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Date Posted: 15:03:21 06/20/01 Wed
Author: Griff
Subject: I just saw the original Gaslight (**) - not sure if I was inspired enough to do a full review though. For now, here we go with a double bill! Watch out for spoilers.


FRIDAY THE 13TH


Like most rip-offs of top films, as with the endless succession of Die Hard and Jaws clones, Friday the 13th borrows the framework of Halloween but just doesn’t have the soul, the little touches, the style that made its inspiration so brilliant. The first of the cash-ins out of the gate, this can at least claim to have set the conventions of the slasher film in stone and adds a couple of its own to the endless list of genre clichés but whereas Halloween was more than just an exploitation pic thanks to its great direction and memorable score, Friday is nothing more than a slim plot on which to hang a series of gruesome deaths.

The first in a franchise that has inexplicably dragged on for eight more films and a TV series, this is the best of the lot, which isn’t saying a lot considering the quality of the sequels. The only surprise here, back at the start of the never-ending series, is that the killer is not Jason – instead it’s his mother, and oddly enough a middle-aged woman in a chunky sweater proves not to be the scariest slasher ever, although she is strangely eerie at times. At least she’s not a Michael Myers impersonator in a hockey mask, so there is at least a smidgeon of originality here, but let’s not get too excited because there’s eighty-odd minutes to get through before that revelation.

So, we have a bunch of horny teenagers up at Camp Crystal Lake, getting the place ready for its reopening after all those horrible things that happened many years ago... unfortunately for them a killer stalks the camp, slicing up the teens as they go about their business. Interesting only for an early appearance by Kevin Bacon, the cast is there for no other purpose than to take off their clothes and get horribly murdered. Cue scene after scene of the teens being killed during/after sex or wandering out into the woods alone in the middle of the night. One character even ventures out into the pouring rain wearing nothing but a nightie!

Sadly there’s nothing to maintain interest between the admittedly well-realised deaths (good make-up from Tom Savini) because the whole film revolves around them - when the guys and gals aren’t getting skewered with a variety of sharp implements there’s nothing much going on; the plot saunters off with its hands in its pockets and sits in the corner till it’s needed again for the next bloody murder. It’s all padding and consequently there’s no suspense to be found. Director Sean Cunningham swipes John Carpenter’s lingering POV shots but his direction is so muddled that he can’t decide, and we can’t tell, which are the POVs and which are the shaky camera shots.

By the time we get to the finale things have really gone stale, and to make things worse it’s so repetitive it makes the previous hour or so look varied. The remaining girl, Alice, whacks the killer on the head and runs for it, the killer catches up with her and gets whacked on the head, Alice runs for it... apparently the script read, “Repeat until audience is ready to swallow cyanide capsule”. Throw in a shock ending nicked from Carrie and that’s pretty much the whole thing. What it does have going for it is a few nods to the horror genre, like the mad old crank who tries to warn the kids off, the hostile locals and Harry Manfredini’s score, which seems inspired to some degree by Bernard Herrmann. The series is all downhill from this point on...



FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2


The term ‘more of the same’ could have been coined for this lazybones sequel which, if you study it very closely, differs from the original film in one subtle way: the inclusion of the words ‘Part 2’ in the title. Apart from that it’s business as usual for the first of many, many sequels in which numerous teenage camp counsellors are murdered in various ways including a spear through the back, a slashed throat, a machete in the head and that old favourite, the gory stabbing. Yes, it’s class all the way with this one.

Like the first film, this has the counsellors getting their camp ready for opening after a period of closure following the earlier bloody events. In a daring departure from the original setting, this takes place in a different camp on the same lake! I hope not too many fans of the original were alienated by such a severe change of direction. After an interminable and rather distasteful prologue in which Alice (Adrienne King), the one survivor of the first movie, is slowly stalked and then stabbed in the head, it’s exactly the same formula as before. Only the killer has changed; it’s now Jason, back from his watery grave with a sack over his head like a maniacal Elephant Man.

We get more nudity, more tame sex scenes, more peering through windows, more spying from behind bushes, more teenage pranks. The new writer’s credit deserves a chuckle because the dialogue is completely irrelevant as it exists only as a vehicle to get us from one murder to another, to appeal to the bloodthirsty fans of the series. Boring and idiotic, there are numerous scenes with Jason remaining completely unseen as he hides behind two branches ten feet away from someone, and quite a few where he somehow knows where characters are going and gets there ahead of them. There’s even the same ‘shock’ ending as before and the crazy old coot popping up again to warn the kids that they’re doomed – but his character isn’t wasted, no sir; he gets garrotted from behind a tree. No sense in letting a good body go to waste!

As for what little there is on the plus side: there’s a sexually active disabled guy, not a character you see too often in movies and so a commendable inclusion, even if he is two-dimensional Jason fodder like everyone else. Harry Manfredini’s ‘ch-ch-ch puh-puh-puh’ theme music continues to give the movie what little eerie atmosphere it has (which is very little). And there’s a scene near the end nicked from Psycho - it could be a homage but since this movie is completely bereft of original ideas it’s more likely a blatant steal. What more is there to say, really? If you’ve seen the first one then you’ve seen this.



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