You know the moment. You’re in a wheelchair and about to get lucky in an 80’s horror movie, when all of a sudden instead of climaxing with a hot girl – you’re rolling down the stairs with a machete stuck in your head. It can be a cruel, cruel world and Mark from Friday The 13th Part 2 found that out the hard way unfortunately.
Mark is the guy in the horror movie that you want to root for. He’s nice. He has a disability that doesn’t deter him. And he’s about to make whoopee with Vickie which makes you want to root for him even more. Now if you know the horror rules, you don’t have sex in a horror movie because you’re probably going to die. But Mark didn’t even get to have sex! Oh the horror! It was terrible. It was unthinkable. It was downright mean. So let’s watch it and enjoy his pre-sex demise!!
I usually root for handicapped characters in horror movies. I felt bad when Will ‘The Wizard Master’ from Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors bit the dust via Freddy Krueger in his dream world. And I felt even worse when Mark from Friday The 13th Part 2 took a machete to the face just after he was making headway with a lovely young lady inside a cabin. Life can be cruel. But not quite as cruel when we’re talking about Franklin Hardesty from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Welcome to another edition of Hip Hip Horroray! It’s a mediocre ongoing post where I give you my moments throughout horror history that made me rejoice when someone annoying in a movie met their demise. And if we’re talking annoying, we’re talking about Franklin. Bound to a wheelchair, but not bound to being a character that we give a shit about, Franklin mopes and blows raspberries while he wheels around and becomes more and more annoying as the film goes on. The first part of sweet justice is served early on though, when he tries to take a leak on the side of the road and rolls down a hill after a speeding car blows by him.
And of course, the second part of sweet justice is served when Leatherface does what we all wish we could: he carves Franklin up like a delicious Thanksgiving turkey. Fittingly, Franklin is still bitching and moaning right up until the chainsaw does us all the big favor. If you pause the movie during this scene at just the right moment by the way, you can see a small smile appear on his sister Sally’s face. She’s glad he’s gone and as the audience, so are we. So join me now with the Youtube video below in sharing the joy of Franklin Hardesty’s last moments on Earth. Hip Hip Horroray!
