Friday, February 4, 2011

Masks in Movies ot 4

In 1980, the mask trip would continue in horror with a trip to a summer camp turned into horror for movie goers. “Friday The 13th” entered theatres. Even though Jason Voorhees is now a horror icon, complete with hockey mask, it wasn’t until the third Friday the 13th film that we see the iconic masked Jason; in the first film he wasn’t even the antagonist, and the second film he wasn’t wearing his famous mask but rather a bag over his head. From the third film onward he would keep his famous hockey mask. In the film Jason attacks (and apparently kills) a boy wearing a hockey mask to scare a girl, and puts the mask on. In the modern remake of Friday the 13th, there is a shot of his old bedroom with hockey trophies, insinuating Jason was a hockey player. Jason Voorhees was a child at Crystal Lake Summer Camp (based on a real summer camp in New York by the same name). With Jason at camp, he drowns while swimming. Two counsellors are too busy having sex to pay attention to him and Jason dies. It is someone other than Jason who is the killer in the first film. It is only from the second film onward that Jason is the killer. Jason would hunt down and kill all the counsellors he felt responsible for his death. He then kept the camp as his home, and in subsequent movies would kill those who came to the camp, as a predator would kill others infringing on his territory. The film would spawn many sequels (including a not well received trip into space!) over the decades. The trio of Jason, Michael and Leather face would be the predominant masked killers throughout the eighties and nineties. That isn’t to say film goers were devoid of alternate masked villains. In the film “Alice, Alice”, a killer stalks a Christian boarding school. The killer, dressed in a yellow raincoat and female transparent mask, doesn’t sound frightening at first. The visual works very well, however, as the killer stalks the hallways for both children and adults alike. In “Too Beautiful to Die”, a killer haunts the runways of the fashion industry, wearing a mannequin type mask, hunting down fashion models. In “Happy Birthday to me” the killer wears a latex mask to impersonate another character while she hunts down and kills people at her birthday party.

But as the masks would fill horror films, masks also took a different ride as well in the 1980’s. Masks would start to show up in science fiction films. Movies like “Cocoon”, “Strange Invaders”, and “Dr Alien”, and on television the mini-series “V”, would portray aliens as donning our skin and faces to blend in, or take over our planet.

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