Book #39: “Friday The 13th” by Simon Hawke
Friday The 13th
Simon Hawke
Released: January 1st, 1987
My 9th book for 2024 was Simon Hawke’s "Friday the 13th”. This was based on the screenplay by Victor Miller.
I remember the first time I ever saw a Jason Voorhees movie was August 15th, 2003. I had just completed my 9th grade orientation, and my parents took me to see my first "R" rated film as a teenager in the movie theater. I had been following the news all summer. Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street films was going to take on Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films in massive blockbuster. I had never seen an entry in either series, but after all the hype surrounding it, I wasn't going to let this opportunity to see the newest one slip away. I saw it in Hagerstown, Maryland, at the Regal Cinema inside the Valley Mall. I was blown away by it. I had to know more.
Over the next year, I went from renting James Bond movies at the local blockbuster, to renting Friday the 13th movies. I remember watching this one sometime in late 2003 or early 2004. I was in the basement of my house at Clearview Terrace. It was one of the first films I had rented on DVD. It was good, but certainly not nearly as scary as some of the other entries in the series. Part 7 was my first original Friday the 13th film. I purchased the DVD from Suncoast as I was leaving the theater that day.
Years later, I discovered that there were a series of novels written in the late 80's that novelized the film series. I had begun to seek them out. I've been searching for these novels for 2 decades now. They were available online, but for some pretty hefty prices. Presently, on Amazon.com, you can pick up this novel for $3,999. Not including the shipping cost. This was a bit out of my price range. A couple days ago, I found them available on my Kindle for $4.99. I picked them up, and have begun to read them, and relive exactly what got me into the series in the first place: the stories.
As a teenager, blood and gore were hallmarks of scary slasher films. The more brutal the kill, the more I wanted to watch it to see just what could "shock" me next, and give me a frightening chill. I used to love staying up late at night with my friends on Friday and Saturday nights eating food and letting the movies roll in our VCRs and DVD players. As I read this book, I could hear the soundtrack to the movie playing along in my head based on the various scenes.
Friday the 13th always captivated me. Crystal Lake seemed so interesting. It's rather funny to think about, but where most people deride the films as being over-glorified violence, cheap disgusting gore, and reckless teenage premarital sex, the mythology really hit me hard. I have this strange fascination with the period of time from the 1950's to the 1990's. When I think about the 1950's, I picture it as the "ideal" time to be alive. The world was at peace. Countries were still rebuilding from the devastation caused during World War 2 the previous decade. Businesses were grown. A new generation was growing up in a different world. Dances were popular. Summer Camps taught useful life skills and allowed children to go outdoors for some fresh air, and recreation. Admittedly so, not every person shares my utopian outlook for the decade. Racism and sexism were much more visible at the time, but those are not the elements I glorify in what is referred to as the "Golden Era".
I picture being at the camp in 1957, 1958. What would it have been like to be a camper when one of your fellow bunkmates drowned in the lake? How painful must it have been for his mother to be working there and receiving the horrific news? What about the next year when 2 camp counselors were murdered? The camp had shut down. They tried reopening it in the early 60's, but arson attacks, and poisoned water in 1962 prevented that from happening.
Flash forward 20 years to the present day (in the novel). June 13th, 1979, Steve Christy works to reopen the camp and shed the "Camp Blood" legacy that has notoriously engulfed the once thriving summer camp. So many questions to wonder. Why is Steve so determined to make this camp work again? Who are the counselors? What are their stories? Where did they come from?
I certainly have put way more thought and effort into this film series than a lot probably ever had. Having the opportunity to finally read these seemingly long obscure paperback novels was a real treat, and I learned even more about the characters in my favorite film series. It was great to see these stories in a new light, words on paper. A new medium. It was well worth it.
The only downside is, the version I downloaded didn't transfer over well when the person who did the conversion brought it to the digital format. The editing is a bit off at best, so sometimes you'll come to a word that doesn't make sense, but you see where the computer software had tried to make it something sensible, yet out of place. The spacing can be a bit odd as well. But then again, for a chance to read the novel, worth it.
Here is what I learned:
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- Summer camps are run on shoestring budgets by small town families.
- The Christy’s run Camp Crystal Lake.
- Steve Christy is the Camp Director.
- Aside from the lake, the camp features a corral of horses and a small fortune in sporting goods equipment.
- Older kids served as camp counselors and doubled as the setup crew.
- Claudette is a guitar player and singer.
- Small towns don’t change much over the years. If anything, they get even smaller. The children grow up and move away to bigger towns and bigger opportunities. Those few that stay behind replaced the old folks as they died.
- Each town has particular stories that are told over and over. Crystal Lake’s big story was Camp Blood. A series of misfortunate events that occurred at the local summer camp.
- Jason Voorhees drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957. His body was never found.
- Pamela Voorhees was Jason’s mother.
- 2 camp counselors were murdered in 1958. The killer was never found.
- The camp suffered from several arson attacks.
- In 1962, the camp was about to reopen, but the water was bad.
- Crazy Ralph is a notorious alcoholic.
- Ralph is married.
- Ralph rides a Swim Newsboy Special bicycle.
- Police Officer Dorf rides a Harley Davidson Electra-Glide.
- He uses the 10-Code on the radio despite only 4 officers existing in Crystal Lake.
- Dork dreamed of being an officer for either the NYPD or LAPD.
- Annie Phillips lived for her job as a camp counselor and cook in various countrysides. It helped her to escape big city life.
- Ed Brian’s dog Winslow greets Annie after she hikes into town.
- Big Dave is the radio DJ the locals listen to in Crystal Lake’s coffee shop.
- Camp Crystal Lake is 10 miles from the coffee shop.
- Trudy works behind the counter at the coffee shop.
- The camp houses 50 campers and 7 staff. Most of the campers are inner city children.
- Steve Christy’s parents are crazy and broke.
- Steve spent $25,000 (in 1979) over the course of a year to reopen the camp.
- Ned Rubinstein made the honor roll every year since starting high school. As a reward, his dad helped him get a brand new Chevy pickup truck.
- He was set to start school at UCLA in the fall.
- Jack Kendall and Marcie Gilchrist met senior year. They both plan to go off to different schools in different states, but signed up for the same camp to spend one last summer together.
- Jack and Marcie have been abstinent.
- Camp Crystal Lake was established in 1935.
- The camp’s failures had ruined Steve’s father.
- Alice Hardy is from Los Angeles, California.
- Steve and Alice have a complicated relationship together. He wants to finish the camp and sell it, she wants him to sell it and move on with their lives and relationship.
- According to Ned, there was a fad in NYC in the late 70’s for pet stores to sell baby crocodiles.
- Alice is seeing both Steve and a man named John in LA.
- Brenda is a vegetarian.
- Officer Dorf’s radio handle is “Cycle 2”
- Ned christens Crazy Ralph as “The mad prophet of Crystal Lake”.
- Jack smokes marijuana.
- Marcie likes her hamburgers rare.
- The camp has an emergency generator for power outages.
- The power lines in Crystal Lake are said to be “lousy”.
- Bill’s uncle has a cabin in Maine.
- Alice’s father was a commodities broker.
- He literally worked himself to death of a coronary.
- Jack muses about sex, pregnancy, commitment.
- Marcie muses about graffiti on bathroom walls.
- She has been on the pill for 8 months.
- Steve dislikes going into town because all the townspeople stare at him in judgment.
- Steve’s dedication to the camp is driven by his longing to restore the family name.
- “I’ll make a go of that damn place. I’ll make a go of it and show them what a bunch of superstitious nonsense all this stuff about ‘Camp Blood’ is. I’l show them they were wrong about it, just like they were wrong about my father. A man, whose only curse was an incredibly pathetic run of the worst luck in the world. And it would serve them right if I sold the goddamned place for a healthy profit to some real estate developer who would come in and put up condos.”
- Steve and Alice share different perspectives. Alice sees the Crystal Lake as an opportunity to sell lakefront property. Steve knows that is impossible, unless there is a benefit to going there, due to Crystal Lake being an economically depressed small town.
- Steve thinks about dedication and commitment to work in America, and the power of never giving up.
- “There had to be production. People had to get back to working with their hands. They had to have faith in themselves, in their own abilities, in the American spirit. Even the Japanese were saying that.”
- “Soichiro Honda had started with a small repair shop in Hamamatsu in 1928 and built it up into a factory producing piston rings; a factory that was bombed to smithereens during the war. But he hadn’t given up. After the war, he started up all over again, founding the Honda Technical Research Institute. It was an impressive sounding name, but the Institute had actually been only a wooden shed, measuring 18x12 feet. Honda had bought 500 army surplus engines, hired a few workers, and stuck the engines into bicycles.”
- He laments that his family’s failures had been the direct result of the Crystal Lake citizens.
- “If there was any curse upon his family, he thought, it had been put there by some of the locals who didn’t want to see the camp succeed.”
- Sandy the waitress is the only person in town who seems to treat Steve’s ambitions with politeness and respect.
- Late-70’s Era Jeeps are not ideal vehicles to pull trailers. They are too light and the wheel bases are too short.
- Brenda is reading a book about vampires on a Mississippi river boat.
- She is into horror movies.
- Bill plays the guitar.
- He is more of a finger picker than a strummer.
- Alice fantasizes about Bill.
- The novel implies in detail that Alice shows interest in multiple men, where the movie displays her as somewhat more reserved.
- Alice uses her padded elbow to break the window glass of the office vs using an object in the film.
- The phone line had been chopped with a machete.
- Steve gets his Jeep stuck I. The mud after he swerved to avoid hitting a deer.
- Steve considers Officer Dorf to be Crystal Lake’s answer to Don Knotts.
- Sgt. Tierney gives Steve a lift back to camp.
- Tierney has to cut the ride short after getting recalled to the highway for a Code Niner fatal car accident.
- Steve’s final thought is that he could do nothing to save the kids at camp.
- Upon his arrival at Crystal Lake, Bill stopped in for breakfast at the General Store and spoke with some of the locals.
- Mrs. Voorhees is strong enough to launch adult human bodies through glass windows.
- Mrs. Voorhees used to work for the Christies.
- The camp counselors who were supposed to be watching Jason were making love as he was drowning.
- Pam was the camp’s former cook in the late 1950’s.
- Jason was not a very good swimmer.
- Jason’s birthday is June 13th.
- Mrs. Voorhees had been driving around committed the murders with Annie’s corpse in the passenger seat of her Jeep.
- Steve’s father kept Pamela on as cook even after Jason drowned.
- Steve kept a rifle in the office.
- Alice had been completely against the rifle, but now saw it as her only chance for survival.
- The author’s repetitive use of words to talk about Pamela’s hatred of teenagers for what happened, displays just how far her mind is now. She is complete mad and deranged.
- Alice is given 20 milligrams of valium in the hospital.
- Sgt. Tierney was a war vet. The sight of the bodies around the camp was worse than anything he had seen in combat.
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