How I Would Have Done FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)
In which the fact Jason's mother even exists, let alone she's the real killer, is actually foreshadowed. Also we get to the fun parts faster.
Once upon an October, in a month dedicated to horror films, Myopia Movies did an episode dedicated to the original Friday the 13th. You know, the one where Jason’s mother is the killer and not Jason himself. The film had some serious problems with Chekhov’s Gun —namely that Pamela Voorhees herself isn’t introduced until the very end of the film and there’s not even the smallest hint she’s the actual killer until she goes berserk.
Of course, as I’ve said before, anybody can complain. Here’s how I would have done the film. This article is adapted and expanded from my original blog post that I wrote to promote the episode when it first came out.
Prologue
*The canonical prologue takes place in 1958, where two counselors at Camp Crystal Lake sneak off to have sex and are attacked and killed by someone they seem to know. Then we cut to the late 1970s and the new counselor hitchhiking to the camp with one of the locals.
The problem I had with that ties in with the broader problem I had with the film—that Pamela Voorhees even exists isn’t revealed until the last 15 minutes, let alone that she’s the killer. I would set the prologue in 1957 and have cribbed the movie prologue from the comic Pamela’s Tale, which focuses on young Pamela. That summer, her sickly young son Jason, who’s attending Camp Crystal Lake, catches two counselors (let’s make them Barry and Claudette from the canonical film) having sex in the woods and Barry chases him into the lake, where he drowns.
Pamela, then a teenage single mother working in the kitchen, senses something is wrong or hears her son crying for help and rushes out, but is unable to save him. She lashes out at the counselors (perhaps with a machete conveniently lying around — foreshadowing) and then sets the camp kitchen on fire. The fire spreads, destroying much of the camp, and Pamela is arrested.
Act One
*It’s now 1979. New camp counselor Annie Phillips arrives in the town in New Jersey where Camp Crystal lake is located, but needs a ride to the camp itself that is in the final stages of being rebuilt. Ignoring the ranting of the elderly Crazy Ralph, Annie gets a ride from local trucker Enos, who while driving her to the camp passes by “the old Voorhees house” while regaling her about the camp’s troubled history. We learn that Pamela was recently released from prison after doing 20-odd years for the prologue rampage, but shut herself up in the house and hasn’t been seen since. Enos thinks she’s died and Annie expresses her sympathies. Enos drops her off at the camp entrance, but Annie is soon ambushed and killed by an unknown assailant.
*I’d tighten up the first half an hour or so more broadly, as it’s pretty dull. At one point every single one of the counselors piles into one of the cabins to kill a snake, which might be the filmmakers hanging a lampshade on just how unbelievably bored everybody must be. Night needs to fall faster so we can get to the teen hijinks like Brenda, Alice, and Bill’s Strip Monopoly and Marcie and Jack going off to have sex and then the killing. So Ned, Marcie, and Jack die generally like they do in canon, but then…
Act Two
*Another problem I had with the film was that the kills were too spread out, eliminating suspense and giving the cast a serious case of Too Dumb To Live. Consequently, I would have the counselors figure out what’s going on a lot earlier. Annie already didn’t show up like she was supposed to and when Ned goes missing too (perhaps he was originally supposed to participate in the Strip Monopoly as well and just had to go to the bathroom or something), Brenda, Alice, and Bill decide something fishy is going on. They put their clothes back on and start searching the camp. They find the corpses of Ned and Jack in the cabin and Marcie’s in the bathroom. They attempt to call the police to report the deaths, but the phone lines have been cut.
(This being the 1980s, nobody except super-rich New Yorkers have cell phones and maybe nobody knows how to operate the camp radio, assuming there even is one.)
At this point, they then decide discretion is the better part of valor and try to leave the campsite, but their cars have been disabled. Even though we haven’t met Mrs. Voorhees yet, we can see how dangerously clever she is — unlike her 300-pound muscle-mountain son she’s not going to realistically overpower an alerted adult opponent, so she strikes from ambush, has the technical skills to cut phone lines and sabotage vehicles, etc. You could even imply she learned all this in prison.
*Meanwhile, camp owner Steve Christy is returning to camp and he’s night-blinded with a flashlight and killed by an unknown assailant. Said assailant — Pamela Voorhees — then talks her way close enough to Brenda, Alice, and Bill, taking advantage of the fact that she’s a middle-aged woman and doesn’t appear to be remotely threatening. However, she seems remarkably knowledgeable about the recent deaths at the campsite, raising suspicions. Then…
Act Three
*Pamela goes into murder mode, killing Brenda with the machete in her opening attack and chasing Alice and Bill into one of the cabins. They barricade themselves inside and Pamela rails at them from outside, revealing her whole back-story and plan for revenge, much like she did to Alice in the canonical film. Knowing she can’t realistically wait them out, Pamela gets some gasoline and sets the cabin on fire just like she did so long ago. Interspersed with flashbacks to show how crazy she is? Bill and Alice have to jump out windows to avoid the flames and that’s when Pamela kills Bill. Although a middle-aged woman isn’t going to be beating a young man in a fistfight, if he’s just jumped out the window and hasn’t gotten up, it’s stabbing time. Then Pamela goes after Alice.
*In the canonical film, Alice is able to evade or injure Pamela multiple times, but repeatedly runs away from her only to have Pamela set on her again. I would have this happen once and then when Pamela attacks her again, Alice decides to kill Pamela, or at least injure her so badly that she won’t be getting up and coming after her. However, once Alice has knocked Pamela down and moves to finish her, Pamela hits her really hard in the head or stabs her with a hidden second weapon (perhaps a pocketknife), injuring her and leveling the playing field. This would make the final fight between the two much more suspenseful. Alice still wins and decapitates Pamela like in the canonical film.
*However, instead of her just paddling off in the canoe and having the “dead lake Jason nightmare sequence,” the police and/or fire department arrive, drawn by the smoke and fire from the burning cabin. Alice and the dead Mrs. Voorhees are loaded up into the ambulance and we cut to…
*DISFIGURED ADULT JASON WATCHING FROM THE WOODS. Although the Wikipedia article about the first movie states the creator didn't like making Jason into the villain of the later films when he was the victim of negligent camp staff, I think the "dead lake Jason" was included as a sequel hook. This would show that Jason is not in fact dead, but grew up into the mute and vengeful machete-machine we all know and love.
You guys like? It keeps the few good parts of the film (Mrs. Voorhees as a tactical genius with a very understandable beef with the camp), but tightens it up and makes it a lot more suspenseful.
Although I’d said I’d do “How I Would Have Done Death Ring” this week, I figured more people would have seen Friday The 13th. Future “how I would have done it” posts will be behind the paywall — if you’re liking what you’re seeing here, sign up for a Substack premium subscription below or go to my Patreon. This month’s premium post will be how I would have done Death Ring, January’s will be how I would have done Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and February’s will be how I would have done The Last Starfighter.