Top Ten Cinema of 2019

My top ten films list this year is different from years past. As a genre specific film fan, I tend to gravitate to horror, and my favorites list is typically confined to them. This year sees more content variety, with queer films taking multiple spots. All of these films I saw in theatres, although a few received very limited release. The gems are out there if you know where to look.

     My list contains two re-releases. Restorations that played by projector light deserve to share the spotlight.

     This year’s batch of favorites struck a deep emotional chord. The top five brought me to tears, sometimes multiple times. This is a testament to the power these films had on me, to make me care and feel on a grand scale. These were my favorite dreams projected onto the cinema screen in 2019.

10. Climax

Considering I’m also a club DJ who spins some of the bands featured in the film, this psychedelic dance floor nightmare from Gaspar Noé was tailor made to my sensibilities. Hallways remain one of my favorite terrible places in horror, and this film plays like hallway porn.

9. Doctor Sleep

The underperformance of this film in theatres makes no difference when the movie is this strong and confident; people will discover this film later and wonder how audiences could have possibly dismissed it upon release. A fantastic adaptation of a favorite King novel, with only one faulty detour in the final minutes.

8. Paris Is Burning

With the trans and queer communities currently under attack by an administration that traffics in hate, audiences needed to be re-introduced to the mothers and butch queens before us who endured this struggle during the Reagan/Bush years, and did so with lasting influence, love, and style.

7. Equation to an Unknown

Sometimes you have to see a melancholy gay French porno from 1980 on the big screen with a crowd to understand how vital the projection of queer art and erotic experience really is.

6. Us

Jordan Peele is the closest current horror filmmaker we have matching the intelligence, originality, and intensity of Wes Craven. I hope Lupita Nyong’o takes home many awards for her terrifyingly original CHUD/committed final girl combo.

5. Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation

This documentary had the ability to bring audiences to tears for extended periods of time. Community and freedom are beautiful things to witness, especially when you’ve felt them before. Some might argue that the Love Generation didn’t change the world, but these youth absolutely made history here and changed the landscape.

4. Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood

Many watched this film as a comedy, but I had an altogether different experience. One of the most suspenseful films I watched the year, where the dread was palpable. I hate Charles Manson and his cult, the subject has terrified me since I viewed Helter Skelter on television when I was far too young in the 1970s. I really didn’t want to go back there, and this film showed how we can dream better.

3. I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu

Auteur Meir Zarchi returns with an epic sequel that makes us confront the all too real horrors in America today. An incredibly astute portrait of middle American poverty and how human monsters are made. This film delivers an unforgettable villain with Becky, portrayed by Maria Olsen, the widow of the original film’s castrated rapist Johnny. She horrified me, and then made me cry for her. Maria Olsen delivers the best performance of the year.

2. It Chapter Two

The closest I’ve seen to an actual novel on film. Stephen King’s It was the first hardcover novel I bought when it hit the shelves in 1986 and it remains one of my most read books. I felt that It Chapter Two could not have been adapted any better than this. I love these characters and every minute I got to spend with them onscreen. This sequel also takes the daring step of making one of the Losers gay and making his desire matter. In doing this, the filmmakers have made this story that has long mattered to me matter even more.

1. Knife + Heart

Yann Gonzalez’s neon, blood, and semen drenched love letter to giallo and queer cinema takes the gay slasher subgenre to exciting new heights. This film’s protagonists, an outsider group of lesbian pornographers and gay male and trans porn performers, make one of the most endearing alternative families I’ve seen on film, a group I’d fit right in with. Knife + Heart is the most stimulating and artistically thrilling work of cinema in 2019, partly because it is about cinema and its carnal effects on the viewer and those who produce it. We long to see our nightmares and desires projected on screen, and these are mine.

Armando D. Muñoz

Eek! Speak's Top Ten Horror Films of 2016

Cinema church at dawn.

As we begin our journey into a new year of fear, I’m eager to shine my flashlight back at the films that most entertained, inspired, and downright frightened me in the genuinely disturbing year of 2016. In putting this list together, some surprising connections came to light, and looking back at last year’s horror entertainment was like looking into a cultural mirror. What frightening face does that mirror reveal? Let’s look at this list and find out.

10 The Invitation

Latest LA fad.

I went to see this film with apprehension, since my new novel Turkey Day shares one major plot similarity: a dinner party invitation leads to murder before dessert. Thankfully, The Invitation is a wholly original, unsettling mystery. I certainly benefited by seeing this in a theater very close to the Hollywood Hills where the film is set. This is not the only film in this top ten list to make Los Angeles a setting and an accomplice to terror.

9 The Eyes of My Mother

Hide your eyeballs.

Black and white German Expressionist horror and extreme modern horror are two contrasting subgenres that I love. Rarely are they melded together as they are in The Eyes of My Mother. Though this film runs a scant 76 minutes, every second is executed with quiet, artful elegance, leading you gently into excruciating narrative territory. The feel bad movie of the year.

8 The Neon Demon

Neon triangles of terror.

So there are a number of hot models splashed in glitter and gore lounging all over opulent L.A. landscapes. There’s some semblance of a story, maybe some commentary about beauty and drive, and lots of lingering shots of neon triangles. Whatever it is, I loved this self indulgent runway freak show. This may sound like a love letter from one of the director’s devotees, but I had never seen a Nicolas Winding Refn film before this. Curiously, this isn’t the only film in my top ten to seduce me with pretty neon.

7 Fender Bender

Retro slasher.

There has been a trend over the past decade for slasher films to mimic the 1980s in style and structure. Yet when I see new filmmakers straining to replicate the rampages of the Reagan era, I’m taken out of the film. I just stop buying it. Then there’s Mark Pavia’s Fender Bender. Pavia has a love of the retro slasher era too, but instead of recreating the MTV decade’s hairstyles and totally dated dialogue, he pays attention to details like atmosphere, isolation, an iconic new killer and likable victims. In doing so, Pavia creates a slasher movie that appears as though it was made in 1981. I really hope there is a Part 2 or Part II. I wrote about this film far more extensively in my last Eek! Speak blog entry, check it out.

6 The Girl in the Photographs

Modern slasher.

Not all new slasher films reflect the retro era. The Girl in the Photographs feels not only modern, but ahead of its time. That should be expected considering Wes Craven was an executive producer. Craven’s level of quality and care is obvious throughout, from Dean Cundy’s atmospheric cinematography to the brutal murder set-pieces. Sadly ignored upon its miniscule release, this is a rich and rewarding slasher film that is an important part of the Craven cannon, and a movie that I plan to analyze in depth in a future article.

5 Green Room

Ugly Americans.

I love horror with a political edge, when it reflects and dissects the issues that make America hurt and burn. Green Room holds a mirror to the country’s racist divide in the coolest of possible settings, a punk rock club. Neo-Nazi skinheads are the force of evil here, and they are not portrayed as superhuman villains. These skinheads are idiots, fearful only due to their numbers and their nonchalance toward grievous violence. The filmmakers’ message is simple and one I stand firmly behind with a baseball bat – Nazi Skinheads Fuck Off!

4 The Purge: Election Year

Today's Republicans.

I love how bold and outspoken this series has become. The Purge: Election Year made me as uncomfortable as watching the nightly news; the film is nearly indistinguishable from fact. And who are the bad guys here? A mix of white supremacists, conservative Republicans, and Evangelicals. They are cruel, crazy and prone to murderous violence. Couldn’t have framed it better myself. Plus, I love scary mask porn like this, with a hundred unique killer costumes. Those Candy Girls make my diabetes explode.

My diabetes just exploded.

3 31

A neon Samhain nightmare.

Trick or treat, motherfuckers! Rob Zombie delivers what is basically his Halloween III, a new tale of terror set on October 31^st. This carnival of killer clowns is looking awfully familiar. We have uniform wearing Nazis and evil rich overseers who look like the new first family. Some viewers may see only boobs and murder and trash, but I saw Zombie working on many intelligent levels here, including political commentary. Another neon filled nightmare with the most beautifully skuzzy horror bathroom I’ve ever seen.

2 The New Beverly Cinema’s All Night Horror Show

The most grindhouse night of the year.

I have been to every edition of the New Beverly Cinema’s 12-hour horror marathon but one, and it inevitably ranks as my favorite cinema event of the year each time. I pride myself in having seen a majority of horror films, and yet programmers Brian J. Quinn and Phil Blankenship always manage to assemble a secret line-ups of old favorites and undiscovered gems of the genre. Even films I have seen countless times like Trick or Treat, Hell Night, and Dawn of the Dead (featured previous years) take on a new significance and become more delicious when included in the program. This year’s line-up ran as follows: Race With the Devil, The Horror of Party Beach, Rawhead Rex, A Bay of Blood, Slaughter High, and Ticks. All presented in 35mm with vintage horror trailer reels running between them (full disclosure – numerous trailers from my personal collection occasionally make up these reels). Quite frankly, Brian J. Quinn and Phil Blankenship are the best in the world at what they do, continuing the pure grindhouse cinema experience. This is my religion, and my church.

1 The Love Witch

Love her.

This film isn’t just my year end favorite; it’s my new cinematic obsession. The Love Witch creates a genuine hypnotic, narcotic effect with its blend of beauty, intelligence, and dripping love of the horror and erotic film genres. Much has been said about the film’s strict adherence to the aesthetics of 1960s Euro-horror, but I found this film to be most similar to Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, in their structures, their portrayal of a voluptuous vamp using magic spells to procure love, and their gender politics. Luckily, The Love Witch gets to revel in all of the naked Satanic orgy action that Elvira could only hint at. The Love Witch is horror burlesque that stimulates your mind and inside your shorts simultaneously. Submit to her pleasures.

The 1988 35mm Love Witch.

In extra appreciation for The Love Witch, I had the joy of projecting this film on 35mm for its opening week at the famed Nuart Theatre, a rare film format for exhibition in this digital age. In 1988, the first film I assembled and projected on 35mm, beginning my longtime side projectionist career, was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. It’s as though these vamps have me forever trapped in their celluloid webs.

Bathed in The Love Witch's lurid 35mm hues.

The changing political landscape should usher in a daring age of horror cinema like after Vietnam and during the conservative 1980s. If 2016 is any indication, an exciting new era is well underway. I’m eager to see horror get more political, activist, and inspiring in 2017, and if the majority of us feel the country is going to Evangelical Hell in a deplorable basket, take after the Final Girls of 2016. Blind them with your sex and fight back with a cry of “Neo-Nazis fuck off!”

Armando D. Muñoz

America 2017

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!