ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 25th

"ALIEN" released in 1979

After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as a distress call, its landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious life-form, and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun, in Ridley Scott's cult sci-fi chiller, Alien!

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The commercial spacecraft Nostromo is on a return trip to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis: Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), two Engineers, Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and also a cat named Jones. Detecting a mysterious transmission from the nearby planetoid LV-426, the ship's computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Company policy requires crews to investigate such transmissions so they land on the planetoid, sustaining damage from its atmosphere and rocky landscape. Parker and Brett repair the ship while Dallas, Kane and Lambert head out to investigate. They discover the signal comes from a derelict alien spacecraft and head inside it, losing communication with Ash. Exploring the spacecraft, they find the remains of a large alien creature whose rib cage appears to have exploded from the inside. On Nostromo, Ripley determines that the transmission may be a warning, not a distress call. In the alien ship, Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large egg-like objects. As he inspects one, a creature springs out and attaches to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo. As acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash ignores Ripley and lets them in. The crew unsuccessfully attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face, discovering that its blood is an extremely corrosive acid. It later detaches on its own and dies. With the ship partly repaired, the crew lifts off. Kane awakens, dazed but otherwise unharmed. During a final crew meal before stasis, he chokes and convulses in pain. He dies as a small alien creature bursts from his chest and escapes out into the ship. The remaining crew attempt to capture the alien, but are dispatched one-by-one by the ever evolving - and increasing aggressive - creature, until only Ripley is left to face the terrifying Alien!

TRIVIA:  During early development, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett ran into a writing impasse while trying to work out how the alien would get aboard the ship. Shussett came up with the idea "the alien fucks one of them," which was eventually developed into the facehugger concept. This method of reproduction via implantation was deliberately intended to invoke images of male rape and impregnation, so both writers were adamant that the facehugger victim be a man: firstly because they wanted to avoid the horror cliché of women being depicted as the easy first target; secondly because they felt that making a female the casualty of a symbolic rape felt inappropriate; and thirdly, to make the male viewers feel more uncomfortable with this reversal of genre conventions.

Top:   The Xenomorph literally bursts from Kane's (John Hurt) chest... and later grows into a highly aggressive creature which dispatches the crew of the Nostromo one-by-one!

To commemorate the release of Alien, IHdb presents the brilliant feature-length documentary on the making of the film, The Beast Within: The Making of 'Alien'. Produced in 2003, the documentary features interviews with director Ridley Scott and master designer H.R. Giger, as well as with star Sigourney Weaver and other members of the cast and crew, who share their experiences from working on the project and discuss the special efforts that went into bringing it all together.

Enjoy!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   97%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 15th

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME" released in 1981

At a private school in Massachusetts, Crawford Academy, popular girl Virginia's group of her friends begin to fall prey to a grueling series of murders, and soon there will be no one left to attend her 18th birthday party, J. Lee Thompson's cult slasher film, Happy Birthday to Me!

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At Crawford Academy, the richest, most popular - and most snobbish teens - at the Academy, the elite clique the "Top Ten", meet every night at a local tavern, the Silent Woman Tavern. The Top Ten includes; Bernadette (Lesleh Donaldson), Amelia (Lisa Langlois), Etienne (Michel-René Labelle), Greg (Richard Rebiere), Maggie (Lenore Zann), Steve (Matt Craven), Rudi (David Eisner), Alfred (Jack Blum), Ann (Tracey E. Bregman), and Virginia "Ginny" Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson). On the way home, the Top Ten see a drawbridge going up and decides to play a game of chicken. All cars in the game attempt to make it across before the bridge is completely raised (to allow the passing of ferries). A protesting Ginny is shoved into a car by Ann, and very car jumps the drawbridge save one. Distraught, Ginny runs off into the darkness and visits her mothers grave before returning hom to be berated by her father Harold (Lawrence Dane) for returning home late. The next morning, school principal Mrs. Patterson (Frances Hyland) threatens the Top Ten with the banning of ever going to The Silent Woman after hours. Later that day, Ginny has a session with her on-call psychiatrist, Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford) shares a handful of lost repressed memories where she underwent an experimental medical procedure, involving surgery to restore brain tissue, after surviving a harrowing accident at the same drawbridge years before. As Ginny attempts to resume her normal life, her fellow Top Ten members are being murdered in vicious and violent ways: Etienne gets strangled when his scarf is caught in the spokes of his motorcycle as blood splatters, and Greg gets his neck crushed while lifting weights. And yet, the killer who always sports a pair of black gloves is never seen. With Ginny's 18th birthday steadily approaching, she begins to believe she that she may have killed her friends in a fugue state, resulting from the trauma of her mothers death years before; after leaving Ann's party in a drunken rage, Ginny's mother drove her car off the drawbridge into the river below, killing herself, and seriously injuring Ginny. Not knowing what to believe, Ginny returns home... where the killer has a gruesome birthday party waiting for her!

[last lines]
Lieutenant Tracy: [seeing all the dead bodies] Dear God, what have you done?
Virginia Wainwright: [singing to herself, now insane] Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Ginny. Happy birthday to me.

Top and Above:   Crawford Academy's elite clique The Top Ten, including Virginia "Ginny" Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson)(top right).

Interestingly Happy Birthday to Me was filmed before - but released after - producers John Dunning and André Link follow-up My Bloody Valentine; My Bloody Valentine went into production a week after Happy Birthday to Me wrapped, but post production was rushed to meet the 11 February 1981 release date in time for Valentine's Day. During Happy Birthday to Me's development, Dunning and Link decided to capitalize on the success of the previous years release of horror/slasher films, including the wedding-themed He Knows You’re Alone, Prom Night, Mother’s Day, Friday the 13th,  two New Year's Eve-themed horror movies, Terror Train and New Year's Evil, as well as Christmas-themed films To All a Goodnight and Christmas Evil. The producers hired John Saxton, a University of Toronto English professor, to develop the story, with Dunning providing the basis for the subplot involving Virginia’s brain injury after reading an article where scientists were regenerating frogs with electricity; and figured this could form the basis for a murder mystery where a girl suffers flashbacks and blackouts yet is unsure of her role in the mayhem around her. The script was completely reworked by screenwriting team Timothy Bond and Peter Jobin before production started in early July 1980. At the helm was British director J. Lee Thompson, famous for the classic Cape Fear (1962). Thompson, who had actively been looking to direct a thriller after having directed two other films in the horror genre, Eye of the Devil (1967) and The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), later stated in a press interview  "What attracted me to this script was that the young people stood out as vivid, individual characters. The difference between a good chiller and exploitative junk, at least in my opinion, is whether or not you care about the victims."

Starring Melissa Sue Anderson (who took time off from the TV series Little House On the Prairie to do this movie), Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane, Sharon Acker and Frances Hyland, Happy Birthday to Me also featured young upcoming actors, Matt Craven, Lenore Zann, Jack Blum, David Eisner, Michel-René Labelle, Richard Rebiere, and Lesleh Donaldson. Actress Lisa Langlois originally auditioned for the part of Ann, but with role instead went to Tracey E. Bregman (in her feature film debut), with Langlois instead cast as Amelia. Reportedly, actor Glenn Ford - who was less-than-thrilled to be in a slasher film - was heavily drinking during the production of this picture, and constantly through tantrums. Thompson and the producers tolerated most of his behaviour, as an actor of his caliber brought a bit of Hollywood glamor to the film, a rare thing for most slashers, which kept costs to a minimum with largely unknown actors. However, producers were forced to step-in when Ford and assistant director Charles Braive were involved in an on-set altercation. According to Dunning, "He [Ford] hit our AD who had called a lunch break in the middle of one of Glenn's scenes. I had to stop the police from arresting him. It was a mess. Glenn wouldn't come out of his dressing room until the first AD apologized, who said he would never apologize to Glenn. But I told him that this might be the end of his career as an AD if he didn't. So, he went and said he was sorry... and Glenn said he was sorry. They kissed and made up. As far as I know, Glenn never hit anybody else.".

TRIVIA:   Many fans were upset with the 2004 DVD release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment because, not only did it have a completely different cover to that of the infamous original poster and VHS cover, it featured a disco score in place of the atmospheric piano piece that originally played over the opening credits in theaters and VHS releases. In response, in 2009 Anchor Bay/Starz Home Entertainment re-released the DVD using the original poster as the cover and restoring the original music over the opening sequence.

Top and Above:   As Ginny struggles to remember her suppressed memories, helped by psychiatrist, Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford), her friends are being brutally murdered one-by-one!

While much of the film was shot in and around Loyola College in Montreal, the drawbridge scenes were actually filmed in Phoenix, New York, just outside Syracuse. The producers found it difficult to find the right bridge closer to the main production, as the expansion of the Highway system had made them increasingly rare. The whole town of Phoenix came to watch the dangerous stunts, where a total of fifteen cars were junked, and one stunt driver was hospitalized with two broken ankles. The bridge itself has since been removed and replaced by a bridge further to the north. The removal takes with it a piece of history in drawbridges. The film's make-up effects were done by special effects guru Tom Burman (who replaced Stéphan Dupuis just three weeks before the cameras were due to start rolling), who, accroding to Dunning in an interview with the Terror Trap in 2011, began "splashing [fake] blood all over the place" on the set, encouraged by Thompson himself. Dunning said: "The cameraman came to me and said, "John, you've gotta slow J. Lee down. He's throwing too much blood around, and the camera lenses are always covered in it!". He'd take a bucket of blood and whip it around. I had to go to him and tell him to tone it down so we could clean up the crew". In an interview with actress Lisa Langlois also at The Terror Trap, said: "That's something he [J. Lee Thompson] was very famous for on that set, slinging lots of fake blood all around!".

With script being continuously re-written during production, it was reported in the press that in order to keep the "twist" ending a secret several endings were shot - when it fact, it was to hide the fact that while shooting, the film had no ending! According to a copy of the third draft of the script (obtained by genre website Retro Slashers), Happy Birthday to Me was supposed to end where Ginny is revealed as the killer, but possessed by the spirit of her deceased mother. Although this ending logistically makes more sense than the ending that was filmed, the filmmakers thought that what was originally scripted was not climactic enough (still, the majority of the film does point to this original ending, which indicates the switch came well into production). This version of the script also features a good number of scenes that were either never shot or rewritten, including some that show more clearly Alfred's love for Ginny and Ginny's difficult relationship with her father. However, the script was rewritten with a far more twisted revelation where the identity of the murderer is revealed to be Ann, posing throughout the movie as Ginny's-doppelganger while murdering her school friends.

TRIVIA:   This film was the last movie that director J. Lee Thompson made before the start of his long association with Cannon Films and Golan-Globus Productions, starting with 10 to Midnight (1983), which would see out the remaining of his career; only one other picture, The Evil That Men Do (1984), being made outside of this production house.

Top:   Ann (Tracey E. Bregman) arrives the "party" to wish Ginny a Happy Birthday... revealing herself as the killer;

Above:   Director J. Lee Thompson (pictured on set of 1986's Murphy's Law).

Columbia Pictures bought the rights from Cinépix for a reported $3.5 million, and put as much money into promoting the film as it cost to make. Columbia actually published a promotional manual for Happy Birthday to Me, which was jam-packed with ideas for cinemas to promote the film. Although it is not clear how many picture houses really embraced the film's promotion, some of the more colorful ideas were to stage a mini-recreation of the film's final scene (without the bodies), but with a butchered birthday cake with crimson candles surrounded by glittering birthday party hats, all to be set upon a fake coffin. People celebrating their own birthdays were encouraged to bring family and friends with incentives, such as T-shirts and party hats. They also suggested having a member of staff, dressed in funereal black, preventing anyone from entering the auditorium during the final ten minutes. Those in line would then be offered "a bite-sized slice of Virginia's birthday cake” from the concession stand. Dunning and Link didn't like the advertising campaign Columbia devised, believing it should have been more subtle and worried that it might put off as many people as it attracted. They were also concerned that only a handful of the murders in the film were as truly bizarre as the expectation built up and that the audience might feel cheated.

Nevertheless, Happy Birthday to Me grossed over $10 million at the US box office, and, for a short time, was the highest ever grossing Canadian film until Bob Clark's Porky's came along the next year in 1982. Critically, the movie received mostly negative reviews, with Vincent Canby from the New York Times calling it a confused ripoff of Friday the 13th and Prom Night. James Harwood in Variety wrote that the film gets "dumber and dumber until the fitful finale". In 2012, AllMovie gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Happy Birthday to Me stands out from the slasher movie pack of the early '80s because it pushes all the genre's elements to absurd heights. The murders, plot twists and, especially, the last-minute revelations that are dished up in the final reel don't just deny credibility, they outright defy it."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   27%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 13th

"FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD" released today in 1988

Years after Tommy Jarvis chained him underwater at Camp Crystal Lake, the dormant Jason Voorhees returns to the camp grounds when he is accidentally released from his prison by a telekinetic teenager, in John Carl Buechler's Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood!

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The undead and decomposing Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) remains chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake. While he remains chained, a young child named Tina Shepard (Jennifer Banko), who witnesses her alcoholic father physically abusing her mother, unlocks previously latent telekinetic powers in which result in her father's death at the bottom of Crystal Lake. Ten years later, a now teenager Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) is still struggling with the guilt surrounding the death of her father. Tina's mother, Amanda (Susan Blu), takes her to the same lakeside residence so that her powers can be studied (and unknowingly exploited) by her psychiatrist, Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser). There, Crews begins a series of experiments (verbal assaults) designed to agitate Tina's mental state, forcing her powers to become more pronounced. Next door to the Shepard residence is a group of teens who are throwing a birthday party for their friend Michael; preppy Russell (Larry Cox) and his girlfriend Sandra (Heidi Kozak), Ben (Craig Thomas) and his girlfriend Kate (Diane Almeida), science fiction writer Eddie (eff Bennett), stoner David (Jon Renfield), perky Robin (Elizabeth Kaitan), shy Maddy (Diana Barrows), and snobby socialite Melissa (Susan Jennifer Sullivan). Michael's cousin Nick (Kevin Spirtas), who has arrived just for the party takes a liking to Tina, much to the jealousy of Melissa, who bullies Tina. Later, after a particularly upsetting session with Dr. Crews, Tina runs from the cabin and to the dock thinking about her father's death. While thinking about him, she wishes he would come back. Instead, Tina's psychic powers breaks the chain around the neck of Jason Voorhees. Tina's torment from her powers is increased as Jason emerges from the lake and his reign of terror descends on the area once again!

[opening lines]
Narrator: There's a legend around here. A killer buried, but not dead. A curse on Crystal Lake, a death curse: Jason Voorhees' curse. They say he died as a boy, but he keeps coming back. Few have seen him and lived. Some have even tried to stop him. No one can.

Top and Above:   The unstoppable Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is released from the bottom of Crystal Lake by troubled telekinetic teen, Tina Shephard (Lar Park Lincoln).

After the previous installment, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (which reintroduced Jason Voorhees as the unstoppable undead creature), Part VII was originally hoped to be Freddy vs. Jason, a clash crossover between Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. Plans fell apart when Paramount Pictures (who held the rights to the Friday the 13th series at the time) and New Line Cinema (who held the rights to the Nightmare on Elm Street films), failed to come to an agreement. After Freddy Vs. Jason failed to materialize, Paramount was still so high on the "Jason Vs. Blank" marketing angle, screenwriter Daryl Haney pitched a last-second idea to pitch Jason against a Carrie-esque, troubled telekinetic teen. Haney was then hired to write the story treatment, first draft, revision, and polish - but that evolved into writing 15 different drafts. However, Haney was later fired by executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr., after Haney's agent that the writer would not do any more work on the project unless he received a large pay increase (even though Haney had never told his agent to do any such thing). The subsequent rewrites were done by an unknown screenwriter, credited by the pseudonym Manuel Fidello (although it has been argued this "Manuel Fidello" was actually somebody with legitimate writing credits who wanted the quick cash as long as the film wouldn't end up on his resume!).

Interestingly, two actresses who had previously appeared in Friday the 13th movies auditioned for the lead role of Tina Shephard; Marta Kober (who played Sandra in Friday the 13th Part 2) and Kerry Noonan (who played Paula in Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI). Both read for the role of Tina, when they thought the title was "Birthday Bash", but when they realized it was for a role in the next Friday the 13th film, the producers and director John Carl Buechler decided against casting them. After turning down Kober and Noonan, Buechler originally wanted Paula Irvine to play the role of Tina Shepherd, because she was 19 years old at the time and had the perfect teenage look and the personality he was looking for. Unfortunately, Paula already made commitments to star as Liz in Phantasm II (1988) so John was unable to cast her for the role. John was running out of time and was not able to find a real teenager between 18-19 years old to play the role of Tina Shepherd, he had no choice to cast Lar Park-Lincoln who was 26-years-old at the time. Lar Park Lincoln had to wear a lot of makeup to look approximately eight years younger than she looks, so the audience will think she's a teenager. The New Blood marks the first of four appearances by Kane Hodder as Jason. Hodder was ultimately chosen based on his work in the film Prison, for which Buechler had worked on as the special effects make-up artist. In that movie, Hodder filmed a scene in which his character, a prisoner executed in the electric chair, rises from the grave; Hodder himself had suggested to Buechler that he have maggots coming out of his mouth during the scene to heighten the effect of decomposition, and went on to film the sequence with live maggots spilling out of his mouth. Buechler remembered Hodder's commitment to the part when casting The New Blood, and chose Hodder over C. J. Graham, who had portrayed Jason in Part VI.  

Melissa: You are nuts!
Nick: Shut up, Melissa.
Melissa: I don't believe you. You people give me the creeps.
[walks away]
Nick: Hey, where do you think you're going?
Melissa: I'm going back to bed. You wanna come?
Nick: Look, Melissa, just stay here with us.
Melissa: It's not my style.
Nick: Don't go out there!
Melissa: Fuck you. And fuck you both!
[opens the door to see Jason standing there; he bludgeons her head with an axe]

Top and Above:   Jason "crashes the party" for a final showdown with Tina!

In addition to portraying the undead Jason, Hodder also performed all his own stunts in The New Blood, including falling through the stairway, and having the porch roof fall on his head. Hodder would even go on to make cinematic history for the longest uninterrupted onscreen controlled burn in Hollywood history. For the scene in which Tina causes the furnace to shoot flames at Jason, Hodder was actually set on fire by an apparatus rigged so that the ignition could be captured on film (as opposed to being edited in later with trick photography). Hodder was on fire for a full forty seconds, a record at the time.  

The hardest scene Kane Hodder found to film was where he kills the camper in the sleeping bag by bashing her into the tree. The scene required a number of retakes because he kept swinging as hard as he could but no matter how hard he swung the sleeping bag he couldn't get it to look right, as the dummy inside was heavier than he thought it would be. By the final take, he was so fed up with the situation that after he dropped the bag he kicked it angrily, and this is the shot that appears in the final film (in retrospect, Hodder said that was one of his favorite "kills" and he later recreates it in Jason X (2001).

During filming on location near Bay Minette in Alabama, the dressing room for Kane Hodder was a quarter of a mile down a dirt road. One night filming ended at at 2 a.m. and he was still in the Jason costume, and he decided to walk through the woods on a path to his dressing room. As he was walking someone approached him and asked if he was with the movie. He didn't reply, because he thought it was a pretty stupid question to ask, as he was standing there in full Jason costume. The man asked again, Kane took a little lunge for the guy and grunted. The guy took off, tripping and running. The next day director John Carl Buechler told Kane that the local sheriff was supposed to stop by, but he never showed.

TRIVIA:   During filming producers hired Leslie Buzbee, the local 'gator man'. They paid him to be the alligator wrangler so he was supposed to keep gators away from the actors. But alligators are not active in the winter when they were filming (October and November, 1987). So basically they paid him to do nothing but watch the lake.

Top:   Director John Carl Buechler on set with actress Lar Park Lincoln;

Above:   Kane Hodder (sans make-up) on set in Alabama.

Buechler stated that he clashed with associate producer Barbara Sachs (making her producing debut with New Blood, and would return to produce Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) continuously over many ideas that he had for the film. This included showing Jason unmasked for quite a bit of the movie. She vetoed the idea, but Buechler ended up going behind her back and filming it anyway. Buechler also stated that the final sequence of Tina's father coming out of the water was to be more elaborate and feature full prosthetics and a life size dummy. However, that sequence was completely over ruled by Sachs as being "silly and disgusting", and Buechler ended up filming what he considers an inferior version of the sequence. Buechler also famously clashed with the MPAA over the edits required for The New Blood to avoid an X-rating. Several explicit scenes of gore were cut,  including; Maddy's death, who originally had a sickle jammed through her neck; Ben's death, which showed Jason crushing his head into a bloody pulp; Kate's death, which showed Jason ramming her in the eye with a party horn (the VHS and DVD versions only show a full view of Jason as he aims towards her face, but quickly cuts to another scene before revealing the blood and gore gushing from her eye); we see Eddie's head hit the floor; a shot of Russell's face splitting open with a large blood spurt; Dan's original death had Jason ripping out his guts; Amanda Shepard's death originally showed Jason stabbing her from behind, with the resulting blade going through her chest and subsequent blood hitting Dr. Crews; Dr. Crews's death showed Jason's tree-trimming saw violently cutting into his stomach, sending a fountain of blood and guts in the air; and Melissa's original death had Jason cleaving her head in half with an axe with a close-up of her eyes still wriggling in their sockets. In all, The New Blood had to be submitted nine times to the Motion Picture Association of America before being granted an R-rating, and it stands as arguably the most heavily censored entry in the Friday the 13th series. During an interview for the 2009 documentary film, His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th, Buechler was quoted as saying the MPAA, "raped my movie!".


Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood debuted at number #1 at the US box office, grossing an impressive $8.2 million its opening weekend in 1,796 theaters. Ultimately, the film would go on to gross a total of $19.2 million at the U.S. box office, placing it at number 53 on the list of the year's top earners, and the 8th highest grossing film in the Friday the 13th series. However, The New Blood, like many of movies in the franchise, received mostly negative reviews from critics on it's initial release - but gained a cult following for fans, who deeply praised Hodder's performance as Jason, with Buechler, who also created the special make-up effects for the film, is credited with creating "the definitive Jason". 

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   30%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 9th

"FRIDAY THE 13TH" released in 1980

In 1957, a young boy named Jason tragically drowns in a lake near Camp Crystal Lake. In 1958, two counselors are brutally murdered, forcing the camp to close. Then, in 1979, a group of counselors reopen Camp Crystal Lake. During that time, the counselors are getting killed one-by-one by an unknown assailant, in Sean S. Cunningham's cult 80's slasher film, Friday the 13th!

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Newly hired counselor Annie Phillips (Robbi Morgan) enters a small diner and asks for directions to the reopened Camp Crystal Lake. A friendly truck driver named Enos (Rex Everhart) agrees to drive Annie halfway, while an elderly man, Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), warns Annie against going, believing the camp has a "death curse". During the drive, Enos tells Annie about a young boy that drowned at Crystal Lake in 1957 and about the two murders the following year. After Enos drops her off, Annie hitches another ride from an unseen second driver, who later chases her into the woods and slashes her throat. Meanwhile at the camp, counselors Ned, Jack, Bill, Marcie, Brenda and Alice (Mark Nelson, Kevin Bacon, Harry Crosby, Jeannine Taylor, Laurie Bartram, and Adrienne King), along with the owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), refurbish the cabins and facilities. As night falls, Steve leaves to pick up supplies in town, while the counsellors remain behind in the path of an approaching thunderstorm. During the night, Jack and Marcie have sex in one of the cabin's bunk beds - but they are unaware of Ned's body with his throat slit above them! Shortly, Jack is murdered from his throat pierced with an arrow from underneath the bed, and the killer murders Marcie by smashing an axe into her face. Later, Brenda hears a child's voice seeking for help and she ventures outside her cabin to the archery range, only for the range lights to turn on and she is shot by an arrow, and killed. Eventually, Steve returns to the camp and the killer shines a flashlight at him; he appears to recognize the killer before he is also murdered. Alice and Bill, meanwhile, are worried by their friends' disappearances, and they leave the main cabin to investigate, only to discover a bloody axe in Brenda's bed, the phones disconnected and the cars inoperable. When the power goes out, Bill goes to check on the generator and himself murdered. Now alone, Alice leaves the cabin to search for Bill, only to encounter the unlikely murderer herself - Mrs Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer)! A brutal cat-and-mouse chase ensues throughout the entire camp, with Alice left to rely on her wits and nerve to survive this bloody Friday the 13th!

[Watching Alice run away]
Mrs. Voorhees: [to herself in a high voice] Kill her, Mommy! Kill her! Don't let her get away, Mommy! Don't let her live!
[normal voice]
Mrs. Voorhees: I won't, Jason. I won't!

Top and Above:   Alice (Adrienne King) heads the new camp counselors; Brenda, Ned, Marcie, Jack and Bill (Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Kevin Bacon, and Harry Crosby).

Having mostly directed family films and sexploitation comedies, mainstream success still eluded producer/director Sean S. Cunningham. Then in 1977, Cunningham produced Wes Craven's 1972 directorial debut The Last House on the Left and began to see the box office potential of horror movies. Later in 1978, John carpenter's Halloween was released to huge popularity, and Cunningham was determined to capitalize on the films success with his own horror film. Cunningham approached former novelist/playwright Victor Miller (the writer of one of his earlier films, the low-budget rip-off of The Bad News Bears titled Here Come the Tigers) to write the screenplay. Initially Miller delighted in inventing a serial killer who turned out to be somebody's mother, a murderer whose only motivation was her love for her child. "I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun. Mrs. Voorhees was the mother I'd always wanted—a mother who would have killed for her kids." Miller wrote the script, then titled Long Night at Camp Blood, in two weeks, before turning the screenplay over to Cunningham who had his own ideas for a new title - Friday the 13th.

Worried that someone else owned the rights to the title and wanting to avoid potential lawsuits, Cunningham thought it would be best to find out immediately. He commissioned a New York advertising agency to develop his concept of the Friday the 13th logo, which consisted of big block letters bursting through a pane of glass, and paid to have a full page ad placed in Variety over the Fourth of July Weekend of 1979. The publicity worked, as the financiers behind Together (1971) and The Last House on the Left (1972) contacted Cunningham and offered to cover the entire cost of the proposed $500,000 dollar budget!

Casting was done by Julie Hughes and Barry Moss of TNI Casting, a New York-based casting agency well-known and respected in the theater community in New York, with Friday the 13th being their first horror film. With Cunningham looking for "good-looking kids who you might see in a Pepsi commercial" , many of the actors were stage brats drawn to the auditions based upon the stellar reputations of the casting directors (the most famous of these actors was Kevin Bacon, who had been in his first film, Animal House, six months prior, but had, to his surprise, returned right back to the life of a work-a-day actor - but he was the only one they auditioned for the part of Jack Burrell). The leading role of Alice was set up as an open casting call as a publicity stunt used to attract more attention to the film. Among those auditioned was actress Adrienne King, who heard about the auditions from her friend who worked as an assistant to Hughes and Moss. King actually auditioned for the roles of Brenda, Marcie, and Annie before being cast in the lead as Alice Hardy. Surprisingly, King at first did not want to be in the film, because of the graphic violence in it, but she soon changed her mind. With King cast in the role of lead heroine, Laurie Bartram was hired to play Brenda, with Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson and Jeannine Taylor, who had known each other prior to the film, were cast as Jack, Ned, and Marcie respectively. 

TRIVIA:   Composer Harry Manfredini has said that contrary to popular belief, the famous "Chi, chi, chi; ha, ha, ha" in the film's score is actually "Ki, ki, ki; ma, ma, ma". It is meant to resemble Jason's voice saying "Kill, kill, kill; mom, mom, mom" in Mrs. Voorhees's mind. It was inspired by the scene in which Pamela Voorhees suffers from schizophrenia and chants, "Get her, mommy! Kill her!" Manfredini created the effect by speaking the syllables "ki" and "ma" into a microphone running through a delay effect.

Top:   The vengeful - and psychotic - Mrs Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer);

Above:   The infamous finale scene where Alice is attacked on the lake by the risen Jason (Ari Lehman).

Academy Award winning actress Estelle Parsons was initially asked to portray the film's killer, Mrs. Voorhees, but eventually declined, with her agent citing that the film was too violent, and did not know what kind of actress would play such a part. After also considering Louise Lasser, Dorothy Malone, and Shelly Winters, Hughes and Moss sent a copy of the script to Betsy Palmer, in hopes that she would accept the part. Eventually Palmer agreed to star in the film, with a 10-day schedule and recieving one thousand dollars per day. Even though Friday the 13th would be her first film since starring in The Last Angry Man in 1959, Palmer would later state that if it were not for the fact that she was in desperate need of a new car, she would never have appeared in "[this] piece of shit". Nevertheless, Palmer, a method actress gave Mrs. Voorhees a detailed backstory. "Being an actress who uses the Stanislavsky method, I always try to find details about my character. With Pamela... I began with a class ring that I remember reading in the script that she'd worn. Starting with that, I traced Pamela back to my own high school days in the early 1940s. So it's 1944, a very conservative time, and Pamela has a steady boyfriend. They have sex—which is very bad of course—and Pamela soon gets pregnant with Jason. The father takes off and when Pamela tells her parents, they disown her because having... babies out of wedlock isn't something that good girls do. I think she took Jason and raised him the best she could, but he turned out to be a very strange boy. [She took] lots of odd jobs and one of those jobs was as a cook at a summer camp. Then Jason drowns and her whole world collapses. What were the counselors doing instead of watching Jason? They were having sex, which is the way that she got into trouble. From that point on, Pamela became very psychotic and puritanical in her attitudes as she was determined to kill all of the immoral camp counselors."

Production began on 4 September 1979 on location at a working Boy Scout camp, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, near Hardwick, New Jersey - the filmmakers eventually gaining approval to film at the camp after giving a "sizeable" donation to the Boy Scouts of America. Interestingly, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco is still in use today, and the camp has a wall of Friday the 13th paraphernalia to honor that the movie was set there. Because the camp was closed during filming, and situated in the deep New Jersey woods, the cast and crew didn't see much outside interference. While most of the cast and crew stayed at local hotels during the filming, some of the most loyal cast and crew members, including special make-up effects artists Tom Savini and Taso N. Stavrakis, stayed at the actual camp site. During the evenings, they had Savini's Betamax VCR and only a couple of movies (Barbarella (1968) and Marathon Man (1976)) on videotape to keep themselves entertained, so each night they would watch one of these movies (to this day, Savini says he can recite those movies by heart!). In fact, the scene with the snake in the cabin was not in the original script, and was an idea from Savini after an experience in his own cabin during filming. Even the snake in the scene was real - including its on-screen death.

[last lines]
Alice: The boy. Is he dead, too?
Tierney: Who?
Alice: The boy. Jason.
Tierney: Jason?
Alice: In the lake, the one... the one who attacked me. The one who pulled me underneath the water.
Tierney: Ma'am, we didn't find any boy.
[Alice is bewildered]
Alice: Then... he's still there.

Top and Above:   Special make-up effects designer Tom Savini adds the finishing touches to Ari Lehman's Jason make-up for his scene with actress Adrienne King.

King and Palmer reportedly got extremely physical during their fight scenes. Having worked on-stage for years, Palmer was used to really striking her co-stars with a cupped hand along the jawline to achieve the scene, and actually slapped King hard across the face during one of their on-screen fights. King was initally shocked at being struck, and Cunningham had to quickly tell Palmer about faking the blows and cheating with camera angles. Harry Crosby was also injured during filming when the bloody eye make-up used for his scene where his character Bill is discovered impaled to the door with arrows, got into his eye, burning his corneas and causing him excruciating pain. For one of the opening death scenes, Palmer had just arrived into town when those scenes were about to be filmed, but was not in the physical shape necessary to chase Robbi Morgan around the woods - unlike Morgan, whose training as an acrobat assisted her in these scenes, as her character was required to leap out of a moving Jeep when she discovers that Mrs. Voorhees does not intend to take her to the camp. For that scene, Palmer was subbed by Taso N. Stavrakis. Stavrakis also stood in for Palmer for the final decapitation scene. In the slow motion shot, Stavrakis had his head under Mrs Voorhees jumper (appearing headless) and raised his hands. Palmer later laughingly recalled the scene, stating "I don't have hairy knuckles!". The idea of Jason appearing at the end of the film was initially not used in the original script; however Miller, Savini, and uncredited screenwriter Ron Kurz all claim credit for thinking of it. for his part, Savini stated that "The whole reason for the cliffhanger at the end was I had just seen Carrie, so we thought that we need a 'chair jumper' like that, and I said, 'let's bring in Jason'". Cunningham originally wanted to cast his son Noel Cunningham as Jason, but his wife Susan E. Cunningham wouldn't let him do this. Ultimately, 14-year old actor Ari Lehman - who had previously worked with Cunningham on Manny's Orphans - was cast as the young Jason, making him the first actor to portray the soon-to-be-legendary mass murderer. Miller initially wrote Jason as a normal-looking child, but the crew behind the film decided he needed to be deformed. Miller explained Jason was not meant to be a creature from the "Black Lagoon" in his script, and scripted Jason as a mentally disabled young boy; it was Savini who made Jason deformed. At one point, Palmer was so taken aback by Jason's appearance, she asked savini who he was supposed to be. Savini proudly responded, "That's your son, jason - he's a mongaloid!"

 For his death scene, Kevin Bacon had to crouch under the bed and insert his head through a hole in the mattress. Then, a latex neck and chest appliance were attached to give the appearance that he was actually lying down. Getting the set-up right took several hours, and Bacon had to stay in that uncomfortable position the entire time. For the bloody final moment, Tom Savini - also under the bed - would plunge the arrow up and through the fake neck, while his assistant-also under the bed-operated a pump that would make the fake blood flow up through the appliance. To further complicate things, the crew needed someone to stand in for the killer's hand as it held Bacon's head down, and they settled on still photographer Richard Feury. So, after several hours of set-up, and latex building and planning, it was finally time to shoot the scene, and when the moment of truth came, the hose for the blood pump disconnected. Knowing that he basically only had one take (otherwise they'd have to build a new latex appliance and set everything up again), Taso N. Stavrakis grabbed the hose and blew into it until blood flowed out, saving the scene. "I had to think quickly, so I just grabbed the hose and blew like crazy which, thankfully, caused a serendipitous arterial blood spray," Stavrakis said. "The blood didn't taste that bad either."

Paramount Pictures later bought Friday the 13th's distribution rights for $1.5 million, after seeing a screening of the film, and subsequently spent another $500,000 in advertisements. Friday the 13th opened theatrically on 9 May 1980 across the United States, ultimately expanding its release to 1,100 theaters after taking almost $6 million at box office in it's opening weekend. Earning nearly $40 million at the domestic market, Friday the 13th was the 18th highest-grossing film that year, facing stiff horror film competition from such high-profile releases as The Shining, Dressed To Kill, The Fog and Prom Night. The film also received moderate to favorable reviews from critics - with one very big exception;  Gene Siskel. In his review, Siskel wrote that producer/director Cunningham was "one of the most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business" and published the address for Charles Bluhdorn, the chairman of the board of Gulf+Western, which owned Paramount, as well as Betsy Palmer's home city and encouraged fellow detractors to write to them and express their contempt for the film. Siskel went even further and spent an entire episode Sneak Previews - which he co-hosted with fellow famed movie critic Roger Ebert -  berating the film (and other slasher films of the time) because they felt it would make audiences root for the killer. Amazingly enough, Siskel's constant rants towards movie only encouraged hard-core horror fans around the country to see the movie (!) and Friday the 13th has since become a cult slasher classic, spawning a hugely successful horror franchise that has spanned 38-years, 12 films, multiple spin-offs (including comics, graphic novels, and one television series), and introduced one of horrors most iconic villains - Jason Voorhees!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   59%

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 1st

"FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2" released in 1981

Mrs. Voorhees is dead, and Camp Crystal Lake is shut down. Five years later, a camp counselor in training program begins at Campanack Lodge - right near Jason's home, Camp Crystal Lake - and as teenagers in the program start snooping around Camp Crystal Lake, they start getting killed violently one by one, in Steve Miner's chilling Friday the 13th, Part 2!

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Two months after the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, sole survivor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) is recovering from her traumatic experience. In her apartment, she finds the decapitated head of Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) in her refrigerator and is murdered by an unseen adult Jason Voorhees (Steve Daskawisz) with an ice pick to her temple! Five years later, camp counselor Paul Holt (John Furey) hosts a counselor training camp at a building near Crystal Lake, attended by lovers Jeff and Sandra (Bill Randolph and Marta Kober), troublemaker Scott (Russell Todd), tomboy Terry (Kirsten Baker), wheelchair-bound Mark (Tom McBride), sweet-natured Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor), jokester Ted (Stu Charno), and Paul's assistant - and girlfriend - Ginny (Amy Steel), as well as numerous unnamed counselor trainees. At the campfire that night, Paul tells them the legend of Jason to scare the other counselors from entering Camp Crystal Lake. As he and Ted orchestrate a prank to scare the camp counselors by having Ted appear with a mask and a spear, he reassures the counselors that Jason is dead, and that Camp Crystal Lake is off limits. That night, the elderly "Crazy" Ralph (Walt Gorney) wanders onto the property to warn the group, but is garroted from behind by Jason. The next day, Jeff and Sandra attempt to go to Camp Crystal Lake upon finding a killed dog, before getting caught by the local policeman, Deputy Winslow (Cliff Cudney) and returned to the camp. Later, Winslow spots Jason, revealed to be wearing a burlap sack to conceal his identity, and chases him into the woods. When he finds a rundown shack that he enters, he discovers something horrifying inside before getting killed by Jason with a hammer. Back at camp, Paul offers the others one last night on the town before the training begins, but out of the named counselors, only Ginny and Ted accept his offer. Jeff and Sandra are forced to stay behind as punishment for sneaking off to the campsite. As the few remaining campers are dispatched one-by-one by the vengeful Jason, Ginny and Paul later return to the camp for a final confrontation with Jason!

TRIVIA:   Throughout the final scene, the mummified head of Mrs. Voorhees is noticeably an actress wearing makeup rather than a fake head. The final shot is a close-up of the head, ending in a freeze frame before the credits roll. Originally this shot ended with Mrs. Voorhees opening her eyes and smiling, but at the last minute Steve Miner decided this effect was hokey and cheapened the movie's impact.

Top and Above:   Just after Jason gets his bloody revenge on Alice (Adrienne King), a new group of campers arrive on the shores of Crystal Lake.

Following the success of Friday the 13th in 1980, Paramount Pictures immediately began plans to make a sequel, as it was rumored at the time had Paramount not agreed to finance Friday the 13th Part 2 (and the following sequels), Warner Bros., who distributed the first film outside the US with great success, were willing to step in and take over. The initial idea for a sequel involved simply using the Friday the 13th title for a series of films, released once a year, that would not have any direct continuity with one another, but be a separate "scary movie" of their own right. However, Phil Scuderi — one of three owners of Esquire Theaters, along with Steve Minasian and Bob Barsamian, who produced the original film — insisted that the sequel have Jason Voorhees, Pamela's son, even though his appearance in the original film was only meant to be a joke. Steve Miner, associate producer on the first film, believed in the idea, and brought screenwriter Ron Kurz (who performed un-credited re-writes on Victor Miller's original Friday the 13th script) on-board to write the script. Original producer/director Sean Cunningham had already remarked "how stupid" he thought the idea was that Jason be alive the whole time (as had Betsy Palmer and Tom Savini), believing the plot to be too counter intuitive from the first film; although he did return to assist his friend Miner with pre-production and casting.

Amy Steel was among the first to be cast as heroine Ginny Fields, who won the part through an audition. "At the time of [making the film], it was before the genre really picked up so I didn’t give it a lot of credit or take it seriously. For me, it was just another audition because I had no idea what it would end up meaning after all this time. When I played Ginny, I was really young and different from a lot of the people working at the time so that came out in my character. I was naturally suspicious of cocky guys at that age, and you see a lot of that when I’m on screen with Paul (John Furey). I tried to put so much behind the actual words in the script just so she felt almost unreachable, to Paul and to audiences. I wanted her to have some power." Stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer would also return for brief cameos in the Part 2. King, who at the time was being stalked by an obsessed fan after the success of the original Friday the 13th, purportedly wished her role to be small as possible (although in the documentary Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, it was stated that King's agent had asked for a higher salary, which the studio could not afford). According to King, there was no script for her scene which is why she didn't know her character died. She showed up to set, found out Jason was going to kill her, and that they needed her to completely improvise a phone conversation. So, everything with Alice talking to her mom on the phone about struggling to move on with her soon-to-end life was unscripted. For her part, Palmer was very surprised to be asked back for a cameo appearance by Miner, as she assumed - like everyone else - that Jason was dead. Palmer later filmed her lines in half a day in front of a black screen, and a new mockup of her head was created by the make-up effects team. Warrington Gillette originally auditioned for the part of head counselor Paul (which would end up being played by actor John Furey), However, the producers liked him, and, knowing he had gone to stunt school, asked him to be Jason. Although Gillette is credited as playing Jason, in most of the scenes the character was played by stuntman Steve Dash (Gillette only plays the unmasked Jason in the sequence where he bursts through a window). Dash was upset at being uncredited in the role, as he has most of Jason's screen time, but Dash eventually received sole credit for the archival footage used for the next film in the series, Friday the 13th Part III.

TRIVIA:   Originally, sex scene between Sandra and Jeff was longer and it included full frontal nudity from actress Marta Kober, but when Paramount studio discovered that she was underage, the scene was deleted completely.

Top and Above:   One by one, Jason (Steve Daskawisz) dispatches the camp counselors in bloody fashion!

Principal photography began on October 3, 1980 (just a few months after the release of the first film!), primarily in New Preston and Kent, Connecticut. While most of the crew from the first film returned, special effects artist Tom Savini, who was asked to work on the film, declined to return because he was already working on another project, Midnight (1982). Legendary make-up artist Stan Winston was then contacted to replace Savini, but unfortunately he too had a scheduling conflict, leaving the make-up effects to be handled by Carl Fullerton. Fullerton - who only had six weeks to plan and create all the FX on the film, and basically one day to plan and create Jason - designed the "look" for the adult Jason Voorhees and went with long red hair and a beard while following the facial deformities established in the original film in the make-up designed by Tom Savini for Jason as a child. Another notable addition to Friday the 13th's production crew was Frank Mancuso, Jr., a recent college graduate at the time who happened to be the son of the President of Paramount Pictures. Mancuso, Jr. worked on Part 2 as a roving crew member, but by Part III, he became the steward of the Friday the 13th franchise, producing the sequels Part III to Part VII: The New Blood, and executive producing the Friday the 13th TV series (running from 1987-1990).

To keep costs down, the actors stayed in the cabins on-set during filming. Lauren-Marie Taylor later recalled how one night, John Furey, Bill Randolph and Russell Todd played a practical joke on her; scratching on her screen window until she hyperventilated from fright (and eventually fainted!). Likewise, during a break between takes, the cast and crew were highly amused when two girls attempted to use the telephone in the phone box which the Jeff and Sandra characters use in the film. The telephone was, in fact, fake, and the girls soon stormed off in anger, assuming that the phone was not working. During the climactic fight between Jason and Ginny, when Jason raises the mattock to block Ginny's machete swing, Steel got the timing was wrong during the first take and she accidentally hit Daskawisz's finger, causing him to have to go to the emergency room. Dash reportedly still has photos of him being treated in the ER in full costume, with the fake machete still stuck through his shoulder. After his finger was stitched up, he returned to set that night and insisted they complete the scene. Steel said they simply put a condom on his finger, and applied make-up to make it look dirty to disguise the bandages. In another scene where Daskawisz was wearing the burlap flour sack, part of the flour sack was flapping at his eye, so the crew used tape inside the eye area to prevent it from flapping. Daskawisz, however, received rug burns around his eye from the tape from wearing the rough flour sack material for hours. Daskawisz also injured himself again while filming the scene where Jason is chasing Ginny through the woods; Daskawicz ended up falling on the pickaxe and breaking some of his ribs.

TRIVIA:   The film's ending has been a source of confusion for fans. Writer Ron Kurz has stated that Jason's window jump was intended to be set in reality and that Paul was killed offscreen. However, the beginning of Part III, in replaying the end of Part 2, instead showed Jason pulling the machete out of his shoulder and crawling away as Ginny and Paul leave him for dead in the shack. This arguably retcons the scene of Jason's window jump into a dream. In addition, near the beginning of Part III, a news broadcast reports the body count at eight, thus excluding Paul from this count.

Top and Above:   Ginny (Amy Steel) appears to be the sole survivor of Jason's (this time played by Warrington Gillette) rampage... or did she?!

In fact, the hardest scene Steel found shooting was final "window scene". The shot required three takes, and each time her frightened reaction was genuine, due to every time she heard the high speed camera (for the slow motion effects) start running she would tense up and get scared. It was during this scene where Warrington Gillette recieved an injury of his own! After trying to to break through the window for the shot, the "break-away" glass didn't break, and he ended up getting a concussion from banging his head against the pane.

Like its predecessor, Friday the 13th Part 2 had difficulty receiving an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Upon reviewing the film, the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) warned Paul Hagger, an executive at Paramount, that the "accumulation of violence throughout the film" may still lead to an X rating even if substantial cuts were made. A total of forty-eight seconds had to be cut from the film in order to avoid an X rating, most notably cut by censors was the "double impalement" scene of Jeff and Sandra, who are impaled by a spear while having sex in a bed (a scene many have compared to a scene in Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood), which the censors found particularly graphic. Eventually, Part 2 was released across 1,350 screens on April 30, 1981, against  strong competition early in the year from other high-profile horror releases as Omen III: The Final Conflict, The Howling, Scanners, Wolfen, Deadly Blessing, The Funhouse, My Bloody Valentine, The Fan and The Hand. Nevertheless, Part 2 grossed an impressive $6.5 million in it's openign weekend, and earned over $21 million at the US box office.

Agan like its predecessor, critical reception to the film was initially negative, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times writing that Friday the 13th Part 2 is "a cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead teenager genres; about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk, and they're all about as bad as this one. Some have a little more plot, some have a little less. It doesn't matter." David Harley of Bloody Disgusting reviewed, "It doesn't exactly stray far from the formula of the original film — neither do most of the other sequels — but Friday The 13th Part II still stands as an iconic and important entry in the series due to the introduction of Jason as the antagonist of the series and the usage of Italian horror films as an inspiration for its death scenes — most notably, the spear copulation death from Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood", while Scott Meslow of The Week described it as a transitional film that blended elements of the original film and those to come later in the series. 

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   34%

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