FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Writer: Victor Miller

Producer: Sean S. Cunningham

Cast: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Peter Brouwer, Rex Everhart, Ronn Carroll, Ron Millkie, Walt Gorney, Willie Adams, Debra S. Hayes, Dorothy Kobs, Salle Anne Golden, Mary Rocco, Ken L. Parker, Ari Lehman

In 1958 at Camp Crystal Lake, two camp counselors are murdered. More tragedies follow in the next several years, so the summer camp is closed. Many years later, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) has decided to reopen his family’s camp. A group of young adults, who will be working as camp counselors for the summer, are arriving there to help get the camp ready. Someone else has also arrived at Camp Crystal Lake to commit more murders on Friday the 13th.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) was the massive horror hit that made just about everyone realize that a low budget film without major stars could be well made and provide a fantastic return on the investment. Of course, that encouraged a lot of independent filmmakers to hop on the bloody bandwagon to create the slasher film craze in the early '80s, and it was Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th that showed them all how it was done.

The horror genre never used to get much respect from the critics, yet Halloween roused more than a few from their knee-jerk dismissive mindset to approve of its craft. Carpenter was a director that knew the language of the film medium so well that he could tell his simple story very effectively.

Those same critics were chomping at the bit to tear Friday the 13th to pieces. It has been dismissed and damned by many as a rip-off, artless, crude, and even misogynistic. While director Sean S. Cunningham and writer Victor Miller frankly admit that they set out to rip-off Carpenter’s film, they only swiped its intent: to tell a scary story about a killer picking off young victims one-by-one. That template is so simple that it allows for enough variety so that each new slasher film need not be just more of the same. Friday the 13th certainly was not just another Halloween.

The chief differences Friday the 13th has from its Halloween inspiration are its setting, its killer, and its technique. The summer camp setting is a brilliant way to isolate the cast to be easy prey for the killer, and, best of all, it is an environment that the viewer can easily settle into. It is a mundane setting that everyone in the audience can relate to, even if they all have not gone to summer camp. When the audience feels in tune with the setting, the horror of the situation is bound to register more deeply. The killer in this film is much different than the unfathomable menace of Michael Myers in Halloween. In fact, most slasher films to follow would deal with their killers much more in the manner of Friday the 13th. The difference in technique many would attribute to a desire to be more blunt in getting to the payoffs. In horror movie terms, that often means more kills and more gore. Without a doubt, much of the success of Friday the 13th was the result of Tom Savini’s nasty special effects make-up expertise. Gore was certainly an increasingly important gimmick to get a lot of asses into the seats at the theaters. This was another difference from Halloween that most other slasher films would adopt.

None of the differences mentioned above mean that Friday the 13th is a better film than Halloween, but it is a different film still trying to land the same audience. I think that it does so admirably well.

The most tiresome criticism I hear about slasher films, and this one especially, is that the characters are shallow and unrealistic. Just how much depth does a typical 18 to 22-year-old really have to display in one single day? 

I think that the young characters in Friday the 13th are far more realistic than the glorified and pandering representations of their target audience that more recent filmmakers put in their films. People that look like models and say everything as a snarky putdown or a contemporary catchphrase are not realistic. Those idealized characters are doing “movie stuff” that creates a comfort zone between the viewers and the victims they see onscreen.

The characters that are getting offed in Friday the 13th made an impression on their intended audience because the viewer could easily relate to them. They don’t behave in some idealized way that makes the young viewer feel hip and cool for wanting to believe they are like that, too. The reason that Friday the13th made a real impact is that it shows the young viewer that someone like them can get it without warning. And it’s gonna be nasty!

Something else that goes a long way toward making this film’s danger really matter to the viewer is the non-plot activity during the character’s interactions. Again, this creates a sense of reality and intimacy that makes the horror payoff. These young people are doing the unglamorous chores and having the fun and mishaps of a group gathered together to get the camp prepped for its reopening. When we settle into that very real environment, it makes the threat seem more personal.

 

The young cast is quite likable. Chief among them are Adrienne King and Kevin Bacon. Yes, that Kevin Bacon getting his first meaty role, though he probably wants us all to forget it. He has nothing to be ashamed of here, as he does a good job. The cast members seem real rather than just actors being given their “movie moments.” Concocting convoluted back-stories and angst for each character may seem to some like great writing, but it can keep characters from being typical and relatable. Friday the 13th does not strive for high drama but for a shared terror with its audience. A setting and a set of characters that are readily accessible to the audience make the terror seem more immediate.

Special mention goes to Betsy Palmer for her role. It was a huge departure, to say the least, for this actress. Despite her misgivings about the script, she gives it her all, and that really helps the film work in the end.

This was the first and best installment of one of the most iconic horror series in film history. I have also enjoyed the sequels even as they play fast and loose with the continuity and the timeline. I usually try to judge each film on its own merits. I can cut a flick plenty of slack if it is making a sincere effort to deliver the goods and does not get pretentious and stroke its audience’s ego. Friday the 13th is effective because its story and technique were simple and direct. In this case that presents no barriers to its audience engaging with the terror of its situations. That was all that Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller were aiming for, and they hit the bloody bull’s-eye.