The Semiquincentennial Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).
Week # 3:New Jersey:
Details about New Jersey:
State bird: Eastern goldfinch
State flower: Purple violet
State tree: Red oak
The most important thing to remember about New Jersey is this is the place where it all started for people like me (fans of the drive-in theater). If not for a guy in New Jersey, this blog might have ended up being called The Good Ship Lollipop Theater.
New Jersey has the distinction of being the "diner capital of the world" due to the fact that there are more diners in the state than any other state in the union. Good news for guys like Guy Fieri, host of Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
New Jersey is the birthplace of many iconic figures in music and films. Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi were born in New Jersey, as well as Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Michael Douglas. And that's just for a start.. For further interest.
Among other things that New Jersey has a claim to fame is the fact that both New York NFL teams play their home games in New Jersey. Several other sports teams, both major and minor leagues, in other fields that are ostensibly New York teams also play home games in New Jersey.
First a note and an apology: I had originally scheduled The Toxic Avenger to appear as the entry for New Jersey. But, since I had never actually watched it, I was just going with it because of my perceived reputation of the movie. I didn't know it started out the way it did. 10 minutes in I started to regret my decision, and after another 5 minutes I'd had enough. It starts out way too over the line in bad taste. And this opinion from the same blogger who brought you both Midnight Cowboy AND Myra Breckenridge, A Clockwork Orange, and even Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh... Maybe I'm just getting old.
Friday the 13th (1980):
(Another note: Once again, as usual, I try to keep images of the gorier scenes at a minimum to avoid turning off the more prudish readers.)
Dateline: 1958. At Camp Crystal Lake all the children are asleep. The camp counselors are having a sing-a-long, along with the requisite activities you would expect from a group of older adolescents, including two of them who sneak away from the rest of the group to engage in an extracurricular project in which clothing is not required. While engaged in this somewhat illicit act, the pair are stalked by an unseen interloper, who proceeds to kill them both.
Dateline: Present day (1980). A girl, Annie (Robbie Morgan) comes hiking into town looking for Camp Crystal Lake. She stops at a diner to ask directions and receives not a friendly welcome but some strange looks. She manages to hitch a ride with a trucker, Enos (Rex Everhart), who volunteers to take her up the road. Along the way a crazy townie warns her that she won't be coming back from "Camp Blood" because it's got a death curse. Enos fills her in on more details as he helps her along her way, including the two kids who were killed in 1958, a boy who drowned in 1957 and a bunch of fires. He encourages her to quit now, and not go on, but Annie is not afraid of these "cornball" rumors.
On their own way to Crystal Lake are three others; Jack (Kevin Bacon), Ned (Mark Nelson) and Marcie (Jeannine Taylor). They arrive at the camp where Steve (Peter Brouwer) and Annie (Adrienne King) have already been at work trying to whip the camp into shape for their new campers. Bill (Harry Crosby, son, by the way, of Bing) and Brenda (Laurie Bertram) have also previously arrived and been helping out.
Meanwhile, back on the road, Annie is still hitchhiking to the camp. She gets picked up a mysterious figure (whom we don't see) who gives her a ride. Annie realizes that something is amiss when the driver goes by the entrance to the camp and jumps ship (jeep). But she is caught by the driver and slashed. We only see the hands of the figure, not the face. But those hands are definitely male hands... (remember that.)
Steve takes off in his jeep to take care of some business, leaving the five helpers behind to finish their duties. While various shenanigans are going on back at the camp, a motorcycle cop shows up at the camp. He doesn't like these youngsters much, absolutely certain that there are some illicit drugs in the mix, but he warns them about that townie from the beginning of the film, Ralph (Walt Gorney), who has a tendency to believe his own delusions about the camp being cursed. Sure enough, after the officer leaves, Ralph sows up spouting his doom and gloom. But he seems harmless enough, even if he is a little wacko.
It turns out that his doom and gloom speech, that they're all "doomed" is not that far from wrong. First Ned sees a mysterious stranger enter one of the cabins and goes to investigate. Then Jack and Marcie decide to play a little of the old game "hide the salami". And Alice and Bill and Brenda decide to play a new version of Monopoly called "Strip Monopoly". Yep, you guessed it, the teenagers, being typically 1980's irrepressible and sexually uninhibited teenagers, are getting down and funky.
Back at the cabin, Jack and Marcie are making out, unaware that a recently slashed Ned is lying in the bunk above them. Marcie leaves Jack to go to the outhouse, and guess what... the interloper who dispatched Ned has not left the cabin. Jack is dispatched in short order and the killer goes to the outhouse to look for Marcie, who is also removed from the land of the living.
If you're keeping track, only three people, not including the slasher, are left at the camp. Steve, for his part seems to have decided to stay out for the night. Back at the game, Brenda realizes she may have left the windows open in her cabin, so she exits the game. When she gets back to the cabin she decides just to stay in. But she hears the cry of a boy calling for help, so like any good citizen she goes back out into the rain. And is taken out by our killer on the archery range.
Alice hears a scream, and she and Bill go to investigate. They find a bloody axe in Brenda's bed, but no Brenda. Their search for Jack and Marcie also proves fruitless. The generator goes out and Bill goes to check on it leaving Alice alone. A short time later, Bill is also removed from the land of the living. (You notice, by this time, that the only one of the counselors still alive is the one who hasn't been fooling around? What are the filmmakers trying to say? Premarital sex will get you killed?)
Steve, who has just been getting a bite to eat at the diner in town heads back to the camp. His jeep stalls (I think it's out of gas, Steve), but fortunately a police car comes along (with a far friendlier cop this time), and gives him a lift. Unfortunately before they can get to the gate to the camp the police car is called in on an emergency, leaving Steve to hike the rest of the way. As he approaches the gate, he meets the killer, who dispatches him. But it turns out Steve recognizes his assailant.
O.K. It gets a little hairy from here on out. As the sole survivor of this onslaught, Alice begins to panic and barricade the door to the cabin. But when she sees a jeep pull up she thinks it's Steve and rushes out to greet him in grateful thankfulness that there is someone coming to the rescue. It's not Steve however, but Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) who claims to be an old friend of the owners. Still, she is a welcome sight to Alice who knows there is some deranged lunatic on the loose in the camp.
Spoiler alert! In case you are one of the very few who have never seen the ending, you better stop now. Just in case you don't know what the name of the star killer of this series of films is in the first place.
Mrs. Voorhees reveals that it was her son who was the drowning victim from 20 years ago at the camp. Her son drowned, she feels, because the camp counselors had abandoned their charges to engage in illicit sex instead. Which explains why the killer frowns upon irresponsible sex-obsessed teenagers. And, of course, it is none other than Mrs. Voorhees herself who is exacting revenge for the death or her son, Jason Voorhees.
A huge flight and fight ensues between Alice and Mrs. Voorhees. Of course, the winner of this battle is not Mrs. Voorhees. But there still may be some danger for Alice coming from another source... How did you think they managed to get 10 (so far) sequels (and one reboot) with Jason as the prime evil villain...?
On a budget of only about $500,000, the first movie in the franchise was essentially a blockbuster, pulling in almost $60 million. In the first two weeks of it's release it was #1 at the box office. And as noted in the previous paragraph, Jason became enough of a draw that the character's very name drew enough box office to keep it afloat as a franchise for over 20 years worth of sequels. Of all of the movies put out by Paramount in 1980, only Airplane! grossed more box office money than this one.
As could be expected from that quarter, the critics gave this movie a resounding negative review: "Silly, boring youth-geared horror movie", "blatant exploitation of the lowest order" and "a shamelessly bad film" are just a hint of the vitriol that the reviewers spewed on it. According to the wikipedia article on the movie, Siskel and Ebert, in their TV movie review, devoted an entire episode to disparaging this and other slasher flicks.
Obviously the lowbrow audience the movie was intended for reacted to it better than those of the highbrow movie critic board. As far as slasher flicks go it is not really all that great. Personally I think Freddy vs. Jason, the film that paired the Nightmare on Elm Street villain, Freddy Krueger against Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees, was a much better film. But in terms of the slasher film overall, this one would pale by comparison to what was probably the king of slasher films, John Carpenter's Halloween. As much as I liked Freddy vs. Jason, I would dearly love to see Jason go head to head with Michael Myers.
Well, campers, until next week, take my advice and keep the kids at home from summer camp.
Quiggy
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