Spoiler alert: Gerry Cheevers did it.

We all know that Friday the 13th is back in the theaters. I say “back” because as you know, the original splattered across the screen in 1980 and oh, what a lovely sound it made. It was a movie that jumped on the slasher trend launched by Halloween but brought to the genre something new. And when I say something new, I mean massive skin lacerations leading to eruptions of gore, tendrils dancing playfully where a head used to be, and innards released from their fleshy caverns by the gleaming blade of a knife.

Slasher movies quickly descended into banal orgies of gore, it’s true. But for that brief time, it was done well, with all of that viscera hung messily onto a skeleton of plot and pacing. Remember the shocking conclusion to the original Friday the 13th? The big revelation? Yeah. Bet you didn’t see THAT coming. The killer in the hand knit sweater.

The remake will be lousy. I’ll see it when it hits the drive-in, but it will suck. I know it will suck because I’ve seen the previews and do you know what they show in every scene? The killer, all big and bulky and wearing that now comical goalie’s mask. Did you see the killer in the original or even have an inkling who it might be? No, popcorn hurler, you did not. You didn’t know who was popping off all those happy campers and you didn’t know what to be looking for behind every tree. Friday the 13th in its original form was just short of brilliant.

Okay, maybe a long way from brilliant. But in relation to the slasher films that came after it, it stands as a high water mark. Or perhaps a high blood mark, because there were buckets of it. The remake will be an absolutely dismal failure, though it may be a smash in terms of dollars and cents. Such is the state of the horror genre. Those of the movie going age don’t know any better.

It’s up to you, parents, to drag your impressionable kids out of the theater, embarrassming them in front of their friends and scarring them for life, and demanding that they watch that other movie before they experience this one. You want to be a good parent, don’t you?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.