‘Kill her, Mommy!’ – How Friday the 13th failed its most subversive villain

Mrs Vorhees was the only radical element of a long-suffering franchise, writes Clarisse Loughrey. But ‘bad mothers’ must always be dealt with – either through reformation or destruction

Grin and scare it: Betsy Palmer’s Mrs Vorhees from ‘Friday the 13th’ was a different kind of villain (Rex)

We should cut Casey, Drew Barrymore’s terrorised high school student in Scream, a little slack. When a creepy voice on the phone demands that she “name the killer in Friday the 13th” or watch her jock boyfriend get sliced up, she goes for the obvious. It’s Jason Voorhees, with his hockey mask and rusty machete. Casey’s watched him slaughter teens on the banks of Crystal Lake “20 goddamn times”. The voice snaps back: “Then you should know Jason’s mother, Mrs Voorhees, was the original killer! Jason didn’t show up until the sequel.” Her faux pas results in brutal, bloody annihilation.

But why would Casey remember Betsy Palmer’s Mrs Voorhees, in her pastel-blue knit and sensible footwear, when her progeny’s done everything possible to upstage her? Sure, she might have killed a few campers, but since the first film was released 40 years ago, Jason’s risen from the grave (several times), battled a low-rent version of Carrie, and even taken a day trip to Manhattan. After Scream’s release in 1996, he went on to visit outer space and take swipes at Freddy Krueger.

It’s an odd chapter in horror history. A whole franchise – with 10 sequels, a 2009 reboot, video games, and comics – was birthed entirely out of director Sean S Cunningham’s desire to cash in on Halloween’s 1978 box office success. He simply took what he liked most about John Carpenter’s film and, with the help of screenwriter Victor Miller, cranked up the heat on all the lust, blood, and terror. The promiscuous are sacrificed, but prudish tomboy Alice (Adrienne King) survives. The villain’s backstory positions them as some kind of vengeful spirit, unleashed on the transgressive youth of Reagan’s America. Each kill is more lurid than the last. Friday the 13th didn’t invent these tropes, but it replicated them so religiously that they felt set in stone.