You know I really should've done this one on the 13th of October. Would've been nice to do it on the day. But that would've been really close to the last one on the 11th. ANNNNNYWAY: Today we roll into the 80s with a quicky overview and with Friday the 13th. Cited works include the film itself, Kendall R. Phillips's book Projected Fears:  Horror Films and American Culture, Carol J. Clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws:  Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Vera Dika's essay "The Slasher Film, 1978-81" from American Horrors:  Essays on the Modern American Horror Film, and Jonathan Lake Crane's Terror and Everyday Life:  Singular Moments in the History of the Horror Film.  Among other points, I'd like to say here that one of the many reasons I love this paper is because it's not often one sees a college scholarly senior thesis with the phrase "Strip Monopoly" in it.  Oh, and in case it already wasn't apparent, SPOILERS ABOUND AHEAD, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE:

The 1980s: "The Final Girl" Thrives

"If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then John Carpenter's Halloween may be the most flattered film in the history of American cinema."(Phillips 123)
      While it is true that one reason Halloween was important in the evolution of the horror film was that Laurie Strode represented a departure from many of the previous female protagonists, it is also true that Halloween was significant, retrospectively, as a foreshadowing of a decade of horror movies built upon the repeating of many of both the traits of Michael Myers and the characteristics of Jamie Lee Curtis's character. The Myers archetype would be seen again in numerous other movies as an inhuman, unstoppable, sometimes almost supernatural evil force. The character Curtis pioneered would be refined over the course of the decade and appeared so often that certain film analysts could not ignore the precedent and have since taken to calling such characters "the final girl", a term coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. In general, Clover believed that each "final girl" is identifiable because they exhibit similar characteristics. According to her, the final girl is almost always presented as the movie's main character from the beginning. She tends to not be sexually active and also is watchful, intelligent, meticulous, and resourceful when compared to the other supporting characters that surround her. (Clover 39) Another author, Vera Dika, characterizes this character thusly: "Not only is she elevated from the rest of the young community because she can see and use violence, but also she is less extensively held as the sexual object of the killer's gaze (Dika 90-1). However, Clover admits there is a crucial difference between the initial "final girl"-like character of Halloween and the "final girl" of the 1980s movies. "[...] The films following Halloween present Final Girls who not only fight back but do so with ferocity and even kill the killer on their own, without help from the outside" (Clover 37, emphasis mine).
     Two of the most enduring "slasher" films of the decade, Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, enumerate this difference through their own particular finales, whether it be Friday's climactic encounter between Mrs. Voorhees and Alice; or Nightmare's final battle between Nancy and Freddy Krueger necessitated by her parents' inability to protect or believe her. Friday the 13th tells the story of Camp Crystal Lake and the murders that befall the counselors there on the night of Friday the 13th. As the movie progresses, various teenagers are dispatched through a series of violent tactics. Each counselor either has a personality flaw of some variety or has engaged in some act of sex or drug/alcohol use during the movie. (Crane 149-151) Thus, many have come to believe as they watch the movie that "Jason's" primary goal in the film is to exact revenge upon the immoral acts of the teens. This idea is elucidated later in the film when the viewer discovers the actual murderer in the movie is Jason Voorhees's mother, known only as Mrs. Voorhees here, later Pamela Voorhees. Mrs. Voorhees explains that her son drowned in Crystal Lake as a result of negligent counselors who were too preoccupied with sex and having fun to hear his cries for help. She has since become obsessed with vengeance and possessed by his spirit, egging her on into each ghastly murder. While she falls to the female protagonist, Alice, at the end of the movie, Jason's spirit is not able to be killed, thus living on to numerous sequels over the more than 20 years following its release.
     As a "final girl", Alice is not so much a "virgin" as she is less sexually active by comparison with her fellow counselors. This is made abundantly clear less through Alice's own actions than through the many explicit sexual encounters of her friends. In fact, the one instance in the movie where it appears Alice may act immodestly (during a game of "Strip Monopoly"), she is interrupted and later tells a friend that she was unsure of whether or not she would actually remove her clothes in front of the others.
     In contrast, almost all the other characters have either a sex scene in the film or unsavory characteristics that appear to imply immorality. The older male head counselor is continually lusting after the female counselors, calling them "babes in the woods" at one point. Also, twice during the movie, "Jason" intrudes upon girlfriend-boyfriend pairs who've drifted away from the main group to have sex. In both instances, both members of the pair are killed swiftly and usually one after the other, forming almost a ready-made punishment for their actions, whether the couple have actually completed the act or are only intending to.
     Also, as has been previously mentioned, the "final girl" is set apart by the way in which she notices strange occurrences, is self-aware, and protects herself in innovative ways. Many of the deaths in the movie involve counselors who either fail to heed the warnings of the townsfolk regarding the camp, run around in circles with "Jason" in hot pursuit, or stand still, screaming, as "Jason" delivers the fatal blow. Alice, on the other hand, appears to care more about her job (preparing the camp so that new campers will be able to attend) and others (appearing to wonder about missing counselors fairly often) than she does about herself. Thus, she appears to avoid the pitfalls that claimed her friends and also fulfills almost every aspect of Clover's "final girl". However, it is crucial to realize that there is an important change made evident in Alice during the final act of the movie that separates her from the survivor seen in such characters as Laurie Strode.
     Alice's final battle against Mrs. Voorhees is crucial to fully understanding the separation between Friday the 13th's "final girl" and Halloween's proto-"final girl". Strode, fighting against Michael Myers, uses violence in an attempt to stay alive, not necessarily to kill the monster. While it is quite evident that gouging someone's eye out with a needle or coat hanger would be highly unpleasant, it is by no means a lethal blow. This is perhaps the reason that Loomis's interference is required for Strode to survive the
movie. She may be more resourceful and intelligent than her predecessors, but she is not a violent murderer.
     Alice's battle with Mrs. Voorhees, on the other hand, combines Laurie Strode's resourcefulness and intelligence with a degree of violence and rage. Before the battle even begins, she shows brilliance not seen in prior protagonists by hunting for ways to protect herself and keep intruders out. Strode had a similar idea in Halloween, but appeared to grab items on impulse with little thought. After meeting up with Mrs. Voorhees and discovering her secret, the battle begins in earnest. Alice begins by causing Mrs. Voorhees blunt force trauma to the arm and back with a fire poker. As this momentarily disables her foe, Alice takes the opportunity to attempt to escape, dropping the weapon on the way. Mrs. Voorhees soon regains consciousness and pursues her prey throughout the camp. She unknowingly passes Alice, allowing her to find a new place to hide: a kitchen closet. Mrs. Voorhees discovers this hiding place and breaks the door in. The battle continues as Alice again momentarily fazes Mrs. Voorhees, this time by hitting her with a frying pan. Alice then attempts to escape by canoe on the lake, only to end up in a final wrestling match with Mrs. Voorhees on the shore. As the wrestling match nears its close, Alice finally obtains Voorhees's machete and uses it to decapitate her adversary in an action that is, ironically, one of the most, if not the most, bloody, violent killings in the movie. It is even interesting to note, as some analysts have, that Alice almost becomes Mrs. Voorhees through that action or that the two have almost entwined fates. (151-2) This is underlined by the fact that the two women have similar hairstyles and similar clothing when they first meet, just before the final battle begins. Thus, Strode differs from Alice in that Alice realizes that the only way to survive and obtain "justice" was to not just survive and escape but to "kill" the villain in whatever way possible (even if the attempts to quash the overall evil were ultimately unsuccessful), thus evolving further than most of the women before her.