Hacker Cinema
Friday the 13th
1980 · Film · 95 min
Part of Friday the 13th Collection
Directed by Sean S. Cunningham
Camp counselors are stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer camp that was the site of a child's drowning.
1 mixed9 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
Termination of Transfer is what happened to the Friday the 13th franchise. The screenwriter wound up owning the name Jason Voorhees, but not the adult visual of Jason. As I understand it, the F13 franchise owners could have made movies with adult Jason Voorhees as long as they don't call him Jason Voorhees. All in all it was a mess. I think it's all resolved now, but the situation did tank the online game that a lot of people enjoyed.
> When I was growing up, those were what was harming children at an industrial scale.
Have you ever considered that maybe people were right about all that stuff? The problem so many people have is they either aren't forward thinking enough or only look back a few years at most when arguing against "moral crusaders."
Take for example violence in movies and videogames. Back in the 80s, the MPAA came down hard on the Friday the 13th movies, and the violence level in those movies absolutely pales in comparison to what you see now in Saw X, a mainstream R-rated horror movie. In the early 90s, there were federal hearings about violence in video games, Mortal Kombat being the prime example. Compare what gave people heart attacks back then to what the latest Mortal Kombat game features. Maybe those people were right all along, and we should have done something other than just laugh at their concerns?
With the benefit of decades of hindsight, there's a lot of issues in society where the "slippery slope"-ists turned out to be right.
It wasn't a sudden change, it's been a gradual tendency towards them. James Bond was already 19 films by the turn of the century (or 20 if you include the other Casino Royale), King Kong and Star Trek both got to 6, Batman 8, Star Wars had just had the 4th, Friday the 13th had reached 9 films.
Even BttF itself was three films, and in the second one was parodying the tendency towards sequels with the holographic Jaws 19.
I think this is a great breakdown and analysis, though "‘Terminator’ Really Is a Horror Movie" is something a lot of people at or near the time of its release, including my eleven year old self watching it for the first time, understood intuitively. In my mind (and perhaps even in my local video store) it was always grouped with Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street
It suffers from the same misfortune as the LOTR novels, Aliens, Friday the 13th, Godzilla, or countless other works that were among the first major works in their genres.
They were groundbreaking, foundational works that influenced everything came after them. The later works were often amplified takes on what came before; explicit attempts to out-do their ancestors.
(Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. You don't always improve things just by adding more...)
So, folks go back to the originals and wonder: "what's the fuss about? what was so groundbreaking about the hard-sci-fi-ish space marines and H.R. Giger visuals in Aliens? or the boring, soulless, pondrous killer in Friday the 13th? " The originals seem tame or quaint by comparison to what came after.
Know this: there is a whole world of enjoyment out there waiting for you should you ever decide to appreciate works of art in their appropriate historical contexts. Blade Runner has its faults and its charms and is by no means a perfect movie, but it is arguably the most visually influential movie in history or damn close to it.
Things are never entirely born from nowhere, but Blade Runner's now-cliched "neon cyberpunk dystopian future" look had never been really done before, certainly not on the big screen, and I'm honestly not sure if it's been done better since.
As far as discussing Blade Runner on its own merits, outside of any context... I understand why some think it's boring. It's slow and meditative. Deckard is a cipher. But this is by design. It works for me, mostly.
Of course, if you just want to skip all of that context business and focus on the latest/flashiest works in a particular genre... that's cool too. Literally nothing wrong with that. It's art. You can interact with it however you want. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Looks to be a different source from the OP, but let's go down the chart for 1980 past the top ten:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/1980/
Kramer vs. Kramer (book)
Ordinary People (book)
Popeye (comic)
The Shining (book)
Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (sequel)
Caddyshack (original - franchise starter)
Friday the 13th (original - franchise starter)
Brubaker (book)
The Jazz Singer (remake)
Flash Gordon (sequel/remake)
Bronco Billy (original)
Raging Bull (book - biopic)
Maybe you should go back a few decades until you can find a time when the top 20 were mostly originals. Would have to be before the Star Wars/Jaws blockbuster era, probably.
It's almost as if someone wanted turn burn a few billion to verify the economic model that dictates current movie ticket prices. IOW, with the new restrictions, it sounds a lot like the "dollar cinema" we had growing up: for a dollar, you can watch 2nd-run movies. Lot's of restrictions around that, too. Usually only one movie showing at a particular cinema, showings are usually only in the evening, etc. But, because first-run movies are priced as they are for some good reasons, to make it cheaper there were some corners cut.
But I didn't need billions in VC money to come up with that one my own when I was 16 and watching the first Friday the 13th for $1.
It wasn’t always this way. Films like Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead, and pretty much the entire Hitchcock collection were some of the most iconic films of their times.
In my opinion, the popularity of the late 70s to 80s slasher films (Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St, Texas Chainsaw Massacre to name a few), combined with studios’ ever-shrinking tolerance for risk, resulted in a particularly bland few decades of mainstream horror, with the well-known Saw franchise and, to a lesser extent, the somewhat satirical Final Destination series as typical examples of the era. Personally, I’m partial to the Evil Dead films, Army of Darkness most of all. Groovy.
Horror can be excellent when done well, and pathetic when done poorly. It is easy to go for cheap scares and bloody massacre scenes. There is a lot to dislike about modern horror films that can turn off audiences looking for more than jump scares and blood splatter. If I hadn’t dated a girl in college who was super into the horror genre, I would have never gotten into it.
Horror is best when it floods you with an emotional high that lasts long after the initial shock. For a most masterful example, try playing Silent Hill 2, if you dare.
but then there would never be a Friday the 13th, which is also a problem. When would Hollywood release all its horror movies?
IMDB reports that 2322 movies were released in 1939 alone, is it really surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?
1980 for comparision, IMDB lists 6007 movies (8000+ if you include TV movies), and contains modern (popular) classics such as Stir Crazy, Superman II, Empire Strikes Back, Airplane!, The Blue Lagoon, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy. The Shining, Caddyshack, Raging Bull, Friday The 13th, The Fog, The Blues Brothers.
Hmm, looks like 1980 was a much more 'classic' era than the 40s for hollywood, but you wouldn't have heard that from film buffs in the 80s.
Hollywood has always been a great abuser of the 'sling lots of shit at the wall and see what sticks' approach to 'greatness', they're just slinging a lot more shit these days.
Even if we take a really contemporary year and do the same study, we see a pattern of greats no matter what year, take 2005 at random:
Batman Begins, Sin City, V for Vendetta, Revenge of the Sith, King Kong, Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr & Mrs Smith, Wedding Crashers, Munich, Saw 2, Hostel, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Madagascar, Pride & Prejudice, Land of the Dead.
Ah, but the movie buff will point out that they're not established classics like Gone with the Wind, or Wizard of Oz. Not yet, anyway.
Edit: Btw, for 2005, the number of movies was 28,000+. Is it any wonder that there is a lot of formulaic stuff in there as well?