The Big Picture
- Famed movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert hated the Friday the 13th franchise for its portrayal of violence against women and its negative view of human nature.
- Gene Siskel went as far as to ruin the twist ending of Friday the 13th in his written review to deter people from seeing it.
- While Ebert's opinions on the franchise remained consistently negative, he finally found an installment he enjoyed, 2009's reboot.
Slashers have never been critically acclaimed fare. It wasn't until just recently that horror in general got much recognition from critics outside of the big classics like Psycho or The Exorcist. Your usual horror movies that get pumped out every year were looked down upon, not just by critics but actors too. Horror was something an actor did to get their foot in the door and that was it. These days, horror is more respectable — but Slashers still don't get a lot of love. Back in 1978, though, John Carpenter's Halloween did. Roger Ebert (despite earning a reputation for hating all horror movies) helped get the little indie film off the ground with his rave review. A few years later, however, when Friday the 13th famously ripped off Halloween, neither Ebert nor his critic partner Gene Siskel liked it; in fact, they hated it. The pair loathed the entire Friday the 13th franchise with a passion, ripping each film in their written reviews and on their TV show. Siskel and Ebert hated everything about the films so deeply that, whether you agree with them or not, you have to respect the voracity of their convictions, even if it made you laugh or roll your eyes.
Gene Siskel Hated 'Friday the 13th' So Much That He Ruined the Twist Ending
Siskel and Ebert despised slasher movies so much that in 1980, on their show Sneak Previews, they dedicated an entire episode to it called "Women in Danger." They looked at films like When a Stranger Calls and I Spit on Your Grave, bemoaning the ultra-violence against women. Ebert said these films also portrayed women as "helpless victims." They went after that year's Friday the 13th as well. Ebert really didn't like that the film so often looked through the eyes of the killer. He said, "It's almost as if the audience is being asked to identify with the attackers in these movies, and that really bothers me." As great as Roger Ebert was, there are a few holes in his comments. Just as many men die in slashers as women, and these female characters aren't helpless. They're actually the ones who are the strongest and take down the killer, hence the term "Final Girl." He also seems to forget that Halloween often looks through the eyes of Michael Myers, yet he enjoyed that movie and had no problem with seeing The Shape's point-of-view.
10 Bad Movies That Siskel and Ebert Famously Annihilated
Two thumbs down!Gene Siskel took his hatred for Friday the 13th a step further. He detested the picture so much that he decided to ruin the ending in his written review for The Chicago Tribune. As almost everyone knows now, Jason Voorhees is not the killer in the first film. Instead, the initial entry is a whodunit. We don't see the killer's face until the third act when it's revealed to be an older woman named Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), who is out for revenge because her son drowned at Camp Crystal Lake when the counselors weren't paying attention. In his review, Siskel wrote, "It has been suggested that a great way to keep people from seeing a truly awful movie is to tell them the ending. I like that idea a lot, and I know it is a powerful (and controversial) weapon. So you're going to have to trust me to use it wisely...and sparingly." Siskel then not only gave away the killer reveal but even described how Mrs. Voorhees dies. "Now, there, I hope I've ruined Friday the 13th, which is the latest film by one of the most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business, Sean S. Cunningham." Damn, Gene. You can imagine how many fans were livid to read that review.
Siskel & Ebert Didn't Like It When Jason Voorhees Showed Up Either
If Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were so offended by the first Friday the 13th, then you know that wasn't going to change with the sequels. Now Jason was the killer, but everything else stayed the same. Horny teens show up to a camp and got it on, Jason shows up and kills them in sickening ways, and a young woman defeats him. In his review for The Chicago Sun-Times in 1981, Roger Ebert gave Friday the 13th Part 2 a measly 1/2 out of 4 stars, saying, "This movie is a cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead teenager genres; about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk, and they're all about as bad as this one. Some have a little more plot, some have a little less. It doesn't matter." On Sneak Previews, Ebert called the first sequel, "an unpleasantly, absolutely reprehensible sleaze pit of a movie." He went on, saying it "contains an absolutely negative view of human nature." In his opinion, all the characters are the same, when in actuality, its final girl, Ginny (Amy Steel), a child psychology student, is one of the most fleshed-out and empathetic heroes you'll find in a slasher. Siskel, as you can guess, agreed that Friday the 13th Part 2 was depressing, saying "It's the same movie shot after shot." Siskel even said he wanted to see the filmmakers challenge themselves by having no one die. Yeah, that would have worked.
1984's Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (it wasn't) is seen by most franchise fans as the best in the series, alongside Part 6's Jason Lives. It's here that Jason is at his scariest, thanks to stuntman Ted White behind the mask, and where it gives us our best characters and most satisfying ending. Siskel and Ebert loved it! Gotcha! They did not. In At the Movies, Roger Ebert called it, "an immoral and irreprehensible piece of trash." He came down again on how depressing and hopeless it was because everyone ends up dead. His voice raised, he ended with, "The people that made this movie ought to be ashamed of themselves." Siskel had to rein in Ebert's rage, agreeing that The Final Chapter was bad but dismissing it as just "a rollercoaster." While Ebert was deeply offended that kids would look at the world as hopeless, Siskel seemed to have accepted them and no longer let the franchise get him riled up. He did throw in there that the message The Final Chapter sends is that, "Watching girls get stuck is entertainment." Someone should have reminded dear Gene that out of the thirteen victims in the fourth film, six are men. Jason is an equal-opportunity killer!
Roger Ebert Finally Finds a 'Friday the 13th" Movie He Accepts
Now, if The Final Chapter is seen as the pinnacle of the Friday the 13th films, the next one, 1985's Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is seen by many as the worst. Part of that is because Jason Voorhees isn't in it. He truly did die in The Final Chapter, but the box-office receipts said another sequel had to happen. The fifth film puts a copycat killer behind the hockey mask, but that's not the only reason why it didn't work. A New Beginning has the weakest characters and plot, and the sex and nudity are more over-the-top than in the other films. If you already hate slashers, this one would drive you crazy. In their At the Movies segment, poor Roger Ebert raged for almost five minutes. He referred to it as "leftover, recycled garbage," and, well, on that, he wasn't completely wrong. He also ripped what he called "the dead teenager formula." He was no longer deeply offended by how disgusting or depressing they were but that they were constantly doing the same thing. He was nice enough at least to not spoil the ending. Gene Siskel, who ruined the first film, wanted to give away the ending to this one as well, but Ebert wisely interrupted and changed his mind with, "I don't think you better do that." It's the only kind thing he ever did for those early Paramount Friday the 13th films.
The franchise didn't stop at five. It's actually up to twelve now, and if it wasn't for that lawsuit that halted more being made, there'd be many more. Gene Siskel passed away in 1999. Roger Ebert would follow him to the Great Theater in the Sky in 2013, but he was still around in 2009 for the Friday the 13th reboot. He was no longer deeply offended. By this point, the franchise wasn't shocking. So much had changed since the 80s. In 2009, we were living in a world where Saw and Hostel existed. A guy in a hockey mask paled in comparison to that. Ebert poked fun at the movie but actually gave it two out of four stars. He praised it (sort of), writing, "Friday the 13th is about the best Friday the 13th movie you could hope for. Its technical credits are excellent. It has a lot of scary and gruesome killings. Not a whole lot of acting is required. If that's what you want to find out, you can stop reading." After that, he went on to spoil the ending. Gene Siskel would have been proud.
