Sunday, October 2, 2011

Jason and Tommy, sittin' in a tree...


Horror Movie Marathon
Day 1, Movie 1

Friday the 13th: Part V-A New Beginning (1985)
Directed by Danny Steinmann

Jason Vorhees is an icon, simply put. There's nothing around it. Granted, he's not the best written character around. (Big deal, you were relatively retarded and drowned because of horny teenagers.) But his legacy lives on. Often imitated, pretty much every slasher film from here on out owes something to Jason, even though he owes a lot to Michael Myers.

Michael Myers was really a product of suburbia. There is a certain rural-ness to Jason. He's the reason you don't want to go into the woods alone, or at all. I know for a fact that I've avoided sets of woods deliberately at night. I'm not sure exactly what it is that bugs me so much about them, but I don't believe I am alone.

To put things in perspective as to how much of a pussy I truly am when it comes to these things, my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to venture into the woods behind my friend's house a little over three years ago. I remember, we went to Allen's house after we got done seeing Pineapple Express at midnight. He, myself and Greg thought it would be a wise idea to walk out into the woods. The moon was full, it was foggy and cold. We couldn't see much in front of us, even though we took a flashlight with us. We stayed out there for about ten minutes and left. As soon as I turned my back, I felt like something was right there behind me.

This has been a common occurrence in my life. When I was a kid (and even more recently), I'd turn all the lights off downstairs and have to go upstairs to my bed. As soon as that light got turned off, I sprinted up the stairs in order to avoid whatever it was I believed was directly behind me. It was never anything (least so I think), but I can say that it resulted in a lot of stubbed toes and swearing.

Is this phenomenon from watching the Friday the 13th movies? It certainly could be. But really, domestic horror belongs to Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. Jason will always be something I think of when going into the woods.

I'm not really sure when my love of these movies began. I don't even know if I can seriously say to myself or anyone else that I love these movies. They're a secret, or else should be. I try posing myself as this serious minded film guy, watching the occasional foreign film and trying to pass myself off as smarter than I probably am. But when it comes down to it, everyone has guilty pleasures and each of the Friday the 13th movies falls under that category.

When I was younger, my cousin Matt and I would meet up at family functions. We would get talking about different things, but eventually, it became known that he was able to watch R-rated movies. And not just Lethal Weapon 3 and Speed, but actual horror movies. The types of movies that I was pulled away from when I was at the video store. Once I knew about this, I mined Matt for all the knowledge on these movies. He and I would walk off, talking about various scenes in each of the Friday the 13th movies. He would describe them as if they were stories around a campfire, urban legends that weren't supposed to be heard. I had a ball getting the shit scared out of me.

This is probably most of the reason as to why these movies hold a special place in my heart. I know a lot of people wouldn't find it as appealing as I do to get whole movies ruined, but it was awesome. My imagination filled in the blanks, just like a good campfire tale. I took what information I had or could get from VHS boxes and plot summaries, along with Matt's stories and constructed these elaborate scenarios.

Needless to say, I was slightly disappointed when I actually watched the movies.

But, then again, I wasn't really.

I didn't actually start watching the movies until I was working at Blockbuster. I don't exactly remember what the dates were, but I'm pretty sure it was around spring of 2003. The reason I remember this (at least slightly) is because I watched the latter three films in my parent's bed, recovering from getting my wisdom teeth removed. I sat there, gauze filling my mouth, and watched these movies. The mix of actual decent filmmaking (read: only decent, nothing more) and the nostalgia I felt for the stories Matt told me on my grandmother's farm resulted in a genuinely pleasing movie watching experience.

When I watched Part V at first, I was pretty confused. The whole plot was a little strange: Tommy (portrayed by Corey Feldman in the previous film and someone that looks like a low rent Mark Hammill in this one) from The Final Chapter is now crazy and recovering from his stint of running away from Jason and ultimately killing him. He goes to a countryside mental institution with a cast of characters that ranges from your typical slasher movie nymphomaniacs to rip-offs of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest characters.

Tommy shows up and, before long, a fat, chocolate eating, well-meaning, mentally challenged young man gets axed to death by another man who has a remarkably short fuse. The EMTs show up to take the body away. It's after this that the killings start. And man do they start.

SPOILER ALERT

A lot of fans of the Friday the 13th fans tend to not take this one seriously. Almost like On Her Majesty's Secret Service. But as with that film, this really isn't a bad movie in respects of the rest of the series. The reason that people have such a problem with this movie is that the killer is not Jason. Rather, it's the EMT father of the fat, challenged boy. He goes crazy, but not crazy enough to not have a way to explain his way out of the killings by making them all look like the work of Jason.

This is all well and good, a decent plot. But the movie is not concerned with plot at all. While watching this, my sister was sitting to the side, talking to me about different things to do with the movie. She started asking me about the plot and things of nature. I explained to her that the plot of a Friday the 13th movie is about as important as how many bullets a six-shooter has when being used against a living dead mummy. (Thanks Dad for that one.) The movie hints that the killer is someone besides Jason, but goes along with the assumption that it's him for the entire of the movie until the end.

Everyone thinks it's him. And why not? They should. He has superhuman strength, he appears out of nowhere, he kills people in an over-elaborate fashion and wears a hockey mask. But the movie never hints at anyone besides Jason being the killer. Granted, they linger on shots of him after he sees his son dead, but they never actually imply anything else besides that. I always found that weird. The movie could definitely been a decent whodunit, but it never quite elevated itself to that level.

That is not to say the movie is without merits. Oddly enough, for the killer not being Jason, it has the highest body count of any of them. It has a few inventive kills here and there, nudity and the like. This one always holds a special place in my heart because of the atmosphere it contains. I don't know why I like it, but I do. It's up there with the first and the third.

And really, though I like Jason Lives, I was always more of a fan of Jason being alive than resurrected Jason. Call me crazy, but there it is.

Jason will always hold a special place in my heart, even if he'd rather be ripping it out of my chest and holding it in front of me while I die slowly.

Dedicated to those who never saw a Saturday the 14th...

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