Released: May 9, 1980
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Screenplay: Victor Miller
Tagline: "If you think this means bad luck…you don't know the half of it"
Cast:
Adrienne King as Alice Hardy
Harry Crosby as Bill
Peter Brouwer as Steve Christy
Laurie Bartram as Brenda
Kevin Bacon as Jack Burrel
Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees
After the first two bodies drop, the film skips ahead twenty-one years to find a young couple and a group of new, teenage counselors settling down in the remains of the deserted summer camp that played host to the tragedy, ready to repair and revitalize the secluded campground. But they have not been heeding the warnings of the Crystal Lake locals, particularly those of Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney)--doomed to always be heard, but never believed--when they are cautioned that if they stay too long at "Camp Blood," they will not come back. When a secret assailant starts offing the kids one-by-one, counselor and sensitive artist Alice is left to fend for herself in the midst of a powerful thunderstorm before the murderer is revealed in one of classic horror's great twists.
If John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) blew the horror genre wide open by starting the slasher boom, Friday the 13th provided the template most of its successors would slavishly follow, with all of those witless teens wandering off alone at night to be graphically skewered by farm tools and sporting goods. Though director Sean S. Cunningham and writer Victor Miller certainly jumped on the Halloween bandwagon, they produced, at little expense, a glossy and quirky rip-off that proved to stand alone as a quality imitation.
What makes Friday the 13th work, and what helped it stand out when it was released, was its killer twist ending and use of a remote, backwoods location. Crystal Lake is visualized as an idyllic American town, one filled with abundant pastoral and natural beauty. Early scenes in the film document this beauty, creating an almost Rockwellian vision of the surrounding area. These visualizations serve a crucial purpose, because the film largely concerns innocence lost or destroyed. The curse of "Camp Blood" lets us see that Crystal Lake has now become a Garden of Eden-type-setting, beauty now corrupted because two camp counselors allowed an innocent child to drown while making love--they lose their biblical innocence and a child loses his life. At the same time, Mrs. Voorhees loses her son, and therefore her innocence, along with her mind (as we later learn). Take, for instance, the scene involving the snake in the counselor's cabin--a snake in the garden, as it were--that is promptly decapitated by a counselor's machete, putting an end to the threat and restoring order. Symbolically, this scene is echoed in the film's bloody denouement as the final girl, Alice, lops of the head of a much more dangerous snake in the garden, the killer, also utilizing a machete. In both cases, we get the idea of natural order overturned by the presence of evil--a serpent, specifically--and then order is restored, even if the respite is brief.
It can be quaint when there's not various limbs strewn about
By essentially retelling Halloween's story in a remote environment, Friday the 13th managed to cement the slasher sub-genre for years and years to come. By enshrining the "rules" that Halloween established, from the killer with a vengeful agenda to the secluded, disturbed idyll, to the final girl running across all of her dead friends in a literal "tour of the dead," the film signaled a shift in horror as a whole, as made evident by the abundance of sequels that followed (ten movies followed, plus the remake in 2009, and there's a second reboot on the way next year, which will be the thirteenth Friday the 13th), and a return to the brand-name monster horrors of the 1930's. Though only present briefly in this first installment (that's right, he doesn't actually show up until Friday the 13th Part II [1981] and doesn't wear the infamous hockey mask until Friday the 13th Part III [1982]), Jason Voorhees has become an icon of the horror genre in the same vein as Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, and the Wolf Man.
Of course, the film is not without its faults. Though the graphic violence does its job in making the audience feel like victims, thanks in large part to special effects artist Tom Savini, who arrived at Crystal Lake straight from the Monroeville Mall and his work on Dawn of the Dead (1978), the direction is nothing special, and the revelation of the killer, who is shown to have hairy hands and large work boots and is strong enough to heft a corpse through a window, does not play logically (even if it is shocking on first viewing). Additionally, horror fans have debated for years if Friday the 13th is even suspenseful at all, if the story is too weak and padded to allow for true feelings of terror.
What most F13 fans do agree on, however, is the clever use of the camera in the film. Following in the footsteps of films like Psycho (1960), Peeping Tom (1960), Halloween, and even Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971), Friday the 13th forces the viewer to see through the killer's eyes as the teenagers are observed from the shadows. Often positioned outside cabins or bathhouses, the camera looks at the characters through windowpanes. Outside the windows is only darkness, since the setting is motley nighttime. But inside the buildings, the characters are brightly lit and attending to their business, unaware of danger. This pervasive composition reveals not merely the voyeurism of the killer as they stalk their prey, but also visually constricts the space of the protagonists within the rectangular frame, literally boxing them inside a series of smaller and smaller boxes as the film progresses. In the tightest, most claustrophobic of those boxes, our heroes go about their business without realizing their world has become limited and closed off by the invisible presence of the slasher nearby.
He won't be kicking off his Sunday shoes anytime soon
Filming techniques like this have become standard in the slasher sub-genre, and in horror in general, and even if you don't find the film all that suspenseful, it's hard not to twitch just a little when characters blindly walk into a bloody death while staring straight at the camera, a fact that the audience can recognize and anticipate but that the characters cannot. Little stylistic choices like these, or the abundance of "danger" and "warning" signs hanging about the decrepit, abandoned campground, make Friday the 13th a slasher that will always be a cut above the rest.
All of the tropes seen here may seem familiar to us now, perhaps even overdone, especially since Friday the 13th is now considered fascinating not for being a stand-alone film, but for spawning a successful and highly profitable franchise, even though most of the sequels are best avoided and present less interesting filming techniques and discussion than the original. Cunningham's film can still probe the mind of seasoned viewers and horror newbies alike, making us ask what exactly is meant by the cop who warns the counselors that he will not tolerate "weirdness." It it a surface jibe at authority? Or only a mask for the conservatism that sees virginal Alice as the sole survivor and the killer's motivation revolving around punishment for sex. And what exactly is the relationship between nature and man in this story of a paradise lost? Full-on assaults on the body are conducted under a heavy thunderstorm, pounding rain and lightning, the "invader" to the garden arrives with natural cover, with the help of a force beyond this world. And so it "rains blood" at Camp Crystal Lake again, and the viewer must ask if the storm is a manifestation of the killer's rage? A protest against the unnecessary death of an innocent child? God's tears over a mother's love turned to violence? Or does He send the storm as a cover for the murderous campaign to succeed?
The first Friday the 13th is more than mere dreck, because it features some visually accomplished moments and a smattering of interesting symbolism. Not least of all, the film conforms to the slasher format's best aspect. It reminds the viewer that even if the boogeyman is at the door, they can survive. And they can do it with the qualities they already possess in spades, intelligence and insight.
Tranquility restored, or the calm before the storm?
Friday the 13th (1980)
5-Totally Terrifying
4-Crazy Creepy
3-Fairly Frightening
2-Slightly Scary
1-Hardly Horror
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