Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)
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BILL FREDA:
I find it very funny, but many people still think I edited Halloween, not Friday the 13th. Of course, Halloween was a much better-produced movie. You can still watch it today. I mean, I look at Friday the 13th now and it's just terrible-looking. It's so low budget. But I do think kids have a great sense of humor, and that's what Friday the 13th had. It wasn't serious. And kids loved the creative way the murders were executed. It was almost stupid. Today, people say, "How could you do a movie like that? It's so dumb." But Friday the 13th came in just before the realistic era arrived. It was still part of that almost 1950s-era sensibility, where nobody really died and nobody really got hurt. That is why it was shocking.
RON MILLKIE:
I wasn't offended by the violence in Friday the 13th. I had already gone through Vietnam and protested. I felt that was much worse—people having to die for a stupid war. I just thought this was not to be taken seriously.
RONN CARROLL:
The truism that came out of Friday the 13th for me was that I'll try not to judge any material, other than to do the best work I can. It is a very subjective thing. Unfortunately now, you couldn't even make a movie like Friday the 13th on the cheap, that would still draw the kids. At that time, it didn't have to have a lot of high-tech stuff going on. There was a time when you could make this sort of movie, and it would be fun. It was a popcorn movie. The kids could still gape and go, "I wonder how they did that!?"
From left: Domestic one-sheet; international one-sheet; and German one-sheet.
United Kingdom quad poster.
From left: Japanese video poster; German one-sheet; Australian half-sheet.
JEANNINE TAYLOR:
Friday the 13th had an artfully designed plot, striking special effects and memorable music. Was it a valid endeavor? I think it was. I really was shocked at the degree of hostility and the criticism and how emotional it all was. People vilified everyone connected with the project. I don't think I—or anybody—deserved to be held personally responsible for the degradation of our culture. I did not think Friday the 13th merited that kind of scorn. I still don't. But now when I think about the initial reaction to the film I realize that one must ask the question: who was being murdered in this way? The epitome of fresh-faced, all-American middle-class youth. We were the next step along the road of those squeaky clean kids in sit-coms. That's what enraged the press and some of the public so extremely. It was the first time that had ever been seen in exactly that way, except for Halloween. And Tom Savini is such an artist and so good at making these effects that it created this horrified reaction because it did look quite real. It was extremely disturbing.
None of the older generation took it as fun. People Gene Siskel's age and older didn't think it was fun at all. There were still arbiters of taste who were the children of people whose sensibilities were formed during the end of the Victorian era. It's not really all that surprising that there was this kind of stigmatization of anything violent or sexual. Things have moved way beyond that now—and I don't know if that's good or bad; it just is.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
By the mid-1980s I began to get asked these questions about themes that were being superimposed upon Friday the 13th and other slasher films. That thing of, "Oh, the slut's gonna die. And the good virgin will survive." And honest to God, I thought they were nutty. Friday the 13th wasn't meant to be misogynistic. It certainly wasn't trying to demean women. We killed democratically.
I never bought into the notion of sex equals death. I grew up as an Irish Catholic, but religion was not part of my life at all as an adult. So in my movies, you don't find any sense of preachiness or born-again stuff. There have been a great number of films made that do present that morality, but that certainly wasn't what I intended in Friday the 13th. It wasn't meant to be a morality tale. In fact, I think that diminishes the form at some level. The fear comes from bad things happening to good people for no apparent reason. And reconciling yourself to the fact that bad things are out there. We think that we protect ourselves by being nice to our mothers, being polite, by being good people, going to church. And doing all the good things. But gnawing in the back of our minds someplace is the notion that they may not protect us. It's as cold as that.
VICTOR MILLER:
If there is a scene in the film that is the most controversial, I think it is when the Jack and Marcie characters are having sex, and the camera pans up to Ned's dead body right at the point of orgasm. It all sort of works together. And it was all plotted out, that it just got creepier and creepier, that it really would make sex very creepy. It is all about sex and violence. That was a lesson I learned from Halloween—if you make love without the benefit of marriage, you get killed. And anyway, what else would a bunch of kids be doing while opening up a camp? Painting canoes?
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
Friday the 13th has no emotional impact on me at all. It's all plumbing. The characters were thin at best. The person who calls Friday the 13th a film is pretentious. This is the movie business we're involved in. And there is a difference. I don't think popular moviemaking creates values in culture whatsoever. They project the values that are already a part of a culture. What we're doing as filmmakers is sitting around the campfire, telling these little fables, these little stories, that reflect what we think is important, what is valued, in our culture. We're just using different tools than we could before, and we're able to reach more people. And if you reach out with stuff that doesn't really relate to life, that doesn't have any resonance, it will just get rejected. It might be popular for 10 minutes. That is why, in general, people don't like to be surprised in movies. They want to have their feelings and prejudices affirmed.
My feeling about all the attention that Friday the 13th has gotten is that it's unwarranted. Friday the 13th is interesting maybe as a social document, in historical terms of what can happen in the movie business at a particular point of time, for whatever reasons. But it's a very simple, low-rent kind of movie. Certainly, if it were made today, it wouldn't merit a second look. I was very, very fortunate to have had a chance to make it and benefit from its success. But, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't qualify as anything meaningful. It's hardly a cure for cancer, is it?
2. The Body Count Continues
By the end of 1980, Friday the 13th not only ranked as the top-grossing horror film of the year; it represented the new face of the genre itself: culturally resonant, and with a modern sensibility and cutting-edge special effects. In the wake of Halloween, Friday the 13th tapped into the collective fears of its audience in a way few Hollywood films ever had—and it had done it outside of the establishment and without following any of the traditional rules. By benefit of the mass marketing campaign afforded it by Paramount Pictures, Friday the 13th bridged the gap between the wholly independent, regionally-distributed B-movie and the truly respectable, major studio A-picture. Friday the 13th was at the forefront of a coming sea change in exploitation moviemaking; if the public was looking outside the mainstream for something that scared them, the major studios were only too eager to sate their audience's taste for horror by looking outside established patterns of acquisition and exhibition. Following the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, what had quickly been dubbed the "slasher film" was just as quickly becoming a staple of the industry, with the mandate to make them faster, cheaper and gorier than the last.
The success of Friday the 13th had surprised no one more than its creator. It was not a film born out of creative passion but manufactured as a means to an end. For Sean Cunningham, the hope was to make enough of a profit to afford to make another movie. Now, he was being offered that chance—only it was a remake of the same movie he had already made once before. But more troubling for Cunningham was that a key creative question remained: what do you do when almost the entire cast of your original film—and its villain—are dead? But with Paramount Pictures eager to acquire a follow-up and Georgetown Productions, the production company run by f
inanciers Phil Scuderi and his partners in Boston, only too happy to oblige, Friday the 13th was about to take its first evolutionary step toward becoming a now oft-used Hollywood phrase—a film franchise. And it would be done with or without Cunningham.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM, Executive Producer:
I'd like to go on record to say that when we made Friday the 13th, we had no clue there would ever be a sequel. That was never part of our plan. You made a sequel to JAWS maybe, but you didn't make sequels to low-budget independent horror films. We only started talking about doing a sequel within days of the initial success, and that came directly from Paramount. It was, "People are comin' to see this, and you killed eight people. Maybe next year, you should kill twelve people?"
FRANK MANCUSO, SR., VP Distribution, Paramount Pictures:
The first film was such an immediate success that we looked to establish it on a long-term basis almost immediately. We sought the worldwide rights because it was a no-brainer—when you make an acquisition like Friday the 13th at that kind of price, the profit margin is built-in. And those profits will allow the studio to gamble a little bigger on something else, whether it is another acquisition or one of our own productions, because we know we already have profits on the way. And it became a natural thing to open another one the next year, on a Friday the 13th. We wanted it to be an event, where teenagers would flock to the theaters on that Friday night to see the latest episode. That was the concept almost from the beginning.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
We kicked around a lot of ideas of what a Part 2 should be, or could be. I thought we should exploit the title, use "Friday the 13th" as a tentpole name for a series of scary movies not necessarily related to each other. But Phil Scuderi felt it was really important to bring back this Jason character. I thought that was just the worst idea I had ever heard. Of course, I have been proven completely wrong. But at the time Jason wasn't a villain, he was just a figment of somebody's imagination. Having Jason come up out of the lake was a device. It was justifiable, but it wasn't meant to be the beginning of a story. He was just a gag. The notion that Jason came back—how are you going to sell it?
Finally, as I considered whether or not to be involved, I just didn't get it. Friday the 13th was reality based. When you added Jason as a machete-wielding character, you're shifting to a mythological base. Since then I have come to understand it, but in the beginning I just didn't get it at all.
VICTOR MILLER, Screenwriter, Part 1:
I remember buying Variety every week when Friday the 13th was in the top ten and I just could not believe it. I was hot for about 30 seconds. Immediately I went out and took all kinds of meetings. When Part 2 came around, I thought there was no way they could have paid my new salary level. Which I think is one of the things about sequels—you always try to get a new writer because that way you can pay them minimum. And I would go with Sean that an anthology Friday the 13th would have been much more interesting. But who am I to argue with the fact that it has since had a life of its own? And Sean and Phil were the owners of this thing; I was not an owner. I wanted to go on a different kind of rollercoaster with Part 2. So I didn't do it.
Part 2's prologue sequence was the last to be filmed during principal photography, and shot over the course of two days on the outskirts of Kent, Connecticut. As would become commonplace throughout the sequels, the character of Jason Voorhees was often played by different performers for select "insert shots" of the killer. But the pre-title sequence of Part 2 merits special distinction, because for the only time in the series' history, Jason was played by... a woman! The legs of Jason (background) actually belong to the film's costume designer, Ellen Lutter.
STEVE MINER, Producer & Director:
I thought the first film was very good, and we should move ahead in the same way. I thought it made sense that Part 2 would be about Jason. His mother was dead, and the ending of the first film just left itself open to it. I thought people were anxious to find out what happened. Who was that kid that came out of the lake? Was he a dream? Was he real? The ending of the first one didn't mean that Alice saw the real Jason. He's not the living dead, as some rumors have speculated. I approached it that Jason survived his drowning—we just had to give him a chance to grow a little so he could be menacing. I also thought Part 2 should follow the same structure of Friday the 13th, namely a bunch of teens in a camp situation that are being killed off.
I thought that I would just produce Part 2. Then when Sean didn't want to direct it, it became clear that I was probably the best person for the job. Working with Sean and Wes Craven, I'd learned the nuts and bolts of filmmaking on a grassroots level. I'd done every job on a film that you could imagine. I had also directed a lot of industrial films and second unit stuff. And I thought I understood what the first picture's audience and fans of the genre would want. It was a natural transition for me. I felt like I was ready to direct.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
Steve Miner and I had been friends for 10 years by the time we did Friday the 13th. He was an enormous help, a rock, and I really grew to count on him. Then, when Steve got the opportunity to direct Part 2, I was able to support him and help him get a directing career launched. I added very little to the second film, and certainly the third. Most of it came from Steve. I didn't interfere at all. I just acted as a mentor, giving advice. I only remained close to the next two Friday films because of Steve, and then after that I was just a cheerleader. And I'm very grateful I had the opportunity to do it. I'm proud.
But because Phil Scuderi, Steve Minasian and Bob Barsamian put up the money, they controlled the copyright in their investment entity. However, it was subject to a whole bunch of obligations to me. Consequently, Georgetown couldn't make the deals with Paramount without me cosigning and agreeing that I was to be paid directly by Paramount. Absent that, I wouldn't sign. And if I wouldn't sign, Georgetown couldn't do it.
BETSY PALMER, "Mrs. Voorhees":
During the making of the first film, I was aware there were some very short men who were hanging around—a group of five tiny, tiny men, all looking very mob-like. That was the money behind the show. And they were from Boston. I asked Sean who they were, and he said they were the backers, or "the angels." I thought, "Hmmm, this looks like mafia to me."
FRANK MANCUSO, SR.:
The people in Boston were our customers. We sold our pictures to them to play in their theaters, and that's as much as I knew about them. We had a very simple arrangement. They would make Part 2 and we would negotiate how much we wanted to pay for it. And when the deal was done we'd distribute the film. Very clear lines. We never got ourselves involved in the production, and they never got themselves involved in the distribution. They got their proceeds, but ultimately the payoffs and the profits were all handled by Paramount.
Friday the 13th was a tough act to follow. While its artistic merits remain debatable—no love would ever be lost between it and its critics—any film that achieves such a level of success still brings with it considerable expectations for a sequel. This weighed heavily on no one more than Steve Miner. With his mentor Sean Cunningham offering little more than encouragement, the success or failure of Part 2 would rest completely on the shoulders of the neophyte director. Undaunted, Miner chose the path often taken by sequel-makers—create a follow-up that's familiar yet different, one with a little more style, a little more gloss and, in the case of a horror film, a lot more scares.
To recapture the appeal of the original film—and likely surround himself with familiar and reassuring support—Miner assembled a team that included many of the same crew members who had worked on Friday the 13th, with most receiving promotions. By the end of September 1980, just a few months since the release of the original film, Miner and company would already be setting up camp in Kent, Connecticut and its surrounding community in preparation for an eight-week shoot. Along with a new group of fresh-faced young actors, the team set out to do the only thing they could: to try and top Friday the 13th.
I don't begrudge the fact that people give Sean credit for Friday the 13th—he deserves a lot of it, for both the first film and for Part 2. But it was awfully difficult. I had always done things the hard way. I didn't go to film school. I didn't have the benefit of learning the craft out in Hollywood. I'm from the East Coast and no one knew me. And here I was making a sequel to a type of horror movie no one in the industry at large particularly liked, even if they admired the amount of money they made. I was sure I was going to be typed as the guy who makes sequels. But I could look out my window and see 10 people who'd give their right leg to have the opportunities I've had. It was my obligation to make the most of it. I wasn't scared, only excited. This was my break. I would be judged on this film, and I really wanted to do better with Part 2.
"It was just me, a black cat and a head in the refrigerator!" says Adrienne King on filming Part 2's prologue
DENNIS MURPHY, Co-Producer:
Sean had no interest in a Part 2. If you look at Here Come the Tigers, that's the stuff Sean loved. He's a big family guy and then he just got into all this other weird stuff. But he felt comfortable with Steve Miner. And I don't know how close Steve and Sean are now, but I'd feel bad if they weren't friends now, because they were so close.
Steve is also officially the producer of the movie, but I don't think Steve realized what all that meant—there was a void and he just stepped in. Steve needed a producer. I played hard to get, but at the end of the day I had a Co-Producer credit. And this was my first producing gig, so it was a big deal for me.