Michael and Leatherface came back, Jason’s just passed through the re-birthing canal, and Freddy, Chucky, and Pinhead are clawing their way up the fallopian tubes. So…
In Defense of the Crimson Cheese
There is a sect of 80’s horror fans that do not adhere to the common adage of “once a franchise delves into self-parody it dies.†The absolute beauty of horror that originated in the decade of decadence is how they all started out as maniacal ideas, executed with a serious tone and passion. Freddy, Chucky, Jason, Michael Myers, and Pinhead all started out this way. Then, after success, there was an attempt to copy that tone and passion a few times, which for the most part resulted in a “meh†type of feeling. There are exceptions like Dream Warriors, but for the most part the median of these franchises are forgettable. This is of course when the self parody begins. Flicks such as Freddy’s Dead, Jason X, Bride of Chucky, and ultimately Freddy vs. Jason all delved back into the serious nature of their beginnings and made a joke out of it (some would argue it started even earlier then these movies.) Please, don’t get me wrong, straight horror can be amazing, but that is not the focal point here… it’s about this specific generation of mainstream horror franchises.
Of course, this caused a lot of horror fans disappointment with their cries of how it isn’t scary anymore and how they are more comedic then horrific. So? What’s the problem? Are you seriously telling me that you were actually scared of the original movies? Are you seriously saying that the reason you enjoyed them so much was because they incited fear in you? If your answer is yes, then I need to ask if you have ever watched any of them more then once and more recently then 20 years ago? Are you really a fan, or do you just remember them being more brutal and horrific then they were? If you have such an austere lust for the most demented, gore spewing, psycho characters… what is more “psycho†then killing someone with a healthy sense of humor? Perhaps those of us who were never legitimately scared by slasher flicks are prone to enjoy the comedic, hedonistic side of things more; hence that is what gobbled up the straight terror end of the spectrum.
Look, the first Nightmare, the first Child’s Play, the first Halloween, the first Friday are all beautifully made horror classics, but all these 80’s franchises were unique unto themselves and their time period in one way that really has never been replicated… we started to root for the villains. As for the sick, cold, beautiful bastards that always root for the villain no matter what… we love you, but this isn’t directed at you, now go masturbate to Cannibal Holocaust. The 80’s horror icons, our generation’s Universal Monsters, somehow became the heroic protagonists of the story. The first films in the franchises were created to scare and viewed to be scared, but time and sequels changed the social response to creating these flicks to “WOW†the audience with funny kills and viewing it to laugh at how many one dimensional nymphomaniac 20-somethings they will carve up next. Freddy Krueger was a child molesting murderer and yet it got to the point where we cheered as he slaughtered innocents. THAT WAS THE FUN OF ALL THIS!
This all lead to the characters being caricatures of themselves… which was never detrimental, if anything they stayed more honest to their origins this way, but were free to do anything under the sun. Look at Freddy vs. Jason, director Ronny Yu understood what made these guys great, the look, the back-story, the lore, the comedy, the kills. Sure the humans in that movie were garbage, who cares? This is not about “quality†or writing or any standardized pretentious film arguments. This is about understanding what made these characters stick around for so long and become so beloved. It wasn’t even specifically the flicks, it was the characters! Sure they all had their earnest moment at the beginning when it was supposed to be scary and we were supposed to be rooting for the good guys, and for most of them it was done right the first go around. Why do we always have to go back and try to make everything serious again? Re-release movies if you have to, some things should stay as artifacts and beacons of their time. If the franchises never embraced the villain’s status as a champion of hilarious murder they would NEVER have obtained the iconic heights they have now. Ok, how about we settle it with this… as long as the killer’s nature and persona are kept in tact, all is well. Period.
(Also, none of the above pertains to any horror character, or franchise created in the 90s… that was a whole different animal of parody that was lame beyond belief.)
With that said…
Friday The 13th : A Review of the last 10 minutes that would make Larry David Proud.
******SPOILERS******SPOILERS********SPOILERS************
There is really no need to review the whole movie; it was half travesty and half brutal fun. Jason looked physically bad ass (still not as iconically perfect as Ken Kirzinger or Kane Hodder); Derek Mears gave a good performance with his physical presence. Very akin to Rob Zombie’s Halloween the stuff that was added to the persona of the character destroyed it. Mr. Vorhees doesn’t set traps, he doesn’t keep hostages, he doesn’t practice archery and he most certainly doesn’t have an elaborate headquarters of death. Honestly, I think the best thing to come out of this film is the completely definitive image on the gorgeous theatrical release poster.
It seemed at times that Marcus Nispel was trying to remake his other remake, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with this remake. Add a slight dollop of Leatherface from the 1986 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, with the whole sympathetic pseudo sexual victim relationship and a sprinkle of that awful too-close-shaky cam crud and you got the new Friday. The acting was good, the comic-relief surprisingly funny, the plot simple as it should be, and the intelligence/booby level was equalized appropriately. All I want to discuss, in brief, is the ending. If you want a well written full-review just head on over to the talented Christopher Stipp’s much more thorough and different assessment:
http://asitecalledfred.com/2009/02/13/trailer-park-friday-the-13th-and-shopaholic-reviewed/
**********EVEN BIGGER SPOILERS*********
There are two groups of teenagers in the movie. The first, on a mission to find Crystal Lake’s best weed, get destroyed by Jason in the very beginning. The exception being the girl who supposedly looks like Jason’s mother, he takes her hostage, locks her up in his basement lair while he is out… um… bringing home the bacon. The second group is simply a bunch of wealthy kids going up to stay in daddy’s lake-side cabin for a weekend of boners, beer, and republican conversation.
Supernatural‘s Jared Padalecki plays Clay Miller, the brother of Whitney, the chick locked in Jason’s love nest. Cut to after Jason is supposedly dead. It’s night time. Mr. Voorhees has a chain wrapped around his neck, the other end of said chain is tangled up inside a wood-chipper which is located in a barn. I will give the benefit of the doubt and say the barn is roughly a mile away from the lake. Also note that Clay has no knowledge of Jason’s story, legend, or origin. Cut to the scene of both Millers standing on the Camp Crystal Lake dock, it’s now day time, Clay kicks Jason’s dead body into the water… and then Jason pops back up through the dock to grab him. Cut to credits.
Ok… I laughed out loud in the theater. Not because it was awful, not because it was badly shot, not because it was meant to be humorous, but because of the plethora of questions!!! Not questions about Jason returning to life… questions about WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY DRAG 300 POUNDS OF DEAD WEIGHT ALL THE WAY TO THE LAKE AND DUMP HIM IN? WHY!
Think about it… There are somewhere around 12 freshly murdered corpses in the area, probably hundreds more in Jason’s home. You and your sister/brother have gone through the most traumatic and exhausting experience of your entire life, yet you manage to take down a lumbering psychotic professional killing machine whom you know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT. Would your first instinct be to spend the next 3 hours, cutting him down from the wood chipper, and doing your best to move a humongous, foul-smelling, corpse all the way to the lake and dump out the only evidence to prove to the cops, the world, and everyone that you yourself did not go on a brother/sister killing spree? They effectively spent all night moving this body… with no motive, they didn’t even consider going to get help? None of this occurred to them in the LONG arduous trek these two tired, broken victims spent transporting the corpse? Clay is shown to be a pretty smart guy throughout the whole movie too. I mean I can deal with stupid characters in horror films… but this is just beyond absurd, they are going WAY out of their way to do this meaningless act, which is actually a detriment to their future well being (a.k.a. Not going to jail.) Let’s not forget that a cop was brutally murdered here… No one is going to take this lightly.
I realize I am over analyzing an extremely lazy storytelling device, one that only served to give Jason a chance to pop out of the water, but it’s absolutely hilarious. I also realize that Whitney heard her friend at the beginning of the film say something about Jason’s origin… but come on… she has been a hostage for 6 weeks! A month an a half in a constant state of fear and god only knows what Jason was giving her to eat, the last thing this chick would want to do is spend a few hours dragging a corpse through the woods in order to be symbolic! What truly made me laugh is the thought of the movie cutting away right after Clay kicks Jason into the lake, and then we go straight to a conversation with Clay Miller and the police:
Cop: You kids ok?
Clay Miller: Well I’m a little banged up, and she’s been held hostage for 6 weeks but yeah, we’ll live.
Cop: so you say Jason Voorhees did this?
Clay Miller: yes, he’s a psychopath… he brutally murdered everyone…
Cop: WELL… where’s the body, got to call in forensics and such. You said you killed him in the barn right?
Clay Miller: he died in the barn, yes sir, but we dumped his corpse in the lake… so…
Cop: The lake? What the hell for? Because of the legends?
Clay Miller: Legends? No… we just… we just figured the lake would be fitting, you know?
Cop: Fitting? Your tellin’ me you disposed of the body of the prime suspect in well over hundreds of missing person cases including last nights murders?
Clay Miller: hmm… should we not have done that? Was that a bad idea? ‘cause I gotta be honest, we started to question it ourselves as we were both crying and dragging his body through the woods.
Cop: God damn…
Clay Miller: So next time… no lake… check. Got it. Man… he was HEVVVVV-EEEE too… Haha.
Cop: get in the car.
You know what, it’s so absurd it actually makes the movie better. Thanks for reading!
Comments: 11 Comments
11 Responses to “Opinion In A Haystack: Bloody Cheese”Leave a Reply |
February 16th, 2009 at 2:47 am
That movie ruled because it took every stereotype from old slasher flicks and amped them up to absurd level. Every scene that wasn’t someone getting murdered had tits, beer, or drugs in it. What else do you want?
I can’t believe you didn’t make any mention of the token black character.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Dong, did you even read what I wrote…I didn’t even review it…I just talked about them pushing jason into the lake.
February 16th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Do you know what is funny, I had NO CLUE WHATSOEVER that this movie was even released until I saw the weekend’s returns. Yeah it was that far off of my radar, not that I would have gone to see it. I think modern horror movies, remakes of horror movies, or sequels to horror movies that were a franchise more then a decade ago, are useless to me. I just don’t care about there existence.
And now with that said… I thought your column was funny, I loved the dialogue at the end there. If that were in the movie I would consider going to see it just for that laugh at the end.
-Chuck
February 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
thanks chucks.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I can agree with things, I cant agree with other things.
ultimately, remakes in all their forms are evil.
But Friday had some great tits and some great violence. That’s the movie cheese I grew up on and I’m happy to see that it’s still at large today.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
First off I love your new ending! Awesome!
Secondly, I loved the movie for the fact that it was a total cheese fest. Oh sure it played fast and loose with Jason what with the lair from hell and the archery champ skills and all but it was Jason, hockey mask, machete, dead teens, tits, blood and screams. What else did people expect from this film? Citizen Kane?
Just to answer something Dong pointed out (Dong? Seriously?), the token black guy, for me at least, started out as antagonistic, he played the race card far too often but fuck was he ever funny! I mean, trying to jerk off whilst high to a winter knitwear catalogue? Genius!
The rest of the characters (and I use the word very loosely!) were 2 dimensional at best. Well…apart from the girls…they had their, erm, good points!
It was a good movie to watch on a friday night right before I went for a few beers. In fact the only reason I went was because I have such a love of horror films in general and the Friday the 13th franchise in particular and I knew it was gonna be a cheese fest of epic proportions!
Any film that has a hockey masked, machete wielding, undead maniac killer on the loose is fine by me. They’ll get my money to go see it! I mean, I even sat through Hatchet for gods sake and that wasn’t a patch on this film!
But I did love your (semi)review Opinioninahaystack!
February 16th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Dann – Remakes are evil…but they have wrought some GREAT FILMS…The Thing, The Fly, Cape Fear, I think 12 Monkeys is a remake…Yes, friday did have some great tits (as the pretty boy denoted 7,000 times, which was pretty funny). It was cheese, but I guess not the type of cheese i prefer. I didn’t hate it, it was fun, and I might see it again. Thanks for commenting!!!
Darren – Thanks for commenting. Thanks, glad you love my ending, I should send it to NEWLINE and ask them to shoot it for the DVD…heh. Anyway, I was trying to make it pretty clear that I judge horror (as well as all genres and films themselves) on a separate scale. ART IS NOT RELATIVE, NOR IS ENTERTAINMENT. So I totally agree with you, and I never expect Citizen Kane from anything…except of course…Citizen Kane. The first half of this column was just me trying to justify being on the side of ULTRA CHEESY 80’S HORROR FRANCHISE SEQUELS that are soaked in past references and comedy…It wasn’t a slam against the new Friday, it was more just a slam against people for not enjoying when the filmmakers themselves are laughing it up. Thanks for reading darren.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Look, the ending was what sealed this movie as being pretty much perfect for me. What I found interesting and maybe even “new” in this movie is that they didn’t try to explore the Friday story through the now standard- darker. more realistic, grittier lens but instead just completely over shot the stereotypes, and predicable characters to the point where it wasn’t quite as predicable.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Jd – I didn’t even say I hated the ending, I just thought it was hilarious and WAY absurd (remember, we are talking about them dragging him to the water, not jason popping out of the water). I do disagree that it was stereotypical and predictable, if you think it wasn’t, then I don’t really know where you are coming from on that. Either way, like I said to Matt (Dong) above…I DIDNT HATE IT, it was fun stuff…I just wanted to write about the ending and how I wish they would have played it out with Seinfeldian comedy instead. Thanks for reading and replying man.
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Actually Bob I didn’t read the article at all before commenting. Partly cause I hate you but mostly because i can’t read or write.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:10 am
Dong…I love you.