hilarious Siskel/Ebert review of Friday the 13th Part 2

Slasher movies were cheap to make, trendy and popular at the time, so horror movie makers churned them out at an epic rate. Many of them were poor imitations of earlier movies and of generally low quality. But the genre produced its fair share of genuinely great horror movies nonetheless.

Back in the 70s, before the Slasher Boom took off, in addition to Halloween (1978), we got Black Christmas (1974) - which I would contend is an even more eerie slice of horror cinema - and the twisted and intriguing Alice, Sweet Alice (1976). 

And in the 80s, there were a number of exceptionally well made examples of the genre. The Burning (1981) is essentially a better-made Friday the 13th. The killer is far more disturbing (and yet somewhat sympathetic) and, sleeziness aside, the characters are fun and the cinematography excellent for a movie of this sort. It feels like a blend of a screwball teen summer comedy and violent horror movie all rolled into one. Another notable one from the same period is Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), which parodies itself and the entire genre many years before Scream (1986) received acclaim for doing likewise. And that's not forgetting A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - the most comprehensively inventive slasher movie of its day. 

Jason Lives is a bad movie. Just because it is self-parody doesn't all of a sudden make it good. That is a cop out. It is fine if you think it is a good movie, but I definitely don't. There are fans of this movie that don't even think it is a good movie, they just think it is an entertaining movie. I don't. I think in order for it to be fun, you have to already be a fan of some of the Friday the 13th movies that came before. Scream is on an entirely different level and to compare them is ridiculous imo.

The Burning is not an exceptionally well made movie imo, it is just better made slasher movie than most. I don't even like The Burning, but it is certainly of higher quality than most slasher movies. 

I didn't say none of them are good, but the bad far outweigh the good. 

I am aware of why these movies were made btw.

I am a bit bored of discussing it because I have already addressed the good slasher movies in other replies to other people in this same thread. I didn't mention Alice, Sweet, Alice yet, but I agree that it is an example of how to make a good slasher movie. It is one of the best in the genre.

I will admit that I have biases when it comes the horror genre in general and especially when it comes to slasher movies. I mostly find the genre lazy and extremely repetitive. 

  I appreciated Siskel and Ebert coming along when they did in the late 1970s, introducing me to a lot of arthouse and foreign films which were a welcome alternative to the kiddie blockbusters (Star Wars/Superman) that dominated the box office back then. But the slasher film trend, and their pearl-clutching attitudes toward these films, really got tiresome. I think both of them, but particularly Siskel, aspired to be the TV version of Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, and they were disappointed that as the 1970s wound down, and the blockbusters took over, they felt that serious film criticism was becoming less relevant, so they took it upon themselves to crusade against these low-budget gory films mainly to have something to do, and sometimes they went overboard. Ebert was the more level-headed of the two, but he did go after the 1978 version of I Spit on Your Grave with a vengeance, calling it the worst film ever made.
While the film was exceedingly brutal (I've only seen clips of it), Ebert ignored the intent of the filmmakers, who wanted to make the point that rape was,
in fact, exceedingly brutal, and they wanted to show the victim getting revenge on her rapists. The movie could be taken as torture porn trash, or as a pro-feminist statement; in any case, it warranted discussion about its content, not just Ebert's quick dismissal of it.

  Maybe it was that film which set the stage for S & E's fervent anti-slasher film campaign. They did like Halloween (one of the only slasher films I've seen, not being a fan of the genre), but when the sequels and similar films started coming, they became a little nutty with their outrage and their pontificating. What they didn't get was that the teenagers who went to see these films weren't as naive and impressionable as S & E thought they were--the audiences for these films knew that they did not contain serious
moral messages about society, sexuality, etc.--they were made because they were low-budget, they made tons of profit, and their main intention was to give the audiences a scare. They were not, as Siskel once claimed on an episode, a symbol of the repression of women--I can remember him wagging his finger at the camera and hysterically accusing the makers of a Friday the 13th installment, "You're telling the audience, 'You act this way, YOUNG WOMAN' [the woman in the film clip was behaving flirtatiously], 'and you deserve to DIE!'" while Ebert nodded solemnly in agreement. Were audiences really getting this message from the movie, or did they just want a cheap thrill? Siskel seemed to forget that not everyone goes to the movies for art, and no matter how desperately he tried, he wasn't going to get an audience of thrill-seeking, horny teenagers to forgo the slasher stuff and go see My Dinner with Andre instead.

  I remember S & E  appearing on The Phil Donahue Show around that time, primarily to talk about slasher films and slasher novels and how they were inflicting great moral harm on society. Siskel's proudest moment was when he held up a cheap paperback novel and pointed out to the audience the illustration on the cover: the tiny figure of a person in the background, with an enormous puddle of blood taking up most of the foreground. He announced to the crowd of concerned moms and housewives something like, "That's a perfect example of what's wrong with this trend! It's all about the blood, and the person in the background--no character development!" The audience, dazzled by this profound insight, dutifully applauded him for his brilliance; he loved this kind of adoration.

Besides the slasher film crusade, sometimes they could take it a little too far with their annual "Memo to the Academy" shows, in which they implied that if their choices for the Academy Awards were disregarded, it was some kind of crime against art.

It’s my favorite of the series. And this is why I don’t trust a critics opinion.

Ebert hated genre movies as a rule and often got the details wrong in his reviews, especially as he got older. I even believe he didn't watch all the genre movies he reviewed but that's just me. He also was very .. woke to the point his knee jerk reaction to every slasher was that it was misogynistic. That said he was my favorite reviewer when it comes to anything besides horror and sci-fi.

"The slasher film was pushing certain kinds of makeup fx innovations so it was kind of like a new magic trick."

I really do miss Tom Savini. Sadly Hollywood has no use for people like him anymore. I despise CGI gore in horror films.

yup, they were idiots.

I remember when they reviewed Jurassic Park, Siskel mentioned how weak the characters were next to Jaws. A valid criticism.

There is no X-Men movie he gave a terrible review. I think you are talking about either X-Men (2000) or First Class. He rated both 2.5/4 stars.

He might have wrote what you say he wrote about genre films, but he seemed to like comic book movies a lot. You are picking out the exceptions. 

I will admit that there are many examples of him either not paying close enough attention to certain movies or he just didn't "get" them. When you are watching the amount of movies he watched that is going to happen. He would often rate up to 7 movies a week and those reviews are based on just one viewing.