“Halloween” helmer John Carpenter revives “Friday the 13th” rivalry

PanARMENIAN.Net - John Carpenter does not think much of the 1980 film that spawned the hockey-mask wearing, machete-wielding slasher Jason Voorhees, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The Halloween director recently criticized the original Friday the 13th film for what he said was a lackluster money grab.

Carpenter told author Bret Easton Eliis on his podcast that he is a huge fan of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but Friday the 13th, not so much.

“One springs from an organic idea and has a truly artist’s eye working,” Carpenter told the American Psycho author. “And Friday the 13th, I feel, affects me as very cynical. It’s very cynical movie-making. It just doesn’t rise above its cheapness.”

Carpenter's 1978 slasher classic, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, was an enormous box office success, and he believes that is why similar horror films flooded the market in the years following.

“I think the reason that all these slasher movies came in the ’80s was a lot of folks said, ‘Look at that Halloween movie. It was made for peanuts, and look at the money it’s made. We can make money like that. That’s what the teenagers want to see,'" the director said. "So they just started making them, cranking them out. Most of them were awful.”

His comments come on the heels of the news that Carpenter will executive produce a new edition to the Halloween franchise.

The new film will be produced by Jason Blum and will be co-financed by Blumhouse and Miramax.