HALLOWEEN QUICKIE
In honor of Halloween (or Samhain if you're old school Gaelic), I thought I'd pay tribute to a few horror films that scared the pants off me over the years.
FRIDAY THE 13th (any of the early installments, but particularly Part II)
I wasn't seeing these in the theater as a kid, because I was only like seven years old when the first one was released. But then around 1981 something awesome happened, and my parents and every other family in our neighborhood got premium cable (including HBO, natch), so of course we young'uns were forever trying to sneak glimpses of forbidden R-rated flicks like the raunchy teen comedy Porky's and any and all of the gory slasher flicks that movie studios were cranking out at the time. And the undisputed Mack Daddy of all '80s splatter fests was definitely Friday the 13th.
My favorite memory of this film was in the summer of 1982 (yeah, I don't know why I have a freakish memory for dates, I just do) and I was over at Ridley and Rianne's house, the next door neighbor kids I was tight with. It was also the summer I was finally allowed to play outside after dinner, which was a HUGE deal to me at the time. Anyhoo, Ridley and Rianne had a babysitter one night--Joe P--a teenager who lived in the house behind us. Yes, people hired teenage boys to babysit back then; parents of Gen Xers were chill like that (plus everyone knew everything about everyone in our 'hood, another hallmark of that era). Personally, I thought Joe was super cute and I was a bit jealous several years later when I heard from my Mom that he'd gotten engaged. Maybe I thought somewhere in the back of my mind I'd have a chance with him one day, because that's how teen girls think. But whatever.
So I was hanging at Ridley and Rianne's that evening, and since their parents were off at a fondue restaurant or a key party or whatever hip '80s parents did on their nights out, the three of us kids tuned in to HBO to try to catch us some Friday the 13th Part II while Joe was preoccupied with a phone call (probably chatting up some girl). It was the part in the movie where a female camp counselor goes skinny dipping alone in the lake at night (as you do), and a male camp counselor happens by and takes the opportunity to steal her clothes. The skinny dipper chick climbs out of the lake butt naked to chase the guy through the woods (as you do), then the dude steps into a rope trap that snatches him up and he's hanging there upside down from a tree when the girl catches up to him and she's all, "You prick, why'd you steal my clothes? Oh, you're caught in a trap. Hold on, I'll go find something sharp to cut you down with." And the girl wanders off into the darkness and the guy is hanging there like a slab of beef and that's when Joe finally notices what we're watching, and he's like "Hey you little shits, turn that off! These two are about to get killed. Believe me, you DO NOT want to see it." And the three of us beg to differ--we kind of do want to see it but we're also more than a little freaked out by the whole scene, so we turn off the movie and Joe sends us outside. So we're sitting on the driveway and it's just beginning to get dark, and we're of course discussing the skinny dipping and the guy hanging upside down in the trap and the almost-killing we just saw, i.e. "How do you think the killer gets them?" et cetera.
Then suddenly from out of the near-darkness, a wadded-up candy wrapper whizzes by our heads and the three of us shriek and jump about eight feet into the air. We turn to see Joe standing behind us, laughing his ass off. Ah, Joe. What a loveable scamp you were.
Epilogue: Years later I watched the film in its entirety and finally learned how Jason Voorhees offed the clothes stealing guy and the skinny dipping girl. It was gross, but strangely anti-climactic. In my mind, I think I'd built it up to be something pants-shittingly horrific, when really it was just a run-of-the-mill, slasher-flick knifing for both of them.
That said, the theatrical trailer still gives me the willies:
