SATURDAY THE 14th: Uh, Why is there a Dracula Creature from the Black Lagoon on the cover?

Oh, childhood memories you have let me down yet again.  I remember SATURDAY THE 14TH being a funny, imaginative, scary movie that was high on creepy atmosphere and laughs.  But back then I was five and stupid.  Now that I am old and narcissistic I can clearly see what a boring, incredibly naive piece of schlock this movie is.  Its so tongue-in-cheek that the tongue has pressed through the cheek creating a large amount of trauma and blood loss and there are all these people standing around shocked into petrification that nobody can help but watch the ugly mess unfold before their very eyes until the damnable thing dies.  In other words this movie is grossly bad.  I can't even give it a pass for nostalgic reasons.

The movie crashes and burns almost instantly as the credits pop up over a freeze framed haunted house and each name is introduced with some poorly animated animal like a snake or bat crawling or flying on the screen like this was some kind of kids movie.  The animation is bad, folks.  Like they didn't have time to finish it but they went with it anyways because it was the early 80's and no one thought that they would invent the Internet so some guy with too much time on his hands could write a blog post to point it out.  After the credits roll we are "treated" to scene after scene of painfully bad humor involving monsters running around in a house trying to get a book that has powers and the newly moved in family doesn't seem to notice except the boy of course.  There are two draculas also trying to get the book.  I really have no idea what is going on in this movie.  Nothing makes sense.  There are too many holes to count.  Nothing visually leaves an impact on your memories.  Its a forgettable mess of boredom. 

SATURDAY THE 14TH has an innocent quality to it.  It is as if who ever wrote LEAVE IT TO BEAVER or HAPPY DAYS wrote this movie.  Look at the title.  Doesn't the title imply that this would be a spoof of at the time modern slasher flicks like FRIDAY THE 13TH?  But there is no spoof to be found.  If you think about it this movie isn't a spoof at all.  It is just a really bad comedy that has monsters and draculas in it.  Did an 8 year old write this?  Wouldn't it be funny if a shark monster tried to grab this girl at night but when she enters her room it is too foggy (for some reason) for the monster or the girl to see each other so the two walk around in circles just missing each other barely.  That is what happens, folks.  I kid you not.  You can see the immaturity or naivety of the makers who made SATURDAY.  I don't see how a script this pointless or unfunny could have been given the greenlight.

I guess if you look closely at the cover that the dracula on the cover is really just a really green dracula and not a dracula creature from the black lagoon.  But come on, folks.  At first glance that is what it exactly looks like.  I wish this movie was good.  I can't believe I actually remembered this movie from my childhood because I just watched the damn thing on DVD and I don't remember much at all.  Heaven help me, there is a sequel and I have seen it.

Jason