Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time :: This Franchise Has Got a Death-Curse! :: An After-Action Report on an All-Night, Dusk 'til Dawn Friday the 13th Movie Marathon!

To celebrate that kooky calendar quirk, Friday the 13th, Yours Truly decided to embark on a foolhardy marathon of Friday the 13th and all of its sequels and kept a bit of a running commentary going on Facebook, which I decided to re-post here in all its rapidly degenerating-as-the-evening-wore-on and the sun came up glory. So, pack up, Boils and Ghouls and let us head to Crystal Lake shall we?

Before June of 1980, summer camp probably brought to mind some fun in the sun, perhaps an inconvenient tumble in a patch of poison ivy, or maybe stealing your first kiss behind the canteen before gathering and singing songs around the campfire under a fat full moon. But after June 1980, thanks to filmmaker, Sean S. Cunningham, a rousing chorus of “Kum-Bah-Yah” rapidly degenerated into a brutally quick rendition of “Kum-Bah-Yeaaarrghh!” when a lethally sharp gardening implement was shoved into your spleen, leaving you to gargle the refrain.

I had toyed with idea of watching the films in reverse order but quickly scotched it. And so, we began at the beginning with the original long night at Camp Blood and still my personal favorite if the franchise. Friday the 13th (1980) also holds a dubious distinction for me. I have seen it (in this order) via word of mouth from my older sister, on Betamax, on VHS, on old school Laser Disc, on broadcast TV, on basic cable, on premium cable, on Monstervision, digital streaming, on DVD, on BluRay, at a Drive-In theater, under a hardtop, expanded through the novelization, three separate 'making of' texts, and countless behind the scenes documentaries. No other film, even Star Wars, holds that distinction. Loved it then, and I still love it now. And now, on to Part 2!

No one could have predicted the cultural lightning rod and box office phenomenon generated by Friday the 13th, which quickly earned itself a sequel to cash in. One part The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976), two parts Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971), and a tablespoon of Part 1 nets you Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). Now, one of the dumbest things this franchise ever did, and that is really saying something, is how they killed off Adrien King's Alice, the lone survivor of the first massacre -- though a movie about how a guy wearing a potato-sack managed to track her down without drawing any undue attention would've been a hoot, but, no, we just get more of the same. 

The film does suffer a bit from JAWS 2-itus in that not enough campers get killed. (Even the odious comedy relief escapes. *pfui*), and can I get a moment of silence for Crazy "You're all Doomed" Ralph? I've always preferred the whodunit of the first one as opposed to the howtheydunit, which this one laid the foundation for. Best of the franchise? Maybe. All I know for sure is the worst is yet to come. Onward to Part 3 -- IN 3-D!!!

This might be considered blasphemous in some circles but the second dumbest thing this franchise ever did was ditch the potato sack for the hockey mask. I go into greater detail on what some consider to be the worst film in the franchise here. 

It's kind of amazing how much Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) is a carbon copy of Part 1 when it comes to the jump scares. The home 3D experience is still pretty terrible. Shelley's still an asshole. And Stoner girl is the worst actress of ever. Still, some of the franchises' most nasty kills. Alrighty, then. NEXT!

And with The Final Chapter, thus ends the opening salvo of the Friday the 13th franchise, when Paramount decided to temporarily pull the plug on Crystal Lake. I had a great idea for a Friday the 13th sequel once. It begins with the end of another one of Jason's rampages (back when these were still lakeside massacres) and the crime scene investigators come in and try to piece it all together, question the lone survivor etc. etc. etc. Meantime, Jason escapes from the morgue and comes back, the killing begins anew and here we go again.

That's not quite what we get in Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984). This time we lost Matthew Starr, George MacFly and a golden retriever as Jason meets his Waterloo at the hands of prepubescent film nerd and a ride down his own machete. Is this 'Final Chapter' the end of our marathon? Nay. We are barely half done. *sigh* ONWARD!

Ah, yes, A New Beginning. And has anybody seen Jason? Hello? *tap*tap*tap* Hello? Yeah, the fifth dumbest thing this franchise ever did was laying the groundwork for a reboot with Tommy Jarvis taking over for clan Vorhees. Not sure which part I liked better in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985): the part where the dude with the runs got killed in the outhouse that took forever or the bumblef@ck hayseed riding his motorcicle around and around and around and around and around. 

E'yup. This one is a bit of a mess, and it didn't help that the MPAA dropped the hammer on it, leading to some jarring and nonsensical cuts. Also around the fifth installment you start to notice patterns. Like how there's a lot of produce squishing when some is killed (-- Banana Girl in Part IV and Hillbilly Mom in Part V), allowing me to coin Ronco's Death-Spasm. Also, I had failed to realize that Jason Vorhees chucking people through a window was such a thing. It's like this franchise's Wilhelm Scream.

It should be no surprise. He did learn it from his mama, after all. I don't know. Maybe they had the right idea of moving on without Jason, putting the whodunit element back into the franchise -- though it wasn't much of a mystery. Eh, it's all moot anyway as 'you know who' was destined to return. So sharpen your machetes and lets move on...

Wake up, Kitten, you're missing it! 

There's a bit of a Naked Gun element leaking into Friday the 13th by Part VI: Jason Lives (1986). But you either gotta fully embrace that kind of full frontal parody or you wind up with the kind of mess that this movie turned out to be. For what we get all boils down to Random Schmucks in the Woods Getting Stabbed: The Movie.

And it's all Tommy Jarvis' fault, too, as he pulls a Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and inadvertently resurrects our villain. So all that blood is on his hands. But! If memory serves, we are finally done with that cretin as the franchise takes another drastic left turn. For, long before he took on Freddy Kreuger, someone had the bright idea of having Jason duke it out with Carrie White. Sort of. Now there's a prom date for ya. Push play already!

Meet The New Blood! Not quite the same as the Old Blood but close enough! Honestly, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) is easily the second or third best film in the franchise. I, for one, was thankful for the hard reboot that left the misfired komedy elements of Jason Lives dead and buried. 

Probably not since the first one have we seen such a collection of victims that we aren't anxious to see our hero/villain dispatch -- with the notable exception of Snooty McPooty and the seedy psychologist, 'natch.

Awwww, man. We were really rooting for ya there, Maddy.

Also, Jason using a power tool is the 

equivalent of Dylan going electric, right?

And kudos to first time Jason, Kane Hodder. I really dug his "What the hell is happening?!" reactions to Tina Shepherd TK'ing all that crap she chucked at him. Alas, this was a one and done for our Carrie surrogate, though this might be a good thing because she probably would've wound up marrying that idiot, Tommy Jarvis. Still, with this entry the franchise appeared to have corrected itself somewhat -- but that sure as hell didn't last long judging by what came next.

And as the clock reached 8am and this marathon entered it's eleventh hour I came to the regretabble conclusion that I was getting way too old for this nonsense. And so, as the opening credits for Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), I called it and this would be the last film partook. Now, the fourth dumbest move this franchise ever made was having Jason take a slice out of the Big Apple but then spending 90% of the movie on the SS Ersatz Love Boat. Nice poster art though.

Well, it was until Paramount was threatened with legal action by the city to cease and desist and got themselves a new poster. Anyhoo ... The saddest part of this disaster is Jason invading a knock-off Golan 'n' Globus New York City should've/could've been amazing. He could've been like an inadvertent Paul Kersey, taking out a gang of tuffs terrorizing a neighborhood, but then leaving the original victims to get rid of him once he does that. Instead, we got this steaming pile of shit. And I'll have to confess, I kinda dozed off during this one. I remember Guitar Girl getting killed, and then the next thing I knew it's five hours later, the sun was up and the cat was chewing on my beard because, apparently, her food dish was empty. I thought about finishing it off, but, nah, screw it, that one is thee worst of the worst -- well, at least until the Platinum Dunes reboot.

Now, I did get some grief for not including Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) in this marathon. As to why I excluded it? Well, first, the third dumbest thing this franchise ever did was reducing Jason Vorhees into a transferable slug of evil.This is a franchise I have come to expect certain things from, and that wasn't it. As someone else said, it's a pretty good movie but a shitty sequel. Saw it once in the theater, didn't care for it, and refuse to go back. (Though that opening bit where the FBI baits our killer and then bazookas him is hilarious.) And, turns out, I pooped out before I would've gotten to it anyway. (Well, that and I didn't have a copy to begin with.) And with that, I crawled off to bed with Jason X (2001) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003) still safely ensconced in their cases for another day. G'night everybody! And next time, I promise to start a little earlier so's I can finish this thing properly. 

Cult Movie Project #20 (of 200) :: Some Like it Hotter and that Certain Itch You Just Can't Scratch: Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956)

Wanting to turn his latest in a long string of girlfriends into a singing sensation, mobster Marty "Fats" Murdock (O'Brien) must scrape the bottom of the talent agent barrel due to a lack of any perceivable vocal talent exhibited by his main squeeze. Thus, Tom Miller (Ewell), wanting to keep his kneecaps intact, crawls out of a bottle long enough to shop Jerri Jordan (Mansfield) around to several hot night-spots to show off his client's *ahem* assets, which quickly negate her inability to carry a tune in a bucket and lands Jordan a recording contract. However, Miller soon realizes Jordan wants nothing to do with showbiz and is being pushed into it by Murdock as a vehicle to fulfill the mobster's own secret ambition to be a songwriter.

Blessed with a shrilly voice that can shatter glass, Jordan is reduced to just mimicking a wailing siren during each refrain of Murdock's number, a tune he wrote while serving a prison stretch, which Miller tries to sell to Wheeler (Emery), a former mob rival of Murdock's, who controls a payola monopoly over the jukebox trade. But Wheeler refuses to add the record to his playlist once he finds out who wrote it. Furious over this, and suspicious of the budding romance between Miller and Jordan, Murdock takes matters into his own hands and starts strong-arming his way into Wheeler's territory, forcing bar owners and restaurateurs to buy their jukeboxes from him instead. This causes Wheeler to hire some gunmen to rub-out Murdock, who is looking to rub-out Miller, who only wants what Jordan really wants, and what Jordan wants is to play house with him. And from there, all kinds of mayhem ensues...

After successfully making the jump from animated shorts to live-action motion pictures, Frank Tashlin was a bit of a rarity. A bit of a live-wire as well, Tashlin had worked for, quit on, got fired by, then rehired, only to quit or be fired again by nearly every major animation studio head: Paul Terry, Leon Schlesinger, the Fleischer brothers, Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney, and Screen Gems. Known to work fast and for infusing his own kooky sensibilities into his projects, during one of his many tenures at Warner Bros.' famed "Termite Terrace" (Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies), Tashlin brought a sense of cinema to his shorts (-- odd camera angles, crash-cuts, montages, and vertical and horizontal pan and zooms); and together with Tex, Chuck, Bob and Friz, revolutionized the art-form and set the standard that has lasted to this very day.

After World War II (-- during which he contributed to those Private Snafu shorts), Tashlin gained some traction as a floating gag writer for the Marx Brothers, Red Skelton and Bob Hope, who asked him to help salvage a stagnant musical number for The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). Liking his pitch, Tashlin managed to leverage his way into directing his concocted "Silver Bells" sequence; and Hope was so happy with the end result, Tashlin was tagged to direct his next feature, the hilarious Son of Paleface (1952), which led to directing a feature for Martin and Lewis, Artists and Models (1955), they're best co-flick of ever. 

And with all the sight gags, garish colors, frenzied pacing, manic music, mixed with those colliding plot-lines twisted into pretzels, if those two features didn't prove you could take Frank Tashlin out of cartoons but you couldn't take the cartoon out of Frank Tashlin, then The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) made it an absolute fact chiseled into bedrock.

Theoretically based on the Garson Kanin novel, Do Re Mi, in actuality the film is more of a thinly disguised mash-up of Born Yesterday (1950) and The Seven Year Itch (1955), smushed together as a starring vehicle for Jayne Mansfield, who had just signed with 20th Century Fox as an insurance policy against their collapsing relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Here, reluctant gangster moll Mansfield is teamed up with a hapless talent agent, Tom Ewell (-- Monroe's tongue-wagging straight-man in The Seven Year Itch), at the behest of her boyfriend, Edmond O'Brien, who wants Ewell to turn her into a singing sensation (-- no matter that she has the vocal range of an avocado), or else. From there, Tashlin plays his well-endowed star (all 40-18.5-36 of her) as a mobile sight gag and a living, breathing double-entendre. And to her credit, Mansfield is keenly aware of this, I think, and plays it to the hilt. And how the hell they ever got that orgasmic, erupting milk-bottle gag past the censors is beyond me and anybody's guess.

I don't think any movie captures the loopy zeitgeist of the 1950s more than this film; an anthropological study of booming consumerism, mass-marketing, mass-psychosis, and the cultural obsession with image and the "in thing" that Tashlin takes to the woodshed and cynically lampoons and lambastes with the ferocity of a rabid badger armed with a pointed stick. And sticking with the popular trends of the day, The Girl Can’t Help It is also an astounding showcase for the burgeoning rock 'n' roll movement. 17 musical interludes are plugged into the plot, highlighted by the Platters, Fats Domino, Abbey Lincoln, Ray Anthony, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, all beepin', boppin' and potato chip'n along.

And then there's Little Richard, wailing the theme song to the rafters (-- written by Bobby "Route 66" Troup), bringing down the house each and every time. And while I think Tashlin was also attempting a Moe Howard eye-poke on the fad (-- especially during the rockabilly numbers), his spirited staging and the depth and texture of the CinemaScope and Deluxe Technicolor (which just pops) brings such a vibrant vitality to these scenes, even on the crappy YouTube print I watched, you just wish there were more of them. And there almost was.

Apparently, the production tried to get Elvis Presley to perform a number for the movie but, as usual, Colonel Parker asked for too much money. However, Tashlin would get the last laugh on Parker. For, as we reach the climax, after several dubious plot machinations collide, O'Brien, who, if not for Little Richard, would've stolen the movie as Fats Murdock, is stranded on stage, surrounded by rabid teenie-boppers and a trio of assassins. Stuck and thus, Murdock belts out the tune he wrote for Jerri while in the pokey; a familiar sounding ditty called "Rock Around the Rock Pile". 



And as O'Brien starts gyrating and swiveling his hips and bouncing around the stage, with Ray Anthony and his band decked out in prison garb behind him, as I nearly laughed myself to death, even I could see how eerily this number presciently predicted Presley's own "Jailhouse Rock" production number destined to hit a year later, making Tashlin less of a satirist and more of a prophet.

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“Tashlin never made a masterpiece, but The Girl Can’t Help It rates a near-miss. It’s a highly innovative film, briskly paced and extremely colorful; one-liners are bandied back and forth, actors are in constant motion, music blares, and there’s even a screen which, upon Ewell’s command, switches from black and white to color and expands to CinemaScope. The off-color jokes, double entendres, and sexual innuendos – all staples of Tashlin’s humor – will make you either smile or walk up the aisle cursing about adolescent humor. I bet you’ll stay seated. It is a 1950s comedy that seems to improve with time, and today looks much better than most highbrow comedies of the period.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary 
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The Fine Print: The Girl Can't Help It was gorged via YouTube. Watched as a Mansfield-Chambers Taboo-Breaking Sex-Symbol double-feature with the Mitchell brothers' Behind the Green Door (1972). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's 20 down, with 180 to go.

The Girl Can't Help It (1956) 20th Century Fox Film Corporation / P: Frank Tashlin / D: Frank Tashlin / W: Frank Tashlin, Herbert Baker, Garson Kanin (novel) / C: Leon Shamroy / E: James B. Clark / M: Leigh Harline, Lionel Newman / S: Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O'Brien, Henry Jones, John Emery

In Memoriam :: Maureen O'Hara

Obviously, Maureen O'Hara didn't need to hitch onto John Wayne's wagon to be a movie star. And yet I always associate them with each other, which is weird because the grand total of films they actually did together can almost be counted on one hand -- and one of those was just a glorified cameo in Big Jake (1971). No. Her film cred was firmly establashed long before Rio Grande (1950). They just seemed so good together. A perfect fit. And frankly, I think O'Hara could take the Duke in a fight despite all the evidence presented in McClintock (1963), a raucous, wild-west take on The Taming of the Shrew. Still, it does contain my all time favorite scene between these two, with an assist from Yvonne De Carlo and Chill Wills.

   

Video courtesy of dasse111. 

Maureen O'Hara

1920-2015

Awesome and then some, she was lovely, one helluva an actress, and one of the last of the rapidly dwindling links to Hollywood's Golden Age. She will be sorely missed.

Living to Die By: The Tragic End of a Long Hard Trail :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950)

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"In the Southwest of the 1880s the difference between death and glory was often but a fraction of a second. This was the speed that made champions of Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and Wild Bill Hickok. But the fastest man with a gun who ever lived, by many contemporary accounts, was a long, lean Texan named Ringo." 

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Now, as glorified as that preamble makes the notorious gunman out to be, the Johnny Ringo we actually meet as The Gunfighter (1950) gets to rolling proper is a study in sharp contrast. Seems all of his old friends are dead and his wildcatting ways have him worn down to a nub. And these feelings of wanting to abandon this life and start over before it all finally catches up with him, too, comes to the forefront when he's goaded into a fight by a young upstart and once more proves the faster draw -- but barely.

Then, trying to stay ahead of the dead-man's vengeful brothers, Ringo (Peck) heads to Cayenne, where his long estranged wife (Westcott) works as a school teacher, rearing a son he's never met. Turns out the local Marshall (Mitchell, who is fantastic) used to run with Ringo but has long since reformed. And while the arrival of Ringo is a cause célèbre, Marshall Strett does his best to run interference with any local hot-heads who want a shot at Ringo -- namely a young punk named Bromley (Homeier, equally fantastic) looking to make a name for himself, and move Ringo along before any trouble starts.

But Ringo refuses to leave before he talks to his wife, who initially refuses. And as the clock keeps ticking, like a child's puzzle, all the pieces of this rousing melodrama click into place, leading to an inevitable but fantastic climax and resolution that packs one helluva lasting punch.

This is a film that always gets unjustly overlooked when talking about the greatest westerns of all time. Maybe it's because The Gunfighter is so not typical of the genre; so lean and so economical it all boils down to a 'country cottage' melodrama and character study of a man trapped by his own reputation, which has been clouded and diluted over the years with exaggerations and falsehoods.

The film was loosely culled from the real life exploits of John Ringo, who was a distant cousin of the Younger brothers (who ran with Frank and Jesse James). And according to legend, Ringo also ran with the Cochise County Cowboys and was a ruthless killer, whose exploits included going up against Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, but he would survive the legendary Gunfight at the OK Corral and Earp's vengeful purge. And like in this cinematic version, the real Ringo later made an effort to reconcile with his family but, unlike the film, he was summarily rejected. Extremely despondent over this, Ringo is alleged to have gone on a violent ten-day drinking binge before finally turning his gun on himself and, in a fit of despair, committed suicide.

The story was originally co-scripted as The Big Gun by William Bowers and director André de Toth, who offered it to Columbia, who envisioned the role going to John Wayne. But Wayne's long-standing hatred of Harry Cohn saw him passing on the part -- a decision Wayne would come to regret. (Wayne would sort-of remake The Gunfighter as The Shootist (1976), where, in true Wayne fashion, the aging outlaw goes out on his terms, not anybody else's.) With no star attached to it, the script was eventually sold off to 20th Century Fox, where it kind of moldered on the shelf until it was eventually dug up by, strangely enough, Roger Corman.

According to his own legend, back in 1948, as documented in his auto-biography, How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime (1990), the future schlock-meister and mini-movie-mogul-to-be Corman got a job at Fox and worked his way up from page to spec-script reader. And when word came down the line that the studio was looking for a suitable vehicle for Gregory Peck, "something offbeat but classy", Corman recalled the script, found it, made a ton of notes, and passed it back up the line. And when it was chosen, his supervisor got a bonus that failed to trickle down to him, which so disillusioned Corman he quit to study abroad, setting the stage for his triumphant return as an independent filmmaker and the undisputed king of exploitation movies.

But Corman wasn't the only one to punch up the script, with producer Nunnally Johnson and William Sellers also taking a revising run at it. Frequent Peck collaborator Henry King [12 O'Clock High (1949), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)] was tasked with directing and does an excellent job, as does pioneering editor, Barbara McClean, cutting it all together. (I love the throwaway bits, like the two drunks fighting in the street that fails to impress the gathered crowd.) In front of the camera Peck is ably supported by cast of rock-solid character actors, including Karl Malden, Ellen Corby and Jean Parker. And once more, Millard Mitchell manages to steal another western right out from under another mega-star -- just like he did to Jimmy Stewart the very same year in Winchester '73.

And then there's Skip Homeier, whose enigmatic presence, to me, always elevates everything he shows up in from this, to Fixed Bayonets (1951), to The Tall T (1957), to The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966). He is so good in this as the weasel Bromley. In the original ending, after gunning Ringo down, Bromley is arrested by Strett. But when Daryl Zanuck screened the rough cut, he apparently blew his top, sending King and Johnson scrambling to fix the resolution, having Ringo's dying wish to let Bromley go, a bit of poetic justice, as now everyone will be gunning for the man who gunned down Ringo -- but not before Strett gets his pound of flesh before sending him on his way "to get killed someplace else."

Despite all the clout in front of and behind the camera, The Gunfighter would fare poorly at the box office, which has gone a long way toward its dubious reputation. Most of the blame fell on the star. Well, not the star but his mustache. (Backed up by hundreds of scathing comment cards and weepy fan letters demanding the star never sport a nose broom again.) The studio wasn't keen on it to begin with but Peck had demanded that he be allowed to have it, claiming period authenticity.

And he probably got away with it because at the time of filming began, the head of production at Fox, Spyros Skouras, was on vacation. And by the time he got back and saw the rushes, too much of the film was in the can, making it too late to shave it off and start all over. And ever since, when Skouras ran into Peck, he would let him know that mustache cost them millions of dollars. As for me? Meh. I think the mustache looks fine. And I can't recommend The Gunfighter, the movie it "ruined", enough.

The Gunfighter (1950) Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation / EP: Darryl F. Zanuck / P: Nunnally Johnson / D: Henry King / W: William Bowers, William Sellers, André De Toth, Roger Corman, Nunnally Johnson / C: Arthur C. Miller / E: Barbara McLean / M: Alfred Newman / S: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Jean Parker, Karl Malden, Skip Homeier