Apparently John Carpenter had a few big issues with the original ‘Friday the 13th’. The famed horror director is back in the spotlight after agreeing to be an executive producer on the ‘Halloween‘ reboot and during a recent interview the realm of Jason Voorhees came up and it appears that Carpenter just isn’t a fan. That is actually selling it short as it sounds that his opinions of the series show a lack of originality that we all know Carpenter himself was able to deliver many times over.
With how many consider ‘Friday the 13th’ to be nothing more than a pale copycat of ‘Halloween’ you could see why he might be annoyed by it.
Maybe annoyed isn’t the right word as he says on the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast that:
“And Friday the 13th, I feel, affects me as very cynical. It’s very cynical moviemaking. It just doesn’t rise above its cheapness.”
While I think that we can all agree that ‘Friday the 13th’ wore out its welcome due to bad writing, I’m not sure I can agree on the cheapness portion. Sure, it can be cynical as you never have a hero to root for in the films but it also defined the 80s slashers almost as much as ‘Halloween’ did. Not only that but the first movies in the series were solid films in their own right that were able to build a mythology about the hockey mask-clad slasher who spent far too much time stalking teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake.
I can only hope that when the new ‘Halloween’ drops that Carpenter is able to use his creative talent to revitalize his own slasher and give us another amazing horror film.
Do you agree with Carpenter that ‘Friday the 13th’ was cheap and cynical or is he overselling how bad the first entries in the series were? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Cinema Blend
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!