That made people think I was even more weird. I remember talking on the set about it a lot after that. People went, "Are you really religious!? Do you go to church!?" Here I am having discussions about God and faith and Heaven and Hell, and, "Is it right for somebody who is religious to do a horror film?" It wasn't even like we were in church talking about it—we were on a horror film set!
Rebecca Wood-Sharkey and Tom DeSimone star as ill-fated lovers Lana and Billy. The filming of Billy's death left one cast member queasy—Jason himself. "When I had to put an ax in that guy's head, I had to tell myself, 'It's just a movie,'" says stuntman Tom Morga. "Because even though it is fake, when you see a face and a head and you're going to put an ax into it… it's not the thrill of your day. I really did get a little sick doing that."
Danny Steinmann had come to Friday the 13th from a diverse background in exploitation cinema. He began his directing career with the 1973 X-rated romp High Rise, using the pseudonym Danny Stone. He also cut his teeth as a production assistant on Arthur Hiller's adaptation of The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), and as associate producer on the telefilm Spectre (1977) for late sci-fi pioneer and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. He then went to England, and was the associate producer on two films, Deadly Game (with George Segal) and Separate Tables with Julie Christie and John Schlesinger. He spent two years, developing writing and directing the misbegotten film The Unseen, on which he used a pseudonym. 1984's Savage Streets would be Danny Steinmann's first recognized directorial credit, and it was his exploitation credentials that would attract the attention of Phil Scuderi and his partners Steve Minasian and Robert Barsamian.
If it is true that the first day of any film shoot sets the tone for the entire production, then A New Beginning's was a doozy. Steinmann's more visceral sensibilities would reportedly clash with some members of the production team, and if the Friday the 13th series was hardly considered "high-brow," even by its fans, A New Beginning still needed to play in multiplexes across America. It could be bloody—that much was required. Sexy was fine, too. And certainly, it needed to be scary. But how far was too far? By the end of the shooting, it was clear to all involved that Part V would stretch the boundaries of the established Friday the 13th formula—one which critics lamented had already been stretched much too far—resulting in the grittiest and most hard-edged entry in the series.
TIM SILVER:
For our first day, we shot what I guess was the "love scene," with a rather well-endowed woman, DebiSue Voorhees. Then we saw the dailies the next day, and that's when Frank and I began to say, "Wait a minute." Because Danny was, how shall we say, particularly intrigued in the pornographic aspect of it. And we were all kind of shocked.
SHAVAR ROSS:
I first came to the set when I had to come in for wardrobe. It was the first day or two of filming, and they were shooting that scene with DebiSue Voorhees in the wilderness—the butt-naked scene! But I didn't know, and I wanted to meet Danny, so I saw the cameras and just ran right over. And they were like, "No! This is a closed set!" They had to stop the take, and Danny came over and met me, to shield me from what they were shooting.
BRUCE GREEN, Editor:
I was living on Venice Beach at the time, and I came home one day and there was a message on the answering machine: "This is Tim Silver from Terror, Inc. We'd like to know if you'd come in to interview to be editor for Friday the 13th Part V." I just listened to it and didn't pay it any mind—I wasn't interested. I had been an assistant editor on Star Wars, and I had already done Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I had also never seen any of the Friday the 13th movies—I'm not a horror film buff. Then I went over to my friend's house, who was also an editor, and he had the same message on his answering machine. Then we called up another friend of ours and he had the same message. Nobody wanted to do it. My attitude and their attitude, because they had all done similarly big movies, was, "We didn't go to film school and spend six, seven years as assistant editors to work on this crap."
Later that night I phoned Michael Kahn, who was the editor who trained me, my mentor, and who is still Steven Spielberg's editor. I told him I had passed. And he started yelling at me: "You have to go in and do this movie! You have to interview for this film!" I said, "Why? I don't like horror films." He said, "That's not the point. If you're going to become an editor, you've got to be able to edit anything that's thrown at you. You can't say you'll just do high-end dramas. And more importantly, these are movies that are being distributed by Paramount Pictures. If these films are good enough for Paramount, who are you to say they're not good enough for you?" So I signed on to do Part V because I wanted to be associated with the studio. I wanted to be associated with Frank Mancuso, Jr., who was a young, smart guy. And it was very helpful to my career.
I don't even remember meeting Danny until the first day of dailies. Now, this director came out of porn. And I was a bit nervous about doing this movie anyway. So I came into dailies, and there's this hardcore sex scene. And offscreen, Danny is yelling, "Fuck her! Fuck her!" I went white. And everybody in the room was silent. I was like, oh my god! What have I gotten myself into? It's bad enough I'm doing a low-budget horror film after hanging around with Steven Spielberg for the last five years. Now I'm doing a porn.
Frank Jr. looked shell-shocked because he hadn't been on set. We walked out of this screening room in Beverly Hills that was owned by Dick Zanuck, and I said to him, "What am I supposed to do with this stuff?" And he put his arm around me and said, "Kid, make it look like a Pepsi commercial."
DEBISUE VOORHEES:
The lovemaking, and my death scene, was all one 13-hour day. I think that's one of the reasons they decided to do it on the first day because they knew how difficult it was going to be. My role was really hard to do, because one, I was naked, and two, since the scene required that my eyes be gouged out, there were a lot of hours where I had to be led around by people in nothing but a robe, unable to see. It wasn't a fake head at all. I went in to have a cast made of my face, and you know how you get brain freeze when you eat ice cream? This was like that, but you couldn't stop the pain. I had to breathe through straws. Then from that cast, they created a really thin mask for me to wear over my eye and nose area. and then filled it up with fake blood. And when that stuff started seeping into my eyes, let me tell you—it burned. I kept closing my eyes as tight as I could and the crew had to try and move me around to keep me comfortable.
You can't be naked in front of people you don't know and not feel vulnerable. You're not human if you don't. Danny was actually really sweet and really understanding with me. He was very protective. On that day in particular, he really went out of his way to be overly sweet to me. It was a relief when that day was through.
Will the real Jason please stand up? Below Dick Wieand (center) as ambulance driver Roy, and the character in costume as the "impostor" Jason.
DANNY STEINMANN:
Some people on the set knew that I had shot a porno. We had a good-looking guy, a good-looking girl… I meant the scene to be something that the audience would be able to have fun with. A way to take a break from the horror. I shot a softcore love scene. Were the actors fully nude? Absolutely, though never showing male genitalia or insertion. The sex was loving and gentle. In any other genre, it would have been given an R rating by the MPAA—but not in a horror film. It's funny, but the scene that the MPAA totally eliminated isn't one that had too much horror, blood or graphic violence, but a simple love sequence! The way it ended up, because of the MPAA, we cut to a guy watching them in the forest, who is killed, then back to the love scene and it's already over. A three-minute, softcore sex scene, of which the MPAA allowed a mere 10 seconds to be shown.
DebiSue was terrific throughout, never complained once. She's a very bright and wonderful woman. And I was protective of her.
DEBISUE VOORHEES:
The costume designer tried to change one of my outfits and I didn't like it. She wanted
me to wear these really short shorts—ridiculously short—instead of the skirt I picked out. And I liked the skirt a lot better—the shorts were just not attractive and I thought the skirt was just a nicer thing to wear. It was at the end of that day and I was exhausted and very emotional and I just started crying. I said, "No, I want the outfit that I picked out!" It was silly to be all teary, but it was such a difficult day. And Danny came over right away and he goes, "No, you'll wear what you picked out. It's already been decided on, we like that and it's fine." Danny was really sweet about it, and about everything.
MELANIE KINNAMAN:
After the auditions, I never saw Danny again until I walked in cold onto the set on my first day. There were no rehearsals. I met Danny in the makeup trailer, he said, "Hello," and he was pleasant. Then everything changed. My first scene was my character's very first shot in the film, when I come out to the van to meet Tommy. I was a nervous wreck because Danny was so mean to me just before that shot. And I had like three hours sleep, and was in a wardrobe that was heinous. But I said to myself, "Ok, just do it." From there on out, I received no direction. You basically just went and did it, and if Danny didn't like something he'd tell you. But he'd tell you in a way that wasn't nice. He'd bark at me, like, "What are you doing!?" And I was in the throws of a very emotional character—she really was.
By the third or fourth day I did get used to Danny. But I knew innately to stay away from him. Which is hard to do when you're an actor, with your director. But I knew I was on my own. And it was OK with me because I came prepared. I had talked to counselors at the state welfare department and social services, as well as a friend who had been to rehab. I knew this character, and I knew what I wanted to do with her. It was my first big film so I couldn't be intimidated or it would have come across onscreen. But it was shocking, as I had come from the theater were you work tightly together, and I was used to working with really good directors.
BOB DESIMONE:
There is a scene very early in the film, when I drop Tommy off at the sanitarium. I remember I improvised a moment where I pulled my ear and stuck my tongue out at Melanie, and she was freaked out a couple of times. But I was playing a sleazeball. So she stopped the scene and said to Danny, "He's making me nervous." And Danny said, "That's the idea! If you're an actress, go with it. If he's making you nervous, let him make you nervous." So I kept doing it. That's why I gave her the tongue and the ear. I was like, "That's for Danny."
I think with me Danny was better, because we had a relationship. I think I got a little leeway. But he was doing a lot of cocaine. Someone would be talking to him and he would be smiling away. Once, an actor was going over how they should play a scene, and Danny just snapped a pencil in his hand, right in the actor's face. Danny was enraged half the time. He couldn't control his anger or frustration on the set, even on this B-movie.
STEPHEN POSEY:
I was one of the guys who were in that whole independent horror film stockpile of people of the time. I met Danny Steinmann through a connection with Tom DeSimone. I was the director of photography on Savage Streets. I liked Danny a lot, we were buddies. The edgy elements in his films come from some place deep down inside him. The Danny I knew on set was a fun-loving kind of guy. But there was definitely a dark place in there. There was always that contrast. Certainly it's there in his Friday. Danny always needed that little bit extra to get excited. I don't know how to say it other than he needed more.
So that first scene we shot—it didn't surprise me at all. But it doesn't surprise me how everyone else reacted. That makes perfect sense, from their point of view. This is not what the franchise was about, and I remember us all having a bunch of conversations. And after that first day's dailies, we did feel under the gun by the producers, that we really had to be on our toes to make sure that they were satisfied with what we were doing. So it wasn't the most fun and relaxed show I've ever been on. There was always a certain amount of pressure on that set, from there on out.
Eddie (Robert John Dixon) gets the strap; DebiSue Voorhees as Tina.
TIM SILVER:
I liked Stephen Posey. There's no doubt that he's a nice man and he did a good job. And Danny, without that partnership with Stephen—I don't think he would have been able to pull the movie off. In my first meeting with Danny, I sensed he was nervous, and had an automatic sort of macho, standoff-ish attitude. My impression at that first meeting was that he was thoroughly tense—he was under a lot of pressure, he had a lot to do, and that he was on his guard. As many directors would be, working with strangers. Also, when you're working as a line producer, effectively, a lot of directors will see you as their adversary, as their opponent. It fits how he conducted himself. Danny was an isolated individual who was yelling and screaming when no one carried out what he needed. Stephen was good at interpreting what Danny wanted.
It's just funny, because Danny has a warm and humorous side to him—he was a character and had an impish laugh. But he was an extremely paranoid individual. If he thought you were not on his side, he saw you as the enemy. And I remember finding that progressively as we shot he became more paranoid and antagonistic. I don't know whether or not he felt he was being reigned in too much, or controlled, or whether or not he was at odds with his mission. The folks from the East Coast may have been out to make a certain picture, and Danny felt he had to make it for them. But whatever it was, he felt he was being creatively constrained. There came to be a division between those who Danny thought were on his team, and those he thought weren't.
MELANIE KINNAMAN:
Stephen Posey was awful. Horrible on the set. Worse than Danny. The nicest people were the assistant directors, and other members of the crew. They were really good people and saved the day. They made it bearable for me to finish the film. Someone felt bad about the way I was being treated, and they told me Danny was on drugs. And I knew about the drugs on the set; I used to see the guy who was bringing them. By the middle of the shoot, I remember I was in my trailer and I said, "I just can't take it anymore." My agent was there, and I started crying and then she started crying. Then I realized that I had to find the joy in the work. That's how I got through it. I said to myself, "I'm really nervous, but I'm excited to do this film, and it has to be something that I can use in my career. So I can't be bad in it."
JERRY PAVLON:
This is all very shocking to me. I guess I was a John Denver groupie for far too long. I was never aware of the drugs—I never even knew that people were aware of them, either, let alone possessing them. It's just not where I go. My experience with Danny as a director was a very good one. I thought he was really smart. Danny certainly was intense, but he had an intense intelligence, and I use that phrase carefully. When you go into material like this, you can either be with dangerously thoughtless people who are exploitive, or you can be with business people who are trying to do something interesting with it and make something of some credit. Danny had a very nice balance—he was light-spirited and tongue in cheek, but also serious. I appreciated that. He was also very confident in his handling of direction, particularly around camera shots. He was very actor-centered, and I appreciated that immensely.
In all fairness to everybody, the script was weak. But Danny knew that, too, to his great credit. We didn't chuck the dialogue completely, but Danny didn't necessarily go with it word for word. We all sensed the basic scenario, rehearsed it a couple of times, and then just went with it. Do you remember that one scene at the table, the breakfast scene? That was hilarious. Now, that my character stuttered was an idea that I was presented with at my first audition. Danny just said, "You're a disturbed guy." And we worked for some time, probably half an hour, on the character in different scenes and trying different vocal mannerisms. And in that breakfast scene, as written, there is a line that is one of the worst and most comical ever written—"Y-y-you don't set a place for a dead person." That made me scream with laughter every time I tried to get serious about saying it. How can you, with any credib
ility whatsoever? And with a stutter? And with an audience on set watching? For whatever reason, that line keeps haunting me. People come up to me and say, "Are you the person who said that?" Because it is so completely idiotic.
JULIETTE CUMMINS:
Danny was always up. Energetic and intense. And motivated to get to the next scene. I think he wanted to bring the production in on time without going into extra shooting days. And by the time I showed up, everybody knew what they were doing and they just looked at me to make sure I knew what I was doing. And I had no clue! Danny told me where to go and what to say—he was very respectful in that way. He was dead-on. He was quick. He was dedicated to what he was doing. But, you know, and this is just me, I don't think he liked what he was doing. I don't think he appreciated or was proud of what he did.
COREY PARKER:
Friday the 13th wasn't like an A-thing, even at that time. But that's what I liked about Danny and the way he was working. He had a lot of intensity, especially once we started rehearsing and were on set. He didn't do it by numbers. I remember I brought my own clothes. The 1950s thing, the way my character dressed, that may have been in the script, but in any case it was something that appealed to me and something I was familiar with. And it's funny, some people think that the characters in the scene are supposed to be gay. Especially because of the cap I had on my head. And maybe he is gay—I'll leave that up to each person. But that was my little input into the scene, my little association—Danny liked it that way. He wanted the actors to get into it and make it into something interesting. He was really open and excitable about ideas like that.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 39
