NewYorkGiantsFans.com

[ARCHIVES] FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES FINALE

Uploaded by: cultureoutofcontrol
Video Description:
THE CHARNEL PIT is the name of the last episode. Written By: Jim Henshaw... More information from his blog.
-----------------------------
Twice in my career I've been in charge of the writing on shows considered the most violent on television. During the late 80's, "Friday the 13th" was both a hit on late night TV and continuously attacked by the then fledgling "Religious Right" who saw us as "Satan worshipers" bent on corrupting the youth of America, turning them to demonology, human sacrifice and relentless blood-letting.
To be sure, the series featured characters meting out death and meeting their own ends in painfully creative ways. Our world was filled with serial killers, diabolical scientists, vampires, werewolves and yes, crazed teens filled with vengeful rage.
But we also engaged in a lot of soul searching, analyzing and otherwise deconstructing what we were doing. Scripts were written and rewritten. Final cuts were recut, screened repeatedly and tweaked to make sure that while offering hard core horror we weren't doing anything that would indelibly warp the average viewer.
The key word there is "average". You simply cannot tailor any creative work to neither offend nor provoke someone with a different agenda. Even the Mona Lisa has been razored and splashed with paint for her supposed sins.
During the run of F13, I got dozens of incoherent letters from "fans" including a 3" thick scrapbook of blood colored scrawls the sender insisted had been dictated by Lucifer himself.
On the other side of the ledger, I received many calls from those who had received a personal message from God to save my soul. Apparently God could find their number to deliver his message, but not mine.
We went through our, at times agonizing, process to make sure we didn't get a visit from what we called "The Taste Police". These fictional authorities weren't representatives of the show's opponents. On the contrary, they represented the guardians of our own critical faculties, who would come for us if we did anything shoddy, irresponsible or just plain stupid.
A year or so later, I was writing and producing "Top Cops" acknowledged by no less an authority than TIME Magazine as "the most violent show on television".
We soon put that moniker down to the growing American hysteria about runaway production when we learned that a scene in which an unresisting suspect was handcuffed and placed in a squad car accounted for "Three aggressive and violent incidents" those being the attaching of the cuffs, the arm on an elbow in escorting the suspect to the cruiser and the officer's hand on his head (insuring he didn't injure himself) while being placed in the back seat.
"Friday the 13th" eventually lost its three season battle with the Reverend Donald Wildmon and others of the Religious Right. Enraged, we surmised, by an episode in which all the bad guys were members of the Ku Klux Klan, they went after our advertisers, most of whom were new to this kind of publicity and eventually caved.
For our final episode, we decided we might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and made it about everything they had accused us of being. Instead of turning out tasteless and crass, it was one of our best pieces and the script was nominated for a Gemini award.

Related Videos

[ARCHIVES] FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES PILOT PLAYHOUSE	Friday the 13th - The Series (The Poison Pen, 1/5)	Master of Disguise Part 1
Friday the 13th The Series - Mesmer's Bauble	[ARCHIVES] FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES THEME 1987-1990	Friday the 13th - The Series 1x03 (Cupid's Quiver 1/5)

Comments for this video: Show || Hide


Tell a friend:

1. Your name:
2. Your friend's name:
3. Your friend's e-mail:
4. Your message:

URL
Embed Code