Story of a Lonely Boy...

            For every hero, there is a villain.  For every damsel in distress, there is a knight in shining armour.  For every chainsaw-wielding maniac, there is a hysterically screaming tramp.  And for every Freddy Krueger, there is Jason Voorhees.

         

Those of you who have grown to know (and love) me are very aware of my extreme fondness for Jason Voorhees.  And yes, this may or may not include permanent ink on my body.  But another story for another day.  Today, I realise, the time has come to channel this love into something I can share with the world.  And this, my friends, comes in the form of a very belated review of ‘Friday the 13^th’.

Of course, in this circumstance I am speaking of the classic 1980 film starring Betsy Palmer, a bunch of unknowns and a very young, very handsome Kevin Bacon.  And I promise that my love of Bacon won’t turn this review into something similar to my Kurt Russell jeans-obsessed rant that is formerly known as a review for ‘The Thing’.  Pinky swear.

For those of you who know the hockey mask and the title but not much else, ‘Friday the 13^th’ set the tone for many amazing, as well as many terrible, horror films of the 1980s and beyond.  It is one of the first films to use the cabin-in-the-woods formula; however, instead of a bunch of teens travelling to a remote cabin, here they are summer camp counsellors working to reopen Camp Crystal Lake.  Why does it need reopening, you ask?  Well, you see, some twenty-odd years ago, a young boy named Jason Voorhees drowned in the lake while his counsellors were not supervising him.  Hmm… hormone-driven youths, wonder why they weren’t paying attention?  You do the maths.  A year later after Jason’s death, two camp counsellors are murdered at Camp Crystal Lake by an unknown assailant.  Following this, the camp is closed for many years until a new owner decides to reopen it, despite its’ grisly history.  As they work towards refurbishing and reopening the camp, a group of new counsellors find themselves stalked and ultimately murdered by a mysterious stalker hell bent on revenge.

In terms of acting, sure, there are no Oscar worthy performances.  But the murders?  They are quite amazing, especially for their time.  The characters I personally find quite annoying; I don’t particularly like any of them, which, of course, makes the viewing a whole lot more pleasurable.  Kevin Bacon is working towards his ‘Footloose’ cool and I find a certain point of the film for his character quite… well, frankly, quite awesome.  Betsy Palmer works her role well, although I don’t want to go into too much detail for those of you who haven’t ever seen the film.  And the ending – oh boy, horror gold. 

There is a whole bunch of associated trivia I’d love to get into with you, but again, no need to spoil a great film for new viewers.  Overall, I’m assuming I don’t need to tell you how highly I think of this classic film; it is a poignant piece in the horror genre and will live a long life in the collection of any horror enthusiast.  If you haven’t seen it, make it your next horror classic to view.