Friday the 13th Scream Factory Box Set: Cunningham Interview

 Okay, so I'm finally digging into the Blu Ray special set Scream Factory put out for Friday the 13th fans to really enjoy. There is just so much to canvas, to explore, to really venture into. It will be so exciting. So on YouTube (which is currently exploring some global site outage), everyone and their mother decided to do Unboxings and Deep Dives into the Friday the 13th set. I received so many notifications and recommendations by YouTube's algorithm on videos about this set, I was starting to get a bit irritated. A few YouTubers I obviously follow, but when you get so many of these Unboxings and reviews, it can be a bit overwhelming. Because this was right in the middle of October, the Friday the 13th franchise suffers from the month's Halloween fever. I have always thought of Friday the 13th as my spring and summer franchise, anyway, to be honest. 

I sort of decided I would pick and choose, without any linear direction. Because of the ongoing Friday the 13th dispute, I was curious how Sean S Cunningham's interview would go. He has to be as exhausted with the Friday the 13th history as John Carpenter is of Halloween and The Thing. So this interview intrigued me just because I sort of anticipated Victor Miller's name wouldn't be mentioned since he's fighting it out with Cunningham in the lawsuit over certain creative royalties and such. And, as expected, Miller's name didn't come up. In fact, Cunningham talked a little about Friday the 13th but more about his career. His history with Craven and Miner, "Last House on the Left" (1972), "The New Kids" (1985), "House" (1986) and briefly about its sequels and "DeepStar Six" (1989). He didn't really discuss Friday the 13th in any length. But Scream Factory does include lots of Friday the 13th (1980) clips even when Cunningham isn't even talking about the film. That was rather interesting to me...just clips of the film interspersed within Cunningham's interview while covering content in his resume. But he had a lot of energy, and I thought he came across very likable, not at all the ogre I was, for some reason, expecting. Here lately, Adam Marcus (the director of "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday" (1993)) has not had nice things to say about Cunningham. And the lawsuit that has kept another Friday the 13th film from being made--let's be honest, the fanbase is rabid and loyal, and you always have horror / slasher fans talking about it--hasn't placed Cunningham is the most positive light (or Miller, for that matter). But he comes across very well.

I'll end up being just like the YouTubers with so much content on this box set, it will get more than a bit old. 

***This is called "Crystal Lake Confidential" on the Scream Factory Bonus Disc, but this isn't Cunningham elaborating in vivid detail about the facets of filmmaking for "Friday the 13th" specifically. This is a mild career retrospective for a big bonus disc***