Reliving the Horror of the 1980s

The movie business is not known for its originality, but perhaps in no other genre is it to be as wanting as the "slasher" film. Introduced in the late seventies and then flowering in the eighties, a number of films made their mark and then were remade, again and again and again, simply giving the viewer what they expect--young people being viciously murdered in bizarre ways.

Last year two of the iconic slasher films were remade or, in the parlance of Hollywood executives, rebooted. Friday the Thirteenth, one of the pillars of the genre, was originally released in 1980, and then had eleven sequels, with roman numerals and subtitles attached (even though number four was proclaimed the "Final Chapter"). In 2009 the button was pushed to reset, with no number, no subtitle, just the bare-bones title.

As the film opens, the end of the first film is re-told, as the mother of Jason Voorhees gets beheaded by a plucky camp counselor. It seems that at Crystal Lake a young boy drowns in the care of counselors, and Mom goes crazy with sharp objects to get her revenge. Jason didn't drown, though, and in each subsequent sequel he creates havoc while hiding behind a hockey mask.

In the 2009 version, directed by Marcus Rispel (who also rebooted The Texas Chainsaw Massacre--keep aiming high, Marcus!) we meet some kids looking for a crop of marijuana near Camp Crystal Lake. After about five minutes they are all dispatched with sharp weapons. A few weeks later, the brother of one of them is looking for his missing sister, and runs into some horribly douchey young people who are going to spend the weekend and the douchiest one's vacation home. Jason is on the prowl, and eventually they are picked off, one by one, with a creative list of implements, including an arrow, a machete, and deer antlers.

The template for the Friday the Thirteenth series has always been that the kids are punished for their behavior, whether it be slutty behavior by girls (kids sneaking off for sex are always killed) or boorish behavior by boys. This version is not much different, although I was surprised by the death of one of the girls, who is set up as the paragon of virtue. In the end, though, there's nothing unique or dynamic about this film, and watching it is something of a chore.

I've never seen My Bloody Valentine, a Canadian slasher film from 1981 that is known for its high gore factor. It was remade last year as a 3D film, and though I didn't see that effect on my TV, I did get what it must have been like, as several objects, such as bullets, tree branches, and body parts, go flying toward the screen.

Set in a mining town, it's a somewhat complicated story about a cave-in that allows only one survivor, who had killed his colleagues to save air. He's in a coma for a year, and then awakens, dons a jump-suit, a gas mask, and a mining helmet, and goes crazy, killing 22 people, including several teenagers who for some reason have chosen the closed mine as a party spot. The miner is thought to be killed, but ten years later someone who matches his description is again killing, the usual method his trusty pick-axe.

Directed by Patrick Lussier, My Bloody Valentine sets the bar low and delivers what it promises. The axe-wielding maniac, who is pretty spooky-looking in that mining get-up, is indiscriminate in his carnage, even killing a female midget. The real star of the production is not the actors or director, but the special effects designer, Gary J. Tunnicliffe. He has rigged several eye-grabbing "gags" (as he calls them), including a man who has his jaw ripped off and a girl who's head in halved by a shovel blade. Really this is a film of special effects with a story written around it.

Both of these films earned R ratings, and feature some casual nudity. In My Bloody Valentine there's a sequence for ages. An actress named Betsy Rue has a scene of close to five minutes in which she is wearing nothing but her shoes. She has sex, follows her lover out into the parking lot, and is then menaced by the miner, all of her charms visible to the world. For a mainstream film, it might be the longest full-frontal nude scene in history.