As everyone surely knows,
Kevin Bacon has made so many films with so many people that you can
connect him to any actor, living or dead, in
less than six degrees. With such a broad curriculum vitae, it’s
no surprise that he’s appeared in some movies quite far down the
cheap and nasty scale, but it’s his role as one of the first ever
victims of this iconic fear franchise that deserves special attention.
While John Carpenter’s Halloween is widely credited with inventing
the modern “slasher” genre (even though it’s predated
by the similarly themed Black Christmas), this lurid and violent sub-section
of horror didn’t really kick into gear until Sean Cunningham’s
relentlessly sadistic Friday the 13th upped the ante in terms of blood,
guts and sadism in 1980.
Bacon plays Jack Burrell, just one of a group of lithe young folk who
are working on reopening Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp closed down
many years before because of a tragic accident in which a child, Jason
Voorhees, fell into the lake and drowned, because the camp counsellors
were too busy rutting like rabbits to notice. A mysterious spree of murder
and mayhem ensued, killing the counsellors and leaving the camp with
the sort of deadly reputation that tends to dent attendance.
Fast forward to the present and, ignoring the numerous warnings from
gnarled locals that the camp is now cursed, the latest batch of energetic
youngsters get to work – both on the camp and on each other’s
genitals. And before you can say “How was it for you?” they’re
meeting grisly deaths at the hands of a mysterious killer with a taste
for bladed instruments.
Kevin is the fifth of the gang to bite the dust, and his death scene
is one of the best in the movie – indeed, in the whole Friday series.
Completely ignoring the comedic potential in electrocuting him (fried
Bacon!) or hacking him into bits (sliced Bacon!), the killer opts for
a more inventive way of despatching the future Brat Pack star.
He’s lying innocently in bed - no doubt dreaming of cutting loose,
a-footloose, kicking off his Sunday shoes – when an arrow
suddenly and painfully skewers him through the throat, rammed upwards
through his neck by the killer lurking under the bed. It’s a shocking
and vicious scene, with the murderer slowly twisting the arrow as it
goes through for added effect, and it’s made all the more memorable
by the lingering shot of blood bubbling out of the wound that heralds
Kevin’s last
gasp. Presto! Bacon kebab!
Honourable mentions: Friday the 13th isn’t Bacon’s
only brush with horror. More mainstream genre entries on his CV include
the Joel
Schumacher supernatural drama Flatliners, the wonderful monster movie
Tremors, the spooky Stir of Echoes and the insanely silly Hollow Man.
He also appeared with his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, in the 1991 comedy Pyrates,
about
a couple
who
have
the pyrokinetic power to spontaneously combust when they have sex. Form
an orderly queue, ladies.
Need to know: At the time of shooting, Bacon’s
biggest role had been a small part in National Lampoon’s Animal
House, and Friday the 13th was his first starring role. Kevin can’t
even claim to be one of the first victims of Jason Voorhees, Friday’s
iconic killer, because - as every horror geek knows - the killer in this
first
movie was actually Jason’s bereaved and loopy mother. Jason’s
undead form bursts from the lake at the end of the movie, but he didn’t
begin his rampage proper until the Part 2, in which he wore a sack on
his head rather than his now-familiar hockey mask. Bacon isn’t
the only celebrity victim of the Friday movies, either. See also: Corey
Feldman, Crispin Glover.
Availability: Friday the 13th is out on special edition DVD.
