Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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Fade to Black (1980; dir. Zimmerman) sometimes contain no more than two or three
eye/camera shots in the entire film. This may explain the more economical, if still
occasionally inventive approach to eye/camera coded shots in subsequent Friday the
13 th films.
While there is not a decrease in the number of eye/camera shots in Parts VI,
VII and VIII, the approach to them tends to be more streamlined and direct with less
ambiguity. The ultimate aim of the shots in the final three Paramount-produced
Friday the 13 th films appears to be generic orientation and immediate perspective
positioning at the service of the narrative, diminishing suspense caused by distortion
and uncertainty of perspective. A significant commonality between the three films is
the early introduction of and consistent attachment to a protagonist that drives the
narrative development: Tommy in Jason Lives!, Tina in The New Blood, and Rennie
in Jason Takes Manhattan. The eye/camera in these films establish the centralization
of these characters and of Jason as antagonist, which differs from A New Beginning
in which Tommy, though the central character, is not clearly identified as protagonist
or antagonist until the end. The following three films, however, use the eye/camera
in very different ways in order to highlight the protagonist/antagonist relationship.
However, the eye/camera shots in Jason Takes Manhattan only use generic
orientation as part of the device’s developmental continuum within the film. Jason
Takes Manhattan presents the viewer with eye/camera shots initially to create
generic orientation and visceral shock by moving between victim and aggressor
positioning, but gradually aligning the film with Rennie’s perspective, with a few
exceptions. 16
In this way, the eye/camera does not contribute to the overall
perspective of the film, but instead, from moment to moment, presents a variety of
16 These exceptions, as discussed, include the junkies watching the group and Julius’s decapitation.