Friday the 13th (1980) - Annie

What I wanted to do in my finishing of any remaining blog posts about Friday the 13^th is focus on the beginning with the characters before they die. Perhaps I will give the second viewing over to the usual stuff, but since one of the film’s main criticisms is the disposable characters I did want to try to dig a bit deeper—I know, a lost cause to some—and come up with some thoughts on them.

Annie is the main character that I wanted to focus on since Robbi Morgan was tasked with trying to get the most out of a fifteen minute (if that long) screen time. What Victor Miller does in the early going is establish that she’s got the cook gig to help beef up a resume for her future. Feeding kids and staff, showing the responsibilities of such a job, Annie was telling (who we later learn is…) Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) about her dedication to a future, what her hopes and dreams are. Cunningham shoots and edits this particular scene in the speeding jeep where only one person is talking and that is Annie. Perhaps Pamela was offering a back and forth, fueling a comfortable Annie to open up to her. Pamela doesn’t carry an initial appearance of a deranged mother with a psychotic break due to Camp Crystal Lake’s potential opening, thanks to a determined Steve Cristy (Peter Brouer). Earlier when Annie arrives in the town near Camp Crystal Lake, a small New Jersey strip of stores including a diner whose clientele and staff react to her asking for directions to the infamous “cursed” camp, she gets a ride halfway thanks to an oil tanker truck driver, Otis (Rex Everhart). Otis isn’t as much a sourpuss as he is a perplexed small town lifer who can’t for the life of him figure out why Steve or anyone else would want to bother with Camp Crystal Lake considering its notoriety. The two counselors murdered by Pamela at the very beginning (in 1958, Otis telling us that their deaths happened a year after Jason Voorhees drowned), the fires set and water poisoned (by Pamela), and all the money spent trying to bring the camp back to working order after decades stagnant and unused. Pamela entering a cabin of children sleeping in 1958 lets us know that when she was there, and unstable, there were kids. You wouldn’t see Camp Crystal Lake with kids again until the sixth Friday film.

There is one moment when Annie is in the passenger seat of Otis’ truck as he looks over at her, clearly hoping that he can convince her to avoid “the curse”, that does always stay with me. She’s fingering her curls, looking out into the trees and scenery to her side, the sun and wind hitting her face, so young and pretty, breezy and relaxed, totally carefree. Otis just wants to let her know about the camp, perhaps filling her in one what Cristy wouldn’t dare tell her. If anything to spare her any sort of unforeseen trouble. But why should she worry? Why should she buy into some “death curse” that the town drunk Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) propelled her way before hitching a ride with Otis? Was this curse just another campfire tale boogeyman to scare and keep the eyes and mind open at night? Ralph hopping on his blue bike to head for Crystal Lake in order to share his warnings with the rest of the young adult staff looking to help Cristy if they can get the camp open in two weeks, while Annie just let his supposed nonsense fade from
consideration. And with Miller’s script offering a second person warning Annie in Otis, once she does leap from Pamela’s jeep off to the side of the road, the vice tightens and the forewarnings of the past close when the knife slits her throat and the bleeding wound leaves the would-be cook collapsing into the woods where no one could help her.

And that’s it. One could say she is the Janet Leigh Psycho character in Friday the 13^th (1980). She’s bubbly, innocuous, with a wattage smile and warm presence but in Pamela’s dark world Annie is that camp counselor that let her baby boy Jason drown.

The brief exchange where Annie calls Otis, a bit annoyed with her "age group know-it-alls with a head full of rocks", an "American Original" and repeats it back to her in a smart aleck cadence sort of gives us a difference in two generations, but what hurt Annie was he couldn't take her all the way to Camp Crystal Lake. Not that this would have probably helped her fate any...