Happy Friday the 13th, everybody!
Have a better day, at any rate, than the unhappy campers have had at Camp Crystal Lake in the Friday the 13th movies over the years. The original 1980 Friday the 13th is a legitimate classic of the slasher genre; a nasty piece of work but expertly structured and paced, with fine grisly gore effects by Tom Savini. It has the authentic flavor of a tale told on a summer night, around a campfire.
The original is not, however, the movie that Majestic Cinema Tempe 7 has chosen for their 35mm screening this evening at 9:30 p.m. Rather, they are going with Friday the 13th, Part 2, from 1981. Directed by Steve Miner, who would go on to make some good movies, this sequel lacks the original’s intensity. The poster reads “THE BODY COUNT CONTINUES” and that’s pretty much all there is to the movie – attractive young people getting skewered. The anti-sexual subtext is obvious, and ugly.
On the other hand, this is the first film in which Jason, the hard-to-kill killer, is the principal menace, so horror completists may feel compelled to have a look, as may lovers of real celluloid. In this movie, however, Jason wears a burlap sack over his head; he hadn’t yet acquired his signature hockey mask. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out your look.
If you feel like lightening things up, check out next week’s “Tuesday Classics” selection at Harkins Theatres at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 17: 1996’s The Birdcage. This farce from director Mike Nichols from a screenplay by Elaine May (based on the 1978 French comedy La Cage aux Folles) is rightly remembered for a number of classic performances, by Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Hank Azaria and Dianne Wiest, among others.
But it also contains one of the best, and maybe most overlooked, performances of the great and lamented Gene Hackman, as a conservative senator. Hackman may have been overshadowed by Lane’s brilliance, but he’s genuinely hilarious. His irritable plea of “Brigid, I could really use some candy” has become a stock line in our house when a sweet tooth kicks in.
I love the moment when Dianne Wiest says, “Kevin, you could have fallen!” and he angrily replies, “I did!” Or his desperate yet hypnotic monologue about autumn leaves when he’s trying to make conversation. Or the way his face lights up when Nathan Lane enters in drag. Or his delivery of “I realize you want to get married, but how many lives do you have to ruin to do it?”
It all culminates with the plaintive, somehow hopeful expression on his face when he shows up in drag himself at the end, and his terrified delivery of “Don’t leave me; I don’t want to be the only girl not dancing!” Hackman is remembered as a dramatic actor; this movie shows that he wore the comic mask with equal skill.
