Horror proof: Tiffany Helm went from Friday the 13th scream queen to Canmore photographer
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When Tiffany Helm was a teenager living in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, she and her friends would go dancing at an all-ages venue called the Odyssey in West Hollywood.
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The club was somewhat infamous in L.A. due to the young age of the clientele and rumoured activities within. It met an untimely end in 1985 after being set ablaze by an arsonist. But before that, it was the spot where Helm would practise dance moves that she would later immortalize in a gruesome death scene in the 1985 horror flick Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
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'It had its new wave night and its goth night,' says Helm, in an interview from her home in Canmore. 'There were a few of us who did this weird … whatever that was … a synth-pop-mime-robot, whatever. I just integrated it. I think I may have done it off to the side and tried it as a rehearsal when they were checking the camera. They loved it. So I was like, 'OK, this is what I will do because this is what I'm comfortable doing.''
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Comfortable may seem a strange word to describe the scene, but it has become a cherished part of slasher-film lore. So has Helm's character, the doomed 'New Wave kid' Violet Moraine.
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Helm is now a photographer and mother of two who has been living and working in Canmore since 2011. After a lengthy hiatus from acting, she got an agent and started booking roles again a few years back. But, for now, her role in A New Beginning remains her most beloved among horror fans and gets her invites to conventions across North America. On Friday, June 13 – when else? – Helm will attend a screening alongside co-stars Melanie Kinnaman, Dick Wieand, Ron Sloan and Tom Morga to celebrate the 40th anniversary of director Danny Steinmann's Friday the 13th: New Beginnings at the Globe Cinema. It's being presented by the Calgary Underground Film Festival in partnership with Calgary Horrorcon, which runs Saturday and Sunday at the Genesis Centre Calgary. This year's stacked lineup includes an E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial reunion with Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace and Robert MacNaughton, Gremlins director Joe Dante, ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Twin Peaks star Ray Wise, among others.
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This will be Helm's third Calgary Horrorcon appearance, but she has been to similar events in Chicago, Ohio, California and Texas – 'wherever they want me, I'll go,' she says – as fascination for the Friday the 13th franchise endures. Helm admits she is not a huge fan of the slasher film, preferring the more psychological side of the genre, but says she never gets tired of talking about the movie.
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'It's pretty interesting, the whole subculture and the phenomenon of it,' she says. 'You never know what you are going to be remembered for. '
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For aficionados of the genre, and the never-ending Friday the 13th franchise specifically, The Final Chapter is a key entry. It is actually the fifth of 12 instalments of the franchise, which began in 1980 and centres on the hockey-masked supernatural serial killer Jason Voorhees. A New Beginning followed the deceptively titled 1984 entry The Last Chapter and stands out for a number of reasons. Unlike the other films, it is more of a whodunit. Corey Feldman has a cameo in it, and the horror mostly takes place at a creepy centre for troubled youngsters called the Pinehurst Halfway House.
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