Fender Bender - Crossing the Borders of Slasher Cinema's Subdivisions

In my Eek! Speak blog posts, I always discuss my love of the horror genre in its many forms. More often than not I tend to write about my favorite movie subgenre, the slasher film. This may seem to be a limited slice of horror, but for me it’s the most flavorful slice of that bloody pie. If I dissect that category even further, we have a multitude of sub-subgenres, each one worthy of sampling and study. There are the theme day slashers (My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, Happy Birthday To Me), woodsy slashers (Friday the 13^th, Sleepaway Camp, The Final Terror), rural slashers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Two Thousand Maniacs), college slashers (The Dorm That Dripped Blood, Final Exam, Scream 2), police procedural slashers (10 to Midnight, Too Scared To Scream, In the Cut), shopping slashers (The Initiation, Hide and Go Shriek, Intruder), phone slashers (When A Stranger Calls, Don’t Answer The Phone, Scream), sorority slashers (The House on Sorority Row, Girl’s Nite Out, Sorority House Massacre), asylum slashers (Slaughter High, Alone in the Dark, Happy Hell Night), queer slashers (Cruising, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Evil Laugh), final boy slashers (The Burning, Night Warning, My Soul To Take) and more. Some of these titles, like The Initiation, can fall into multiple sub categories (theme day, shopping, and sorority). Like the repetitive body counts in these kill films, the categories and crossings go on and on and on.

Theme day, shopping, and sorority.

     Rather than limited, these slasher films alone provide a cinematic diet full of variety. Sometimes, nothing satisfies the appetite better than, say, a blind final girl slasher film (See No Evil, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Mute Witness).

     In particular, I want to single out two subgenres of the slasher subgenre, the suburban slasher movie and the road psycho movie. One of horror’s greatest achievements, Halloween, may be the most iconic suburban slasher film, while also defining the theme day slashers and flirting with asylum slashers in the opening act. Other notable suburban slashers include Slumber Party Massacre and its topless sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the first and final Scream films. Wes Craven returned to this category repeatedly throughout his career, with Shocker, The People Under the Stairs, My Soul To Take, New Nightmare, and more. Even Red Eye, Craven’s terrorist thriller on a plane, ends in slasher territory with a suburban house chase that would belong in any of his terror films.

Wes Craven's favorite killing ground.

     The strength and scares of these suburban slasher films comes from taking the expected remote terrible place, whether a summer camp, desert, or coal mine, and transplanting that deadly place into your formerly welcome home. You don’t wander onto the psycho’s home turf; they wander into yours. Terror can come knocking or trick-or-treating, pulling up your driveway and crawling through your bedroom window while you take a shower, or better yet, a bubble bath.

In front of the most iconic suburban slasher house, the Doyle house from Halloween.

     Now let’s hit the highway and look at road psycho cinema. The Model T of this high-octane category is Duel, followed by later models like Roadgames, Death Valley, The Hitcher, Welcome to Spring Break, Crash, Highwaymen, and Death Proof. Whether on two wheels or four, these madmen can speed after or right into you anywhere at any time. Your airbags won’t save you against a sharp knife. I would even venture to add Halloween to this list, considering Michael Myers steals a car after his asylum escape and spends the first half of the film stalking from behind the wheel.

Big knife or big tires, the result is the same. From Highwaymen.

     The reason I’m so focused on home invaders and maniacs on wheels is due to Fender Bender, which had its world premiere on May 23^rd in Los Angeles, and is currently enjoying a limited local run before its premiere on Chiller on June 3^rd. Fender Bender is a perfect mating of the suburban slasher and road psycho subgenres, creating a body count that is totally original, timelessly familiar, and revving with ambitious scares.

At Fender Bender's world premiere at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles, May 23, 2016.

     Fender Bender has a wickedly effective and simple premise that anyone with a driver’s license can relate to. A teenage girl is the victim of a minor fender bender in her suburban neighborhood. She trades her contact information with the other driver, who we know from first bump is a knife-wielding maniac with a habit for hunting humans (this is not a spoiler; it’s the basic set-up). Guess who will be paying the girl and her friends a visit on this stormy night?

Relentless and random.

     I have been a fan of writer/director Mark Pavia since the release of his first feature, the atmospheric and under seen Stephen King shocker The Night Flier. With that adaptation, Pavia became one of a handful of directors able to create that palpable King flavor on film. With his original killer thriller, Pavia proves just as adept with the slasher film, capable of creating not only shocking kills and dense suspense, but all of the quiet, important details that aficionados like me can really savor.

You're in his headlights.

     Fender Bender’s closest cousin in the suburban slasher category is undoubtedly Halloween. Remove Halloween’s theme day and asylum escape, and you have an adult male car stalker who follows a teenage girl home to hunt her over the course of one night, wearing a mask and armed with a knife, taking out any friends that get in the way and decorating the property with their remains. Fender Bender satisfyingly fits this formula while carving its own place in the suburban slasher cannon. As for the location, New Mexico is definitely not Haddonfield, Illinois, and the wide, dry vistas of Fender Bender’s suburbs add further isolation. There’s less of a chance your neighbors would hear you screaming bloody murder late at night.

Key ingredients in just the right portions.

     Also reminiscent of Halloween is Fender Bender’s visual style, and it’s more than just the Carpenter influenced widescreen cinematography. Meticulous attention is paid to set design, lighting, and framing for maximum suspense, the dark corners of the frame and long corridors of the house providing a constant threat. Pavia and company are obviously having a ball manipulating the architecture of terror in this suburban killing field.

     In the road psycho arena, Fender Bender gives us the Driver, a memorable new madman shrouded in mystery while engaging in intricate homicidal ritual. The stoic, shades wearing Driver requires the guise of an ordinary motorist to acquire his victims’ addresses and phone numbers. Only once does the Driver’s shades come off, and we are not allowed to see his eyes or the soul they might reflect. Once this traveling stalker follows his victim home, his human side is shed. The Driver becomes a murderous extension of his automobile, clad in full body black leather and a cylindrical mask that resembles the grille of his car. Only through the headlights of this mask do we see the Driver’s eyes, and indeed they are soulless. This killer seems to be fueled by hate, his victims, like those of the D.C. sniper, spread across the nation and chillingly random.

This is the Driver's mask.

     The Driver does engage in some messy hit and run mayhem, but unlike Vaughan from Crash and Stuntman Mike from Death Proof, his car is not his only murder weapon. The Driver, in his completely original garb, carries a completely original weapon, a massive, spring-loaded blade that could pop a tire with ease. Before dawn, bloody tire tracks will circle the house and blood will paint the interior. The Driver is proud of his human road kill, and leaves the arid landscape as wet as possible.

     As for one crucial early step in the Driver's ritual, using the phone numbers that his victims willingly pass on to him in his escalating stalking campaign, this puts Fender Bender firmly into the phone slashers sub-subgenre. A few scenes manage an eerie Don't Answer the Phone vibe, which is definitely a plus.

Don't answer the text!

     There is one other subdivision of slasher film that Fender Bender strongly resembles, and that is the retro slasher film, those killer films from the golden age between 1978 and 1984. While Fender Bender cannot technically qualify as retro due to its release date, it is impressive how effortlessly this film resembles those of that era. Fender Bender is steeped in all of the classic techniques that work: practical effects, catchy synth score, vulnerable characters we like, iconic masked maniac, elaborate murder set pieces. Best of all, there is no modern shaky handheld camerawork to ugly it up and date it. Fender Bender does slasher right.

Director Mark Pavia and his beautiful slasher baby.

     Now I’m hoping we can get Mark Pavia behind the wheel for a sequel. There are a lot more fenders to be bent across the country.

Armando D. Muñoz

Friday the 13th Revisited - My Return to Cinema Slaughter Camp

On March 13, 2015, I posted a lengthy blog titled “Child of Friday the 13^th”, about my lifetime love affair with the film Friday the 13^th and the series it spawned. In brief summation, Friday the 13^th was my first theatrical horror film and R-rated movie, which I saw on opening night when I was eight years old. It was not love at first sight, because I was way too young to understand what I was watching and the effect was traumatizing. When Jason popped out of the lake during the final scene, I threw my Red Vines and soda into the air and ran screaming out of the theater. The film gave me nightmares and sleepless nights for years. When my interest in horror developed in my early teens, I was able to re-evaluate Friday the 13^th, and the film turned from a hated nightmare generator into a work of art that embraced all of my favorite film aesthetics. I faced my fear, and transformed it to love.

Face of fear.

     Now I treat the date Friday the 13^th as another Halloween, a day when most of my friends and I celebrate our love of cinematic scares. I always run my own Friday the 13^th marathon and try to partake in whatever horror-centric happening is going on. This last Friday the 13^th, May 2016, which marked the 36^th anniversary of the original film’s release, proved to be more special than most, and luckily I had my camera constantly going to capture all of the excitement and carnage.

     Los Angeles is a playground for film fanatics, often with multiple events going on at once jockeying for fans’ attention. Never though have I seen so many stellar events at once as on Friday May 13, 2016. First there was the New Beverly Cinema’s An All Nighter on Elm Street, a marathon of the first 7 Nightmare on Elm Street films that reportedly sold out in 3 minutes. At the Hollywood Forever Cemetery was a screening of The Conjuring, including a look at advance clips from The Conjuring 2. For Friday the 13^th fans, first there was a 35^th anniversary screening of Friday the 13^th Part 2 at the Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. Next, the Great Horror Campout sponsored a screening of the original Friday the 13^th within the woods of the abandoned Griffith Park Zoo. Friday the 13^th also screened at nearly the same time in West Los Angeles with director Sean S. Cunningham in attendance. Finally, for those who prefer brand new to retro scares, The Darkness just opened in theaters everywhere, starring Friday the 13^th’s Kevin Bacon.

     Despite all of these choices, my event of choice was immediate, and surprisingly, not the screening of Friday the 13^th at the Crest Westwood, which was nearest me. That screening sounded appealing, with the film’s director discussing the mechanics of this cinematic favorite. However, for many years I’ve wished for a screening of Friday the 13^th in a woodsy setting. Griffith Park, planted right in the center of Los Angeles with Dodgers Stadium next door, is not exactly a remote summer camp. However, the park is a large outdoor oasis that you really don’t want to be lost in without a flashlight at night.

Something is lurking behind me in the abandoned zoo!

     Because I was so scarred by seeing Friday the 13^th so young, I never went to summer camp. It was never even a consideration. Ironically, the Great Horror Campout, an annual slasher themed camping experience that happens in June, sponsored this outdoor Friday the 13th screening, with prior outdoor screenings of Poltergeist and The Shining that I missed. This group’s Great Horror Movie Night would be like a short trip to camp in the woods, to see the ultimate summer camp slasher film. This screening, more than any other revival screening, seemed like it would provide a direct connection, a vein or a Red Vine, to that terrified kid I was watching Friday the 13^th on opening weekend. I couldn’t wait!

     Before that twilight screening, I had many hours to kill, so I decided to get fully into the skin of Friday the 13^th’s main characters, the happy and doomed young camp counselors. I put on my Camp Crystal Lake Camp Counselor shirt and button, rolled some joints, and with Red Vines for wounds, went to camp. Perhaps I should classify this behavior not as cosplay, but as kilplay. Here are some memorable kill shots.

First victims on Friday the 13th.

Ol’ Grimace Face on Friday the 13^th. “It’s got a death curse!”

Carefree youth on Friday the 13^th. We’re gonna live forever!

Final girls on Friday the 13^th. Not so virginal.

Someone’s shooting arrows at us on Friday the 13^th. It’s not even dark yet.

Poor Annies on Friday the 13^th. We were supposed to be good cooks.

They always kill the funny guys on Friday the 13^th.

Smoking some of Marci’s grass on my bunk bed on Friday the 13^th.

In the stall next to Marci’s on Friday the 13^th. 40 yards to the outhouse by Willie Makeit.

I always end up with an axe in the face on Friday the 13^th.

     Finally it was time to leave camp at home for camp on a hillside. I was not venturing to camp alone, both my partner and a friend since my high school years went, all of us adolescent during Friday the 13^th’s original release. Considering the numerous horror events scattered throughout Los Angeles on this night, I really did not expect much of a turnout for this 36 year old slasher film.

     Arriving at the screening location, the abandoned Griffith Park Zoo, it looked more like a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with the number of people streaming in. Hundreds of Friday the 13^th fans, likely over one thousand. Glued to a post near the front of the massive line leading into the woods was a homemade sign warning to be on the lookout for a man lurking in the trees with a flashlight. There were numerous screening staff dressed as killers and monsters wandering around the abandoned zoo, but this sign was warning about the real thing. The final line reads “He may be dangerous or sick or worse.” What a perfect mood setting sign. Even more ominous is the drawing of the man, which also looks like a husky woman, which actually looks like Friday the 13^th’s killer Mrs. Voorhees!

Be on the lookout for Mrs. Voorhees in the bushes.

     But first, a trip to the bathroom, which in this park consisted of creepy orange brick cubicles that once again put me in mind of Friday the 13^th’s ominous bathroom stalls of murder. I fully expected an axe in my face when I exited the stall, but there were still a few minutes of daylight left. I survived this trip to the potty.

Terror toilet in the woods.

     Once we made it through the nature trail with a massive line of guests and maniacs, we were finally rewarded with the tree-lined hillside surrounded by open, abandoned zoo enclosures. Beyond the giant inflatable screen, the hill was packed with laid-back Friday the 13^th fans, probably half of who had not been born when the film was originally released. We staked our spot in the middle, and armed with buttered popcorn and Red Vines, both taste and scented triggers from my original viewing, we were ready for the show.

     The film was presented this night “In Bleed-O Vision”, whatever that is. Friday the 13^th is a notoriously dark movie, but the projector had a bright bulb that made the darkest scenes easy to see. The sound was impressively loud for this massive space, so no lines were lost beneath the frequent roar of the crowd. The temperature was in the mid sixties, but watching the storm besieged characters on screen gave the evening an additional chill.

There were so many people in attendance it was hard to feel the sense of isolation that makes Friday the 13^th so scary, but the responsive screams from the crowd were electric. These were the same screams from opening night 36 years ago. I know because I was there. Back then my screams were of genuine terror. Now my screams were of laughter and joy.

She screams, we all scream.

     The audience screams were loudest during Marci’s kill in the bathroom, which was the scene that disturbed me most on my first viewing. After that incredible reaction, I decided to get video of the audience response for the final two big scares in the film, Mrs. Voorhees’ decapitation and Jason’s arrival. I have to challenge the slogan for the film in the theatrical trailer, “You may only see it once, but that will be enough.” I would say it should be “You can never see it enough.” The size of this appreciative audience was proof of that.

     I only have one complaint about the entire event, and that was the online advertising for the screening, which featured a big picture of Jason in a hockey mask. Wrong movie! I extend this criticism to Midnight Movie Massacre’s Friday the 13^th screening at the Crest Westwood, which also featured a poster of a hockey mask. That must have looked poorly chosen to the director in attendance; couldn’t they get his movie right? I have to wonder whether many of the night's younger viewers were disappointed they didn't get an action Jason movie instead of the mood drenched, quiet mystery murder movie that Friday the 13th actually is.

     Unlike most, I do not identify the Friday the 13^th series as just Jason movies. It’s the unfair, brutal deaths that give these films their power to scare. With my latest Friday the 13^th inspired adventure, with all of the pictures and video I took, there is not one hockey mask to be seen.

     So far as complaints go, this one is minor. Watching Friday the 13^th with tall trees above the screen, the moon hovering overhead, and "Ki-Ki-Ki Ma-Ma-Ma" echoing through the night gave me further ways to re-experience and appreciate this classic, and with a community of like minded fans. The lurker in the woods with a flashlight did not find us, this time.

     There is unfortunately only one Friday the 13^th on the calendar for 2016, so I have plenty of time to plan for my next Friday the 13^th adventure. Where will this Child of Friday the 13th go next? A trip to some of the film's locations in Blairstown, New Jersey on the titular date would be another dream experience. Until then, there are other dates of terror to look forward to, namely Halloween and the soon to be most terrifying day of the year, Turkey Day!