Saturday the 14th (1981) – Nostalgia Central

Rather than aping the slasher genre of 80s horror films (as the name suggests), Howard R. Cohen’s witless spoof takes aim at classic horror traditions, mixing vampires, old dark houses, poltergeists, creatures from lagoons, shaggy monsters and other supernatural paraphernalia.

John Hyatt (Richard Benjamin), his wife Mary (Paula Prentiss), their teenage daughter Debbie (Kari Michaelsen) and their young son Billy (Kevin Brando) move into their new home – a ramshackle house in Eerie, Pennsylvania that they have inherited from a recently deceased uncle.

The Hyatts are unaware that vampires Waldemar (Jeffrey Tambor) and Yolanda (Nancy Lee Andrews) want the house for themselves because it contains a legendary book of evil.

Billy discovers the book and inadvertently reads out a curse, unleashing the monsters illustrated in the book.

The family are then beset by all manner of strange events: Eyes appear in John’s coffee; Mary is bitten by Waldemar; Debbie is menaced by a gill man in her bathtub;  and an exterminator named Van Helsing (Severn Darden) turns up to help them rid themselves of the bats in their belfry.

John and Mary throw a housewarming party on Saturday the 14th, which ends in disaster as the monsters make short work of the guests.

It is ultimately revealed that Van Helsing wants the book himself, in order to rule the world and that the misunderstood Waldemar and Yolanda are actually trying to stop him.

The New York Times dismissed the film as “an unfunny horror-film parody”, and Variety called it “a pathetic farce which will seem frail even on TV, for which it should probably have been made in the first place”. But it proved successful enough on video that a sequel – Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988) – was produced.

John Hyatt
Richard Benjamin
Mary Hyatt
Paula Prentiss
Waldemar
Jeffrey Tambor
Van Helsing
Severn Darden
Debbie Hyatt
Kari Michaelsen
Aunt Lucille
Rosemary DeCamp
Billy Hyatt
Kevin Brando
Yolanda
Nancy Lee Andrews
Attorney
Stacy Keach Sr.
Cousin Rhonda
Roberta Collins
The Major
Paul ‘Mousie’ Garner

Director
Howard R Cohen

Video