Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 163 - The History of Friday the 13th: Part One
Abby and Alan sit down to discuss the history and production of the first four films in the Friday the 13th horror franchise. In part one we start with the first four films; Friday the 13th (1980), Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1983).
From Kevin Bacon to Corey Feldman, there is a lot to discuss between the first four movies in this series.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode, a long overdue episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Brinker, and I'm sitting here with Alan Kudan.
SPEAKER_01:Hello.
SPEAKER_00:And listen, we'll address the elephant in the room. We know we've been a little delinquent behind the scenes, and uh it's been a little bit longer than we anticipated since the last time we recorded, but we are so thrilled to be back, and we beg your forgiveness because there was some big life things happening behind the scenes and we had to shift our focus briefly. But we are so thrilled to be back today in October with our big Halloween series, and uh we're really excited to share spooky Halloween time with you.
SPEAKER_01:I'm very excited for this. We've literally been talking about this for years.
SPEAKER_00:For years, yes. And I want to just shout out right off the bat and say that this episode, the series, is brought to you by Kellogg's. I wish. Why you wish? Because then we'd have a sponsor.
SPEAKER_01:They're evil. The cornflakes were originally developed as part of an anti-masturbation campaign. Mr. Kellogg himself made cornflakes because the bland taste was supposed to curb lustful desires.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know about you, but I am constantly eating cereal and getting lustful desires. Yeah, that's fascinating. What a weird world we live in. No, what I was going to say is that not only is this episode and series not sponsored by anybody, that it's dedicated to our new friend Austin, who's been a longtime listener of the podcast. And Alan and I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Austin in March for the first time in person. And Austin has said to us a few times how much he really loved our Halloween series that we did a few years ago around this time, where we watched every single Halloween film, which I have to say was a really jumpy time in my life.
SPEAKER_01:Why jumpy?
SPEAKER_00:I feel like it, even though Halloween is my favorite franchise, it really got into my head. Really? Yeah. Huh. But anyway, this is dedicated to Austin, and we wanted to recreate it. The Halloween episodes, I think, are episodes like 87 and 88. We also did Nightmare on Elm Street, but Abby.
SPEAKER_01:You haven't even announced what we're doing. Well, people have read the title. Not everyone can read.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, all this is to say we've done some of the major franchises around this time. We're picking up this idea this year with Friday the 13th. And so Alan and I are watching every single Friday the 13th film in the franchise. We are researching the history of the production. We're trying our best to piece together the storyline, which is harder than you'd expect, and we're here to talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:No, I disagree. I think it's actually easier. Unlike the Halloween movies, there is a pretty coherent thread, at least through the majority of the franchise.
SPEAKER_00:Alright, well, let's see if you still say that when we're done. So we're gonna break this up because there's 12 films, and today we're gonna talk about the first four because those sort of create a complete set, and the fifth reboots the series. So today we're just talking about the first four films. There are, of course, spoilers in this, but you know what? I think it's still a fun episode to listen to, and you could still go watch the movies, or you could pause, watch the movies, and come back. Of course, that's up to you.
SPEAKER_01:Or you can pause, watch, pause, watch.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you could do that. We'll make it very clear.
SPEAKER_01:That'd be crazy.
SPEAKER_00:Let's acknowledge our sources. There is a Vox article by Asia Romano. Friday the 13th isn't unlucky. It's a meme disguised as superstition, a time article simply titled Friday the 13th by Time Staff, a National Geographic article by Becky Little, Busting the Myth of Friday the 13th and the Knights Templar, the entire Friday the 13th story finally explained by Cez and Kohler on Looper.com, and a mental floss article by Matthew Jackson, 17 Surprising Facts About Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_01:We will also be citing the movies.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Good call out, Alan. Before we get into the history of this iconic film franchise, and I'd only seen the first few, so it's been really fun, actually, to watch through all these because they get wilder and wilder as time goes on. I also want to talk about the history of the date, Friday the 13th, as this superstitious date in history and why it has that reputation.
SPEAKER_01:I have a question.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So after watching a lot of Friday the 13th movies, I still do not understand why the series is called Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_00:That is a great question, which we will address.
SPEAKER_01:Will we?
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:When?
SPEAKER_00:Today. Similar to superstitions like walking under ladders, breaking a mirror, even seeing a black cat, right? Folks have lived in fear of the number 13 for literally thousands of years. There are many different historic paths that lead us to the superstition of this day. So the background here isn't going to be totally linear, but hopefully you will get there with me. So, first, according to Norse mythology, the number 13 developed a bad reputation when the god Loki crashed a dinner party with twelve other gods, making, of course, Loki the thirteenth god. At this party, Loki was responsible for coordinating the shooting of the Norse god Baldur, was the son of Odin and Frig. He was thought of as just and honorable, like an overall good god. A shining beautiful beacon of good and beauty, which made his death devastating to everybody.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone called him Baldur the Beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:Did they really?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's nice. After he was shot by Hor, H-O-O-R, the world went dark according to mythology. So that's one angle, right? The Norse angle. There is a somewhat similar dinner party theory in Christianity. According to claims, there were 13 guests at the Last Supper, Jesus and his twelve apostles. This dinner took place on a Thursday, followed the next day by the crucifixion on Good Friday. But there are so many other instances of thirteen being unlucky throughout various cultures across the globe. So for example, a year with 13 full moons instead of the usual twelve caused problems for the monks who were creating early calendars. There are also connections here to ancient calendars, like the Mayan's calendar, 13th Buchan, which was associated with the 2012 apocalypse phenomenon.
SPEAKER_01:Whatever happened with that.
SPEAKER_00:However, it's also broadly believed that there is a definitive reason that Friday the 13th has become a cursed day, though it's not entirely accurate. It dates back to a Friday the 13th in October of 1307. On this date, there was a raid on the Knights Templar that mostly killed all of them, so almost nobody survived.
SPEAKER_01:Who killed whom?
SPEAKER_00:Great question, Alan. So the raid was actually ordered by King Philip IV of France, also known as Philip the Fair, even though this is not a good example of that. So Philip had sent orders, secret orders, I may add, uh, to arrest all members of the Knights Templar simultaneously.
SPEAKER_01:I think I remember this from Assassin's Creed.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I remember that too. At this time, the Templars had been accused of heresy essentially and corruption, and also devil worship. We actually talked about this raid in the Black Mass episode that I did with Miranda Warzell a while ago. That was a good episode if you want to hear more about this raid. There's a bit more information on it there. But anyway, that's why Philip kind of there was these rumors that the Knights Templar were corrupt, that they were bad boys and they needed to be broken up.
SPEAKER_01:So what does that have to do with the Friday the 13th?
SPEAKER_00:Again, the idea is that this raid happened on Friday the 13th in October of 1307.
SPEAKER_01:And Jason Voorhees was a member of the Knights Templar?
SPEAKER_00:Listen, stick with me, okay? I told you this was not going to be linear. But I'm talking about the Knights Templar thing because when you do look up, like what is the history of Friday the 13th, often the different historical sources are citing the Knights Templar raid as a reason. And of course the Last Supper. Finally, there's also a fairly complicated theory connected to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. The Code of Hammurabi is a legal text that was written in the mid-1700s BC. It's one of the oldest and best preserved texts that still exist from ancient Babylon. It was composed on a combination of stone and steel and currently sits at the Louvre in Paris. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi does not include the number 13 in the list of laws. Sort of similar to not including a 13th floor on a building. It just feels like it's superstitious and it was left out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's just a way to say your building is taller than it really is.
SPEAKER_00:True.
SPEAKER_01:I I didn't realize there was much superstition with the Hammurabi Code. It's most famous for its introduction of equivalent punishment. So, you know, you get the phrase an eye for an eye from the Hammurabi Code, where if somebody gouges out your eye, then the legal punishment is the perpetrator's eye gets gouged out. If someone's wagon runs over your leg, then their leg will also be maimed. It's kind of crazy and incredibly cruel, but was an effective legal system for quite a while.
SPEAKER_00:Tit for tat, some would say. There has also been a history of certain Fridays being unlucky or cursed for a while. So according to the Vox article, this can be traced back to Chaucer, who introduced or at least memorialized this concept in the Canterbury Tales. Because of Chaucer's style of writing, it's hard to understand if this was playful writing or indicative of the attitude towards Fridays at the time. But essentially, this idea of Friday just being an unlucky day generally, combined with the number 13 having superstition in different cultures is again a kind of all it's like the perfect storm. It all comes together here.
SPEAKER_01:I just remember the Canterbury Tales movie. That's a weird one.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sure I watched it in English class. But listen, watch a night's tale. That's a much better retelling.
SPEAKER_01:Of Canterbury Tales?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Jeffrey Chaucer. Well, it's like a modern version.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Chaucer's in it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but it's better.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it is better. It's more entertaining. But the Canterbury Tales movie, there is so much. I just remember there being full frontal like male nudity.
SPEAKER_00:Like the one you watched in English class or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And they're just like going at it, and then they stop having sex. And then he just turns around and of course he's completely flaccid. I'm like, that's not realistic.
SPEAKER_00:What a high school you went to.
SPEAKER_01:Because you cannot show a wreck penis or butthole and still have a rating of R.
SPEAKER_00:Don't I know it? One of my first my first job, I should say, in New York City was working for a company that put content onto like set top boxes, and I had to watch porn, among other movies and things, and make sure that the ratings were correct. And so I knew the rules really well. So again, there's a great Vox article, which we'll link in the description, which goes into all of the different possibilities here, and there are many. I think it's probably an amalgamation of all of these. But according to Vox, the real reason that Friday the 13th picked up in superstitious popularity is because of a book that came out in 1907 called Friday the 13th. The gist of the story is that a stockbroker uses the date to deliberately crash the stock market.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa.
SPEAKER_00:And of course, when Friday the 13th, the film, finally came out in 1980, it helped sort of seal the fate in a way. It was that recent of this superstition.
SPEAKER_01:Did it release on Friday the 13th?
SPEAKER_00:No, it did not. But it came out on a Friday, but it was May 9th, 1980. So I don't know. I just think it's crazy that you have traditions that date back hundreds and thousands of years ago, and they still sort of exist and inform modern culture. I don't know. That's the whole point of this podcast is to trace things back as best as we can.
SPEAKER_01:I think you're doing a great job.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Okay, so the reason why this series is called Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_01:Finally, thank you.
SPEAKER_00:We're gonna get into it in a second, but know this. There's a difference between the reason why and the in-world reason why. What? I'll bear with me, okay? Stick with me. Horror changed forever in 1978 with the release of John Carpenter's Halloween. Two years later, Paramount was hoping to capitalize on this new slasher genre with the release of Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_01:Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was not a new genre thanks to Black Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:There's a difference between Black Christmas and Halloween, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01:One's a good movie, one's boring as hell.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but also you don't see like it throughout all of Halloween, you see Myers stalk the victims in a way that you don't throughout Black Christmas.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:And I think the difference of that, like this like cat and mouse chase visually, is what Friday the 13th is clearly replicating. And I think that was something new that Carpenter gave us in 78.
SPEAKER_01:So it's I mean, again, it's just better.
SPEAKER_00:It's also just better. Everything about it's better. It's the best film ever made.
SPEAKER_01:And it's Halloween themed. Yeah. Unlike Black Christmas, which is Christmas themed.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Facts.
SPEAKER_00:But it's actually interesting. We're gonna talk about this a little bit. One thing that Friday the 13th is trying to capitalize on, to your point, Alan, is like calendar is creating like a calendar association because it's Sean S. Cunningham saw how successful that was for other films, but we'll talk about that more in a second. When you watch the very first Friday the 13th film, it's hard to ignore the Kevin Bacon. Truly. I mean, he's such a little tiny boy.
SPEAKER_01:He comes out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's almost a jump scare.
SPEAKER_01:Holy cow, you're Kevin Bacon. What the hell are you doing in this bit roll?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was the biggest uh role for him at the time. Sorry, it's not a bit roll.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's a supporting role, but it's a minor supporting role.
SPEAKER_00:But he has a cool kill, and so that's he's just a guy there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he's just one of the sorry spoilers.
SPEAKER_00:He's one of the bros.
SPEAKER_01:Fuck yeah, Kevin Bacon.
SPEAKER_00:No, we're not apologizing for spoilers. Listen, you clicked on an episode for Friday the 13th, it is what it is.
SPEAKER_01:I know, but like what if you didn't know about Kevin Bacon?
SPEAKER_00:Then you shouldn't be listening.
SPEAKER_01:It's such a wonderful surprise.
SPEAKER_00:So when you first watch the very first Friday the 13th film, it's hard to ignore the many similarities to Halloween, which makes sense, but also I've noticed a lot of similarities to Psycho. It feels like Cunningham is really drawing on obvious horror inspiration to kick off this series. And, you know, I don't blame him. I think that's something that a lot of great filmmakers do. Cunningham had worked as a producer on Last House on the Left in 1972 and continued to direct three comedies before trying his hand at horror in 1980.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, wait, wait. So he does Last House on the Left.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Tries.
SPEAKER_00:Three like comedy. One is like a sexploitation comedy, and the other two are like, I don't know, more tame. And then after this, he also goes back to comedy. Like he just loves kind of like edgy comedy.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, Last House on the Left is just one belly laugh after the next. I know.
SPEAKER_00:Weird. This is not the last time we're gonna talk about Last House on the Left in this episode.
SPEAKER_01:That's unfortunate.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So because of his interest in comedy, Cunningham was hoping that Friday the 13th would be a quote roller coaster ride for audiences. He wanted to scare people and make them laugh. The working title used by the writer, Victor Miller, was quote, A Long Night at Camp Blood, end quote. But Cunningham had the idea to title the film Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_01:Why?
SPEAKER_00:Again, looking at the success of Halloween, he saw an opportunity for a calendar-based marketing success. Cunningham even took out an ad in variety with the title before it was fully cleared legally, and before the film was funded, wanting to drum up excitement and claim it as their own. There was, in fact, already a movie with a similar title out there. Friday the 13th, The Orphan from 1979. Distributor George Mansor said, quote, it was moderately successful, but someone still threatened to sue. Either Phil Skurdy paid them off, but it was finally resolved, end quote. So it's kind of the idea that somebody just paid them off to drop a lawsuit because the director went rogue and did this. He believed in it so much. Again, the script had nothing to do with Friday the 13th. Nothing had anything to do with it, but he wanted to have this like calendar thing that you could market and franchise on, right? And he was right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Production started on the first film, which starred Betsy Palmer, Adrian King, Harry Crosby, Lori Bartom, and among others, Kevin Bacon. Notably, again, this was Kevin Bacon's biggest role at the time. He was not an established actor before this. Filming mostly took place in New Jersey, and the camp where it was filmed is still open. I actually think I've had a few friends who have gone to weddings there.
SPEAKER_01:So they filmed it where it's actually supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00:No, when I was telling you that it was in New Jersey, it was because I knew it was filmed there. I don't know where it was meant to be.
SPEAKER_01:No, it is true. Oh. Where Jason goes to Manhattan and he basically walks there. It has to be New Jersey. It has to be. It's in Hoboken.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. As the film opens, a group of teenagers arrive at Camp Crystal Lake to reopen it for the summer. For the first time in years. We find out that the camp has been closed for several seasons after a young boy, Jason Voorhees, drowned in the lake.
SPEAKER_01:It's his fault.
SPEAKER_00:What unfolds feels like a perfectly classic slasher movie. Counselors take advantage of their time at the camp before the campers arrive by hooking up and acting like teenagers, and their escapades are thwarted one by one as a mysterious figure starts to brutally murder them until we are left with only Alice. But just a side note, Kevin Bacon's kill has gone on to sort of be fairly iconic, and it was really challenging for the filmmakers to accomplish, and they almost had to abandon it, so I want to talk about it a little bit. Quoting from the Mental Floss article by Matthew Jackson, quote, perhaps the most iconic death in the film occurs when Jack, played by Kevin Bacon, is killed with an arrow shoved through his throat from underneath the bed he's lying on. It's a brilliant special effects moment, but was also the most complex death scene in the film. To make it work, Bacon had to crouch under the bed and insert his head through a hole in the mattress. Then a latex neck and chest appliance were attached to give the appearance that he was actually laying down. Getting the setup right took hours, and Bacon had to stay in that uncomfortable position the entire time. For the bloody final moment, Savini, who was the makeup designer, also under the bed, would plunge the arrow up and through the fake neck, while his assistant, who was also under the bed, operated a pump that would make the fake blood flow up through the appliance. To further complicate things, the crew needed someone to stand in for the killer's hand as it held Bacon's head down, and they settled on the photographer Richard Fury. So after hours of setup in latex building and planning, it was finally time to shoot the scene. And when the moment of truth came, the hose for the blood pump disconnected. Knowing that he basically had only one take, otherwise they'd have to build a new latex appliance and set everything up again, the assistant grabbed the hose and blew into it until blood flowed out, saving the scene. I had to think quick. So I grabbed the hose and blew like crazy, which thankfully caused a serendipitous arterial blood spray, the assistant said. The blood didn't taste that bad either. End quote.
SPEAKER_01:I think people would be amazed to find out how much of Hollywood is achieved by people just like crouching and just like doing a little task.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You're just out of frame and you're pumping or you're blowing or you're shaking. Or you're holding a light. And that's, you know, that's movie magic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean it's true because like when you read this, you're like, wow, this sounds like how we would maybe do something. I mean, the latex is kind of beyond us, but you know, how we would do a practical effect as people, and it's just like, yeah, sometimes the practical effects are the best way to do it.
SPEAKER_01:They usually are.
SPEAKER_00:CGI ages. Yep. Alice finally, so right, the one remaining counselor, Alice finally comes face to face with the killer haunting the camp. And spoiler alert, this is last time I'll say it, it turns out to be Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother. Pamela was played by Betsy Palmer, but Shelley Winters was the filmmaker's first choice. Palmer ended up taking the part so that she could buy a new car. What? Yeah, she was kind of like this famous like old school Hollywood actress. And yeah, I just thought it was interesting. Like when you Google her, you she has these like glamorous beauty shots of herself from like you know the 50s.
SPEAKER_01:Is this her most notable role?
SPEAKER_00:When I looked at her list of films, I didn't recognize many others, but I feel like my mom would, you know, like someone who really knows a lot of like the golden era of Hollywood. Got it. But Palmer didn't play the role for the whole movie. Several other crew members stepped in until Palmer was cast. Because she was really there for the ending.
SPEAKER_01:Until she was cast.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So like there's like a few moments where you see a movement or a figure and they just I understand, but like were they filming without casting? I think that's crazy. I think so. They're trying to get Shelly Winters. So Mrs. Voorhees is seeking revenge on counselors because she blames the camp counselors who didn't properly supervise her son when he drowned. And in a wonderfully shocking ending, Alice actually manages to kill Mrs. Voorhees, becoming the sole survivor and final girl. As she is floating in a canoe on the lake, the figure of a monstrous little boy jumps from the lake and pulls her off the canoe. But she doesn't die.
SPEAKER_01:Well, right, because that's uh it's a hallucination.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a dream sequence sort of hallucination thing, which will happen copious times in this franchise.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:It's really, I would say, one of the strongest themes in the franchise. That and recaps.
SPEAKER_01:The strongest theme of the entire franchise, hands down, is a blatant, unapologetic hatred of teenagers.
SPEAKER_00:Especially teenagers with boobs. Anyone who shows their breasts, they're dead. Or anyone who enjoys breasts, they're dead too. It's really like one of those movies when you think about like classic horror from this time. There's a lot of that, right? Like teenagers get punished for doing drugs, for drinking, for having sex. This is exactly that. Verbatim. Yep. The pious survive, right? So Alice wakes up in the hospital and it leaves us somewhat unsure of what happened to Jason. Was that a hallucination? Was it not a hallucination? Was not. Wait, it was.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00:Was it's not defined.
SPEAKER_01:Oh.
SPEAKER_00:She that happens and then she wakes up and we don't know. Like, did that happen or did she dream that in the hospital?
SPEAKER_01:Or was she just a drunk teenager?
SPEAKER_00:The twist ending of Jason coming out of the lake didn't exist in the original script. It was actually the makeup artist, Tom Savini, who suggested the ending. He was inspired by the ending jump scare in Carrie. Savini and his team used the pizza ovens at the camp, just a fun fact, to bake the latex needed for the special effects in makeup.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:The writer, Victor Miller, was pretty upset with the filmmakers that they decided to center Jason as the killer in subsequent sequels. Quote, Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain, end quote.
SPEAKER_01:Disagree. Yeah. But I've seen the other movies.
SPEAKER_00:What a cranky writer.
SPEAKER_01:Jokes on you.
SPEAKER_00:The film opened on May 9th, 1980.
SPEAKER_01:It's not called Friday the 13th, Mom Takes Manhattan. Good point, Alan. It's not called Mom vs. Freddy. It's not called Oh, Final Friday, Mom Goes to Hell. Right. But that's a movie I'd watch. Or Mom X.
SPEAKER_00:The film opened on May 9th, 1980. Variety did not love the movie, writing that it quote, has nothing to exploit but its title and whatever Oomph Paramount puts into the marketing campaign, end quote. But it opened on 1127 theaters, and boy did Cunningham prove Variety wrong. The first film in the franchise grossed almost 68 million worldwide, 59.8 million.
SPEAKER_01:Compared Is that adjusted for inflation?
SPEAKER_00:Adjusted for inflation, it's like 238 billion. What? Yeah. Holy cow. Compared to its budget of somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000. I'm sorry, 238 billion? Alright, fact-checking myself. I did this calculation before we started, but I didn't write it down. Okay, so no. 60 million in 1980 is roughly 236 million today.
SPEAKER_01:I see.
SPEAKER_00:Just me exaggerating as always. Regardless, it was a massive success. One of the most profitable horror movies of all time.
SPEAKER_01:Can you imagine making one movie and then having more GDP than a lot of countries?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's crazy. For Paramount, only one film from 1980 did better financially, and that was Airplane.
SPEAKER_01:It's a great movie.
SPEAKER_00:The entire series would go on to include 12 films in total. It would spin off a television series, video games, novels, and comic books. Jason would become just as, or in some cases, maybe even more recognizable than Michael Myers.
SPEAKER_01:Definitely.
SPEAKER_00:The second film in the franchise was released a year later in 1981. This time the movie was directed by Steve Miner. This was Miner's feature directorial debut. He would also direct the third installment, House from 1985, Halloween H2O, Lake Placid, and Day of the Dead from 2008. Lake Placid? Yeah. Heck yeah. And Halloween H2O. It's a good one. Similar to Sean S. Cunningham, Miner also worked on The Last House on the Left as a PA and a personal assistant. The bulk of the second film picks up the story five years later. We start again with Alice, our final girl from the original, who is struggling to move on after the massacre that she experienced. But despite being the final girl, she is killed by Jason pretty quickly into the sequel, finally confirming that he is alive, well, and a killer, right? So we know that even if that was a hallucination or whatever it is, he actually is a threat. I have a question. Okay, hit me.
SPEAKER_01:And I mean, this only dawned on me far later in the series. But he dies as a little kid.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then he comes out of the lake as an adult. No. What?
SPEAKER_00:No. This I actually have a note about this too. He dies as a little kid, right? He drowns in the lake. When he jumps out of the lake at the end of the first movie, he's in the body of a little boy. Right. Then when we are introduced to Jason for the first time, at the beginning of the second film, he's an adult.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:That's if there's a five-year difference between the end of the first film and the start of the second. So we have to assume that he was some sort of like living lake creature monster that was a little boy and then in five years became an adult man, a broad-shouldered adult man.
SPEAKER_01:I think they actually address this in part two, where they say how he lives in his little house. He didn't actually die in the lake. He almost died, and now he just lives in the woods. Something like that. And now, yeah, he's just like this crazy feral kid in a man's body because he's just been living by himself eating like squirrels and shit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so maybe we're led to believe that the kid that comes out of the lake next to the canoe in the end of one was a hallucination, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yep. And then it isn't until later in the franchise when he effectively becomes supernatural. Very similar to Halloween.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we know exactly when that happens. That will be in the next part. Okay, so Jason kills Alice, right?
SPEAKER_01:It's impossible to tell who's who.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, truly. After this, we return to Camp Crystal Lake, and in a similar scene to the first film, we watch as camp counselors arrive for training. The plot is that the all these like will be one day camp counselors come together for a training to learn how to be camp counselors.
SPEAKER_01:Right, and frickin' Slo McGee over there shows up with her car all late.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the girlfriend. And then she becomes kind of the lead woman of the movie, Ginny.
SPEAKER_01:So disrespectful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is. Her boyfriend's pissed. Her boyfriend Paul is the guy who's kind of in charge. So the story of Jason is shared at a campfire tale that night, right? Described in detail by Paul Holt, who is the head counselor. And again, similar to the first movie, these counselors in training start to be killed one by one in cold blood, as Jason makes his way methodically through the lot of them. In the sequel, we meet Ginny, Paul's girlfriend, who eventually becomes the final girl. She stumbles into Jason's shrine to his dead mother, which also includes his mother's decapitated head. Classic. She impersonates Pamela Voorhees and confuses Jason or convinces him enough to survive.
SPEAKER_01:In one of the most bold strategies in the history of strategies.
SPEAKER_00:This strategy play comes up again later. It sure does. So part two also ends with a jump scare. When we think Paul and Ginny will survive, Jason bursts through a window and attacks one final time. He isn't wearing his mask in this movie. His face is covered for the majority of it, but he's not wearing his hockey mask yet. That comes in the next movie. But we see in this scene when he bursts through because he's not wearing anything how horrifying and disfigured his face is. Though Ginny survives, we don't know again what happens to Jason.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he grew up eating squirrels. You know, he has no dental work. Uh his entire skincare regimen is lake water.
SPEAKER_00:It's not good. It's not good. Part two had a budget of 1.25 million and went on to gross 21.7 million just in the U.S. box office.
SPEAKER_01:Great ROI.
SPEAKER_00:The second movie was filmed in a different location, mostly in New Preston in Kent, Connecticut. Similar to Halloween 2, Friday the 13th, 3 picks up right after the events of the second movie. We follow a group of young friends as they travel to Higgins Haven, heading to like a rural sort of Country house trip, right, uh at this guy Chr this kind of rural country house trip with some, you know, teenage friends at this girl Chris Higgins' farmhouse. Chris hasn't been back to this farmhouse in a few years, and we're sort of led to believe that she was attacked by Jason here years previously. As the fun unfolds, Chris remains on high alert. She's clearly uncomfortable and she is kind of dealing with the trauma that she experienced here. And rightfully so, as we start to see Jason stalk the group and kill locals. This is in the town, right? Yes. He starts by killing that guy at the convenience or the gas station or whatever, until he gets closer to the farmhouse. There is a weird, notable standout in this movie, which is a character named Shelly. Shelly is always playing pranks on the rest of the group, especially gory pranks with fake masks and blood. He is clearly an outsider and he makes the rest of the group feel uncomfortable. Especially this one girl that he is kind of like meant to be matched up with, and she's clearly horrified of him.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, everyone's horrified of him.
SPEAKER_00:There is a moment when Jason takes Shelly's prank hockey mask for himself. And this is the first time that we see Jason in his iconic hockey mask, something that stays with him for the rest of the franchise. Yep. So that's where he gets it.
SPEAKER_01:The filmmakers must have known this is the look that we want for him.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But also, like you need something to put on a poster. You know, the first two movies, it's like you need a villain, you need a Mike Myers, you need a Freddie Kruger.
SPEAKER_01:I wonder if the hockey mask was on the original poster for part three.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I bet it was.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's not in one and two, obviously.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But you know, the in posters often get retconned, you know, and like the shifted, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:As he tends to, Jason starts to kill the teenagers one by one. At the end of the movie, Chris, still alive, fights back. She pulls off his mask and realizes Jason was in fact the person who attacked her previously. She hits him in the head with an axe and Jason seems to die, but does he really?
SPEAKER_01:One fun note about this injury, this axe injury.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:For many movies after this, he has the scar from this axe. That's cool. I didn't notice that. Uh he well, I mean, it's just like a I mean, it's a fatal hit, theoretically, you know. If as fatal as you can get with this immortal zombie guy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And every time you see Jason without his mask after this, he has this giant gash over the left side of his head.
SPEAKER_00:Cool. I like that. The end of this movie mirrors the ending of the first. The next day, Chris dreams, another common trope in these movies, that Pamela Voorhees' dead, reanimated body springs from the lake and pulls her under. Part three was originally released in 3D. It's also the first of the series to be filmed on the West Coast in California and not on the East Coast. Part three was released in 1982 and was again directed by Steven Minor. The movie stars Dana Kimmel and Paul Crofta. The movie grossed 36.7 million in the US, compared to the budget of 2.2 million. Originally, the film's plot was meant to be totally different, to focus on Ginny from part two, but the actress who played Ginny refused to return, and a new concept was developed.
SPEAKER_01:I wonder if that was for the best or not.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Part three for me is definitely one of the more forgettable.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It just it blends so seamlessly. Like you can watch one through four as one gigantic movie.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh you know, they just bl especially two through four, just blend right in one right into the next by by design. And it seems like with this rewrite for part three, the original idea was gonna be even more seamless.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, and the only standout of this is that it's not on the lake, and I think that's why it feels forgettable, also, too. But totally, you could watch these for which is why we're grouping these together, and they were it was one of those things where they were like, okay, you know, obviously the success of one was unexpected. We're gonna do a trilogy. So it was originally intended to be three. Then again, this one did so well, right? These ROIs are insane.
SPEAKER_01:They'll never let it die.
SPEAKER_00:That they did another one, and so then that you have a group of four, and then it's rebooted with five. So yeah. Part three was the second highest-grossing horror movie of 1982, second only to Poltergeist, which is really impressive, right? You have Poltergeist, which is again one of the most iconic horror movies of all time, and you have part three of a slasher franchise, which gets horrible reviews, but the people fucking love it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, well, hang on, Poltergeist is famous now, but how many movies come out, don't do great, and then only become cult classics after the home release? But it did well. It was the highest-grossing horror film of the year. Good point. My point is bunk. However, sequels usually make money, especially when the one right before it was incredibly successful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_01:Even if it's a total flop, people have to see it to know that it's a flop. This is pre-internet. People can't just go on AOL Instant Messenger and talk to your friends and find out if it's gonna be a good movie or not.
SPEAKER_00:True, they had to call them on the landline or write them a letter at this point.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:To me, the fourth movie feels like the first deviation in the series. And deviations are gonna be flying fast and loose as we go through the rest of the franchise, but the fourth movie seems to kind of have the first different focus a little bit. Friday the 14th, 4, the final chapter, L-O L, was directed by Joseph Zito. And I really I don't know, I just have this love for horror franchises and films that are the final chapter, the last, whatever, and it's like four out of twelve. I know. Who are you kidding? Tom Savini, the makeup artist from the original movie that came up with the iconic ending, returned to four. He wanted to help kill off Jason, who he felt he had a hand in creating.
SPEAKER_01:I think the biggest perpetrator of this would be the Saw franchise when it's Saw, the final chapter, which is like movie like 25, and then they just keep coming out after.
SPEAKER_00:How many Saw movies are there?
SPEAKER_01:There's not 25. I think that's like Saw seven or eight or something. Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00:Oof, Saw's rough for me. So Friday the 13th, 4 was supposed to be released in October of 1984, but it was moved up to premiere in April. April 13th, 1984, a Friday. There we go. There we go. Took them four to figure it out. The fourth installment grossed 33 million in the US against its budget of 2.2 million. Like it's incredibly obvious why Paramount leans into this franchise, right? It just pretty good. It prints money every single time. At the time, the movie was met with negative reviews, but I think it's fun. And I think modern audiences agree with me. Like, I think you could watch any movie in this franchise and you wouldn't be like, dang, there's something hugely fresh or meaningful or some kind of practical effect that's so unique. Like there's nothing that blows you away, but every single movie is fun to watch. And I personally think they get more fun as it goes on. Like when they jump the shark and get crazy, I love it.
SPEAKER_01:Wholeheartedly agree.
SPEAKER_00:I had and I think also that's why maybe Halloween, which is the best horror franchise of all time, but scared me to watch. Like I think Halloween is scarier than Friday the 13th to me.
SPEAKER_01:Halloween movies are pretty serious.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:With some notable exceptions.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Friday 13th from the get-go is campy as fuck.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And the more they lean into that as the franchise goes on, the more fun it is.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it even it borderlines absurd at times. Yeah. And it's so fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Absolutely. So if you recall, at the end of Friday the 13th, 3, Jason has an axe in his head. And four, we meet him at the morgue. But he wakes up, surprise, surprise, kills a nurse and a coroner, and somehow finds his way back to Camp Crystal Lake.
SPEAKER_01:This is the first time we see him officially resurrect, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is. Nearby, there are two different groups that we start to follow. One is a group of rowdy teenagers, I wonder what's going to happen to them, staying for a weekend on the lake, and the other is the Jarvis family who lives next door. Tommy Jarvis, the little boy of the family, will go on to become an important pillar of the Friday the 13th franchise. He is a nerdy little boy played by Corey Feldman who loves monsters, masks, and special effects.
SPEAKER_01:This movie is great, by the way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is. Again, they start to get better at this point. Jason first targets the teenagers, as he always does, and he kills them one by one. At some point, a newcomer named Rob appears, and we find out that Rob is the brother of a woman who Jason kills in part two. And unfortunately, Rob suffers the same fate as his sister.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, again, names don't matter. The people are here to be killed or do cool things while f fighting Jason.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And even when you have like final girls and things in the series, like usually at the beginning of the next movie they die. Yep. There's a few exceptions to that, but very few. They might survive a few movies, but they don't tend to live forever.
SPEAKER_01:Then Lori comes in and just kicks ass. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:You'd think people would maybe shut down this lake or something, but no. During the end of the movie, Tommy and his sister Trish are running from Jason. Tommy, similar to Ginny in the previous films, has the truly wild idea to shave his head to make himself look like a young Jason.
SPEAKER_01:It's insane.
SPEAKER_00:An insane sequence of scenes. It's insane.
SPEAKER_01:Not even to try to convince a disturbed person that they're the mother, but he's gonna convince him that I'm you.
SPEAKER_00:I'm you. And so he does like it's like the scene in the Grinch. He does like a hack job of like shaving himself. It's so crazy.
SPEAKER_01:But and then it's like, I don't know. We both thought at the time we saw this that we're like, okay, I understand they're gonna kill Jason, and this boy is gonna become the new Jason.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Nope. It's just a really odd ploy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But guess what? It confuses him, it works. And Tommy is able to confuse him enough, disorient him enough that he attacks him with a machete.
SPEAKER_01:I will say, I can't think of a single time in the entire franchise where trying to confuse Jason doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's the best bet. Keep that in mind as we move through this world. So Tommy hits Jason over and over again with this machete as Trish watches in horror as her little brother murders a full-grown man with extreme violence. Tommy's iconic final look at the camera leads us to believe that maybe he's been possessed by the spirit of Jason or will somehow become the next killer, which would have really been an interesting plot line if the series decided to stick with it. But it didn't. Nope. We're going to pause here because the fifth movie comes in the form of a series reboot. And so, like Alan said, these first four movies really, I don't know, it's like they sort of stumble into the traits of Jason one by one, right? He's not even in the first movie. In the second movie, he doesn't have his mask yet. Like it's kind of a slow burn build of his character and what the backstory is.
SPEAKER_01:For sure.
SPEAKER_00:Which is kind of cool. It adds something to it. You're kind of collecting the pieces as you watch. But now we've established who Jason is, what his motivation is, and we're gonna sort of come back with a vengeance. And again, I typically I'm someone who kind of fades out after a few movies in a horror franchise. I think Friday the 13th is one of the few franchises for me personally that I feel like gets better as you go. And I there's something about like to Alan's point, how campy and j like how far these jump the shark as you go on that's so satisfying and fun. And while they're not as soul crushing or as haunting, as scary as other horror franchises, it's unique in that way. Like I'm genuinely having a blast watching these.
SPEAKER_01:I will say this is a rare situation where the sequels are getting more money, better talent.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:All these resources funneled towards them, where it's usually the opposite. Where, you know, but by the time you hit the third or fourth movie in all in almost any franchise, it's usually some kind of cash grab, uh, where they want to spend as little as possible because they know they just want to cash in quick and get out. In this case, they're pumping stuff in and they're trying really hard to make them fun, and they're doing a great job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. It feels so good to be back. Thank you guys again for bearing with us as we had to tend to some life things for a little while, but it feels really good to be back and feels like we're in our skin again. I'm so pumped for this series. I'm having such a blast, and we are gonna do a stories episode at the end of this. We have some really great camp horror stories to share with you guys. So stay tuned. This is gonna be probably a four-part series. Go watch these movies, watch along all October. That's kind of the idea. If you're looking for something to watch and to get into the spooky mindset, I highly recommend Friday the 13th. Also, for anyone out there who's on our Discord, or you can find the link to our Discord in the description of this, our friend Dan is doing something for the third year in a row now, where anybody who wants can go into this Google Doc that Dan has created, make a little column for yourself, and start tracking all of the horror movies you're watching. This is an honor system. It's fun to look back at the years previous, but go track as you watch horror films this month, and whoever watches the most tends to get a little prize. So that's a fun thing that we do every year. As always, thank you so much for being here. We are so excited for this series. It is only gonna get better, right? To me, this is like the basics, and then the next two episodes are gonna be so fun. Stay spooky, stay well. It's a scary time out there, the world is burning around us, but you know what they say.
SPEAKER_01:What do they say?
SPEAKER_00:That's when you need horror the most.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Love you guys. Talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_01:Bye. Bye.
