5 Frightful Tales for Friday the 13th

When I was first asked to do a list of films to mark Friday the 13th….well I’ll be honest, I may have sobbed a bit. Quietly. Just out of sight.

There are twelve films in the Friday the 13th series, including the one where Jason went into space, the one with Freddy Krueger and the remake. That is a lot of time I am not going to get back.

Thankfully I was assured I could pick *any* five films I wanted, as long as they're horror pictures.

You can imagine the relief. So here we go – five different horror films, for five different moods, and five different frights.

For the Gorehounds: Night of the Living Dead [George A Romero (1968)]

The original and still arguably the best zombie film, Romero starts proceedings with typical B-movie tropes. The opening feels amateurish, overlong, another cheaply made independent picture. Then as the shock of a sudden zombie attack changes the tone, Romero injects the proceedings with an increasing sense of tension. Gruesome imagery lead to an unforgettable climax. A deathless horror classic.

For the Film Snobs: Peeping Tom [Michael Powell (1960)]

Not only was this picture about a murderous psychopath who films his victims at the moment of their deaths – with the audience made implicit by sharing his visual point of view – banned, it ended the career of film-maker Michael Powell. Carl Boehm plays the cherubic Mark, whose mind has been distorted by the invasive psychiatric theories of his father. His crimes are in fact a twisted continuation of the father’s work. Peeping Tom is innovative, chilling – and even features a dance number performed by Moira Shearer, the star of Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. Unmissable.

For the Conspiracy Fans: The Shining [Stanley Kubrick (1980)]

Stephen King disowned this cinematic adaptation of his haunted house story – then later (in 1997) directed his own television miniseries starring Rebecca De Mornay. Kubrick’s earlier film is a tour de force of audio and visual depth, a layered masterpiece of technique. It’s a nightmarish echo chamber that draws in the audience and allows their imagination to drag them deeper. Recent documentary Room 237 for one demonstrates just how much fascination the film still holds.

For the Romantics: Braindead (Dead Alive) [Peter Jackson (1992)]

While Shaun of the Dead popularized the ‘rom-zom-com’ term, Peter Jackson had already ploughed that gunky furrow with this gruesome comedy. Timothy Balme and Diana Peñalver play our star-crossed lovers Lionel and Paquita (“zoo….what is zoo?”). Standing between them is Lionel’s terrifying mother (Elizabeth Moody, unforgettable), who is then zombified by a weird rat-creature.

Cue kickboxing priests, undead sex and a very Freudian final confrontation between Lionel and Mother. Also, a lawn-mower figures prominently in the proceedings. Finally, a romantic comedy that trades suggestive glances for gushes of bodily fluids of all kinds flying at the screen. One more time everyone – I kick arse for the Lord!

For the Chills: Ringu (Ring) [Hideo Nakata (1998)]

Hideo Nakata’s film is Kubrickian in its use of sounds and repetitive images. That it takes the theme of Koji Suzuki’s novel – which updates traditional Japanese ghost stories to modern times – and then uses film to illustrate how this takes place shows not only an understanding of storytelling, but a fantastic technical imagination as well.

Ringu terrifies because it stays in the memory. Its scares are based around the idea of a virus that passes from host to host – just as viewers of this film are then compelled to share it with others, in case maybe there is something….other happening here. 

-Emmet O'Cuana