So, I’ve been torturing my wife by watching all of the old Friday the 13ths. She even admitted the first few weren’t too bad, but once they brought him back from the dead with a lighting bolt, she just could not get into them. That being said, I really did take notice of how the first Friday, while a slasher, is also a bit of a thriller, as well. It isn’t until Mrs. Voorhees reveals herself that the killer has truly been unmasked. Based off of the jeep that we see the killer drive, it could also be Steve Christy. And what about old, crazy Ralph? Could he possibly be apart of the violence with his prophecies of doom? Nope, just a woman who went mad with grief.
She’s not cra…
I take it back.
One thing that I noticed when watching these films, especially 1 & 2 (the one with camp counselors as the exclusive targets) is that children today will not even remotely understand some of the aspects of these films. I could be wrong, but most of my friends who have children that go to camp, it is a day camp or weekend camp. The only camps where they go overnight are the theme camps (music, sports, theatre). Camp Crystal Lake was just a camp, where kids went and learned outdoors stuff. Do camps like that still exist? If so, how many of them are there, and how many kids are attending? That is the first thing, the second will be why isn’t anyone calling for help with their cell phone? In a time when you had to keep change in your pocket to make a phone call, these movies will puzzle kids more so than the other slasher franchises (Halloween is in the town and they normally try and attract attention, Nightmare on Elm Street is in their dreams, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn’t really give our protagonists time to realize that something crazy is going on).
I even laughed about that with my wife, while watching the first film. Two of our characters find an bloody ax in a bed, keep in mind one of the counselors is supposed to be there. They think the others are playing a joke, when in today’s culture, it would go something like this:
AX IN BED
ALICE RETRIEVES CELL PHONE: “I’m texting Linda, this isn’t funny.”
Instead, they wander about looking for someone else.
Nope, nothing unusual about this.
Some things I don’t even understand about the movies, and I’ve watched them far more than I should have. For instance, why is this man wearing a neckerchief.
Explain this to me!
The fashion is admittedly fun to laugh at, because I don’t know that we ever thought these looks were going to last forever, but just in case, here is a sampling of the clothing seen at Crystal Lake.
Lastly, I still don’t understand the concept of Jason. They’ve made him more of a spirit of vengeance as the series has went on, but it didn’t start that way. We get a simple explanation that he’s some mentally damaged, feral kid that has been living in the woods. The Jason we see at the end of the first film was originally just a jump scare because Carrie’s did so well. It was never meant to insinuate that Jason did not drown in 1957 (interesting sidenote Jason would be over 60 if he were alive/undead/existing in whatever state he is in for the last 6 films of the franchise today). So if possible explain how Jason went from this:
To this in just 5 years (the second film states that it has been 5 years since the “Camp Blood” murders, even though it was made the year after the first film):
To this the next day (part 3 takes place the day after the second film):
Even though I have picked a little bit at the dated nature of the series, Friday the 13th is still a fun series to watch, as long as you don’t think about it too hard. So pull it up on whatever service it can currently be found on and enjoy. You’ll have to wait until part 3 to get the super-familiar Jason we all know and enjoy. Hope you have fun walking down memory lane, I’m going to wander out into the dark forest and sleep in a tent now. ha ha ha sh sh sh
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