Theoretical Frontiers in Friday the 13th Fandom

The Friday the 13th movies get categorized as slashers, but the series can also be called a mystery. Due to accelerated filmmaking schedules and little concern for continuity between sequels, the Friday the 13th universe poses countless questions, many of which remain unanswered. How could Pamela Voorhees singlehandedly carry out an elaborate, one-night murder spree? Who (or what) comes out of the water at the end of the first movie? If it is Jason, how could he appear as a youth, given that his supposed death occurred two decades before? Did Jason witness his mother’s decapitation? More broadly, where does Jason get his power from and how does he recuperate so quickly? Why does Jason’s appearance change so drastically from movie to movie? These are just a few of the queries stimulating fan speculation. While fans have conjectured a host of answers to specific questions, no singular explanatory theory has emerged. Just as physicists work toward a Theory of Everything to provide an all-encompassing framework for the material universe, we Friday the 13th fanatics have clamored for a unified field theory to better understand our beloved franchise. This article aims to review the major advances in Friday the 13th fan theories and then analyze them so that we can move toward a Fan Theory of Everything.

The first hypothesis we have to treat is the Jason is a Deadite Theory, which explains Jason’s indefatigable capacity to recover from injury and death. It’s good to get this out of the way early. Attributed to Reddit user BARGOBLEN, this theory focuses upon references made in Jason Goes to Hell to the Necronomicon, a flesh-bound grimoire that plays a pivotal role in the Evil Dead films. In the Evil Dead franchise, the act of reading from the Necronomicon summons Kandarian demons that can possess human beings and turn them into Deadites. Jason Goes to Hell reveals that Pamela Voorhees experimented with black magic, utilizing the Necronomicon to resurrect her son. Through this lens, then, the original Friday the 13th film depicts not just murders but rather ritual killings at Camp Crystal Lake. The Deadite theory posits that Pamela’s beheading marked the final sacrifice needed to bring back Jason, prompting his return from the lake in the film’s denouement. The demonic possession also clarifies why Jason became so strong in subsequent films. By Part VI, when Jason gets resurrected via lightning bolt at the cemetery, he has become a full-blown Deadite under a Kandarian demon’s control. While Jason Goes to Hell director Adam Marcus has confirmed that he believes his movie references the very same Necronomicon from Evil Dead, he cannot speak for the Paramount-made Friday the 13th movies that preceded his contribution to the franchise. Many fans have rejected the retroactive Evil Dead-inflected reading of Jason, due in large part to debates about whether or not Jason Goes to Hell can be considered canon (an issue to which we will return).

The Friday the 13th fanbase has been more amenable to what can be thought of as The Accomplice Theory. This theory, sketched out in varied forms by Movie Timelines and your present author, among others, attempts to refine our understanding of how an elderly, diminutive woman such as Pamela Voorhees could perform the intricate and physically intensive murders in the original film. It’s doubtful Mrs. Voorhees could throw a young woman’s corpse through a window or force an arrow through a mattress and into Kevin Bacon’s neck. Accordingly, the Accomplice Theory postulates that Pamela had help from none other than Jason. After all, we can clearly see a man’s hands in several of the kill scenes (which belonged to special effects wizard Tom Savini or his assistant, Taso Stavrakis), giving every indication that the killer is going to be revealed as a male. We can then extrapolate to conclude that this man, Jason, is responsible for the corpse-tossing and the neck-stabbing, among other Herculean feats. This means that mother and son are working in cahoots, with Pamela obviously well-aware that her son survived the alleged drowning.

In my reading, this could suggest that Jason’s incident in the water in the 1950s may not have been especially serious. Nonetheless, the incident racked Pamela with guilt, and she lashed out by blaming the counselors for everything, unable to consider her own culpability in the ordeal. Conceivably, the near-death of her son in proximity to the sort of sex-play that saddled Pamela with a child that she appeared to be supporting on her own brought on a psychotic break. Going forward from the alleged drowning, it could easily have been that Jason was effectively dead to Pamela, and so she let him go off on his own. After the camp closed, she may have communed with Jason after he’d taken up residence in the woods, potentially even bringing along food and other necessities when her guilt surged. And so, when Camp Crystal Lake reopened, Pamela and Jason collaborated to cut a swath through the staff. But when Alice started fighting back and Jason realized his mother’s plan was falling apart, he retreated. After witnessing his mother’s death, Jason was now the one racked with guilt. His ambiguous feelings about his mother in their life together and his ambivalent reaction to the circumstances of her death could now be sublimated into killing interlopers on Crystal Lake territory.

Other fan theories have built upon the idea that Pamela couldn’t possibly be acting alone, including the Multiple Killers Theory. Now, of course, we know there are multiple killers in the Friday the 13th series, namely Pamela, Jason, and Part V’s Roy Burns. But this theory, spelled out by Rob Stewart of 411Mania, holds that “Jason” is literally multiple people, none of whom are the boy who drowned in Camp Crystal Lake. Stewart notes that in the first movie, when Annie hitches a ride to the camp, she does all the talking while the driver of the jeep, her eventual killer, stays silent. Given the movie’s ending, we assume that the driver must be Pamela Voorhees. But Stewart points out that, when we meet Pamela in the final reel, she’s extremely voluble and can’t stop talking about her fiendish plans. The person in the jeep, Stewart deduces, is an assistant who’s helping Pamela with the murders. The theory becomes more compelling vis-à-vis Part II, where we never get confirmation that the killer is Jason. Rather, Stewart contends that the counselors simply presume the killer to be Jason because they’ve been “wound up” by the campfire story told by their supervisor Paul early in the movie. Thus, Jason with the bag on his head could very well be, in Stewart’s estimation, Pamela’s jeep-driving accomplice from the original film. Having failed to save Pamela five years prior, this redheaded, overall-wearing man has been living in the woods with her severed head ever since. Boldly, Stewart goes on to argue that this individual is most certainly not the antagonist of Parts III and IV, as that killer has a more muscular body type and is bald. In Part III, when Chris has her flashback to being attacked by a mystery man in the woods two years before (whom she later recognizes as the killer), the attacker is also bald. Stewart deems it unlikely that a feral woodsman would change hairstyles so drastically and so often.

Doubling down on his theory, Stewart goes so far as to suggest that we meet yet another “Jason” in Part VI, given that the gravedigger in that film is a bumbling alcoholic who could have mixed up the body of the real Jason with that of someone else. This resurrected corpse stays on as the killer for the rest of the Friday the 13th movies. Stewart then discusses Rennie’s flashback in Part VIII, when she recalls being thrown into Crystal Lake by Dr. McCulloch. Under the surface, she encounters a spectral child, and Stewart interprets this as an affirmation that Jason never left the lake in spirit or body. This incident, then, marks the first legitimate encounter with Jason throughout the series, in Stewart’s estimation. And how does Stewart fit Jason Goes to Hell into his framework? He avers that it’s a movie about Jason that has been made within the preexisting Friday the 13th universe.

The Elias Voorhees Theory also builds on the notion of an accomplice, labelling Pamela’s helpmate as Jason’s father. Elias Voorhees is first referenced in Jason Goes to Hell, and commentator Dustin Whitlock of Movieweb proposes that the man’s hands we see in the original Friday the 13th belong to him and not Jason. Elias undertakes another killing spree that spans Parts II through IV, continuing to exact the revenge that he and Pamela took in the first movie. This helps account for how the killer manages to find sole survivor Alice, navigate a route to her house (presumably by car), and kill her inconspicuously at the beginning of Part II. Whitlock submits that simple genetics explain the facial resemblance between Elias and Jason, with the asymmetrical features and hydrocephaly having been passed from father to son. While Pamela may have loved Elias regardless of his physiognomy, Whitlock acknowledges a darker possibility—that Jason may have been conceived by way of a sexual assault. Indeed, the attack described in Chris’s flashback in Part III carries strong overtones of attempted sexual violence, implying that Elias was a predator with what Whitlock calls a “pattern of behavior.”

Alternatively, Whitlock hypothesizes that Elias’s resemblance to Jason could also be accounted for by mask-making, with the father creating elaborate foam-latex disguises in order to perpetuate the myth of his son’s survival or return from the dead. The drastic alteration in the killer’s appearance between Part II and III, then, is little more than Elias changing masks. Whitlock points out that mask-making marks a recurrent theme in the series, what with Tommy Jarvis’s savant-like ability to create masks proving integral to the plot of Part IV. Whitlock also relies on the masking sub-theory to make sense of the more symmetrical look of “Jason”/Elias in Parts VI through VIII. Over the passage of time, he conjectures, the deceased killer’s flesh and the mask’s foam-latex would have decomposed in the grave, revealing Elia’s original symmetrical skull structure. Whatever the case, Whitlock insightfully encapsulates his Elias Voorhees Theory (and the Multiple Killers Theory) when he muses that “The plot of Part 5 is the plot of the franchise—that people accept the ghost story of Jason without questioning it.” The killer, though, was never Jason.

One of the most promising Friday the 13th fan theories has come to us from the pen of Chris Snellgrove of Giant Freakin Robot in late 2024. The Chaos Magic Theory, as I’m labelling it here, once again deals in the dark arts, though it moves out of the realm of Deadite Theory. Snellgrove postulates that Pamela Voorhees dabbled in black magic before the events of the first movie in hopes of resurrecting her son. This required sacrifices, and Pamela’s murder spree in the first film marked an attempt to complete the spell. However, Alice decapitated Pamela before she could kill her final victim and finish the rite. At this juncture, Snellgrove posits, the dark energies within Pamela’s body seeped into Crystal Lake and the surrounding area. Thus, Crystal Lake truly had a “Death Curse,” as Crazy Ralph would phrase it in the first two movies. The “chaotic magic,” as Snellgrove calls it, proceeded to bring Jason back not as a boy but as a monstrous man and rendered him indestructible in the process, enabling his subsequent resurrections. Snellgrove suggests that the lingering magic in the area could solve the mystery of why the surviving women in the first three films all experienced “dream visions” of being attacked by someone who was supposedly dead (youthful Jason, adult Jason, and Pamela Voorhees, respectively). Snellgrove also speculates that the restorative powers of the spell could be responsible for preserving Tina Shepherd’s father beneath Crystal Lake in Part VII even after he’d drowned due to prepubescent Tina’s violent telekinetic reaction to his spousal abuse. In that spirit, Snellgrove advances the notion that Tina’s psychic powers may have been enhanced by the echoes of Pamela Voorhees’ curse in the Crystal Lake area.

We are now in a position to evaluate the various circulating fan theories, selecting the most useful parts in order to move toward a Theory of Everything in Friday the 13th. First off, I think it’s undeniable that Pamela Voorhees had a male accomplice in the first movie, and that he was Jason. Alternatively, as per Whitlock, I suppose the participation of Elias could also make sense in Part I, III, or even II. Elias strikes me as a far more reasonable choice for the killer than a bunch of random psychopathic backwoodsmen operating in the same territory, as per Stewart’s rather outlandish theory. Still, Stewart’s assertion that Jason Goes to Hell is a fictional portrayal of Jason within the Friday the 13th universe stands as one of the most cogent explanations for the film’s place in the lore. And because Jason Goes to Hell is not, by that token (and by the judgement of many fans), in the Friday the 13th continuity, the fact that Elias only enters the franchise in a movie far afield from the canon makes it highly implausible that he’d be the killer in earlier installments.

Whatever the case, I think we can say for certain that the union between Elias and Pamela was not a happy or healthy one, having resulted from some kind of inauspicious or coercive liaison—either a shotgun wedding, paternal dereliction, or outright assault. Killer or not, Elias was probably a predator.

Finally, looking at Snellgrove’s work, I think we can accept that there is a cursed or magical quality to Crystal Lake. This does not necessarily involve black magic rituals or Necronomicon nonsense, but more likely connects to some kind of malevolence in the water and the surrounding land that predated the camp. Crystal Lake would seem to contain some sort of enchantment that awakens or augments specific capacities in particular people, both for bad and for good. This explains Jason’s ability to regenerate and resurrect, as well as Tina Shepherd’s enhanced psychic powers. More broadly, this would shed some light on why Crystal Lake seems to attract malefic events.

Thus, we can summarize our Fan Theory of Everything for Friday the 13th as follows: Pamela accomplished the Friday the 13th murders with help from her semi-unwanted son Jason, product of a toxic relationship with Elias. Five years later, Jason went on a multiday killing spree at Crystal Lake, rapidly recuperating thanks to the enchanted waters until he was definitively killed by Tommy Jarvis. The legend of Jason lived on, allowing Roy Burns to convince locals he was Jason. Then Tommy Jarvis resurrected Jason’s remains and, with help from some leftover Crystal Lake magic, Jason became an undead, unstoppable killing machine. He received some resistance from Tina Shepherd and her deceased father, each of whom were turbocharged by Crystal Lake magic, and he ultimately wound up in Manhattan. In the ensuing years, a movie came out called Jason Goes to Hell dramatizing the myth and exploits of Jason Voorhees. Oh, and then Jason was cryogenically frozen and reconstituted in outer space in the future.

Image Credit: Rodrigo Paredes from Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. Alterations were made by adding the Hubble Telescope Imagery as the backdrop.

(This article originally appeared on Medium on June 13, 2025)

Bibliography/Further Reading

Brooks, Nicholas. “A Friday the 13th Theory Ties Jason Voorhees’ Powers to The Evil Dead.” CBR. URL: https://www.cbr.com/friday-13th-theory-jason-voorhees-powers-evil-dead/

Snellgrove, Chris. “Killer New Friday the 13th Theory Explains Everything In The Franchise.” Giant Freakin Robot. URL: Killer New Friday the 13th Theory Explains Everything In The Franchise | GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT

Stewart, Rob. “Friday The 13th And The Multiple Jasons Theory.” 411Mania. URL: Friday The 13th And The Multiple Jasons Theory | 411MANIA

Whitlock, Dustin. “Friday the 13th: Why Jason Voorhees May Actually Not be the Killer in the Slasher Horror Franchise.” Movieweb. URL: Friday the 13th: Why Jason Voorhees May Actually Not be the Killer in the Slasher Horror Franchise

Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

Today I went for a walk to get groceries and travelled past a yard with a bunch of items sitting out for free on the lawn. I spotted a stack of dusted-over DVDs and stopped to read their spines. Nothing looked too compelling, though I did see something called Zombie Apocalypse with Ving Rhames on the cover, so I picked it up and put it in with the groceries. When I got home, I put the groceries in the fridge and fed the disc into the player, as I didn't have anything going on for the afternoon.

Zombie Apocalypse isn't very good, nor does it benefit from being spectacularly awful. The worst part of the production is the ubiquity of CGI. With every zombie decapitation, there comes a spill of computer-generated gore, the blood physics wildly unconvincing. The same can be said for the layered-on smoke and fire, which look spectral and otherworldly atop the movie's locales. Some present-day pundits may decry AI, but a lot of AI slop looks far superior to CGI of this caliber. I guess the only upside to CGI vis-a-vis AI is that someone got paid for their efforts. On account of the constantly looming CGI and the preponderance of suburban and small-town backdrops, the arena for this zombie apocalypse feels rather claustrophobic. 

To the credit of the writers and filmmakers, though, they did manage to do some world-building. Regarding zombies, we learn how to discern between "shamblers" and "onesies" and get some additional details about their behavior in packs. Indeed, the writers are very eager to share the terminology of this world. This happens mostly through conversations, so there's a lot of expository dialogue in this film. I found this a bit intrusive, though the filmmakers do manage to make some intriguing conceptual space within the limited physical and digital space onscreen.

I'll give Zombie Apocalypse points for the sense of odyssey that it creates. The party of protagonists are on a quest to reach a ship that will take them to a safe-zone, and they traverse various suburbs and small-city downtowns to get there. They're perpetually stumbling upon zombie ambushes as they do so. The film is picaresque in this way. 

The characters are generic and not especially likeable, at least at first, but as their odyssey carries on, I couldn't help but feel some minimal investment in them. Ving Rhames is the only inherent standout, and he does everything that's expected of him. In 2011, Rhames was seven years removed from Dawn of the Dead, and he clearly knows the drill. By this point, he also had the piss-poor 2008 Day of the Dead remake under his belt and was solidly typecast in the zombie-action subgenre. He's mostly just going through the motions in Zombie Apocalypse.

Eventually, the group splits up unwittingly, and one of the subsequent branches encounters a new group of humans. There's a cute exchange when the protagonists and the new group realize that their terminologies differ—e.g. the latter calls the monsters "the dead" rather than "zombies". These little meta moments work in Zombie Apocalypse because they're not constantly shoehorned in as per recent blockbuster tripe such as Love and Thunder.  

In time, we see group members die, and it's not unmoving. In terms of emotionality and plot, this made-for-TV movie moves, if nothing else. All told, Zombie Apocalypse wasn't a total waste of my Sunday afternoon. So if you see it lying on someone's lawn for free, I urge you to pick it up and give it a watch. Once you've watched it, don't throw it away. It's worth passing on to someone else with time to kill.  

Blood Sucking Freaks (1976)

Last night I went on Tubi looking for a grindhouse movie, and damned if I didn't find one in Blood Sucking Freaks. This 1976 film fully delivers as exploitation horror, depicting various means of torture including thumbscrews, guillotines, and electrocutions. And, delivering as promised on its title, the film features an especially memorable scene involving a mad physician drilling into a woman's skull and gleefully sucking out the blood and cerebrospinal fluid with a straw. He gets his comeuppance, though, as the good doctor is torn apart after being thrown into a cell full of long-captive nude women who have turned feral. He's an outlier, as the victims in this film are almost entirely women in the nude, and so the misogyny is pervasive and undeniable. 

The violent vignettes are tied together by a very loose plot in which a demented dramatist named "Sardu" attempts to gain exposure for his Grand Guignol-style act. To this end, he eventually kidnaps a famous ballerina affiliated with the Kennedy Center (the one now chaired by President Donald Trump) and brainwashes her with his sadomasochism gospel. As he subjects her to assorted forms of psychological torture, his assistant Ralphus—a little person with an impressively tall afro—dances and claps with a leering grin. If it's not already obvious, Blood Sucking Freaks is a wholly rebarbative experience. That said, the film maintains a goofball tone all throughout, which by turns helps mitigate the mean-spiritedness (a bit) but also amplifies the carnivalesque madness. 

Yet Blood Sucking Freaks also contains some genuine flashes of artistry. The film culminates in the ballerina giving a public performance in which she elegantly kicks a bound critic to death, which makes for a rather sublime and unexpected viewing experience. Where else but in a 1970s grindhouse movie are you going to see a ballerina leaving a theater critic in a bloody mess? 

When I heard that name "Ralphus" given to Sardu's assistant, I must confess that I thought of World Championship Wrestling, where a schlubby bald man of that same name served as the personal security guard of future WWE legend Chris Jericho back in the 1990s. In the obligatory post-movie Googling, I learned that Jericho, now running out the clock on his career in AEW, is a huge fan of Blood Sucking Freaks. In fact, Jericho considers Blood Sucking Freaks one of his favorite movies, and he's even written a song about it. I find this to be a very telling revelation. It's one thing to appreciate a film like Blood Sucking Freaks as a product of a unique cinematic ecosystem at a particular time, but it's quite another to say it's one of your favorite movies. I mean, the movie involves nearly constant sadomasochistic violence against captive nude women, the dad jokes flying as liberally as limbs. I would ask Jericho, Just how much has this film shaped your sensibilities as a person and a performer? Perhaps the answer would explain some of the questionable gimmicks, storylines, and projects Jericho has attempted in the long sunset of his career.

Chris Jericho, singing for his band Fozzy
(Credit: Lisa, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

As a further aside, I'll note that when I heard one particular swell in the musical score as the mad physician is introduced, I was reminded of hip hop artist Necro, whose track "Evil Shit" uses a portion of the organ music from Blood Sucking Freaks to great effect. Having revealed my enthusiasm for exploitation movies, professional wrestling, and Necro's raps in the course of this brief article, the reader may now be posing serious questions about my aesthetic sensibilities.

Execrable or not, I have no choice but to appreciate Blood Sucking Freaks, as it is an archetypal grindhouse movie. In fact, were I compelled to identify a single movie as representative of exploitation horror as a whole, I might pick Blood Sucking Freaks. With just one screening, it has forced itself into the mix with movies like I Drink Your Blood and Maniac that could also win the ignominious distinction of quintessential grindhouse horror flick. But with that, let me be clear: I'm not saying Blood Sucking Freaks is one of my favorite movies, or even good. Unlike those other aforementioned grindhouse classics, I'm never going to watch this turd again.

The Short Story Substack

Do you like short stories? If so, you're not the only one left who still does. The Short Story Substack (shortstory.substack.com) is dedicated to publishing one high-quality short story every month, and it has won a steady readership. Month to month, the Short Story Substack delivers as advertised. The examples are legion. The January 2025 story, "I Know" by Hannah Smart, unravels epistemically sophisticated dark humor in the style of a more polished, palatable David Foster Wallace. Melissa Ren's "Seasons Change" tells a sad story in reverse to realize a wistful, haunting literary rendering of old age. And the Substack also offers genre fare, such as Tyler Grant's "Worms", a horror yarn that culminates in protracted, gruesome imagery worthy of the basest splatterpunk anthology. All told, there's something for every reader here, making the Short Story Substack well worth the subscription fee. But it's not just worthwhile for readers. Smart, Ren, and Grant each received between $400 to $500 for their pieces, as published authors share in the Substack's subscription revenue. For that reason, the Short Story Substack should draw the attention of writers, too, as they'll potentially be well-compensated for the time and effort it takes to tell a quality short story.

Jason Voorhees Saved My Social Life

As a child in the 80s and 90s, I had a clear-cut vision of what adulthood was. Adults read big books written by towering intellects. They watched sophisticated cinema made by auteurs. They discussed complex ideas and social issues over dinner and drinks, drifting between politics, history, and literature. They looked for intellectual challenges and sought self-betterment, a profusion of novel experiences and imaginings perpetually broadening their frame of reference. Adult potential was boundless.

Then I became an adult, and I must confess I was a little disappointed.

In social situations, I met people in their thirties who read young adult fiction, if they read at all. Their shelves were filled with Ninja Turtles and GI Joe action figures, not books. Their notion of “cinema” consisted entirely of superhero movies, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Transformers. George Lucas and Michael Bay were their “auteurs.”

Video games were all-important, too, with Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Street Fighter factoring heavily into dinner-party discussions. Pokémon came up frequently in several friend groups, and not just those composed of self-identifying geeks.

When groups ruminated at gatherings, they did so over plot points of the Star Wars sequel trilogy (The Rise of Skywalker prompted particularly passionate debate). The most burning social issue I ever heard discussed involved supposedly “woke” casting decisions in the latest iterations of the aforementioned intellectual properties. With respect to new experiences, my friends and acquaintances were content with perpetual reboots, reimaginings, and requels of their childhood favorites.

In short, everyone had franchises they fancied and licensed characters they loved. In any given friend group, these IPs became nothing less than totemic for most members. One could always find the “Ninja Turtles Guy” or the “Hermione Granger Gal”; the “Street Fighter Dude” and the “Pokémon Moll” were never too far away. They could all talk breathlessly about their beloved franchise, ever able to share new thoughts and speculations about prospective reboots while lamenting previous ones.

Many people my age couldn’t be held down to one license. Instead, they had multiple totems to which they gave their love and devotion. Their discussions drifted seamlessly between Avengers and Star Wars and Turtles and Final Fantasy XIV. The references disoriented me, and I felt like I was drowning. Virtually everyone identified with a diverse array of licenses. The associated imagery decorated their phones, clothing, and key rings. Licensed baubles and tchotchkes dangled from numerous parts of their person. They bought stuffies of Mario and Sonic and Pikachu for their offspring and for themselves. For Halloween, they sent their children as the cutest IPs and dressed themselves and their spouses as complementary characters.

I, meanwhile, had IP envy.

It seemed like everyone had their licensed-character familiars except for me. In social situations, conversation would make its inevitable turn to these cherished franchises, and I could only stammer. I’d seen Star Wars and thought it was okay, but I couldn’t discourse on it. I’d played with Ninja Turtles as a child but had forgotten the principal characters’ names. I enjoyed a few rounds of Street Fighter on occasion but had few cogitations on the technical nuances of the gameplay system. I was wholly uninterested in pursuing Pokémon in public as a grown man, and that made me feel like a weirdo.

In the meantime, I watched these fans of manifold licenses advance in their careers, buy houses, and beget children, becoming productive members of society. Yet I was on the outside looking in. I was still trying to make a life by reading big books about non-licensed, original characters and thinking through social issues unrelated to the casting of Hollywood blockbusters. I had nothing tangible to show for it. All told, I was lost in a naive and outmoded vision of adulthood from my childhood.

At the nethermost depths of my gloom, I made a desperate attempt to turn my gaze backward, seeking to dredge up my childhood. Consigned to twisted bedding, I tossed and turned from noon to night, never sleeping, trying to scry into the murky waters of my ancient past. My childhood, I found, had sunk too far away and was fathomless, so I could not pull it back to the surface.

I could, however, see faint traces of my adolescence in the middle depths, and in subsequent reminiscences upon my pubescence, hope reemerged. The fog of past decades parted, and an image rose up from below.

Shooting from the deep came a hockey mask.

Jason Voorhees had come to save me.

As a teenager, I loved the Friday the 13th films. Their promise of violence and brief nudity had consistently captivated my attention. The lakeside setting made for an instant vacation. The teenage party atmosphere spoke to a more promising social configuration (certainly more entertaining than the adult milieu). Rewatching these films as a grown-up, I realized I had not only uncovered an aquifer of nostalgia, but I had found what I needed most: a totemic license of my own.

From that point on, social gatherings became coming-out parties for me, in that I’d advertise myself as a Friday the 13th fan. In my Friday the 13th hoodie, hat, and custom-made sweatpants, I was loud and proud. Going forward, all the Ninja Turtle Guys and Pokémon Molls would know that I was the Friday the 13th Guru. In mixed company, I would reverently take my turn confessing my fanaticism. With that breathlessness of the true fan, I would speculate about potential sequels and castigate entries of the series I found off-putting (e.g. Parts 8 and X). I would fluently spew all manner of Friday the 13th minutiae (or “lore”, as we fans so loftily refer to it), ranging from kill counts in each entry to trivia about filming locations and production schedules. Then I would yield back and make way for the next person so that they could testify to their own personal license-bound experiences. This is socialization.

Truth be told, few of my friends and acquaintances had ever screened a Friday the 13th movie. If they had, it was probably watched ironically. Understandably, the Friday the 13th films struck them as rather quaint and unsophisticated compared to the billion-dollar box office bonanzas for which they live. But now I at least had something they could begin to understand — an obsession with a recognizable IP — and so I was no longer a social zero. I could now float confidently on the periphery of their friend-groups. Jason was my life-raft.

It didn’t matter that most of my acquaintances were too preoccupied with Marvel movies and Star Wars sequelae to hear what I was saying. Nor did it matter that their attention would quickly shift when I gave unsolicited descriptions of Tom Savini’s gore effects in Parts I and IV. I could nevertheless sense that the fellow Millennials I met at parties were starting to respect me, because I too had a license that I loved and lived for. Surely, they could perceive that I was as dedicated to Friday the 13th and Jason as they were to Pokémon and Pikachu or Marvel and Deadpool or any number of other prime licenses, and they could appreciate that. We were all in this overdetermined IP morass together, after all. Finally, they could see me as a true adult in their Millennial mold.

After all that, I still read big books, but now it’s the stately Crystal Lake Memories volume, supplemented by the hard-to-find novelizations of the early Friday the 13th movies. I even bought up Berkley Books’ line of young adult Friday the 13th novels from the 90s. I have cleared my bookshelves of Updike and Sartre to make room for Jason figurines from each episode in their original boxes, not to mention a trio of his Funko Pops (hockey-masked, baghead, and 8-Bit versions). Altogether, they form a household shrine, giving praise to Jason’s salvational powers in the social realm.

Now, fellow middle-class Millennials can come to my place and feel at ease knowing that they are in the home of one of their own. Soon, I may be able to host my own parties, with my guests resting assured they will be swaddled in the comfortable clutter of overpriced licensed memorabilia. Though they may not watch the Friday the 13th movies, they will be soothed by the presence of the IP, even if it is a less familiar one. While the hockey-masked killer Jason may be intimidating to those uninitiated to the franchise, he’s a lot less threatening than the possibility of encountering new and original ideas.

The Author, ready for a night on the town

So if you find yourself adrift in the Millennial experience of pop culture, and you are still trying to take consolation in philosophy, literature, and cinema, here is my advice: rediscover a franchise from your childhood and go all in. Put down the books and the art films and pick up every product bearing your beloved childhood license. And once you’ve done that, find another franchise, and then another, always diving deeper and deeper therein. Each one will anchor you more securely in the zeitgeist. Soon enough, you’ll be fully submerged in nostalgia for your childhood, making you a full-fledged Millennial adult.

[This article originally appeared on Medium.com.]

Invisible Rulers

With her book Invisible Rulers, Renee DiResta has effectively compiled much of what's wrong with society today in digestible form. The chief problem is the internet—particularly social media—which has run roughshod over reason, expertise, and the institutions that uphold them thanks to mobs of grassroots users and the influencers who steer them. Innuendos, rumors, urban legends, and wishful thinking can spread in a matter of minutes on social media. Fact-checked reality lags behind, as it requires some standard of rigor and mental effort. In sum, lies have a quick first step when pitted against fact. These lies, DiResta argues, culminate in “bespoke realities,” which have obliterated the “consensus reality” of the past—that is, the agreed-upon intersubjectivity that has allowed society to function in the pre-social media era. The concept of “bespoke realities” should be indispensable for popular discussions of social media going forward. DiResta also notes how phrases like “just asking questions” and “big if true,” often wielded by right-wingers and anti-vaxxers, can push complete nonsense into the mainstream. By the end of the book, DiResta is referring to the bespoke reality of the right wing as its “cinematic universe,” an eminently useful characterization of the constellation of untruths within which many American conservatives live. To her credit, DiResta keeps the discussion relatively apolitical, though she has no choice but to admit that the right indulges in far more instances of pushing non-factual narratives than does the left, especially when violence and intimidation is involved. Sadly, some of this violence and intimidation has been directed at DiResta herself on account of her studies of the internet, and she details these in the book's penultimate chapter.

Epochal though Invisible Rulers is, it still has some shortcomings. There are only a few mentions of epistemology over the course of the book, even though epistemic negligence is one of the major issues driving internet misinformation. Truth be told, the most toxic influencers are prone to religious-styled epistemologies, even if they are not expressly religious themselves. Influencers often deliver solutions that are all-consuming and spiritual in tone, and their devoted audience is seeking nothing less than deliverance. Being a part of this tide of likes and follows and reshares can shape reality, devotees believe, leading to material, moral, and spiritual rewards. It's lunacy. Relatedly, DiResta doesn't talk about the pervasiveness of rationalization among influencers and internet users, which provides a perpetual off-ramp for their irrational and uninformed behavior. 

And above and beyond all that, DiResta neglects to address the overall garbage culture of the USA. Yes, Americans spend too much time on the internet, but large sectors of the citizenry also spurn education on principle. Anti-intellectualism is on the rise. Intellectual indolence is the norm, and perhaps even a point of pride for some. Attention spans are infinitesimal. When people have no urge to read full paragraphs, how do we expect them not to venerate a platform such as X? Just as awful is the American hobbyhorse of distrusting authority seemingly by default. Uncovering esoteric knowledge (i.e. “what they're not telling you” in conspiracy-theory speak) is not only a preoccupation but a consumable product in itself. All told, many Americans feel they have a right to live in total, irresponsible fantasy—that is, a bespoke reality. While DiResta applies terminology to this, she might have considered why this kind of reality-sculpting is prevalent in America, rather than just attributing it to human nature.

Regardless of its reticence to dig deeper into epistemology and the decline of American culture, I give Invisible Rulers my highest recommendation. It's rare that even the thickest tome satisfactorily capsulizes a zeitgeist, but this one comes close to doing just that in a mere 400 pages. Thus, it's a must read for anyone who still cares about rationality, evidence, and sober analysis.

Blue Money (1971)

Blue Money tells the story of a man named Jim who directs adult-oriented movies in early-70s California, a time and place where it is still illegal to make pornography. As such, Jim is perpetually looking over his shoulder while filming, as the threat of police raids is omnipresent. The mother of his child urges him to get out of the business, as she sees the pornographic art form as, rather poignantly, "dead space." Meanwhile, Jim's working on restoring an old houseboat in hopes of getting away to the sea in his life after porn. Oh, and he's also pursuing an extramarital affair with a European woman who's recently made her debut in his movies. Apparently, she's attracted to his quasi-European, French-Canadian sensibilities (Jim is French-Canadian, for whatever reason). 

The movie is terrible, as can be expected of a Crown International release. Alain Patrick, the actor playing Jim, delivers his lines in a muttered, off-hand fashion often resembling that of Tommy Wiseau in The Room. Although Patrick's French-Canadian background makes these difficulties with English forgivable, some of the lines are ludicrously misspoken, e.g. his demand that his crew "pipe it down." You puzzle over the fact that Blue Money's director didn't demand a retake to make "pipe down" happen, until you find out that Patrick was also the director (again, like Wiseau). It's surprising that producer Robert Chinn didn't show a little more investment in getting Blue Money into a more polished form, especially since the film is effectively telling Chinn's life-story. Chinn is perhaps best known as friend and frequent director of choice for pornographic legend John Holmes. No doubt, Chinn and Holmes dealt with the ever-looming threat of police raids as they made their films. But only fragments of that angst and desperation show through in Blue Money.

The film is still interesting, however, as a cinematic ethnography of early-70s sexuality. In this era, pornography existed on a grey market, and audiences could still be impressed by relatively innocent depictions of sexuality on camera. A softcore flick such as Blue Money no doubt looked titillating to much of its 1971 audience, who (unless they'd been hippies), were coming out of a comparably buttoned-down 60s, and were still a year shy of 1972's Deep Throat, which made hardcore pornography mainstream and "theatrical," in some sense. Porn lurked in the shadows, and for that reason even softcore depictions of its hidden culture and ostensibly liberated ethos would have enthralled audiences. And although a hardcore version of Blue Money does exist, even the Crown International version's softcore sequences would have been compelling to the 1971 crowd. I think, for instance, of the scene where Jim pulls his European paramour into a motel room shower fully clothed, gradually taking off her garments to reveal some brief nudity. This doubtlessly looked like libertine behavior to half the people in the audience for this film. You can almost hear the viewers' thought process: imagine it—pulling a fully-clothed girl into a shower. Wild! Perhaps we might liken early 70s cinematic sexuality to the public's first encounter with video games in the later 70s and early 80s. At first, it must have been rapturous to move around blocks on TV screens with the turn of a dial. In that regard, a film like Blue Money is sexual Pong. Bare breasts in a shower were likely enough to make this poorly scripted, shoddily directed film a memorable viewing experience.

But the directorial effort is not entirely awful. Later in the film, Jim is forced to remove his work-in-progress boat from the location near the marina where he's been shoring it up. At this point, Patrick includes a shot of a mother cat determinedly carrying a kitten by the scruff of its neck to the frames on which the boat rested. Apparently, the mother cat had nested her newborn litter in or around the boat, presumably not in a diegetic mode. I guess the incidental image impacted Patrick enough that he felt he had to include it in the final cut. And I suppose the image does parallel that of his significant other perpetually carrying their child in the domestic scenes. But the image struck me as irreducibly agonizing. I hate to be the bearer of darkness, but litters rarely survive in their entirety, and that's the case even when they live in relatively secure environs like farms or loving households. Being out in the no-man's-land of the marina, those kittens would have had even less of a chance, to say nothing of the mother. And those that do survive these kind of environs probably aren't going to amount to much more than alley cats, fighting for every scrap they ever get in their brief and tumultuous lives. And yet nature and instinct dictate that this mother has to parent with determination, no matter the odds against her and the litter. We hear that a hitter in baseball is an all-star if he fails seven out of ten times, but in all honesty, a mother cat is a hall-of-famer if she manages to keep 20% of her litter alive for more than a few months. We know that hers is a losing battle and a lost cause and all those other stock phrases, but still the mother feline goes full bore. (I wish I could take such an approach with my writing.) In that sense, the mother cat is also working in a "dead space." As with the pornographer and porn performers, little will come of the mother cat's efforts. She produces things that last a few months and then are gone and forgotten. It all serves a brief issuance of sperm and then is done. Though it leaves me crestfallen, I appreciate that Patrick took the time to film that cat scurrying with her young. With that second or two of footage, he acknowledged the perpetually unacknowledged, remembering what's inevitably forgotten. This is the only lasting image in Blue Money.

Forget the bare breasts and the sex, softcore or hard—it's the picture of the mother cat that endures in its capacity to compel. Watch Blue Money, then, if only to see these two or three seconds that provide a thematic fulcrum for an otherwise banal and ham-fisted picture. That single image saves this film from becoming The Room.

Halloween II (2009)

I had no memory of watching Rob Zombie's Halloween II, the sequel to the 2007 remake. I could swear I'd seen it before—twice, by my estimation. I purchased the Unrated DVD edition in 2010, and I could find it opened on my shelf. This suggested I had given it a watch back in the day. Tonight, I got the urge to screen the film, and from the opening credits, it felt unfamiliar, save for the faintest traces of what protagonist Laurie Strode looked like, strung out in the aftermath of witnessing brutal murders by Michael Myers. After the first hour, I had serious doubts I'd seen the film twice, let alone once. Perhaps I fell asleep the first time I attempted to watch it. This also puzzles me. The film turns out to be one of the most compelling in the franchise on account of its complex characterization, hypnagogic visuals, and thoroughgoing storytelling. These combine to make it one of the most interesting cinematic experiences the Halloween franchise has to offer.

The principal characters in Halloween II are not hollow slasher movie victims-in-waiting. The film centers upon Laurie, charting her transformation from the bookish, bespectacled high-schooler of the first film to the haggard, gloomy alt-girl who survived the murders and shot the killer. Between her therapy sessions, flashbacks, and assorted freak-outs, we see the very real PTSD that would be inevitable for anyone who survived the kinds of events documented in slasher films. We also see the aftermath for Annie, who survives Michael Myers' attack in the first film (unlike in the original John Carpenter continuity). Annie and her father, Sheriff Bracket (played by Child's Play legend Brad Dourif), have taken Laurie into their home, helping her through her breakdowns and attempting to provide some semblance of family life. Annie's pain is also very real, not only on account of having been scarred by Myers, but also from living with Laurie's constant anguished outbursts. Laurie feels inexorable guilt for what happened to Annie, and Annie must constantly convince Laurie it's not her fault. These factors deepen the psychological fault-lines, the kind that were only superficial in previous Halloween offerings. Dr. Loomis, meanwhile, the psychologist (psychiatrist in the prior continuity) responsible for Michael's care, has become something of a diva, profiting off sales and speaking engagements related to his book documenting the murders. Played by Malcolm McDowell, his venality raises the question of whether or not he'll do the right thing in the end and do something to prevent further slaughter.

Michael Myers' own motivations remained vague at best in the prior Halloween films. But in the unrated version of the Zombie sequel, the visual representation of his motivators makes for some of the most compelling imagery ever to appear in a Halloween film. Myers is haunted—or better yet guided—by the spirit of his deceased mother in a white gown leading a white horse. The horse, we are told by a rather heavy-handed epigraph, is a symbol of emotional release. Also accompanying Myers' mother is Myers in child form. Together, they advise the mute Michael on his journey through the film, orchestrating his reunion with Laurie, whom we the audience know, based on the first film and the earlier franchise lore, to be his sister. The appearance of these specters and symbols throughout Halloween II gives the film decidedly surrealistic and even Lynchian qualities. I would not have expected as much from a Halloween film; perhaps in oscillating between sleep and waking in my first viewing, I assumed I was dreaming all along.

In charting the mental and physical journey of Michael Myers, the unrated cut of Halloween II goes places no other Halloween film goes before, providing the kinds of interstitial storytelling we could only speculate upon in the previous films. Throughout the film, we see Michael trekking through fields and forests to reunite with Laurie. Surely he made such treks in prior films, but we were only ever left to imagine the logistics. On the way, Myers has neither his typical work-suit, nor his iconic mask. Rather, we see a massive bearded man, his face veiled only by long hair and a hood. He seems like something out of high fantasy, perhaps an itinerant barbarian guided by ancestor spirits. This is not the shadowy Michael Myers who has persisted throughout the series. Rather, he is out in the open. As the climax approaches, his face is shown on multiple occasions. He actually sort of looks like a steroidal Rob Zombie. Whatever the case, the horror baddie who travelled between shadows has been brought out into the light.

Here's what a Barbarian Michael Myers might properly look like

And this, no doubt, provides the main failing of the film for diehard fans of the series. Less has always been more with Halloween. Until this film (and, to an extent, the Zombie film that preceded it), Michael Myers has been a blank slate. The viewer had only the bare bones of his background. The man behind the mask was left almost wholly ambiguous, as were his motivations, and that's what informed the horror, to a large degree. The fact that an unstoppable killing machine could stalk victim after victim for no particularly good reason was a bottomless reservoir of terror. With Halloween II, that mystique is gone. We see the nuts and bolts of Michael's lunacy, and we have a good sense of his every move when he's not killing. This, undoubtedly, alienated some fans, who surely brayed that "this isn't our Michael Myers!" (I'm not even going to Google that so as to get a direct quote—I have a good enough sense of internet fan culture to know for certain that this was the criticism.)

This, however, is not a major flaw in the film, to my mind. Rob Zombie's reboot was committed to reimagining the series, and he delivered. That said, the film has plenty of other faults that keep it from being a classic. The film starts to lose focus around the three-quarter mark when, in the aftermath of learning the traumatic truth about her relationship to Myers, Laurie has a breakdown and then, on the spur of the moment, decides to go to a Halloween party. Why would Laurie be in the mood to party? And how often does a party scene with a live concert actually serve to the benefit of a movie? Rarely, if ever. It certainly does not work here. In typical fashion, the director gets distracted by the band and the (nude) dancing girls and the random MC who takes the mic and starts telling jokes. And it's Rob Zombie directing, so he gets doubly distracted and spends way too much time gazing on this Halloween rockabilly concert. As with most every party scene, it takes the viewer out of the movie.

Still, this is not enough, in my view, to write off the whole movie as a failure. I will not cast off the Halloween II unrated cut as utter crap, as so many others have (cf. The Halloweenies podcast on this film, which I've heretofore not listened to; nonetheless, they've referenced the Zombie films negatively in prior analyses, so it's safe to assume they shat all over this one). The concluding scene offers climactic surrealism, blurring the lines of hallucination and diegetic goings-on. In the final shots, Zombie makes a bold move with all the principal characters (the kind that, spoiler alert, typifies some of his other films), making the ending particularly memorable. Again, I'm shocked I didn't remember it the first time—again, a likely symptom of having fallen asleep. The film is definitely worth another watch, and this time I won't be waiting fourteen years before I fire up Halloween II again.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Until last night, I had never seen A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.

I don't know how I could have gone this long without watching it. I'm a ravenous fan of franchise slashers. Friday the 13th is basically scripture to me, and I've watched each of the films dozens of times. Halloween marks another favorite, and I've viewed all the movies, including the extended editions and alternative cuts, on multiple occasions. I even screen the Rob Zombie versions with some frequency. I love Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, and my feelings are much the same for Freddy Krueger. I've seen most of the Nightmare films several times. But for some reason, The Dream Child slipped through the cracks.

I can only hypothesize why things turned out the way they did. While I'm very fond of what Robert Englund brings to the Freddy experience, I found Krueger's increasingly quipster-ish behavior in the later films somewhat grating. In parts three through six, Freddy seems more like an insult comic than a horror icon. (By Freddy's Dead, he's an outright cartoon character.) And while I've generally enjoyed the imagery in the Nightmare films, I've often found the metaphysics perplexing. I know we're dealing in dreams here, but in almost every Elm Street movie, there's some point where Freddy crosses into reality, and I'm like, "wait, what?" (Part 2 is the most egregious in this regard.) The dream sequences make for the most creative and horrifying elements of the series, but by the time the plot of any given Elm Street movie resolves itself, it usually does so at the expense of coherence, I find.

But with that said, I've bracketed more serious issues in watching the later Friday the 13th and Halloween films. All told, the lacuna in my Elm Street viewing may simply be due to the fact that it's hard to find a good box set for the series. For years, the 8-film DVD box set has hovered around the same price as the 7-disc Blu-Ray collection. And while that Blu-Ray collection spent years on my Amazon wish list, it was sparse in nature (2 movies per disc and no Freddy vs. Jason) and generally overpriced. 

Finally, last week, Jeff Bezos dropped the price markedly, so I picked up the Blu-Ray box set. My first order of business was to watch The Dream Child.

This put me at a unique juncture. For all the other Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Elm Street films, my first viewing happened between the ages of 12 and 21, often on VHS. So now, at age 40, I had a chance to delve back into my youth, screening a franchise horror film for the first time. Perhaps the promise, wonder, and mystery of inserting a rental into the VCR would be recreated. Certainly, the anticipation was palpable as I pressed play on The Dream Child.

As it turns out, I was disappointed, but only mildly so. Regardless, a lot of my expectations were fulfilled. You see, a big part of renting horror movies in my youth was building up my preconceptions and then being moderately disappointed. Horror films, after all, rarely live up the cover art and screenshots on the back of their case. In this sense, The Dream Child helped me relive my youth.

What was the issue with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5? Well, once again, overly complex metaphysics bogged down a Freddy picture, and in the worst way. The Dream Child was a goulash of bizarre imagery and mythologies, overcooked in some places and undercooked in others. The writers gave every indication that they were making up the rules as they went along, pulling a means for defeating Freddy out of their asses at the very end. This is somewhat par for the course in Nightmare films, but in this case the end contrivance involved the combined efforts of the pregnant lead character Alice, the dream-manifestation of her future son at age five, and Freddy's deceased-nun mother, all in the dream world. There may have been other elements I've forgotten. There were simply too many variables for my simplistic, movie-reviewer mind to keep up with.

But the film has its strengths, too. Kudos go to the director and screenwriter for having Alice do what she wants with her baby in the latter third of the Reagan-Bush era. She spurns others' attempts to urge her toward abortion and adoption. Further to that, a lot of the nightmarish birth-canal imagery deserves some praise, as it takes viewers right into the Fallopian tubes, though the filmmakers go to the well a little too often. I also detected some effective Lynchian influence in the depictions of the cretinous infant Freddy, which is reminiscent of the baby in Eraserhead. The set-piece deaths generally deliver, as one expects from Elm Street films. The car-accident kill scene that takes out the father of Alice's baby is fantastic, as skeins of wires on a Knight Rider-esque talking motor bike piloted by a robotic Freddy entrap the victim in his dream, leading to a real-life car crash. Additionally, the kill scene where the comic-book fan gets eviscerated by "Super Freddy," a jacked super-villain Krueger in a cape, is particularly memorable. In these scenes, I felt some of that sense of wonder and awe I experienced as a teen (though I wouldn't have been able to designate filmic imagery as "Lynchian" at that age).

But the feeling that won out was disappointment. And this is okay. Because for me, I think disappointment provides its own brand of inspiration, and this is an important component of my creative process. For every horror movie I rented or bought or viewed on Tubi that didn't deliver on the promise of its box art and/or blurb, I felt the urge to sit down and write something that did meet my expectations. So maybe there's a nightmarish birth sequence in my literary future. 

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Crash of the Moons (1954)

"Crash of the Moons" is a two-part episode of the 1954 television series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger that, when watched in sequence, makes for a 72-minute, movie-like experience. This episode finds titular hero Rocky getting word that two "gypsy moons," which are mutually locked together and drifting through outer space, are going to crash into one another. On one of the moons, Posita, the denizens are willing to relocate. However, on the other moon, Ophecius, the waspish female suzerain Cleolanta is set upon destroying Posita (and its inhabitants) before it crashes into her home. It's Rocky's aim to set things aright.

Richard Crane, seen here in
another role, plays Rocky

It might seem like what we have here is boilerplate black-and-white 50s TV sci-fi, and, for the most part, that assessment adequately characterizes this episode. But watching this last night, I will confess that this episode moved me nonetheless. When Cleolanta's minions start bombarding the moon opposite them with missiles, the camera cuts from an outer-space perspective of explosions on the surface of the planet to the ground-level happenings on the planet itself. Infrastructure clatters down and roofs cave in and Rocky Jones' female assistant and his twelve-year-old ingenue, Bobby, scramble for cover. And as they do so, the infant prince of Posita wails and shrieks.

Hearing this crying baby last night, I thought of the babies in Gaza—the Palestinian babies and the Israeli babies. The leaders of men can come up with all kinds of reasons why they should bomb their neighboring peoples, but the babies can only cry. Listening to those straining screeches, my chest seized up and my mouth became pinched. We have destroyed one another in the past, we destroy one another in the present, and we will destroy one another in the future. In fact as in fiction, too many babies are doomed on arrival, born into the insoluble and perpetual conflicts of angry rival cultures locked in one another's gravitational pull. Gravity's a metaphor here, of course; hate is the real and abiding attractive force. Destruction of another gets conflated with self-preservation. Perhaps we should listen closer to the babies' crying. Babies shriek the same way, then and now and forever. 

I guess what I am saying is that this boilerplate black-and-white 50s TV sci-fi legitimately affected me. This vision of the future from the past put me in the immediate present. I was moved enough to have my heart teleported 6,290 miles from my watching location to the Gaza Strip. So I'd recommend you watch and listen to the crying baby in this two-part episode of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger and in life. Maybe it will move you, too. But probably not enough to make you do anything.

Babies cry and the skeletons smile.