Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)
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We didn't really have real premieres back then for films like Friday the 13th. So they just had a screening for the cast and crew. But it was still really exciting.
TOM FRIDLEY:
I went to see it with my girlfriend at the time and my mom. I had a great time. I totally loved it. I didn't realize how comical Part VI was going to be the first time I read the script. Often you read your part and the other parts in a screenplay, but you don't really know how it is going to come off and what the director is going to do with it. Jason Lives didn't read nearly as funny as it ended up being. I think Tom did a brilliant job.
THOM MATHEWS:
With the constraints that we had—the budget, the rules of the genre, the reshoots—Tom did a really good job. He had certain menu items we had to fulfill, but it was nicely shot, it had a lot of diverse elements to it, and I think all the actors did a good job. And some of the deaths were great!
NANCY MCLOUGHLIN:
In all honesty, when Tommy got the movie, I had reservations. I love my husband desperately, but I'm just not a fan of these types of movies. I never had any interest at all in doing one. I didn't like the darkness of it. I did wish it were something else, and what breaks my heart is that it bothers Tommy when I'm not a fan of one of his films. But I can honestly say what he did with the material is great. Whether I like the film… I thought Jason Lives was funny and good. There was nothing I thought was inappropriate about the way it was done. I thought it was done beautifully. And I think that made it the best of the series. And it was humorous. Tommy has such a beautiful gift.
VINCENT GUASTAFERRO:
I saw a couple of early cast and crew screenings that Tom McLoughlin had invited everyone to, but I wanted to see it with a crowd of teenagers. Because it had a cult following, and Jason fanatics, they're wild. So I went to see it the minute it was released. I think Jason Lives is unique among the genre, at least up until that point, because of three elements: it put little kids in jeopardy, it used contemporary rock music in the score, and it had a real sense of humor. I thought this one was better than the other Fridays—some of them took themselves a little too seriously.
From left: Domestic one-sheet; German video cover; Yugoslavian poster.
GABE BARTALOS:
Being a fan of Friday the 13th, the build-up to the release of Part VI was great. I remember I was on a trip back to New York, and I tore down one of the subway posters for the movie. And that was a great, badass poster. I still have it somewhere. I remember thinking, "This is great to be involved with this!"
One surprise that was not so great was discovering at the cast and crew screening that the MPAA ratings board had a field day with the film. We had done a lot of work on this triple decapitation of the survivalists—we cast the actors' heads and even reproduced their bodies. Jim Gil did this very cool effect where the blade would pass through each of the three urethane heads and hit a trigger mechanism that would then launch the head, and then knees would collapse. It was very, very clever. But now, it was all gone. Right when that scene started, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, Gabe, the triple decapitation is all out." And I'm like, "What are you talkin' about!?" Then the scene ends and I'm like, "Who are they protecting! It's a Friday the 13th film! Little Billy is not gonna wander in there thinking he's gonna watch The Sound of Music." It was very confusing and disappointing.
On the flipside, Tom McLoughlin had done such a good job with Jason Lives—there was a real grit and a texture to that film. It is one of those things that now, as an effects artist and filmmaker myself, I'd rather have my effects be a part of a good film, whether those effects are highlighted or not. So I tip my hat to Tom. Because the overall experience of seeing the film was still great.
JOSEPH T. GARRITY:
I think Tom's film, in retrospect, was part of a reaction to what the 1970s were. In some of the horror films of that period, there was a certain nihilism, a sense of futility. I think around the time we did Jason Lives, there was a lot of hope coming back for the world to become a better place, and a yearning for a renewed spirituality. To question why we do what we do. Is the Bible true? Is there a God? I don't want to make Part VI out to be more than it is, but at least Tom thought to even think about those questions at all, even if it was just in the context of this little horror movie.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR.:
I thought Tom did a good job. It was more of a fanciful approach to the series, so in that regard I was happy. I thought the movie had found a nice place to go after Part V and that it brought another level of humanity to the material like I thought we achieved on The Final Chapter, although in a different way than Joe Zito had.
I don't know whether audiences of the time were ready for more comedy in their horror. As you do something over and over like the Friday movies, you become more comfortable with what it is, and the rules of it. When you first start out, your notions are pretty defined. Like, if you were making a stew and you're comfortable with certain spices, then you start to say, "Well, maybe some of this and a little of that isn't going to hurt us." It becomes a judgment call. Perhaps some of the things that were tried could have gone too far in one direction, but I think we were just trying to experiment a little more. And it was my belief to let young filmmakers like Tom explore their passions and bring their own flavor to the series.
TOM MCLOUGHLIN:
For me, Halloween was the beginning of a new wave of horror movie—babysitters and a masked killer and a knife. John Carpenter made a brilliant film out of no money and a lot of talent. Then everybody tried to do spins on babysitters in jeopardy or kids out camping in the woods or some kind of a masked killer. But there were so many of them that I felt like, if I was going to make one, I wanted to try to put a different spin on it. That's always the toughest thing as a filmmaker: how do you make sure you please the fans, but also hopefully attract people who normally wouldn't embrace this kind of film? That was the goal I set for myself—that the comedy would work with the horror, that my Friday the 13th still delivered, yet it wasn't just another Jason movie.
In general, there has been negative response to Jason Lives from hardcore horror fans—that there wasn't enough sex leading to the decapitation or whatever. And the line that is still quoted more than any other from the film, in both positive and negative responses to it, is the one when the caretaker looks into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, and says, "Some folks have a strange ide'r of entertainment." It has been taken almost like a question. Are you making fun of the audience? Are you making fun of the genre? Are you making fun of yourself? I just tried to create a rollercoaster ride where there were laughs and screams and you had fun with it. Any time I noticed a sequel being successful, it's because you've taken another genre or another element and challenged the formula. Put Sigourney Weaver in a monster movie and have her be tougher than the alien, and you've got something. Cut to many years later, and I was sent a script called "Scary Movie" by Kevin Williamson. Of course that ultimately became Scream, but I passed on it because I'd made that movie already with my Friday.
Ultimately I am seeing that there's a new generation that is discovering these movies. I'm thrilled to read the e-mails from kids that are seeing Jason Lives for the first time and enjoying it. There are a lot of people that didn't like mine because it wasn't as violent or as sexual as the others. But on the other hand, there were a lot of people who loved it because it was the one that went a little bit off to the side—which is what I, as a filmmaker, needed to do. And definitely, for the slasher genre, it was something new.
7. Jason's Destroyer
By the end of 1987, Friday the 13th was a series in transition. Its first six installments had grossed nearly $200 million at the box office in the United States alone, and Jason Voorhees had grown into a highly recognizable icon whose hockey mask and bloody machete had become synonymous around the world with murder, mayhem and big profits. Yet, the future of the franchise was anything but assured. The slasher boon of the early 1980s
was not only on the wane, it was practically extinct. Audiences were now turning to mutating monsters and biomechanoids to get their cinematic chills. The biggest horror hits of 1986 were James Cameron's action-horror sequel ALIENS, David Cronenberg's critically acclaimed remake of The Fly, and the PG-13 thrills of Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Then, in the spring of 1987, director Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction was released to blockbuster box office and rave reviews. The film tells the tale of a suburban husband who, after a brief fling with a co-worker, becomes the unwitting target of the woman's psychotic—and eventually knife-wielding—revenge. Although blatantly mining many of the conventions of the slasher film, its A-list cast including Michael Douglas, Anne Archer and Glenn Close, coupled with stylish direction and glossy production values, earned this horror film Academy Award nominations, not scorn. Fatal Attraction also captured the cultural zeitgeist of the time in a way that no "slasher" film had since Halloween and Friday the 13th, spawning a host of imitative "suspense thrillers," all boasting major stars and similar plotlines: affluent suburbanites under threat from all manner of rampaging psychos, from spurned roommates (Single White Female, Columbia) and crooked cops (Unlawful Entry, Fox), to disgruntled tenants (Pacific Heights, Fox) and even deranged nannies (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Buena Vista). Perhaps these films' not-so-subtle lifting of slasher movie cliches was some sort of compliment, however backhanded, to the subversive influence of films like Friday the 13th, but one thing remained clear: Paramount's once-lucrative horror series was in trouble. The steadily declining returns for A New Beginning and Jason Lives gave critics and industry detractors even more fuel to declare that Friday the 13th was no longer Paramount's lucky day—or at the very least, that horror fans were demanding more intelligence behind their lust for blood.
Jason may have been down for the count but he was far from out—especially if Frank Mancuso, Jr. had anything to say about it. The now 29-year-old producer's willingness to take risks with the Friday formula, as evinced by the tongue-in-cheek tone of Jason Lives, was, he still believed, exactly the creative shot in the arm the series needed in order to thrive. The road Mancuso chose next, however, came as a surprise even to the series' diehard fans. Friday the 13th was about to make a detour from the silver screen to the small screen—albeit in a form that no one could have ever quite expected, or anticipated.
MICHAEL SHEEHY, Senior VP of Production, Hometown Films:
When I started my career, I realized that without a track record, you didn't break in at the top. So I started in the mailroom at the Creative Artists Agency, which is one of the biggest talent agencies in the business. That was in 1982. But I wanted to produce—I loved the conceptual aspect of development, that you can come up with an idea, develop it with a writer and bring it to fruition. Working with actors at a talent agency was not as exciting for me as developing story and packaging projects and putting them together.
Frank Mancuso, Jr. was very serious, very thoughtful and contemplative and also very stylish. I was always impressed that he'd wear really fine suits and drove great cars and seemed to have great taste. And he was very young for a producer at that time. When I first started at Hometown, Frank had a suite of offices across two floors, on the Paramount lot. We were technically an independent outfit, but of course Frank Mancuso, Sr. was the chairman of the studio at the time so we had a certain degree of autonomy. Paramount would be Hometown's base for the next five years.
At our peak, we had a staff of about 10 people. We were always a lean, mean machine. Casual, but very professional. We became like a family. And by 1987 we had a lot going on. I was developing feature films and working on television, and over a five-year span, we would produce 15 features and over a hundred hours of TV programming. We shepherded the Friday the 13th movies and a number of other features, and we had the War of the Worlds television series going.
Frank Jr. told me that when Paramount came to him and wanted to produce a Friday the 13th television series, what he really wanted to do something else that was totally original. But Paramount was smart. Based on the title, they eventually went out and sold it into 200 different syndicated markets with nothing but the words "Friday the 13th." Eventually Frank Jr. would affectionately call The Series, "The $20 million-a-year Erector Set," because we shot all kinds of stories.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR., President, Hometown Films:
Friday the 13th came about as a TV series because Paramount Television wanted to get into the syndication business. They chose Star Trek and Friday the 13th as two recognizable titles because they felt there was enough of a core audience that they'd be able to get people to watch without big star power. Mel Harris, who was running Paramount Television at the time, came to me and said, "We want to do a TV series and we want it to be Friday the 13th—but it doesn't have to have anything to do with the movies." I said, "But that's a double-edged sword. What happens if people show up expecting Jason? They'll be pissed off. Then there are other people who won't tune in because they think they are going to see Jason." But Mel said, "We're comfortable that this is going to work and we really want you to do it. And you can do anything you want for 26 episodes a year."
Debuting on September 28, 1987, Friday the 13th: The Series ran for three successful seasons in first-run syndication. The show's original cast (top right) starred John LeMay and Robey as distant cousins Ryan Dallion and Micki Foster, who inherit a cursed antique shop known as "Curious Goods." Chris Wiggins played Jack Marshak, an eccentric antiquities dealer who comes to the aid of Ryan and Micki, helping them solve the mysteries of the store's haunted past. LeMay would eventually exit The Series after its second season, replaced by Steven Monarque (left). "The Series was a great experience," says LeMay. "I was working every day for two years, and I came out of it a much more confident actor. But it always seemed to me, especially at the beginning, that it was kind of hit or miss. I also don't think I was exactly what they bargained for when they hired me. They wanted somebody who would stick out their chin a little quicker than I did, while I wanted to make Ryan more intelligent and vulnerable." LeMay would eventually return to Friday the 13th when he starred, as an unrelated character, in 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, making him the only actor to appear in both incarnations of the Friday franchise.
LARRY B. WILLIAMS, Co-Creator, Friday the 13th: The Series:
Steven Alavansky was a creative executive at Paramount when they opened their syndication division in the 1980s. He was their number two guy behind Mel Harris. Steve and I became friends when he was working as a producer on a film called Blood Beach, and I had just written my first feature, SpaceCamp—I ended up with story credit on that. So when Steve got the gig at Paramount, he knew my writing, and contacted me and asked if I'd have any interest in bringing ideas to Paramount for a television series based on Friday the 13th, because they were looking for a way to make it work.
All they had was the title. And as I remember it, they were trying to avoid using Jason so as not to have to pay money to the rights holders on the East Coast if he, or any of the other characters from the films, were used. I thought it was an impossible task, that people were going to reject the show outright if they turned it on and Jason wasn't there, but I still wanted to make some connection to the character.
So I started noodling it in my brain, and I came up with my own mythology. I said that Jason was Jason, but if you put that mask on anybody, they'd become evil. Then I took another step back and asked, "Where did he get the mask?" Then I had my key. So I started thinking about "The Haunted Mask," and Faust. I thought, "Here's the pitch. There's a shop in New Orleans and the guy is going broke because his things aren't selling and what he needs to do is make a deal with the devil, who brings in objects and a manifest. And the devil's deal to the owner is, 'You will get wealthy selling this stuff, but if you break with me, I get your soul.'"
So I came up with the notion that if I had a shop where everything was haunted, and if at the beginning of every episode we'd s
how the front of the store, that among 40 other junk items in there we'd have, hanging from a string, the hockey mask, which would slowly turn. I wanted the show to open like that, with the mask turning and glinting. That was my suggestion—but it didn't get incorporated due to the fear that they would have to get and pay for additional rights to use the Jason character.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR.:
My initial approach was, still, to change the name of the series. I felt the title would work against it. Eventually, we did this focus group study where we showed them an episode, and it turns out there were people interested in it but who wouldn't have sampled it if it were called Friday the 13th. So I said to Paramount, "We just got the best answer in the world. If we change the title, people will watch it. Call it 'The 13th Hour' and make it more like The Twilight Zone." And still, Paramount said no.
LARRY B. WILLIAMS:
If we called it "Curious Goods"—it's just not going to sell. There was a 13-minute pilot shot. It was before the show was accepted by Paramount. I wrote the pilot, which had additional characters, and in 13 minutes we did a mini-version of what an hour show would be like. Frank Mancuso, Jr. directed it—Frank was really involved. They carried it to NATPE and pre-sold the show. They went out with Star Trek: The Next Generation, which came out the same year as Friday the 13th. The sales people at Paramount were geniuses. Everyone was surprised at how successful that sale had gone that first time out. It would have been illegal for them to say to stations that if you want Star Trek, you have to take Friday the 13th, too, but they sure made it sound that way.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR.:
One of the reasons I decided The Series would be an interesting challenge and a great opportunity was because, on a television show, you're going to have all the freedom you want as long as it comes in on time and on budget. It's like your dream of the week. And the great thing about the show was that, because it was syndication, we never got any network notes telling us what to do. If we wanted to shoot a show in black and white, we shot a show in black and white.