Friday the Thirteenth (1933)

Too much of everything

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

With today being Friday, September 13, I decided to watch a movie called Friday the Thirteenth. Now, if you're reading this under the title heading, then you know I'm not reviewing the 1980 slasher flick, nor its sequels nor the remake from a few years ago, all involving the character of Jason Voorhees. No, what I'm reviewing here is an obscure British film that's about a bus crash on that particular day that then flashes back toward the beginning of that day in telling the passengers' lives beforehand. All I'll mention now is that a couple of deaths result but this is not a horror or suspense film but a comedy with some dramatic moments that entertained me quite a bit most of the way through. So on that note, I highly recommend Friday the Thirteenth.

Journeyman director Victor Saville has turned out an excellent programmer here with fine ensemble playing from some of the top names in British stage and screen at the time. In most cases they're just building on their 'image' so that Max Miller is a fast-talking con man, Robertson Hare a bumbling innocent abroad and Jessie Matthews a pert chorus girl etc but somehow Saville gets the blend to work. Emlyn William's screenplay calls for a bus full of passengers to crash on the inauspicious day of the title and two of the cast to perish and then we flashback to their individual stories and just what led them to take this particular bus. Pleasant diversion.

I urge you to see this. You will enjoy it for its tight writing within each ministory; but there are greater joys in the construction as a whole. The characters are united spatially — they all end up on a bus that has an event. But they are interwoven in a deeper way, as the eye skips from one story to the other. Rather than being separate and requiring work to keep them straight, each event in each story adds to a tone of the movie as a whole. It surrounds a whole people and provides a more universal insight into humanity than any single story could.It is not profound; the writer knows not to be overly ambitious. It is about as perfect as screen writing gets, and in 1933! This is where "Short Cuts" comes from.One story satisfies my notion of folding: a young couple is in love. He is a "professor," she a showgirl. The tension between them has to do with his problems in accepting her appeal being exposed as part of what is called here "the business," meaning the business of theater. London in that era was the world center for the theater and between the wars also the center of thinking about what this new medium of film would bring in terms of constraints and opportunities. The central issues are reflected in this little story — which ends happily for the couple, and us.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This film has an excellent premise and is really crying out to be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster. As I recall (and it's a few years since I've seen the film) the action starts with a London omnibus filled with people. There is an horrific crash and one passenger dies. The rest of the film is then told in flashback, with 13 characters who were on the bus getting their recent lives explored in intricate detail. At the end of the film we return to the crash and find out which of these chirpy, vivid characters has met a gruesome end. Great stuff, a little like a good tabloid news story fleshed out in precise, even handed detail. If only it were available on video...