Day 30: The "Friday the Thirteenth" Series

Though not the original—I suppose that would be “Halloween”—the “Friday the Thirteenth” series is synonymous with “guy who can’t die in order to make more movies”…as if that’s something of which to be proud. Truth is, a lot of horror purists think it is, and frankly so do it. Should the thirteenth of a given month happen to land on a Friday, this previously innocuous* day now warrants horror of the highest level all thanks to a hockey mask and whatever’s convenient for killing someone at that moment.

What the layperson associates with the franchise—the hockey mask, machete, and “ch ch ch ah ah ah”—are rather frightening, but they’re not what the franchise is really rooted in. When the original “Friday the Thirteenth” was released in 1980, the murderer was a mystery, the killings rather simple, and the horror very real. Once revealed, we learned that the original “Jason” was simply the voice in a grieving mother’s head, as she sought revenge on those that had caused Jason’s death: the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake.

And thus we have the mythology of the character Jason that we all know so well. This brute who doesn’t feel pain, hides his face and is surprisingly crafty when in need of a death tool was once a young camper whose promiscuous and drug addicted counselors felt no need to keep track of—even when he was drowning. It’s really a case that any mother would want to take revenge on. What we’re all so afraid of however is when the boy himself takes over.

In the second installment of the franchise (well, really the last few minutes of the first), we’re introduced to Jason the specter, a ghoulish figure who, seeking revenge for his own death, will seek any means necessary to murder not only those responsible for his death, but anyone who takes up post as a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake, and in fact any late teen or twenty something that seeks his legend or spends a few hours or a night there.

The good news for those watching is not only the amount of nudity in the series used to demonstrate the promiscuity, but also the fantastic ways in which Jason kills: From his trusty machete, to drowning people, to trapping people in sleeping bags and smacking them up against trees, to conveniently finding the right weapon at the right time (see: a random vat of toxic waste in “Jason Takes Manhattan,” or a sink full of liquid nitrogen in “Jason X, Jason in Outer Space”). The beauty is that Jason can be killed each of these ways as well…he just doesn’t stay dead come the intro to the next movie.

Like any great horror franchise, there’s a drop-off in greatness the more movies that get made. In his 10 movie career (11 if you count “Freddy vs. Jason”), Jason has murdered in Manhattan, been defeated by some sort of telepath, gotten new mythologies, traded a burlap sack for his trademark hockey mask, had his heart eaten, and been to outer space (which happened after he “went to hell”). No franchise can sustain itself for 10 (or 11 movies) well, and “Friday the Thirteenth” is no different. But the beauty of the franchise isn’t its sustained quality, but it’s cultural affect. Halloween was scary before “Halloween,” and nightmares were frightening before they happened on Elm Street, but the thirteenth’s mainstream cause for terror was never the same after 1980.

*Maybe not historically, but certainly commonly.