The Scream and Friday the 13th franchises have always been intrinsically connected. Not only are they foundational to the two major wings of the House of Slasher, but Scream directly references Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 film in its opening act. Younger viewers, myself included, learned about the movie’s shocking killer reveal when Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) loses a horror movie trivia game to the killer known as Ghostface. But rather than disappointment, many of us felt compelled to seek out this classic slasher and behold Jason’s mother for ourselves. The following year, Scream 2 would give us one of the franchise’s favorite Ghostface marauders directly inspired by this murderous mom.
Cunningham’s film is often dismissed as a copycat of John Carpenter’s iconic Halloween, but the summer camp horror is much more than a carbon copy. Admittedly reverse-engineered to highlight a calendar date — thus ensuring annual rewatches — Friday the 13th clarifies a burgeoning slasher formula while evolving the field of special effects. The story does follow then-emerging guidelines, later codified in Carol J. Clover’s 1992 treatise Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. A group of sexy coeds gathers at a terrible place only to find themselves picked off one by one by a killer wielding a phallic weapon.
But Friday the 13th makes one major deviation: the mysterious killer is not a hulking madman in a mask, but a grieving woman trying to process her rage.
On a dark and stormy summer night, Alice (Adrienne King) finds the dead bodies of her fellow counselors artfully staged all over the camp. As she stumbles, sobbing, out into the rain, she bumps into a friendly woman. Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) calms her fears and assures Alice that she is “an old friend of the Christys’” who own the camp. But as they go back to call for help, Alice sees a darker side to this grinning stranger. Mrs. Voorhees recalls her own son’s time at camp, including the day he drowned in the lake. “The counselors weren’t paying any attention… They were making love while that young boy drowned.” We realize that not only has she slaughtered all of Alice’s friends, but she’s also responsible for the two gruesome murders that open the film. The grief-stricken mother channels the voice of her child, chanting, “Kill her, Mommy! Kill her!” words that weave themselves through the film’s eerie score.
Mrs. Voorhees remains an anomaly in the slasher realm, though her galvanizing voice would go on to define the franchise. Subsequent chapters follow her resurrected son, Jason, who grows up to be a hulking madman, dispatching victims with his trusty machete. A classically trained actress known for prominent work on stage and screen, Palmer faced heavy criticism for her role in what was then considered a controversial subgenre. She was particularly lambasted by critic Gene Siskel, who took the egregious step of including the name of her hometown in his review and encouraging his readers to send her hate mail. Now this pearl-clutching seems fairly quaint. It’s rooted in the misconception that older women should be maternal figures and nothing more, which erases female humanity. After all, if male characters can go berserk and slash through hordes of camp counselors, shouldn’t that arc be available to women as well?
Developed as a follow-up to the surprise success of Wes Craven’s 1996 film, Scream 2 follows final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to the campus of Windsor College, where she’s once again stalked by a costumed killer. Like both franchises’ opening entries, the story plays out like a horrific whodunit as Sidney and fellow survivors Gale (Courteney Cox) and Dewey (David Arquette) try to identify the killer on the other end of the line. In a spectacular final showdown, we learn that this time Ghostface is actually Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), the “freaky Tarantino film student.” But true to form, Craven has a second killer hiding under the mask. Gale and Sidney find themselves held at gunpoint by Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf), who’s been masquerading as a local reporter.
We first meet the wide-eyed woman as she shamelessly flatters Gale and desperately tries to scoop her competition. But Sidney, a Woodsboro native, finally recognizes the woman from her painful past. We find out that Debbie Salt is actually Mrs. Loomis, mother of Sidney’s dead boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), who was also the first Ghostface killer. When Sidney shoots her baby boy — an understandable act of self-defense — she ignites a mother’s insatiable rage. Mrs. Loomis has spent extensive time grooming and bankrolling the gullible Mickey to conceal her ultimate quest for revenge.
In the first film’s shocking conclusion, Billy and his partner Stu (Matthew Lillard) claim that the real-life “movie” they are making is scarier if it has no motive. But closing in on his final victim, Billy reveals the true source of his pain. He whispers to Sidney, “Your slut mother was fucking my father, and she’s the reason my mom moved out and abandoned me.” After killing Sidney’s mom one year ago, they’ve kicked off a new murder spree to commemorate the anniversary of her death. Now, Billy’s mother seeks similar vengeance against the innocent young woman who murdered her son.
By contrast, Mrs. Voorhees is much more disturbed. The campers who originally caused her son’s death are long gone, and she must satisfy her grief through proxy revenge. Advancing on Alice, who never met Jason, she exclaims, “You let him drown! You never paid any attention. Look what you did to him!” Unable to process her rage and guilt, the bereaved woman sees all counselors as one and the same, irresponsible teens who deserve to die. Mrs. Loomis racks up a similarly lengthy list of kills, but most of her victims are collateral damage meant to implicate Mickey by mirroring Billy’s crimes. She will off anyone who gets in her way, but Mrs. Loomis’ calculated rage leads to Sidney alone.
Yet beneath these murderous exteriors, both mothers are searching for absolution. After all, they were gone when their sons were in danger. Mrs. Voorhees was working as a cook at the camp, assuming Jason would be safe with the counselors. Mrs. Loomis left her husband in the wake of his betrayal, likely hoping to heal her broken heart in privacy. Neither is responsible for their sons’ misfortune. However, they both secretly believe that had they only been present, they could have protected their children from harm. Their murderous rage hides misplaced anger and guilt over this perceived abandonment. And they are not alone in this self-condemnation. Ever since Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho gave us Norma Bates — whose own son Billy references — we’ve perfected the misogynist art of blaming a mother for the crimes of her son.
But Mrs. Voorhees has a more memorable legacy. When Casey bungles Ghostface’s infamous question, “Name the killer in Friday the 13th,” she sparks an exciting new type of slasher. Billy and Stu have grown up watching Mrs. Voorhees’s story and patterned their own “movie” after that of her son. This surprising moment passes a torch from the original guard of slasher killers to those who will push the subgenre to new heights. As he chases Sidney with a knife, Billy insists, “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
Mrs. Loomis may pin her motive on Sidney, but she owes her existence to Mr. Voorhees.
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