For years now, horror fans have held that “Friday the 13th,” despite its shortcomings, is a significant film because it was instrumental in launching the genre of teen slasher movies.
The original 1980 film has spawned nine sequels, plus the crossover “Freddy vs. Jason.” Let us take this opportunity to re-examine this “landmark” film and discuss any merits we happen to stumble across within it.
The film begins with a prologue set in 1958. In this prologue, more or less stolen from “Halloween” (witness the killer’s point of view throughout), two counselors at Camp Crystal Lake are gettin’ frisky in the attic when darned if someone doesn’t come along and kill them.
We skip to the present (well, 1980), where a smiling but clearly unintelligent girl named Annie is on her way to Camp Crystal Lake to work as a cook for the summer. Seems that after a couple decades, the place is being reopened. All the townsfolk call it “Camp Blood,” and Annie is warned by a doddering bicyclist that she is “doomed” if she goes there. The redneck who gives her a lift in his truck tells her several hundred times to quit. She blithely ignores all the counsel and is murdered by an unseen slasher on her way there.
Meanwhile, at the camp, we are introduced to a scrawny band of horny teens, all of whom smoke weed so much that now they only wear Daisy Duke shorts. These are the counselors for the upcoming camp season, and the guy in charge of them, a curly haired porn star of a fellow named Steve, has had an ill-defined relationship with one of them. The lucky gal and allegedly our main character Alice.
Steve goes into town to do goodness-knows-what, leaving the teens behind to be killed. This occurs with methodical precision and admirable efficiency, and usually to a soundtrack stolen outright from “Psycho” and “Jaws,” as though someone said, “THOSE movies were scary; we should probably use their music to make OUR movie scary, too.”
One of the teens is Kevin Bacon. He gets killed immediately after having sex. Later, Kevin Bacon was in “Hollow Man.” I don’t know that Kevin Bacon’s career has really progressed much.
Nearly every cliche now associated with slasher films is present in “Friday the 13th.” People who fall while running, people saying “I’ll be right back” and then not coming back, idiotic cops, teens having sex, cars not starting, people supposedly being dead and then turning out to be alive and very angry, a killer who proves to be very incompetent indeed once he or she is actually challenged face-to-face, it’s all here. I will grant you that in 1980, most of these things were not cliches yet.
There is no suspense over who the killer is, either. The film’s point of view is omniscient; that is, we are privy to the thoughts and actions of all characters, not just a select few. When a murder is being committed, we are often shown what’s going on simultaneously back in the cabins. This gives everyone an alibi, and we know the killer is not one of the characters we already know. Which means, who cares who it actually turns out to be? Just some random psycho, or someone with a grudge, or a strange act of God. Everyone winds up just as dead either way.
However I do sound as if I'm putting the movie down, I'm not just trying to give an honest review, more so I love this kind of shit anyway as it's right up my street. So disengage,your brain and enjoy it for what it is.
For a movie that only cost $600,000 to make and grossed $485,000,000 worldwide, the makers certainly done something right.
Friday the 13th 1980 movie trailer
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