Let me give you some advice on the film business – anyone who sets out to make a franchise is doomed. William Goldman was right – no one in Hollywood knows anything. None of us knew what we had with Friday The 13th. When you have a franchise it is luck, not planning…”
So begins Sean Cunningham, director of Friday The 13th and the man who also produced such horror hits as The Last House On The Left (1972) and House (1986). Just a little over 40 years ago, however, shortly before the first instalment of the Jason Voorhees mythology changed the face of fearfilms forever, Cunningham was hoping to achieve something a little different. In fact, he was looking to move into children's films.
Ironically, this strange decision is also what led to the gory body-count carnage of Friday The 13th…
“What happened is that got a lot of attention for being a successful movie that was made for not. “So right after that, people began calling me and asking me to make more films that I would label as ‘puke in a bucket’!” He breaks into a laugh. “But I had kids and I said to my wife, ‘I don't want to be the puke-in-a-bucket guy’ – so I made this little baseball film called and then I talked some backers into investing into this soccer movie called . We could not sell that one to theatres, but United Artists optioned it as a potential pilot for a future television series. However, that meant I had no money coming in and I could not pay off any of these guys who had given me the cash to make it — and they were getting impatient…”
