April 20: Classic horror movies
A lady from church gave me crap once for a newspaper column I'd written praising the Friday the 13th movies.
"How could you?" she asked. "Those movies are violent and they're filled with satanic imagery."
It's a Baptist church, by the way, and this should tell you that the people who go there believe that the Bible is more than a collection of nice stories. I thought of quoting my favourite living Christian apologist, Greg Koukl, who often points out that the Bible is rated R. You want to talk violence? There's one scene in there where the prophet Samuel chops an evil king up into little pieces - mostly because Saul wasn't badass enough to do it himself. Yeah yeah - I know that Samuel was an emissary for the Lord whereas Jason Voorhees, the villain of the Friday the 13th movies (exception: the first one where Jason's mother, Pamela, did the killings) is not.
Actually, that may not be precisely true. You could build the argument that Jason has something in common with the Old testament God. Even so, I am not going to suggest that the Friday the 13th movies are appropriate viewing for a Sunday School class (although I'd rather a new Christian watch Friday the 13th, or even a Marilyn Manson concert, than listen to a sermon preached by Joel Osteen.) That wasn't the point of my original column and it's not the point of this follow-up note either. The point I am trying to make is that although the Friday the 13th movies are filled with blood and gore, you could still make the argument that they come from a Christian worldview.
But just because something has a Christian worldview doesn't necessarily mean it's a Christian movie. Martin Scorsee's movie, Goodfellas, has a Christian worldview. In it we meet a man who is too lazy and too selfish to work for a living, so he becomes an associate of the mob. For years he lives the good life - raking in the dough, developing a drug habit, cheating on his wife - until everything comes crashing down. He winds up having to betray the people who set him up in his gangster lifestyle just to avoid jailtime.
Scorsese made Goodfellas again two more times - once he called it Casino and the other time he called it The Wolf of Wall Street. All three films deal with people who are given access to untold wealth and then the facade comes crashing down on them. All three films are known for their extensive use of expletives, violence, portrayal of drug use, and sex. I'd probably be uncomfortable watching any of those films with the Lord, though, like I said, I find more edification in Scorsese than Joel Osteen.
I think this means my point stands. Friday the 13th is not a Christian movie though it does have a Christian worldview. That means there is something we can learn from them.
A caveat before I go on... when I talk about Friday the 13th, I am talking about the original and the first two sequels. I am not talking about Friday the 13th part IV: The Final Chapter or the 2009 remake. (which I reviewed for a christian film review website.) This is because the Friday teh 13th movies started to nosedive into degeneracy starting with part IV. The profanity became more intense, the nudity became full-frontal, and Crispin Glover started starring in them. The first three movies were more innocent - or perhaps I should say were "Degenerate Lite." What sucks about this is that Jason didn't start wearing his trademark goalie mask until one third of the way through part III, which means you have to watch a profane Friday teh 13th movie if you want to witness vintage Jason.
I was 12 when I saw my first Friday the 13th movie. I begged my dad to let me watch one and he finally relented. We watched it in the TV room of our suburban home in southwest Calgary . The people at the video store didn't have the original Friday teh 13th so I had to content myself with part II. I was angry because I wanted to see the story from the very beginning. I gues I was too stupid to realize that the Friday the 13th movies are all the same. The structure is that a homicidal maniac hacks up a whole lot of people (mostly with a machete) until someone kills him (or, in the case of the original Friday the 13th, her.)
Dad and I watched the movie. The first person to get killed was this blonde girl who found someone's severed head in her fridge.Then Jason stuck an icepick in her head. The next person to get killed was an old man who had barbed wire pulled through his neck. Then a police hammer had his skull bashed in with the back of a hammer. I can't remember what order the kills came in after that. I know a kid in a wheel chair had a machete driven through his head and a teenaged boy an girl had a spear shoved through their bodies after Jason discovered them fornicating in bed (a similar thing happens in the book of Numbers and it actually results in a plague being lifted from the Israelites.) Even so, I don't think the screenwriter was using the Pentateuch as inspiration. His motivation was probably a dollar sign.
When the movie was over, my dad looked sad. I don't think he was sad at how bad the movie was, he just wished his son found edification in more uplifting fare like 101 Dalmatians or Mary Poppins. I went to bed and I slept well. I was not afraid that Jason was hiding in my closet and I was pleased with my maturity. I had no nightmares. The next morning I had a new mission in life, which was to see the other three Friday the 13th movies as soon as possible.
At that time, Friday the 13th, part IV: The Final Chapter was playing in theatres. It was rated PG-13 and the person working at the movie theatre would not let me in without an adult. I had better luck with Donnie Emberger, the fat kid in Grade 7, wgho said he had all three of the first Friday teh 13th movies on tape. "We rent them and then we tape 'em at home," he said. "Can I borrow it?" I asked. "No, but you can come over and watch it at my place."
So I went to Donnie Emberger's house one Saturday and I watched Friday the 13th parts I and III. I watched them sitting on the old green couch in the living room of the duplex that Donnie's mother owned. As I watched the movie, Donnie sat on the floor and played with his Mr. T and Hulk Hogan action figures. I asked him if he was going to watch the movies with me and he said no, he'd seen them a few times already and they were kind of lame.
Halfway through Friday the 13th part III, Donnie's mother came home from grocery shopping. She yelled at Donnie to put the groceries away and then she yelled at him to clean the kitchen and then she yelled at him to feed the dog and the fish and to flush the toilet and to clean his room. Donnie was kept busy for the rest of the movie. His mother sat down in an easy chair near the couch and chain smoked through the rest of the movie. She didn't say a thing. Not even: "Oh gross" at that scene near the end where Jason picks up one of the counsellors by the head and squeezes so hard that the guy's eyeballs pop out of his head.
Soon I had to leave because Donnie's dad was coming by to take Donnie to a hockey game. As I walked home, I made the following observations:
1. Donnie's mother didn't seem to care at all that her son had the Friday the 13th movies on video. This indicated that Donnie not only enjoyed the movies, he felt they were worth preserving. Further, she didn't seem to care that I was watching it too. There were no queries - "nare you sure this is a movie your parents would let you watch?" or "do you mind if I pump your developing little body full of carcinogens and second hand smoke?" In fact, Mrs. Emberger didn't even introduce herself. She treated me like a plant. This told me that Donnie probably wasn't getting a whole lot of motherly love at home and was, essentially, raising himself.
2. I know plenty of well-meaning stupid people who believe that an early obsession with horror movies is a sure sign of a potential serial killer. But Donnie never became a serial killer. He became a bank manager, which is kind of the same thing. I don't think that kids who are fascinated with horror are devil worshippers. I think that they're just coming to grips with their own mortality and horror is one way of doing that.
I used to be a horror buff. Looking through my DVD collection, I note a few horror titles - Silence of the Lambs, Creepshow, Se7en, the Shining, the original Carrie, a bunch of low grade slasher flicks I bought for $1.99 at Wal-Mart.
When I was a kid, my friend, Ozi, and I rented a movie called The Unholy, which was about a demon that killed priests in Catholic churches. The demon would tempt the priests with what they desired most (according to The Unholy, what the majority of priests desire most is a shapely redhead wearing see-through black lingere - which probably isn't too far from the truth.) The demon-model (also known as a succubus) would approach the priest, he would kiss her, then she would kill him and he would go to hell. The movie is completely ignorant of the doctrine of justification by faith. Instead, it believes what Hamlet believed, that your eternal destiny is decided by what you're doing when you die.
At the end of The Unholy, a priest defeated Satan and cast him into hell, but the priest became blind for life as a result. Because of its ignorance of justification by faith, the Unholy is not a Christian movie and it doesn't have a Christian worldview. The Friday the 13th movies make no theological pronouncements but the message it leaves its audience with is nothing short of parental.
The kids who die in the Friday the 13th movies are all stupid. They drink alcohol, they do drugs, they have sex. The kids who live to see another day are all angels. They refuse the joint when it's passed to them and they roll their eyes when their unmarried friends announce they're going upstairs for a roll in the hay.
At this point, the moral of this 20th century morality play should become as crystal clear as Crystal Lake. It is this: Do not drink alcohol, do not do drugs, and do not have premarital sex. If you do, a man in a goalie mask will shove a machete down your throat.
"How could you?" she asked. "Those movies are violent and they're filled with satanic imagery."
It's a Baptist church, by the way, and this should tell you that the people who go there believe that the Bible is more than a collection of nice stories. I thought of quoting my favourite living Christian apologist, Greg Koukl, who often points out that the Bible is rated R. You want to talk violence? There's one scene in there where the prophet Samuel chops an evil king up into little pieces - mostly because Saul wasn't badass enough to do it himself. Yeah yeah - I know that Samuel was an emissary for the Lord whereas Jason Voorhees, the villain of the Friday the 13th movies (exception: the first one where Jason's mother, Pamela, did the killings) is not.
Actually, that may not be precisely true. You could build the argument that Jason has something in common with the Old testament God. Even so, I am not going to suggest that the Friday the 13th movies are appropriate viewing for a Sunday School class (although I'd rather a new Christian watch Friday the 13th, or even a Marilyn Manson concert, than listen to a sermon preached by Joel Osteen.) That wasn't the point of my original column and it's not the point of this follow-up note either. The point I am trying to make is that although the Friday the 13th movies are filled with blood and gore, you could still make the argument that they come from a Christian worldview.
But just because something has a Christian worldview doesn't necessarily mean it's a Christian movie. Martin Scorsee's movie, Goodfellas, has a Christian worldview. In it we meet a man who is too lazy and too selfish to work for a living, so he becomes an associate of the mob. For years he lives the good life - raking in the dough, developing a drug habit, cheating on his wife - until everything comes crashing down. He winds up having to betray the people who set him up in his gangster lifestyle just to avoid jailtime.
Scorsese made Goodfellas again two more times - once he called it Casino and the other time he called it The Wolf of Wall Street. All three films deal with people who are given access to untold wealth and then the facade comes crashing down on them. All three films are known for their extensive use of expletives, violence, portrayal of drug use, and sex. I'd probably be uncomfortable watching any of those films with the Lord, though, like I said, I find more edification in Scorsese than Joel Osteen.
Jason umasked
I think this means my point stands. Friday the 13th is not a Christian movie though it does have a Christian worldview. That means there is something we can learn from them.
A caveat before I go on... when I talk about Friday the 13th, I am talking about the original and the first two sequels. I am not talking about Friday the 13th part IV: The Final Chapter or the 2009 remake. (which I reviewed for a christian film review website.) This is because the Friday teh 13th movies started to nosedive into degeneracy starting with part IV. The profanity became more intense, the nudity became full-frontal, and Crispin Glover started starring in them. The first three movies were more innocent - or perhaps I should say were "Degenerate Lite." What sucks about this is that Jason didn't start wearing his trademark goalie mask until one third of the way through part III, which means you have to watch a profane Friday teh 13th movie if you want to witness vintage Jason.
I was 12 when I saw my first Friday the 13th movie. I begged my dad to let me watch one and he finally relented. We watched it in the TV room of our suburban home in southwest Calgary . The people at the video store didn't have the original Friday teh 13th so I had to content myself with part II. I was angry because I wanted to see the story from the very beginning. I gues I was too stupid to realize that the Friday the 13th movies are all the same. The structure is that a homicidal maniac hacks up a whole lot of people (mostly with a machete) until someone kills him (or, in the case of the original Friday the 13th, her.)
The immortal Betsy Palmer mere seconds before her onscreen decapitation
Dad and I watched the movie. The first person to get killed was this blonde girl who found someone's severed head in her fridge.Then Jason stuck an icepick in her head. The next person to get killed was an old man who had barbed wire pulled through his neck. Then a police hammer had his skull bashed in with the back of a hammer. I can't remember what order the kills came in after that. I know a kid in a wheel chair had a machete driven through his head and a teenaged boy an girl had a spear shoved through their bodies after Jason discovered them fornicating in bed (a similar thing happens in the book of Numbers and it actually results in a plague being lifted from the Israelites.) Even so, I don't think the screenwriter was using the Pentateuch as inspiration. His motivation was probably a dollar sign.
When the movie was over, my dad looked sad. I don't think he was sad at how bad the movie was, he just wished his son found edification in more uplifting fare like 101 Dalmatians or Mary Poppins. I went to bed and I slept well. I was not afraid that Jason was hiding in my closet and I was pleased with my maturity. I had no nightmares. The next morning I had a new mission in life, which was to see the other three Friday the 13th movies as soon as possible.
At that time, Friday the 13th, part IV: The Final Chapter was playing in theatres. It was rated PG-13 and the person working at the movie theatre would not let me in without an adult. I had better luck with Donnie Emberger, the fat kid in Grade 7, wgho said he had all three of the first Friday teh 13th movies on tape. "We rent them and then we tape 'em at home," he said. "Can I borrow it?" I asked. "No, but you can come over and watch it at my place."
So I went to Donnie Emberger's house one Saturday and I watched Friday the 13th parts I and III. I watched them sitting on the old green couch in the living room of the duplex that Donnie's mother owned. As I watched the movie, Donnie sat on the floor and played with his Mr. T and Hulk Hogan action figures. I asked him if he was going to watch the movies with me and he said no, he'd seen them a few times already and they were kind of lame.
We were married later in a small ceremony
Halfway through Friday the 13th part III, Donnie's mother came home from grocery shopping. She yelled at Donnie to put the groceries away and then she yelled at him to clean the kitchen and then she yelled at him to feed the dog and the fish and to flush the toilet and to clean his room. Donnie was kept busy for the rest of the movie. His mother sat down in an easy chair near the couch and chain smoked through the rest of the movie. She didn't say a thing. Not even: "Oh gross" at that scene near the end where Jason picks up one of the counsellors by the head and squeezes so hard that the guy's eyeballs pop out of his head.
It's okay. He just wants to see Miley Cyrus.
Soon I had to leave because Donnie's dad was coming by to take Donnie to a hockey game. As I walked home, I made the following observations:
1. Donnie's mother didn't seem to care at all that her son had the Friday the 13th movies on video. This indicated that Donnie not only enjoyed the movies, he felt they were worth preserving. Further, she didn't seem to care that I was watching it too. There were no queries - "nare you sure this is a movie your parents would let you watch?" or "do you mind if I pump your developing little body full of carcinogens and second hand smoke?" In fact, Mrs. Emberger didn't even introduce herself. She treated me like a plant. This told me that Donnie probably wasn't getting a whole lot of motherly love at home and was, essentially, raising himself.
2. I know plenty of well-meaning stupid people who believe that an early obsession with horror movies is a sure sign of a potential serial killer. But Donnie never became a serial killer. He became a bank manager, which is kind of the same thing. I don't think that kids who are fascinated with horror are devil worshippers. I think that they're just coming to grips with their own mortality and horror is one way of doing that.
I used to be a horror buff. Looking through my DVD collection, I note a few horror titles - Silence of the Lambs, Creepshow, Se7en, the Shining, the original Carrie, a bunch of low grade slasher flicks I bought for $1.99 at Wal-Mart.
When I was a kid, my friend, Ozi, and I rented a movie called The Unholy, which was about a demon that killed priests in Catholic churches. The demon would tempt the priests with what they desired most (according to The Unholy, what the majority of priests desire most is a shapely redhead wearing see-through black lingere - which probably isn't too far from the truth.) The demon-model (also known as a succubus) would approach the priest, he would kiss her, then she would kill him and he would go to hell. The movie is completely ignorant of the doctrine of justification by faith. Instead, it believes what Hamlet believed, that your eternal destiny is decided by what you're doing when you die.
Gingers have no souls.
At the end of The Unholy, a priest defeated Satan and cast him into hell, but the priest became blind for life as a result. Because of its ignorance of justification by faith, the Unholy is not a Christian movie and it doesn't have a Christian worldview. The Friday the 13th movies make no theological pronouncements but the message it leaves its audience with is nothing short of parental.
The kids who die in the Friday the 13th movies are all stupid. They drink alcohol, they do drugs, they have sex. The kids who live to see another day are all angels. They refuse the joint when it's passed to them and they roll their eyes when their unmarried friends announce they're going upstairs for a roll in the hay.
At this point, the moral of this 20th century morality play should become as crystal clear as Crystal Lake. It is this: Do not drink alcohol, do not do drugs, and do not have premarital sex. If you do, a man in a goalie mask will shove a machete down your throat.
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