ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - March 29th

"THE BIRDS' released in 1963

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town, where events slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people, in Alfred Hitchcock's cult classic suspense chiller, The Birds!

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Spoiled San Francisco socialite, and notorious practical joker Melanie Daniels, (Tippi Hedren) is shopping in a pet store when she meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), who is looking to buy a pair of love birds for his young sister's Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) birthday. After playing a prank of his own on her, Mitch leaves the store, leaving Melanie planning to get her own back. Tracking Mitch down down to the quiet coastal town of Bodega Bay, where Mitch spends his weekends with his sister and mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), Melanie meets local schoolteacher - and Mitch's ex-lover - Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) who points her in the direction of Mitch's waterfront farm. Hiring a motorboat from the harbor, Melanie sneaks into Mitch's house and leaves a pair of love birds with a cryptic note; but is spotted by Mitch as she makes way back across the harbor. Suddenly, Melanie is attacked by a diving seagull and is later helped ashore by Mitch, who insists she come to his home to tend her wound. During dinner, Melanie befriends Cathy and is persuaded to stay in Bodega Bay for her birthday the next day. However, the festivities the next day take a turn when the children are attacked by a flock of seagulls, and, later that night, rampaging sparrows that came into the house's chimney. The bird attacks escalate in the coming days; Melanie, Annie and the local schoolchildren are attacked by a murder of crows, Lydia discovers her neighbor's eyeless corpse (pecked lifeless by birds), and culminating into a full scale bird attack on the main street of Bodega Bay! Cut off from the inland, Melanie, Mitch, Cathy and Lydia seek refuge inside the family home; but after Melanie is brutally attacked by a mass of birds in the attic, Mitch must now make a desperate effort to save her and escape with his family from Bodega Bay before it is too late!

TRIVIA:   According to Tippi Hedren, she signed a seven year contract with Alfred Hitchcock to work in "The Birds" before she even met him. She thought he meant to feature her in Hitch's TV series, but he flew in Martin Balsam to do screen tests of her in scenes from Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), and To Catch a Thief (1955).

Top and Above:   An interesting love triangle develops between Mitch (Rod Taylor), Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Annie (Suzanne Pleshette), before events surrounding Bodega Bay begin to take a sinister turn.

Originally based on the Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name, director Alfred Hitchcock was apparently dissatisfied with the plot of the novel, and ended up keeping only the book's bay-side town setting, the bird's bizarre behavior, their inexplicable tendency to launch frenzied attacks, fall dormant only to attack again later, and the title. Having first approached his Pyscho screenwriter Joseph Stefano, Hitchcock then hired Evan Hunter; Hunter having previously written "Vicious Circle" for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which he adapted for the television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Hitchcock and Hunter  developed the story, suggesting foundations such as the townspeople having a guilty secret to hide, and the birds an instrument of punishment, even suggesting that the film begin using some elements borrowed from the screwball comedy genre then have it evolve into "stark terror". This particularly appealed to Hitchcock, using the initial humor followed by horror would turn the suspense into shock.

Initially, Hitchcock and Hunter considered Audrey Hepburn for the role of Melanie Daniels, and even went so far as screen testing Sandra Dee for the role, before Hitchcock spotted actress Tippi Hedren in a commercial that aired during the Today Show. In the commercial for a diet drink, Hedren is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile; as an inside joke, Hitchcock would later include a homage to the commercial in the opening scene of the film, where the same thing happens to Hedren's character as she walks toward the bird shop. For the role of Mitch Brenner, Hitchcock considered Cary Grant, but ultimately deemed Grant to expensive - and the fact that the birds and Hitchcock himself were a big enough box office draw for the move. Hitchcock next thought of Sean Connery for the part, before giving the role to Rod Taylor (although Connery would later work with Hitchcock on his next film, Marnie). Suzanne Pleshette wanted to play Melanie, but reportedly settled for the role of schoolteacher Annie Hayworth because the opportunity of working with Hitchcock interested her. The part was originally written as a middle-aged schoolteacher who just lived in the community, but Hitchcock revised the script specifically for Pleshette, making the character much younger and adding backstory and depth. Hitchcock enjoyed working with her so much that he asked her to play Sean Connery's sister-in-law in his next film Marnie. Pleshette, who thought of herself as a leading lady rather than in supporting roles, quipped "Is the sister's name Marnie? I don't think so! I don't think that's the lead!". 

TRIVIA:    When audiences left the film's UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further.

Top:   Mitch's mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy) is about to make a shocking discovery;

Above:   Melanie comforts Mitch's sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) during another bird attack.

Production on The Birds began on location in Bodega Bay (70 miles north of San Francisco) on March 5th, 1962. The now famous schoolhouse in the film is the Potter Schoolhouse, which served the town from 1873 to 1961, which was widely purported to be haunted. According to Hedren, the entire cast was spooked to be there. She also mentioned how she had the feeling, while there, that "the building was immensely populated... but there was nobody there." Of course, when Hitchcock was told about the schoolhouse being haunted, according to Hedren, he was even more encouraged to film there! Interestingly, the service station in the film was a set built by the production team - however, several years later a real service station was built on the very spot shown in the film (it remains there to this day). After 10-days of location filming, Hitchcock (who notoriously disliked working on location) returned to the soundstages  at Universal Studios.

When the children are running down the street from the schoolhouse, extra footage was shot back on the Universal sound stages to make the scene more terrifying. A few of the children were brought back and put in front of a process screen on a treadmill. They would run in front of the screen on the treadmill with the Bodega Bay footage behind them while a combination of real and fake crows were attacking them. There were three rows of children and when the treadmill was brought up to speed it ran very fast. On a couple of occasions during the shoot, a number of the children in the front fell and caused the children in back to fall as well. It was a very difficult scene to shoot and took a number of days to get it right. The birds used were hand puppets, mechanical and a couple were trained live birds.

Impressive for it's time, The Birds featured over 370 effects shots (the final shot alone was a composite of more than 32 separately filmed elements). The special effects shots of the attacking birds were done at Walt Disney Studios by animator/technician Ub Iwerks, who used the sodium vapor process ("yellow screen") which he had helped to develop. The SV process films the subject against a screen lit with narrow-spectrum sodium vapor lights. Unlike most compositing processes, SVP actually shoots two separate elements of the footage simultaneously using a beam-splitter; one reel is regular film stock and the other a film stock with emulsion sensitive only to the sodium vapor wavelength. This results in very precise matte shots compared to blue screen special effects, necessary due to "fringing" of the image from the birds' rapid wing flapping.

TRIVIA:    A number of endings were being considered for this film. One that was considered would have showed the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered by birds!

Top:   The final classic shot of The Birds;

Above:   Director Alfred Hitchcock on Stage 28 at Universal Studios.

After screening out of competition in May at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, with Hitchcock and Hedren in attendance, The Birds premiered in new York on March 28th, ahead of it's US release the next day on March 29th. Opening to universal critical acclaim, The Birds is considered amongst Hitchcock's best films, with film critic David Thomson refering to the film as Hitchcock's "last unflawed film" in 2008. Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, although Iwerks lost to Cleopatra. Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer. The Museum of Modern Art hosted an invitation-only screening as part of a 50-film retrospective of Hitchcock's film work, and included a booklet with a monograph on the director written by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.

An unrelated sequel, The Birds II: Land's End, was released in 1994, starring Brad Johnson, Chelsea Field, and featuring Hedren in a cameo. This direct-to-television movie was widely panned when it premiered on Showtime, leading Land's End director Rick Rosenthal removing his name from it, opting to use the Hollywood pseudonym Alan Smithee. In October 2007, Variety reported that Naomi Watts would star in Universal's remake of the film, which would be directed by Casino Royale director Martin Campbell, and would be a joint venture by Platinum Dunes and Mandalay Pictures. However, since 2007, development has been stalled, and finally on June 16, 2009, Brad Fuller of Dimension Films stated that no further developments had taken place, commenting, "We keep trying, but I don't know."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   96%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - March 27th

"APRIL FOOL'S DAY" released in 1986

Nine college students staying at a friend's remote island mansion begin to fall victim to an unseen murderer over the weekend leading up to April Fool's Day, in Fred Walton's cult horror film, April Fool's Day!

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On the weekend leading up to April Fools' Day, a group of college friends, consisting of Harvey (Jay Baker), Nikki (Deborah Goodrich), Rob (Ken Olandt), Skip (Griffin O'Neal), Nan (Leah Pinsent), Chaz (Clayton Rohner), Kit (Amy Steel) and Arch (Thomas F. Wilson), gather to celebrate spring break by spending the weekend at the island mansion of Skip's sister, Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman). Once on the island, it turns out that Muffy has set up a variety of pranks throughout the mansion, ranging from simple gags such as a whoopee cushion and dribble glasses, to more complex and disturbing pranks, such as an audiotape of a baby crying in someone's room and heroin paraphernalia in a guest's wardrobe. In spite of this, the group try to relax, until Skip goes missing, and Kit catches a glimpse of what looks like his dead body. Soon, Arch and Nan also go missing. During a search for the pair, Nikki falls into the island's well, where she finds the severed heads of Skip and Arch, along with the dead body of Nan. The remaining group members then discover that the phone lines are dead and there is no way to get off the island until Monday. One after another, members of the group either vanish or get killed before their bodies are found until Kit and Rob finally put the clues together; it turns out that Muffy has a violently insane twin sister named Buffy (Foreman), who has escaped from a mental hospital, and, in fact, the "Muffy" they have been around since the first night as Buffy, pretending to be her already murdered sister! Buffy then pursues Kit and Rob throughout the house, leading a final revelation that they never saw coming!

TRIVIA:   The film's French title was Weekend of Terror, while in Germany release was titled The Horror Party.

Top and Above:   Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) has one hell of weekend in store for her college friends!

Often likened to storyline for Agatha Christie's classic chiller Ten Little Indians (otherwise known as And Then There Were None), April Fool's Day was the debut screenplay for writer Danilo Bach, and produced by Frank Mancuso Jr. for Paramount Pictures; Mancuso Jr. having worked with the studio producing films in the Friday the 13th series. One of the first actors cast was Amy Steel, in the lead role of Kit Graham, after having worked with Mancuso Jr. on Friday the 13th Part 2.

Cult 80's actress Deborah Foreman came in early to audition for Muffy, but the director and producers didn't feel she was right for the part. They were close to signing several other actresses, all who backed out for various reasons before Foreman, who continued to petition for another audition, she blew everyone away the second time around and landed the dual role of Muffy/Buffy St. John. Thomas F. Wilson, mostly known for portraying Biff Tannan in the Back to the Future trilogy, was also cast as Arch Cummings. Actors Jay Baker, Deborah Goodrich, Ken Olandt, Leah Pinsent, Clayton Rohner and Griffin O'Neal were then cast as fellow house-guests/victims Harvey, Nikki,  Rob, Nan, Chaz, and Skip. Ironically, O'Neal - whose character Skip at the beginning on the movie is responsible for the prank-turned-accident which leaves a ferryman disfigured - was indicted on manslaughter charges the following year for a drug-induced boating mishap that resulted in the death of Francis Ford Coppola's son Gian-Carlo Coppola.

Filmed entirely on location in British Columbia, the cast assembled at a hotel in Vancouver just prior to filming and began hanging out to build a rapport and hone their characters to make it more believable that they were all actually friends. Although, while shooting the dinner party scene, director Fred Walton angrily felt "there was no collective energy whatsoever" and the scene was "flat." When they broke for lunch, Walton scolded the cast and when they returned to film the rest of the scene, everyone stepped up their game. One of the more memorable scenes was inspired from a real life episode on set; while the crew was lighting a scene, Deborah Goodrich began reading a Cosmo questionnaire to her costars, which elicited a huge conversation that caught the attention of director Fred Walton. A few days later, Walton handed Goodrich the magazine and a new set of questions, and asked the actresses to improvise a scene which wound up in the final cut of the movie. 

TRIVIA:   The interior of the well scene was shot in tank on an L.A. soundstage at the end of production. The water was dyed to look murky and crew members discarded their cigarettes right into the tank. Deborah Goodrich (Nikki) spent so much time submerged in the nasty water that she left the set with a ear infection.

Top:   Nikki (Deborah Goodrich) discovers Arch's head in the well!;

Above:   Rob and Kit (Ken Olandt and Amy Steel) are the last remaining survivors on the island, pursued by a murdering maniac!

April Fool's Day had a fairly difficult post-production process, one issue concerning the all-important final act.The film originally had a much longer and more twisted ending. In the original script, after Muffy reveals the whole weekend was setup, the guests leave except for Rob, Kit, Chaz, and Nikki who sneak back to the house to prank Muffy for revenge. However when they return, Skip cracks and attempts to kill Muffy in a rage of jealousy. Rob jumps in and saves Muffy, killing Skip in the process. This ending actually was filmed but didn't make final cut as the studio opted for a more upbeat conclusion (however this ending is identical to how the film's novelization concludes). An alternate ending was shot where Muffy is left to believe she is alone on the island and Skip bursts out of a closet and 'cuts' Muffy's throat. She screams only to have the rest of the characters, thought to be gone, enter the room laughing, having pranked her back. The final scene that does appear in the movie (where Nan sneaks out of the closet and pretends to slash Muffy's throat) was actually shot three or four months after principal filming ended - which explains the different hairstyles for Deborah Foreman and Leah Pinsent whom appear in the scene. However, Mancuso Jr. insisted on tacking on the jack-in-the-box ending, which was shot in L.A. months after production had also wrapped.   

Released in early 1986, April Fool's Day was only a moderate success at the box office, grossing nearly $13 million (against a $5 million budget), but received mostly negative reviews from critics. One positive review from AllMovie wrote, "Amid the glut of gory horror films that clogged the cable schedules and cineplexes in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th, April Fool's Day stands out as a fairly restrained exercise in the '80s teen slasher genre," commenting that it "has more rollercoaster thrills than most slasher flicks with five times the gore." In fact, due to the film being light on violence it received frequent airings on late night television, where it gained a large cult following.

During a 30th anniversary reunion screening/panel, star Deborah Goodrich revealed that she was sent a script for an unproduced sequel several years after the film's release, though she was sketchy on the details and couldn't recall the names of the two writers. The story found Chazz and Nikki, who had gotten married, buying a closed-down porno theater on 42nd Street in New York City that they planned to turn into a bed and breakfast - but when one of Chazz's college-aged relatives arrived for a visit, the games began again. Ironically, Goodrich and her second husband bought the Avon Theatre in Stamford, CT, where this anniversary screening was held. Another horror movie however did utilize the same title around twenty-two years later with 2008's April Fool's Day; this unrelated picture was not a remake but was also a slasher movie and unlike this 1986 film which underplayed the gore off-screen, the 2008 film was more in the tradition of the usual gory slasher pic that this film evoked and spoofed.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   33%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - March 27th

"SISTERS" released in 1973

A journalist witnesses a brutal murder in a neighboring apartment, but nobody believes her that the crime took place; except for a private detective who helps her try to solve the grisly mystery, in Brian De Palma's debut thriller, Sisters!

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Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt), a columnist with the Staten Island Panorama, is beginning to feel dissatisfied with her work, primarily being assigned to work on fluff pieces, but on occasion is allowed to do hard hitting stories (which she prefers). From her apartment window one morning, she sees what she is certain is the stabbing murder of a black man by a white woman in an apartment across the way; the black man, seeing her, who tried to scrawl the word "help" in his own blood on the window. Reporting what she saw to the police, Grace gets little help from them, with who she has a bad relationship if only because of previous stories she has written on police brutality and racism. When the police and Grace arrive at the apartment in question, they find no dead body, no blood, and no woman matching who Grace saw commit the murder. All they find is the tenant, Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder), a young French-Canadian model/actress, who is visited by her soon to be ex-husband, Emil Breton (William Finley). However, what Grace saw truly did happen, the dead man being Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson), a man Danielle just met on her latest job (Woode was the "victim" of a Candid Camera-style television prank-show) and the murderess being Danielle's twin sister, Dominique Blanchion (Kidder), who is possessive of her sister. Emil helped Danielle cover up the murder. Grace, with the help of a private investigator named Joseph Larch (Charles Durning), tries to find out what is going on, including where the dead body is, which Grace believes they could not have moved out of the apartment between the time she saw the murder and when she and the police initially arrived on the scene. If Grace and Larch find out the truth, they will learn of an unusual relationship between Danielle, Dominique and Emil, one with strong psychological overtones based on the scar Danielle has on her right hip. And even if Grace and Larch discover the truth, they may not survive what Emil in particular is willing to hide at any cost to protect Danielle!

TRIVIA:   During an interview, Jennifer Salt was questioned about the meaning of the film's strange, open-ended conclusion. Salt admitted that she did not understand the meaning of the film's bizarre conclusion either!

Top and Above:   Journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) joins forces with private investigator Joseph Larch (Charles Durning) to solve a murder Grace witnessed from her window.

Brian De Palma was inspired to make the film after he read an article about a set of Soviet Union Siamese twins, Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, who were successfully separated after an operation. De Palma said he was haunted by a photograph of the twins in which one looked cheerful and healthy, while the other looked surly and disturbed, especially as the article went on to include issues about the twins' psychological problems after their separation. Co-written with Louisa Rose, Sisters was originally set up by producer Ray Stark as a starring vehicle for actress Raquel Welch. However, De Palma had Jennifer Salt in mind for the leading role of journalist Grace Collier (Salt had previously starred in De Palma's debut feature film, Murder a la Mod, as well as collaborating again in The Wedding Party and Hi, Mom!). Margot Kidder was then cast in the dual roles of Danielle Breton/Dominique Blanchion. Interestingly, at that time, Salt and  Kidder were roommates in Southern California, when De Palma let the actresses know they had gotten the roles in Sisters in a unique way; at Christmas, Kidder and Salt opened separate boxes under their Christmas tree and each one contained the script to this film - a special "gift" from De Palma.

William Finley, another frequent collaborator of De Palma's, was also cast as Danielle/Dominique's estranged husband, Emil Breton, with legendary character-actor Charles Durning cast in one of his earliest roles as private detective, Joseph Larch. Appearing in one of his first supporting roles, Lisle Wilson was cast as murder victim, Phillip Woode (Wilson would later star as Leonard Taylor on the ABC sitcom That's My Mama, as well as in  The Incredible Melting Man in 1977). Salt's real-life mother, Mary Davenport, was also cast as Mrs. Peyson Collier, allowing the two actresses to now portray mother and daughter on screen.

Following a month of rehearsals, Sisters was shot over a 8-week schedule on location on Staten Island, New York. Heavily influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock (the tracking shot of Salt walking up to the experimental hospital was particularly influenced by the tracking shot of Martin Balsam walking up to the Bates house in Psycho), De Palma also employed unusual point of view shots and split screen effects to show two events happening simultaneously (De Palma also shot the dream sequences in 16mm to give it a more gritty atmospheric appearance). De Palma later stated he doesn't remember where he got the idea for using the split screen, but "it's a kind of meditative form. You can go very slowly with it, because there's a lot to look at. People are making juxtapositions in their mind. And you can have all this exposition mumbo jumbo on one side". However, one elaborate tracking shot had to be deleted from the film; De Palma said the search scene was originally "a Max Ophüls-type tracking shot about 6 minutes long, and while they are searching through the apartment the camera keeps coming back to the couch and the spot is getting bigger and bigger and bigger," De Palma stated. "I shot it, but because the camera could only get down so low and still go up high enough to shoot the rest of the scene we couldn't get down to the bottom of the couch and when we saw the rushes it looked ridiculous because it looked like the guy was bleeding up through the arm of the couch. So I had to throw out the whole tracking shot, and I was forced to use close-ups and television-type coverage."

TRIVIA:   The film was remade in 2006 under the same title, with Lou Doillon, Stephen Rea, and Chloë Sevigny in the leading roles.

Top and Above:   Aspiring actress Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) keeps a dark secret - as a child she was once a conjoined twin with her murderous sister, Dominique (Kidder).

In keeping with the Hitchcockian-influence, De Palma persuaded Hitchcock's semi-retired composer, Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo), to write the score. To indicate the musical effects he wanted, De Palma put together an edit of his film that was dubbed with music Herrman's earlier films. However, while he was showing it to Herrmann, the composer stopped him with, "Young man, I cannot watch your film while I'm listening to Marnie!".    

Released theatrically in the United States by American International Pictures (a subsidiary of Orion Pictures Corporation), Sisters was met with almost universal critical praise; Roger Ebert noted that the film was "made more or less consciously as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock", but said it "has a life of its own" and praised the performances of both Kidder and Salt. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it " a good, substantial horror film" and stated "De Palma reveals himself here to be a first-rate director of more or less conventional material", also noting the film's references to Repulsion (1965) and Psycho (1960). Meanwhile, Variety, while stating it was "a good psychological murder melo-drama", said that "Brian De Palma's direction emphasizes exploitation values which do not fully mask script weakness."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   81%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - March 22nd

"FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING" 
released in 1985

Still haunted by his past, Tommy Jarvis - who, as a child, killed Jason Voorhees - starts to lose his sense of reality when a series of brutal murders start occurring in and around the secluded halfway house where he now lives, in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning!

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Five years after the demise of mass murderer Jason Voorhees the youngest survivor Tommy Jarvis (John Shepard), awakens from a nightmare of him witnessing two grave robbers digging up Jason Voorhees's body in which Jason rises from the grave to murder the grave robbers before advancing towards Tommy (Corey Feldman). Upon being transferred to Pinehurst Halfway House, a secluded residential treatment facility, Tommy is led by the director Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman) to head doctor Matt Letter (Richard Young). In his assigned room, Tommy also meets Reggie (Shavar Ross), a boy whose grandfather George (Vernon Washington) works as the kitchen cook. Other teens introduced are kind-hearted Robin (Juliette Cummins), Goth Violet (Tiffany Helm), shy Jake (Jerry Pavlon), short-tempered Vic (Mark Venturini), and compulsive eater Joey (Dominick Brascia). One day, in a fit of rage, Vic kills an irritating Joey with an axe and is subsequently arrested. Attending ambulance drivers Duke (William Caskey Swaim) and Roy Burns (Dick Wieand) discover the body, with Roy appearing deeply saddened by the death, while Duke believes that the murder was a "prank gone wrong". That night, two nearby punks Vinnie (Anthony Barrile) and Pete (Corey Parker) are murdered by an unseen assailant after their car breaks down. The following night, Billy (Bob DeSimone) and his friend Lana (Rebecca Wood) are also killed, this time with an axe. Panic begins to ensue, but the mayor (Ric Mancini) refuses the sheriff's (Marco St. John) claim that somehow Jason Voorhees has returned. Fearing he is losing his mind, Tommy must once again face his demons if he is to survive another Friday the 13th!

TRIVIA:   Although actor Dick Wieand is credited for the role of "Roy/Jason Voorhees", it is actually stuntman, Tom Morga, who appears in the scenes featuring the impostor Jason, as well as those with the hallucination of Jason, which haunts Tommy.

Top and Above:  Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman and John Shepard) is still haunted by his memories of Jason Voorhees!

The origins of Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning actually began with Friday the 13th: Part 3 -  the film was supposed to center around Part 2's survivor Ginny (Amy Steel), set at a mental institution to which she'd been committed due to emotional trauma. However, Steel declined to return, and the concept was shelved. Part 3's screenwriter Martin Kitrosser later dusted off the story and wrote a treatment for New Beginning's basic story. Early in development, screenwriter/director Danny Steinmann, fresh of the moderate success of his directorial debut Savage Streets (1984), starring Linda Blair, was brought on board to direct New Beginning as part of a two-picture deal with Paramount Pictures; the deal also would have included directing a Last House on the Left sequel, although the project ultimately fell through. Interestingly, Steinmann had actually been working in exploitation cinema under various pseudonyms since 1973, starting with the hardcore sex comedy High Rise. That was Steinmann's only adult film, an attempt to make a better version of Deep Throat (1972), but it did speak to the sleazy sensibilities he brought to A New Beginning.

Working with co-writer David Cohen, Steinman worked under two directives from Phil Scuderi: deliver a shock, scare, or kill every seven or eight minutes, and turn Tommy into Jason. In fact, Scuderi presented Steinmann with a graph to emphasize his "every 8 minute" rule, which meant the film needed to keep introducing new characters and then kill them 3 or 4 minutes later. To turn Tommy into the new "Jason", Steinman and Cohen wrote in the original screenplay a very different version of New Beginning's opening dream sequence; it opens as a continuation of the ending of the previous film - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) - as a young Tommy is taken to the same hospital as Jason's corpse. Then, in a sudden fit of psychotic rage, he winds up attacking half the hospital staff trying to get to the morgue to find Jason's bloodied body. Once he has finally found the body, Jason suddenly rises from the autopsy table. Immediately after this, the adult Tommy wakes up in the van, en route to the Pinehurst house (like in the movie).

TRIVIA:   Three different hockey masks are featured in the film. The first is the one which the Jason impostor, Roy, wears, which has two blue stripes on either side of the mouth. The second is the one the real Jason wears when Tommy sees him in the hospital room at the end, which has one red triangle above the eyes. The third is featured on the poster, and is an entirely different hockey mask, with more breathing holes on it. This one is never used in the film.

Top and Above:   Jason (Dick Wieand and Tom Morga) has returned to kill a new group of teens, ending with a showdown with "final girl", Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman)!

In order to keep the storyline a secret, the film was originally called "Repetition", after the David Bowie song of the same name (in fact, several of the other Friday the 13th films have used Bowie songs as fake titles).The film was originally written to have Corey Feldman as the star, reprising the role of Tommy Jarvis. However, he was already working on The Goonies (1985), and therefore the script was rewritten to have Feldman's appearance limited to a cameo. In fact, all of Feldman's scenes were shot on a Sunday in the backyard of his own house! Among the cast, the only people who knew Jason was actually the ambulance driver were the two leads (John Shepherd, Melanie Kinnaman), the stuntman playing Jason, and the actor playing the driver. However, when it came time to film the big reveal everyone knew it was horrible. In fact, they filmed fake Jason's death scene twice, but still, no one believed the audience would be able to just see the unmasked man and instantly remember him as the ambulance driver. 

Like all previous entries in the Friday the 13th series, New Beginning encountered an enormous amount of resistance from the MPAA. One month prior to the film's release in the United States, the MPAA demanded that sixteen scenes featuring sex or graphic violence be edited in order to merit an "R" rating instead of an "X". Amongst the scenes that the MPAA demanded trimmed (or out-right cut) was a 3-minute long sex scene between the characters Tina and Eddie; played by Deborah Voorhees and John Robert Dixon. Sadly, in later years, when Voorhees became a teacher, she was actually fired from two different high schools due to the sex scene in New Beginning. Ultimately, the film required nine trips to the MPAA before finally being granted an "R" rating.

Released on 1,759 screens in the US, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning debuted at number one at the box office, grossing over $8 million in it's opening weekend. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. was reportedly so pleased with the take at the box office opening weekend, he called up Steinmann and claimed the numbers were like "the golden times". By the end of it's theatrical run, the film had grossed nearly $22 million, but received mainly negative reviews from critics; Variety wrote, "The fifth Friday the 13th film reiterates a chronicle of butcherings with even less variation than its predecessors", while Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "It's worth recognizing only as an artifact of our culture."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   16%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - March 21st

"CHOPPING MALL" released in 1986

When eight teenagers are trapped after hours in a high tech shopping mall, they began to later realize that they are being stalked by three murderous out-of-control security robots,  Jim Wynorski's cult 80's horror film Chopping Mall!

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When four couples Rick and Linda (Russell Todd and Karrie Emerson), Greg and Suzie (Nick Segal and Barbara Crampton), Mike and Leslie (John Terlesky and Suzee Slater), and Ferdy and Allison (Tony O'Dell and Kelli Maroney) decide to have an after-hour party in one of the furniture stores where three of them work at the Park Plaza Mall, they are unaware that the mall have just installed a state-of-the-art security system which includes security shutters across all exits and three high-tech security robots programmed to disable and apprehend thieves using tasers and tranquilliser guns. While the teens party inside, outside a lightning storm strikes the mall several times and damages the computer controlling the security robots, resulting in them killing their technicians (Gerrit Graham and Morgan Douglas), as well as a janitor, Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), before going on regular patrol in the now-empty mall!

TRIVIA:   With the copyright of film's negative tied up in legal limbo, studio Lionsgate released the DVD edition mastered from a Lightning Video VHS master in 2004.

Top and Above:   A group of friends decide to have a party after hours inside the mall they work at, unaware that security has just introduced a new security feature - the Protector robots.

Producer Julie Corman originally conceived the idea about a killer in a mall, and soon contacted exploitation/B-movie filmmaker Jim Wynorski to write the screenplay, with co-writer  Steve Mitchell. While some reviewers later stated that Wynorski's script was inspired by the 1973 TV movie Trapped, Wynorski would claim he had never seen the movie and was inspired instead by the 1954 film Gog. With the screenplay delivered, Corman selected Wynorski to also direct Chopping Mall. Co-produced by Corman's husband, legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman, Chopping Mall starred Kelli Maroney (who appeared in Night of the Comet and the daytime soap opera Ryan's Hope) and Tony O'Dell (from the TV series Head of the Class), and included the acting debut  Rodney Eastman, who later went on to star in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Actors Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov also share a cameo as their characters from the horror-black comedy film Eating Raoul, Paul and Mary Bland.

Given a very limited budget (around $800,000 total), filming was completed in just twenty-two days on location at the Sherman Oaks Galleria (the same mall used in Commando the year before). The filmmakers were given permission to shoot on the provision they film at night after close of business, did not damage any facilities, and had removed any traces of their presence before the mall opening time of 9am. For the scene where the character of Greg was thrown to his death from the third level of the mall, Wynorski volunteered to try the stunt himself first - as long as they set him up from the second level. He completed the stunt successfully but actually found out later he'd broken a rib in the process; Wynorski did not tell anyone he had gotten hurt and no one found about it during the remaining production time. During the course of filming, according to Wynorski, the then-head of Galleria security didn't like the filmmakers and was constantly accusing them of causing disrepair; however, the mall's owner was supportive of the production and made sure the filmming was able to complete on schedule.

[repeated line after the robots kill someone]
Killbots: Thank you... have a nice day.

Top and Above:   A freak electrical storm causes the Protector robots to malfunction and go on a murderous rampage!

When designing the rogue Protector killbots, the special effects crew - led by special effects supervisor Robert Short, with construction supervisors Michael Novotny and Douglas Turner - actually built five remote controlled robots; three were required for the scenes of the robots together in the first half of the film, with two extras as backups in the event that the originals were damaged during any of the action sequences. In order to keep the robots looking realistic (as well as due to the film's budgetary constraints), they were constructed out of such items as wheelchair frames and pieces of conveyor belt, with the claws made from plastic toy grippers adapted with electric solenoids. Excluding shooting laser beams, most of what the killbots are seen doing onscreen was the result of the effects crew operating them via remote control.

Initially released by Concorde Pictures under it's original title - Killbots - the film fared poorly at the box office, with the producers fearing the title might have disinterested audiences, who might think based on the original movie poster that it was a Transformers-like children's cartoon instead of a violent exploitation movie. After some time, the movie was re-released under its new title of Chopping Mall with over 15 minutes cut. On the other hand, the TV cut has some extra footage; such as a small homage to Attack of the Crab Monsters, extended scenes of Ferdy and Allison watching TV, some aerial shots, and an extension of one of the Ferdy/Allison scenes. On November 2011, Dry County Entertainment announced they had acquired the rights to Chopping Mall and are now planning a remake with a supernatural twist, with Kevin Bocarde writing and producing, and Robert Green Hall (the director of Laid To Rest, ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2, and the web series - and the horror feature spin-off - Fear Clinic) helming the new picture.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   57%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - March 17th

"FINAL DESTINATION" released in 2000

When a teenager has a terrifying vision of he and his friends dying in a plane crash, he manages to prevent the accident - only to have Death hunt them down, one by one, in James Wong's Final Destination!

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High school student Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) boards Volée Airlines Flight 180 with his classmates for their senior trip to Paris, France. But just before take-off, Alex has a premonition that the plane will suffer a catastrophic engine failure, causing the plane to explode in mid-air, and killing everyone on board. When the events from his vision begin to repeat themselves in reality, he panics and a fight breaks out between Alex and his rival, Carter Horton (Kerr Smith). This leads to several passengers being removed from the plane, including Alex; Carter; Alex's best friend, Tod Waggner (Chad E. Donella); Carter's girlfriend, Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer); teacher Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke); and students Billy Hitchcock and Clear Rivers (Seann William Scott and Ali Larter). None of the passengers, except for Clear, believe Alex about his vision until the plane explodes on take-off, killing the remaining passengers on board!

Afterwards, the survivors are interrogated by two FBI agents, who believe that Alex had something to do with the explosion. Thirty-nine days later, the survivors attend a memorial service for the victims. That night, Tod is killed when a chain reaction causes him to be strangled in his bathtub. His death is deemed a suicide; however, Alex does not believe that Tod killed himself. He and Clear sneak into the funeral home to see Tod's body, where they meet mortician William Bludworth (Tony Todd), who tells them that they have ruined Death's plan, and Death is now claiming the lives of those who were meant to die on the plane. Later, while watching a news report on the cause of the plane explosion, Alex realizes that the survivors are dying in the order they were meant to die on the plane, which is confirmed when Ms. Lewton is killed when her house explodes after being impaled with a kitchen knife. With the number of survivors dwindling, Alex begins to see omens everywhere that predicts their impending deaths - and perhaps find a way to keep cheating Death's design!

Bludworth: By walking off the plane you cheated death. You have to figure out when it's coming back at you. [to Alex] Play your hunch, Alex. If you think you can get away from it. But beware the risk of cheating the plan, disrespecting the design... it could initiate a horrifying fury that would terrorize even the Grim Reaper - and you don't even want to fuck with that MacDaddy!

Top and Above:   Alex (Devon Sawa), Clear (Ali Larter) and Carter (Kerr Smith) finally realize that Death is coming for them, as explained by the mortician, William Bludworth (Tony Todd).

The original idea for Final Destination was written by Jeffrey Reddick as a spec script for an The X-Files episode in order to get a TV agent. New Line Cinema then bought Reddick's treatment and hired him to write the original draft of the script, which featured Death as an unseen force.  After the script was finished, New Line submitted the script to directors, including writing partners James Wong and Glen Morgan; both later signed on to make it into a film, although they would rewrite the script to comply with their standards. Similarly fascinated about the idea of an invisible force executing its victims, producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide from Zide/Perry Productions signed on and helped with the film's budget.

Alex Browning, the last role cast, went to Canadian actor Devon Sawa, who previously starred in the 1999 film Idle Hands. Sawa said that when "[he] read the script on a plane, [he] found [himself] peeking out the window at the engine every couple of minutes" and "[he] went down and met Glen and Jim and [he] thought they were amazing and already had some great ideas". Ali Larter, who starred in the 1999 film Varsity Blues, was cast as female lead Clear Rivers, with Seann William Scott, famous for portraying Steve Stifler in the 1999 film American Pie, was hired as class clown Billy Hitchcock. Dawson's Creek star Kerr Smith was soon added to the cast as jock Carter Horton, with newcomers Amanda Detmer and Chad E. Donella being cast as students Terry Chaney and Tod Waggner, respectively. Morgan's wife Kristen Cloke was later added to play teacher Valerie Lewton, and legendary horror icon Tony Todd signed to cameo in the film as the mortician William Bludworth (Morgan initially wanted Todd for the role because he felt his deep voice would give the film an eerie tone).

[shouting angrily at Carter]
Terry: I'm moving on, Carter. And if you want to waste your life beating the shit out of Alex every time you see him... then you can just drop fucking dead!
[a bus comes out of nowhere, and runs Terry down!]

 Top and Above:   One by one, the remaining survivors are picked off by Death, including Ms Lewton (Kristen Cloke) and Carter's girlfriend Terry (Amanda Detmer)

While filming of the plane scenes were shot on location in Long Island, most of Final Destination was filmed in British Columbia. Unfortunately, most of the cast members were filming other projects during production, so filming schedules had to be moved repeatedly in order for all of the cast to appear. According to Detmer, her death scene (being rammed by a speeding bus) was filmed first because "it was easy but much anticipated".

To serve the subtleties of the script and to help personify death, production designer John Willet developed the concept of "skewing" the sets. "What I've tried to do with the sets themselves, with their design and with various color choices, is to make things just a little unnatural," Willet explained. The plane scene during which passengers die in mid-air was created inside a very large sound stage, with a three-ton hydraulic gimbal being operated automatically. Used for filming the on-board sequences, it could be shifted on the gimbal to create a pitching movement of up to 45 degrees side-to-side and 60 degrees front-to-back, realistically conveying the horror of airborne engine failure. Wong said, "You walk into the studio and there's a huge gimbal with a plane on top and you think, 'What have I done?' I was afraid we were gonna have 40 extras vomiting."  

Above:   Co-writer/Director James Wong

A 10 feet long and 7 feet wide miniature model of the Boeing 747 was also created. According to visual effects supervisor Ariel Velasco Shaw, the miniature had to be launched about 40 feet up into the air to make it look like a real Boeing 747 exploded into a fireball. If blowing up a four-foot plane, the explosion must be a minimum of eight feet in the air. To film the explosion in detail, the crew used three cameras running 120 frames per second and one camera running 300 frames per second (if they had filmed using a real-time camera, the succession of the explosion would not be filmed in a particular order).

Released in 2,587 theaters across the United States and Canada, Final Destination earned over $10 million in it's opening weekend, eventually grossing $53 million at the North American box office, and another $60 million internationally. While a commercial success, Final Destination received mostly mixed reviews from critics. On the negative side, Stephen Holden of The New York Times said that "even by the crude standards of teenage horror, Final Destination is dramatically flat", while Lou Lumenick of the New York Post commented that "the film's premise quickly deteriorates into a silly, badly acted slasher movie—minus the slasher". In contrast, the film gathered positive reviews from top critics, including Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who enjoyed the film and gave it three out of four stars, stating that "Final Destination will no doubt be a hit and inspire the obligatory sequels. Like the original Scream, this movie is too good to be the end of the road. I have visions of my own". Joe Leydon of Variety also praised the film, saying "[it] generates a respectable amount of suspense and takes a few unexpected turns while covering familiar territory", while Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times said it was "a terrific theatrical feature debut for television veterans Glen Morgan and James Wong".

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   34%

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