much more creatively satisfying experience for everyone involved. The character’s relationship with his abusive Mummy is also a highlight of the expanded mythology, especially since the practical effects that bring her to life are just as freaky now as they were back in ’93.
My only real gripe with the horror elements of the picture comes from the glaring absence of the diminutive stop-motion minions from the first film, though I guess the surprisingly entertaining addition of Professor Popescu (Michael Denish) and his archeological antics mostly make up for that.
Bloodstone: Subspecies II is obviously the middle chapter of a trilogy, with the ending feeling a lot less definitive than its predecessor as several plot threads are left to dangle in the wind, but I appreciate how the flick explores new ground while remaining faithful to nearly all the ideas that made the original such a good time. While I don’t think it’s as big of an improvement over the first movie as some fans make it out to be, Bloodstone is definitely worth revisiting if you’re a fan of old-fashioned vampire yarns.
Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to this initial trilogy, Bloodlust: Subspecies III!
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