After serving up the puerile pizza of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, Sean S. Cunningham found even more unlikely success but with a much higher calibre of exploitation when he directed the first of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series. This set in motion the most enduring of all post-war horror franchises. Before I delve into reviewing each movie over the next fortnight, I highly recommend fans of the series get this fantastic panoramic documentary, which examines the making of each film in geek-tastic detail across seven hours. It even includes the three season TV series. Unlike a lot of documentaries, the makers show the writers, directors and producer Frank Mancuso Jr voicing some criticism along with the inevitable group love-in. I don't look for dissent in these things, but it always comes across as more realistic when filmmakers are allowed this in the final edit. Occasional disappointment is expressed at how a planned vision was carried out, directors Danny Steinman and John Beuchler come under limited fire for their hack work or inexperience respectively.
One of the valuable aspects of an epic series overview like this is in mapping out the perils of how to keep a long-running franchise fresh. They usually follow a set course: the difficult 'second and third album' issues of trying to give fans reimaginings of the same template for a while, followed by an inevitable shark-jumping into understandable refreshment risks with a tired format, then culminating in poor box office results that inspire the concerned producers to then revert back to what they hope is a still lucrative source well to draw from.
On that note, I look forward to seeing and posting here NEVER SLEEP AGAIN which takes a similar in-depth look at the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series before getting my gloved claws into those offerings too...
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