Reasons To Be Fearful, Part Two

Reasons To Be Fearful, Part Two

DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

by Edouard Dauphin

Do you suffer from triskaidekaphobia?

No, you dope, that doesn’t mean you’re afraid of hors d’oeuvre crackers—it means you’ve got an irrational fear of the number 13 and if that’s the case, you’d better steer clear of Sean Cunningham’s Friday The 13th, a new horror film that not only tries to shock you but may actually cause physical damage to your person.

Consider the following: a friend of The Dauphin goes to his local theatre to catch Friday The 13th. A fan of horror films, he’s enjoying the proceedings until a certain scene comes on. It contains the single most shocking surprise bit of violence in recent years. Caught completely off guard, the fellow leaps from his seat, tearing the ligaments in his leg. Meanwhile, three.rows behind him, a woman has a heart attack!

The above really happened. An ambulance was rushed to the theatre to cart the lady off to the nearest emergency ward. How'did the young man and the rest of the audience react? They complained to the management because, in the uproar over the woman’s attack, they missed the end of the picture. So much for the compassion of hard-nosed horror buffs.

But what can you expect? Friday The 13th goes for the jugular and attracts the maniacal. “They were warned,” reads the film’s ad copy, “they are doomed.” Some dame in the St. Vincent’s intensive care unit can sure attest to that.

Flick is set in Crystal Lake Summer Camp, a rustic retreat consisting of dilapidated wood cabins, half-dead trees, weed-infested paths and a lake resemblihg a puzzle. Shot on location in, of all places, New Jersey, the film is the poorest advertisement for life in that state since the last -Southside Johnny album.

A dozen teenagers arrive at the camp two weeks before it is to open for the season. Their task is to spruce the place up before the hordes of campers get there. But since they’re all members in good standing of Teenage Wasteland, they’re much more interested^ n sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Probably all CREEM readers too.

The camp needs more than a quick paint job to overcome a certain image problem. See, back in 1957, a boy drowned in the lake and the following year two counselors were brutally murdered. Closed down since then, the place has come to be known among the local townsfolk as Camp Blood. Jersey people have some sense of humor, huh? They deserve Bruce Springsteen.

One character does not want the camp to open and decides to murder the dozen teenagers. And does this person know how to mutilate. A knife in the throat, an arrow in the eye, a spear through the balls, a hatchet in the face—get the picture? Flick builds nicely to a slow motion beheading that will have you crawling for the aisle moaning “Enough already. ” But stick around for the big surprise shock—hope your heart can take it.

See Friday The 13th and bring along your Blue Cross/Blue Shield card.

“What in the living hell is on board?”

So asks the trailer for Death Ship, easily the dumbest horror movie of 1980. To see this turkey, The Dauph violated one of his basic axioms: never go to any picture that stars George Kennedy. Half an hour into this bomb, you not only don’t care what’s on board—you’re watching the most embarrassing George Kennedy performance since Airport 75.

Death Ship is the poor man’s Poseidon Adventure. A luxury liner with a boring assortment of passengers is run amidships by a strange dark vessel that has chased it relentlessly andfor no apparent reason. In the quickest shipwreck in cinema history, everyone dies except for nine people who cling to a lifeboat. Next morning they spy a ship on the horizon and row frantically toward it. Guess what? It’s the same sinister ship that rammed the luxury liner in the first place. Do the nine eagerly and stupidly climb aboard? Do you even have to ask?

This is no ordinary ship. For starters, it has no crew and no passengers. It seems to run , automatically. Harsh Germanic voices, barking Achtung orders, resound in the corridors. The ship’s screening room shows Hitler newsreels, the projector turning on and off by itself. Blood flows out of the shower spigots and there are swastikas everywhere. Death Ship is a Love Boat for Nazis.

Pretty soon, George Kennedy is assuming command and retreating into a Facist deja vu. The rest of the bunch are meeting violent ends. One is clobbered with an anchor. Another is hoisted into the air and drowned. Eventually, the ones still alive begin to get worried.. They find a drawer full of gold teeth and personal effects. Picking up a wrist watch, one character marvels that even 40 years later, “It’s still ticking.” Did they have Timexes in Nazi Germany?

Skip Death Ship before it skips you.