All my life, I’ve admired the long game. Someone willing to take a slight from childhood, nurture it into a grudge, build into an obsession, and end as a singular fixation that explodes in violence. Knee jerk reactions are easy, and usually the province of the simple-minded. Shaping, honing, and clarifying over decades? A special club indeed, and usually indicative of superior intelligence and a willingness to delay gratification. After all, everything depends on what might occur. Anything could intervene, but you, the practitioner of said long game, believe all is moving towards one very particular result. It’s the inevitability that motivates, provided we never deviate from our goal. In lieu of a life, we have our all-consuming plans. Helps keep the demons at bay.
Pamela Voorhees is just such a woman. Impregnated at fifteen, abandoned, then forced to deliver a hydrocephalic baby, any dreams were necessarily deferred in favor of sheltering the one and only thing that needed her. As such, she became hyper-protective, refusing to send the lad to school and trying against all odds to provide a normal life. You scrape by, taking whatever comes, until Camp Crystal Lake unexpectedly calls back. We have an opening. Sure, it’s just a cook, but it pays well, and the kids will love you. And hey, free room and board over the summer sound pretty damn good. Gives you the chance to save so that September through May aren’t so bad. Fun, sun, and an opportunity for your baby boy to feel normal for a change. What could go wrong?
Summers pass, and we finally reach 1957. That fatal year that would, unknowingly, begin a chain of events that would result in at least three dozen deaths, most occurring within minutes of coitus. A historic bloodbath, all because of a mistake. No one’s fault, really, only Mama Voorhees doesn’t see it that way. She was working, dammit, and you were supposed to be watching the boy. But as counselors stripped bare and pounded away, little Jason, tired of the isolation, decided that on this day, he would show the world. He could swim, he believed, and no one would say otherwise. So as the roar of orgasm filled the air, Jason ambled down to the lake. The Crystal Lake of legend. Like Icarus to the sun, he flew too high. Hubris reigned. He could not, in fact, swim, and he sunk to the bottom like a stone. Dead, before ever learning to fly. The body was never found, but we can assume. And yes, a mother knows.
Such scandals often destroy an organization, but the camp continued. Ms. Voorhees was appalled. Instinctively, she murdered two counselors the next year. Another closure. A re-launch in 1962 was met with mysterious fires and a poisoned water supply, though no one could prove who did it. Pamela danced between the raindrops, more legend than flesh and blood. At last, it was decided that the camp would remain shuttered forever. Too much pain, and a madwoman on the loose. But in 1979, new money arrived on scene. Surely no one remembers. And Ms. Voorhees, well, she must be long dead. No one could possibly nurse revenge that long. A new paint job, some clean sheets, and voila, a summer locale for the drunk and horny was reborn. The future was bright.
Only Pamela lurked. Spied from the woods. Counted every last car that drove through the camp. There will not be frivolity on this sacred ground. Not while I live and breathe. My boy is gone, and I am far from satisfied. And so begins the final stand. The battle royale. The big wrap-up so the world will never forget. My pain will become yours, and I alone will forever connect sex with death; in the movies most of all. Like a jealous god, I will punish all sinners. Hard cocks are but a hard ticket to the graveyard. In pieces, if necessary.
She begins with Annie: throat slashed in the woods. Then comes Ned, another Colombian necktie while resting in a cabin. Jack will be next, pierced with an arrow. Marcie, slammed with an axe in the bathroom. Brenda meets her end on an archery range. Steve, stabbed in the heart. And Bill, sweet Bill, checks out with the standard throat slitting. Seven murders, all technically innocent, but they all fit the bill. They were here, they were aroused, and they must die. While the number of victims remains impressive, it bears repeating that several meet their end in ways seemingly impossible if the perpetrator is, as it is here, an aging woman in a bad sweater. Men – heavy men, mind you – are nailed to doors. Hung upside-down. And a woman, no burly beefcake, but still topping 100 pounds, is tossed through a window. These are feats of great strength. Admirable, in their own sick way. After all, how do you slip away undetected in such a relatively small space and kill damn near everybody?
Because of the long game. It imbues the spirit with the sort of adrenaline usually reserved for children and collapsed car jacks and a parent crushed underneath. Over two decades since her child’s senseless death and she’s still got a full tank. Passion to burn. Scorched earth as a matter of policy. “Kill her mommy, kill her! Kill! Kill!” Save that mantra, an empty mind. Breathing, yes, a meal or two, and some sleep, but otherwise all day every day, a repeating record that never skips, never tires. She had the air of immortality about her, until Alice. Fierce, fearless Alice, armed with a machete. She’d take off Pamela’s head that fateful day, though we never quite believed the body had died. It seemed as if she’d just pick up the pumpkin, twist and turn, and be back on the road in no time. A mother’s love that never fails to move mountains.
Despite all the sequels, reboots, video games, and rumored Broadway musicals, Friday the 13th as an American institution begins and ends, in my mind, with Pamela Voorhees. She alone had the guts, the fortitude, and iron will to avenge the incompetence of a two-bit summer camp that couldn’t see fit to hire good and decent counselors. She was the Luigi of her time, exposing rot through revolutionary bloodletting. And, God love her, she refused to allow revisionism to take hold. This was a crime scene, a holy shrine where youth’s flower met an untimely end, not some beer-soaked whorehouse. And you seek to profit from all this pain? Not on my watch. Not ever. A righteous stand by a woman with the sort of grit too often overlooked. A maniac, yes, but an American original. And a son who rose from a watery grave to live, Jesus-like, forever. In our hearts most of all.
Leave a Reply