“Halloween is making a shit-ton of money, let’s rip it off” and with those immortal words from producer/director Sean S. Cunningham to screenwriter Victor Miller, a horror franchise was born, of course, it was never intended to be a franchise and though Jason and his iconic hockey mask were a few years away – and just in time for the 3D boom – the first Friday the 13th movie still works quite well and has truly stood the test of time.
When released back in 1980 the original Friday the 13th may not have been the first slasher film to hit cinemas but it is often considered the true launch of the 80s “Dead Teenager” genre, and even though Bob Clark's Black Ch Christmas and John Carpenter's Halloween had got a jump on the genre in the preceding decade it was the trip to Camp Crystal Lake that really set the tone for many of the films to follow. Upon viewing Halloween it's clear that Victor Miller left with two takeaways; a prior evil and having sex results in death, and with the addition of a perfect “Campfire Story” motif for this outing he had himself a great little horror story. Now, one of the key differences between Halloween and Friday the 13th is that Michael Myers was given no clear motivation for his becoming a murderer, he was just evil incarnate, as if some switch had been pulled that set him off on his killing spree, while in Friday the 13th there was a clear inciting incident with the death of little Jason, which caused the grief-stricken mother (Betsy Palmer) to have a psychotic break
“Here’s Johnny.”
The story structure of Friday the 13th is pretty much that of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” only instead of it taking place on a small isolated island it’s out in the woods of New Jersey. We get an economic introduction to our cast of characters before the film proceeds to then knock them off one by one; we have the camp’s owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), whose early interactions with camp counsellor Alice (Adrienne King) could have landed him in court for sexual harassment – lucky for him he got murdered before that could happen – and then we have Annie (Robbi Morgan) the camp’s cook, who doesn't quite make it to Camp Crystal Lake as she is the first one to be brutally murdered.
Horror Survivor Tip #1: Do not run into the woods to escape a killer, whoever is chasing you will somehow end up in front of you.
Another key element of this movie is the introduction of “The Harbinger” the character who will warn our cast of characters to "Get out!" while the getting’s good. In this case, it’s Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) who exclaims to all to hear that anyone who goes to Crystal Lake will die, “You're doomed! You're all doomed!” and for one simple reason “It's got a death curse!” Even a kindly truck driver (Rex Everhart) tries to steer Annie away from the camp, providing us with some necessary exposition about the camp’s history, needless to say, such advice is rarely heeded and soon the bodies are stacking up like cordwood.
Horror Survivor Tip #2: Avoid going to the washroom by yourself, just ask Marion Crane, it’s never a good idea.
Rounding out the cast of victims is Camp Crystal Lake’s counsellors Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), Bill Brown (Harry Crosby), Marcie Cunningham (Jeannine Taylor), Brenda Jones (Laurie Bartram) and resident prankster Ned Rubenstein (Mark Nelson ) who are all given just enough screen time to allow us to either root for their survival or cheer for their demise – we’re looking at you Ned – and Miller’s economic screenplay does this beautifully in what otherwise could have been a simple paint-by-numbers procedure.
Horror Survivor Tip #3: Do not be the resident prankster as your chance of living drops almost to zero.
Stray Observations:
• In the prologue only two kids are murdered by Mrs. Voorhees but twenty-one years later she tries to knock off the entire staff of Camp Crystal Lake, which is some serious escalation.
• A motorcycle cop arrives at the camp looking for Crazy Ralph, but what would he have done if he’d found him? Was he planning on Ralph “Riding Bitch” all the way back to the station?
• An actual snake is chopped to pieces, in a rather brutal fashion on-screen moment, which will always be a serious demerit towards this entry.
• I’d love to know how “Strip Monopoly” works because if you pay rent in clothes instead of money you’d be naked pretty damn fast, and are certain items of clothing worth more than others?
• Alice breaks the “Final Girl” rule by drinking and smoking pot.
• If you look closely enough you’ll notice that all the kills are performed by a male stand-in and not Betsy Palmer.
• For a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Voorhees is pretty good at moving bodies around; she nails Bill’s body to a door with arrows, throws Brenda’s through a window and hangs Steve Christie’s corpse from a tree.
She must take Pilates or something to have that much upper body strength.
This film may have been birthed out of the popularity of John Carpenter’s Halloween but it also owes a considerable debt to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The character of Mrs. Voorhees is a schizophrenic who hears and often speaks with the voice of her dead child and thus she is basically the flipside of Norman Bates, we’re just lucky she doesn’t decide to dress up like an eleven-year-old boy, but another key ingredient borrowed from Psycho would be that of Harry Manfredini’s fantastic score. When on things of the music of Friday the 13th the first thing that comes to mind is the iconic “Ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma” that is heard while the killer’s POV is tracking the latest victim, but when the film reaches its third act finale the shrieking violin chords of Bernard Herman’s Psycho score pretty much takes over, a theft that Manfredini is more than happy to admit. And to be fair, if you’re going to steal you might as well steal from the best.
“We all go a little crazy sometimes.”
Of course, one cannot talk of Friday the 13th without mentioning its true star, Tom Savini, even though Betsy Palmer was the only real marketable actor in the cast it was Tom Savini, hot off George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, who made Friday the 13th truly memorable. When one sits down to a “Dead Teenager Movie” the plot and cast of characters are quite secondary to the creative kills that will be presented, and in this area, Savini is a legend. In an era long before computer effects, Savini managed to pull together some truly amazing effects but what should be noted is that in this first film of the series the kills are fairly restrained, so restrained that when it had to be edited for television broadcast only a few seconds had to be trimmed, and it's a testament to both Savini and Cunningham in providing kills that aren't just mounds of blood and gore, instead, they are quick moments that cause an instant visceral reaction which will remain with the viewer long after the moment has passed.
Tom Savini brings home the Bacon.
Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th has often been accused of being misogynist but that is quite unfair and that cloud that hangs over the film is mostly due to the many entries that followed, the kills in this first movie were fairly democratic – hell, it’s the males who get some of the more violent kills in this film – and when the killer is revealed to be a woman it also takes the wind out of any attempt at making a “Male Gaze” criticism. Is Friday the 13th a horror masterpiece? Certainly not, Cunningham was attempting to make a quick and cheap commercial film and any artistic merit was a secondary by-product of this goal, but one must admit that even all these years later one must admit it was a well-crafted little film, executed with excellent workmanship and pride. Friday the 13th may not have re-invented the wheel when it came to the slasher genre but it did add the racing stripes.
Note: The jump scare of Jason coming out of the lake and attacking Alice was a blatant attempt at copying the jump scare from the end of Brian De Palma’s Carrie, funny enough, it was so effective it pretty much cemented the franchise to follow, the same thing cannot be said of Carrie.
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