This is my first entry in my new blog series call “Five for Fridays”. It’s a top 5 list that I’ll post every Friday. Since I’m a horror movie fan and it happens to be Friday the 13th, I thought I’d start the series off with something fun for this dreary, rainy day. Be safe and please don’t trip over a tree log!
1. Jason Voorhees. Man that name is awesome. First off you have a fairly common first name, “Jason”. It could be anybody. Everybody knows a Jason! Then it’s finished with an odd name I had never heard before the series came out – “Vorhees”. Dutch, maybe? A long family name from a history of blood-thirsty Vikings? A phonetically aggressive rarity. It just permeates devastation. From the get-go the “Ja” sound is jarring to the long “a”. Like “Mayhem”. The “Vuh” sounds from “Voorhees” beckons the notions of “Vader” from Star Wars. Although not the killer in the first film, Jason carried the torch, (er knife, machete, corkscrew…) for his mom and then some.
2. Rarity. Rare but not more than any other day, apparently. Mathematically, the 13th of any given month is more likely to fall on a Friday than any other day! Holy Crap, better start stretching and get my cardio up so I can be prepared to run!
3. Ki Ki Ki, Ma Ma Ma. Harry Manfredini. He’s the guy that scored the sound in the movie. While working on the film, this brilliant composer wanted to have a sound play to let the audience know when the killer was present, much like the shark in “JAWS” (duh-duh. duh-duh., etc.) A lot of people think it’s “Ch-Ch-Ch… Ah-Ah-Ah…” but it’s actually “Ki Ki Ki, Ma Ma Ma”. Manfredini came up with this sound based on the line “Kill her Mommy” which Mrs. Voorhees (channeling her son) repeats at the end of the film. He took the first bits of the words. “Ki” from “Kill” and “Ma” from “Mommy”. He spoke the words into a mic “harshly and distinctively” and ran it through a reverberation machine to get the echoing effect.
4. Burlap Sack or Hockey Mask? Well as much as the hockey mask is the iconography now, it didn’t appear until midway in Chapter 3 when Jason knocks off the buffooning prankster Shelly who had a trick bag of props for his jokes. One which was a hockey mask. I think the burlap sack with one eye cut out is equally and sometimes more creepy than the hockey mask. The burlap sack has a straight up back-woods, white-trash, inbred killer effect. While the hockey mask has a slightly more sophisticated but filled with rage effect. I’m still trying to decide…
5. W.O.C. or Weapon of Choice. There are both brutal and hilarious kills in the Friday the 13th series. Jason’s weapon of choice is of course the ever-efficient machete. However Jason has used everything from: ice pick, sleeping bag, hacksaw, leather strap, book ends, party favor, weedwacker and Flying-V electric guitar to name a few. In Chapter 4 he ironically never uses a machete, but is killed by one!
below:
“The Voracious Voorhees”
graphite on paper
© 2015 Will L. Eskridge