CHILD OF FRIDAY THE 13TH

My Years at Cinema Slaughter Camp

     Every Friday the 13^th, I take to social media to share my love for this unusual theme day, and the film franchise that defines it. I’m certainly not alone in treating Friday the 13^th like a holiday; many of my friends celebrate with posts, parties and movie marathons of their own. But where exactly did my love for this most unlucky day come from? Why does a retro murder movie hold such high esteem in my memories, and why does Friday the 13^th continue to be one of my favorite days of the year, every year? This Friday the 13^th, I thought it’d be fun to explore the reasons, like exploring an abandoned summer camp during a rainstorm at night. It’s a story of fear and tradition, a myth told around the campfire of my youth. It’s a twenty-four hour nightmare of terror that has lasted thirty-five years now, and is still going strong.

     It started with my adolescent screams on Friday, May 9, 1980, when Friday the 13^th hit screens nationwide like the arrow to the bulls eye beside camp counselor Brenda. The wave of modern slasher horror had really begun two years before, when Halloween carved the box office and national consciousness like a pumpkin. I was too young to catch Halloween during its initial theatrical run. Like many kids who grew up in the 1980s, I first experienced Halloween during its second annual NBC broadcast, in truncated form, in 1982, with commercials for the newly released Halloween III: Season of the Witch aired throughout. In 1978, I was a moppet bopping down the aisles to Grease. There were no maniacs with knives in my worldview yet.

Too young.

     If Halloween is the granddaddy of the modern slasher movie, then Friday the 13^th qualifies as the grandmommy, or more specifically, the grandmommy denied that was Mrs. Voorhees. Jason would not be giving her any grandchildren, even if he eventually gave her a graveyard.

     During my childhood, I was not a fan of horror movies. In fact, I genuinely hated them for scaring me. Shocking, right? I’m talking the black and white classics and luridly colorful Hammer films on television, before I became aware of modern horror along the lines of The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even the intro to John Stanley’s late night Creature Features series was too scary for me, with its images of Christopher Lee as Dracula. During the 1970s, Scooby Doo and The Twilight Zone were the only scares I could tolerate. I even have memories of sitting in cringing terror during Young Frankenstein, which I caught on the big screen in my earliest years, probably because of Peter Boyle’s freaky forehead and Marty Feldman’s freakier eyeballs.

Too scary.

     On May 9, 1980, I was eight years old and too young to see a film of Friday the 13^th’s intensity. It was entirely my decision to do so, and I still have to wonder what possessed me to do it, considering my incredibly low threshold for the scary stuff. I recall the schoolyard hype for this movie, and the chillingly effective commercials that dared you to see it once (“but that will be enough!”). Perhaps this was some kind of cinematic shock treatment, so I could end the long, sleepless nights that monster movies gave me. Only Friday the 13^th didn’t have any monsters in it. It had a person with a knife. And that bloody knife was a lot bigger than Christopher Lee’s blood-tipped fangs.

 

Even this poster terrified me.

     There’s no question that I was not old enough to view Friday the 13^th alone with the film’s restrictive R rating. Luckily, my teenage babysitter Kelly was game to go and get me into the film, even if she was not my legal guardian. My legal guardian did approve, since my mom drove us to the Tri-Cinemas for the first 5:30pm show on opening night. And what kind of mom would let her children see Friday the 13^th? One that was also a horror fan. In the mid-80s, we would go together on opening night to see films like Silver Bullet and Day of the Dead. For this permissiveness to always let me choose what I wanted to see, her complete disregard for film ratings, and for frequently arguing with theater staff to let me in because I was mature enough to watch whatever it was they were showing, I say Thank you, mom!

Friday the 13^th was not only the first horror film I saw in a theater, it was my first R-rated movie. This was the very first of thousands of times I would challenge and subvert the rules of the notoriously censorial MPAA. While most kids growing up rebelled against their parents or school, my chief rebellion was towards the ratings board.

I defy your rating!

     When we entered the theater for the 5:30pm showing, it was light outside. It would be dark when we left the theater two hours later. The terror of that night would last for years.

     Friday the 13^th was in the big showcase auditorium #1 on the left, and we sat two-thirds of the way back on the left side. I had to have some distance from the screen then; in later years I would become a front row addict for full immersion. Apparently, the film’s ad campaign worked on everyone else, because it was a full house. I got a Coke and Red Vines from the snack bar, and would soon learn that comfort food would offer me no comfort whatsoever as the film unspooled.

     But first, the trailers. Bam! The first one put me in a state of shock. I could only recognize certain words as the text rolled quickly up the screen, words like Master of Modern Horror and Stephen King, who I knew as the guy that made Carrie, a movie that I was denied seeing until I was older (the only film that had that stipulation from my otherwise lenient mom). Only it was the music that I noticed more, and it made my blood run cold. The trailer is entirely one shot, an elevator that opens to unleash a flood of blood. This image was my bloody baptism to theatrical horror, which in hindsight is bloody brilliant, but at the time I felt like I was flailing helplessly in that crimson tidal wave. I had no desire to see The Shining after that trailer; it effectively frightened me off. With Carrie and The Shining, I figured Stephen King had to be some kind of mean, jabbering bastard, and I hoped I’d never run into him in a dark parking lot at night.

 

This damn trailer scarred me for life.

     That trailer for The Shining generates genuine fear in me to this day.

     The feature began, and my terror began one minute in, when the film’s iconic theme first echoed on the soundtrack during the killer’s POV shot through a cabin of sleeping kids, my screen surrogates. When the audience screams began at the five minute mark with the opening double murder, I was already petrified. I could not have gotten up and walked out if I wanted to. As the rapidly zooming title shattered the glass over the screen, my fragile mind and sense of safety shattered with it. At eight years old, I knew full well that movies were not real, and neither was Santa Claus. That didn’t matter. The film looked and felt real. No amount of laughter or audience reaction could quell my terror.

This title still scares me.

     I don’t want to get into a review of Friday the 13^th, since that has been done to death, and nobody needs a recap. A few elements are worth exploring to quantify the film’s impact on me. The first is, quite simply, Victor Miller’s beautifully simplistic story that serves only to scare. It has more sequels than any other horror franchise, a testament to its mythic greatness. Even those who have not seen the original movie know the story about the cursed camp, Jason drowning in the lake, Friday the 13^th is Jason’s birthday, and counselors are cut instead of cake. Told in schoolyards, summer camps and on cinema screens, the Friday the 13^th origin story is legend.

     What really kept me paralyzed was Friday the 13^th’s palpable atmosphere of quiet, constant dread, which can be attributed to Sean S. Cunningham’s often overlooked, masterful direction. Despite my babysitter and the full house, I felt alone at Camp Crystal Lake with those poor, poor young people who were so unfairly losing their lives. The storm and isolation did a number on me, and storms make me uneasy to this day. It’s a Friday the 13^th forecast. I can partly blame the legend within the legend for this phobia. Even a monologue in Friday the 13^th had the power to petrify me, in this case Marci’s story about her “shower dream”, where a rainstorm turns to blood. Hearing about a blood rain right after seeing The Shining’s blood flood was too much for my chicken blood.

Location of dread and sudden death.

     Friday the 13^th’s notorious reputation and biggest scares came courtesy of Tom Savini’s groundbreaking, skin-slitting make-up effects work, which delivers convincing bloody murders right before your very eyes. Those murder scenes really fucked me up. I had never seen effects like that before, did not even know that they were possible, and they contributed to the reality of what I was seeing. The worst one was the fate of Marci in the bathroom stall. Even through the effect of the axe buried deep in her face lasted only two seconds, it seemed like an eternity to me, and in my memory of the scene for many years, I thought I saw the axe come back out of her head, revealing the bloody inside of her shattered skull, with brains and bone and quivering veins. I no longer had an appetite for those Red Veins, I mean Vines.

 

The death that did the most damage to this eight year old.

     I kept covering my eyes, and then covering my ears, but that didn't really work because I didn’t have enough hands to cover all of my vulnerable spots. The audiences’ screams were their own new breed of electric shock to my tiny system. I was not having fun. I had made a huge mistake, trying to be an adult when I wasn’t. This was like getting onto a carnival ride that proves way too fast and terrifying, and I was stuck for the dizzying duration of ninety-five minutes.

     Much like poor Alice on the screen, I was sick and exhausted from terror. Good thing neither Alice nor I puked. I was counting on her, because if she survived, I survived. My identification with this final girl was absolute, and in many ways informed my future interest in this character type. I’m less of a Jason fan and more of an Alice fan, and Ginny, Chris and Trish. My investment lies with the survivors. I want to be a survivor too.

Run Alice, run!

     Somehow I made it through the finale of the film, where in another strange display of the weird and secret rituals of adulthood, a middle-aged woman had gotten her head chopped off, in slow motion close-up no less, and the audience had cheered. Alice and I both sighed with relief, and thought this horrifying endurance test was over.

     And then that damn monster kid Jason popped up out of the lake to pull Alice down. Everybody screamed, and perhaps I screamed loudest of all. Only I did a lot worse than that. I flew up out of my seat as I threw my soda cup and Red Vines in the air, and I apologize to anyone I might have drenched with drink or hit with sugar whips. I tore out of the row, and ran shrieking up the center aisle until I burst out of the theater doors into the bright lobby.

Damn you, Jason!

     It was my prepubescent Carrie moment. They all laughed at me. These mortifying and embarrassing events of May 9, 1980 remain some of my most vivid memories of childhood. At least Alice and I had survived.

     To this day, a late night viewing alone in a dark room or on a revival cinema screen, Friday the 13^th is still capable of evoking dread in me.

     To this day, the smell of an open box of Red Vines takes me back to that night of my eight-year old cinematic shock treatment. Every single time I smell fear and murder at summer camp as well as licorice. The title Friday the 13^th might as well be written in Red Vines (which I have done).

 

The sugary scent of murder.

     Friday the 13^th gave me restless nights for years. I slept with a circle of stuffed animals around me far longer than most kids, to protect me and bite Mrs. Voorhees’ hand if she tried to reach up from under my bed to grab me like she grabbed Kevin Bacon before skewering his neck with an arrow. I never went to summer camp, I would have had to be forced to go kicking and screaming, and the few times I had to go camping in a tent, it was a frightening and unpleasant experience. Didn’t everyone know we were axe fodder out in the woods? Friday the 13th had effectively destroyed my enjoyment of the woodsy outdoors.

I hate you, nature!

When Friday the 13^th Part II came out one year later, I purposely avoided the cinema, and even turned away when the commercials aired on TV. They weren’t going to fool me and get me again. Why would anyone pay for such an unpleasant experience of being scared that bad? Considering how disturbed I was by Marci’s axe to the face in the original, I can’t imagine how much worse I would have reacted to poor, crippled, wheelchair-bound Mark getting a machete through his face and rolling back down the camp stairs in the sequel. What a spectacularly cruel murder scene! What kind of demented person could possibly be entertained by a movie like that? Stephen King maybe, but not me!

This is entertainment? Maybe if you're Stephen King.

     Just over two years after the release of Friday the 13^th, I did take notice of the commercials for Friday the 13^th Part III in 3-D. I had missed Comin’ at Ya! the previous year in the cinema, and was incredibly curious to see a 3-D movie and have those bragging rights. Still, considering my continued sleepless nights, I wonder what possessed me to make my first 3-D movie a Friday the 13^th film. Maybe I just wanted to be a brave boy and make up for my humiliation when watching the first.

     At ten, I had many years of restricted viewing left by the MPAA’s rulebook, so how did I manage to get into Friday the 13^th Part III in 3-D on opening weekend? The theater playing it, the Movies 4, never carded or enforced the ratings, and I thank them dearly for that. Soon, I’d be receiving my sex education at this theater, going to see adult sex comedies by myself every other weekend.

I was not carded to see this at ten years old.

In part due to the gimmick of its extra dimension, this sequel was not as convincingly real as the original. At the same time, the admittedly effective 3-D really did immerse me fully into the remote location, had me hating the isolation of that cabin and barn, and got me dodging Jason’s wicked projectiles. He was constantly trying to jab me in the face with a meat cleaver, a machete, a pitchfork, a knitting needle, a spear, a burning hot fireplace poker and a high-speed eyeball. This campier sequel scared me bad enough that my sleepless nights continued.

     Right after I turned twelve came the ads for Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter. This one promised the death of Jason, and after everything that deformed and demented shit had put me through, I wanted to see him dead. Maybe then I could then get some sleep at nights. I guess I was a sucker for good advertising too. I didn’t go on opening night; I went the following day, Saturday the 14^th, to the first matinee with a group of friends, again at the Movies 4. We were the first to enter the empty theater, and for some reason, the lights kept going on and off. That projectionist was a real dick to screw with us like that! The film for me was the most frightening of the sequels, which is to say, it totally scared the living shit out of me, far more than the previous entry. The kill that really got to me was when stoned Teddy was playing coochie-coo with a porno movie. The way that the butcher knife plunged through the movie screen into Teddy’s skull, with the screen splitting between bubbling blood, was perfectly representative of the series’ effect on me. I feared these murder movies would tear through the movie screen, and I would be the next unfortunate victim with a garden tool in his head.

Art imitates murder.

I didn’t care if my friends mocked or laughed anymore, and I watched segments of the film standing at the back of the auditorium beside the doors. I even ran out of the theater on a few occasions. I just didn’t scream or throw my Red Vines this time. One grouchy employee complained at me that if I couldn’t take watching the movie, I shouldn’t have come to see it. She obviously had forgotten what it was like to be young, looking for a safe scare and taking dares with friends.

     Again, my terror from Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter was so great, I immediately regretted seeing it because of the long night that would follow. I tried to find friends to have a sleepover with, but they were all busy. On really stormy or melancholy nights, I would have a grieving pity party in my bedroom for one, as I mourned and cried for all of those teenagers and counselors who had lost their lives so unfairly at Camp Crystal Lake. Especially that bunch from The Final Chapter, they had been so attractive and likable.

     Less than nine months later, I picked up my first Stephen King novel, Cujo, and I bought my first issue of Fangoria a few months later with issue #42. My hatred of horror started to become an intense curiosity in the making of it. I was probably on my third King novel when Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning reached theaters, but while my interest in the genre was growing, I was not yet ready to go back to camp at my local cinema. I was too afraid just watching the commercials for A New Beginning when I was watching Night Flight. The Final Chapter had scared me too much. As 1985 progressed, my interest in horror exploded into a full blown obsession. I was constantly reading horror novels and daring myself to see most every horror film in a theater. I was finally able to face revisiting the original Friday the 13^th and seeing Friday the 13^th Part II for the first time, but only by watching daytime, edited broadcasts on the USA Network. I also had to sit right up beside the television set with my hand on the round channel knob, ready to turn it to something safe if I got too scared. I turned that knob frequently.

I started reading Fangoria upon Friday the 13th's New Beginning.

     Instead of hating Friday the 13^th, I was starting to enjoy it. A lot. When Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives arrived in theaters in the summer of 1986, I was a hardcore genre nut, and this would be the first Friday the 13^th I went to see in the cinema with genuine enthusiasm. By myself. There were only two other people in the theater. I did make it a matinee though, since I was still a bit chicken. I had a blast with this comic rock and roll version of Friday the 13^th, a satisfying thrill ride that would not give me nightmares. I returned to see it a few more times on the big screen, bought the seven-inch single of Alice Cooper’s theme song, and mail ordered the one-sheet. Jason Lives made me an instant Friday the 13^th super fan.

Between Jason Lives and The New Blood, I play Scream Greats Jason in the desert.

     When Friday the 13^th Part VII: The New Blood arrived in May, 1988, the unspeakable happened. The film did not open in the small city where I grew up, Carson City, Nevada. Considering that the town had only four theaters and eleven screens total, counting a two screen drive-in theater, we were lucky to get most first run features like the first six Friday the 13^ths, but not this time. So my best horror friend Dale Sadler and I bought Greyhound bus tickets and traveled sixty plus miles to Reno, Nevada, to get to the very nearest theater playing it. This was how much of a Friday the 13^th fanatic I had become, and I had friends who were too. The bus ride was worth it, and The New Blood remains a series high point to this day. It was the closest I’ve come to taking a trip to summer camp.

Greyhound bus to The New Blood's Crystal Lake.

     Many Friday the 13^th fans turned on the series when Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was released in late summer 1989, but my experience with it remains another golden memory. I was now a teenage projectionist at the Movies 4. I got to assemble the latest Friday the 13^th movie, and I was able to run an advance midnight screening at the theater. By myself! Not just my theater was empty, but also the entire building. I would have to close the dark projection booth, turn out the lights and lock up the business, and walk home alone in the middle of the night. This was the ultimate test for that boy who had run out of the original Friday the 13^th. Because I was so alone, the movie was far more terrifying than it had any right to be. I was looking over my shoulders constantly. I was scared and loving every minute of it. Jason Takes Manhattan will always be special to me because of this unique experience, extreme cinematic isolation at midnight.

     As the projectionist, I also had fun turning the auditorium lights up and down when young audience members were taking their seats during Friday the 13^th Part VIII’s run. I was repaying the favor from the projectionist who had done the same to me in the same theater five years before, and giving new kids a pre-show scare to remember.

All the frights are held in here.

     Then Paramount sold the rights of the series to New Line, I grew old enough that the MPAA could no longer restrict me, and the Friday the 13^th franchise went through an identity and quality crisis. But it never died. Not only do I look forward to new Friday the 13^th films (I loved the 2009 version, which I saw with a packed house that was frequently screaming and having a blast), I have been actively campaigning to develop my own entry in the series. I want to go back to that scary, stormy camp for another 24-hour nightmare of terror as an architect. I also have my own original summer camp slasher series in development. There are a lot of camps in America to explore and create new legends and stalking grounds.

In 2013, I come full circle and become Marci and Mark.

     Meanwhile, Friday the 13^th inspires my other arts. Recently, my musical alter ego DJ Pervula created a music video for my mash-up of the original Friday the 13^th score and an industrial dirge, which I premiered at the Shriekfest Horror Film Festival’s Opening Night Party as I danced as Jason with an axe. Hard to believe that this guy was the same kid that had run screaming from a theater playing the original Friday the 13^th. I’m throwing shapes and making new beats from the music that had originally chilled my blood.

     From my adolescent pity parties to my filmmaking and nightclub performances, Friday the 13^th remains a major influence. I can’t wait to take you all to my camp in the future, on the cinema screen. I will do my best to make you all throw your soda and Red Vines in the air and run screaming from the theater. It will be fun.

     Happy Friday the 13th!

Armando D. Muñoz