"I'm going to show you some scenes you may recognize. This is an early passive titled Friday the 13th. You've probably seen this film at some point. It is a recognized classic. What you may not know is that when this ‘motion picture’ was first released, the majority of the public thought it was fiction. It went on to make a record amount of money at the box office, but unlike films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Blair Witch Project, no attempt was made by the filmmakers to pass the film off as true. Because not even the filmmakers knew they were making what amounts to a documentary.
"The reality upon which this film was based, unbeknownst to the producers, the director and the writer, was far worse, far more terrible than anything they could possibly have imagined. Through a series of clandestine operations too tortuous to rehearse here, the original screenwriter, Victor Miller, was passed notes on certain key plot points. Those notes originated in a government think tank connected with the still active MK Ultra program.
"Yes, you're aware of MK Ultra. Certainly it seems barbaric to us now that the U.S. Government tested hallucinogenic drugs on children, that they employed psychics to control minds at a distance —all of that is part of the public record. But the people behind MK Ultra were not fascists or fools. Sometimes scientific progress isn't understood at the time it's being made, which is why we have science fiction, horror, fantasy—to lighten the learning curve of the paradigm shift. MK Ultra from its inception had worked on the possibility of mass mind control, from the early stages of development upward.
"Fear is the key. You might say that fear is the greatest weapon one can wield. And fear, of the boogeyman, of things that go bump, of cryptic terrorists and random subversives—fear is what kept our Republic strong in the early days. What we have here with Jason Voorhees is one of the greatest forces for fear the world has ever known. And it starts with the youth. As you can see from this simplistic but effective film, teenagers tend to run rampant without direct supervision. Even with direct supervision, they find ways to sneak away. To indulge their primitive biological needs. Even Sean Cunningham, who originated the Friday series, said it was about the fear of untimely death—not a morality tale. But he was only half right. What that film, and many like it, succeeded in doing was to introduce the fear factor at the point of indulgence—to insert caution where imprudence might reign. What was true in the 20th Century is true in the 25th: children can only be truly disciplined through fear. And that fear, ladies and gentlemen, is what we intend to provide."
