We’re 2 months shy of the next Friday the 13th, and with the unveiling of the new Crystal Lake TV series premiering on Peacock, what better time than to start deep diving into this series. My plans are to have the final articles be released on Friday, January 13th, 2023 so it should all work out.
To get started, Friday the 13th was Sean S. Cunningham‘s directly ripping off John Carpenter’s Halloween, released in 1978. The idea started out as a way to raise money for future projects, and Cunningham knew that Halloween had been incredibly profitable. Cunningham had Victor Miller start writing the script and took an ad out praising his idea to be “The most terrifying film ever made!” with nothing but a title. Cunningham got his film made with a budget of $550,000 and released on May 9th, 1980 to great success, grossing $59.8 million. The film had overall mixed reviews and spawned plenty of controversy over violence depicted in cinema, even some over the villian being female.
Personally, I think I’d rate this film a bit higher than most. It probably won’t show on the scale I’ve created, but while this movie is certainly boring and uninspired by todays standards, Friday the 13th single handedly set the tone for the genre in the 80’s and started a mass injection of slasher films into the genre. While it’s true that this film stole from Halloween in a bid to be profitable, every other slasher in the 80’s borrowed from the formula created by Cunningham and Miller.
Synopsis
The story begins with a flashback to 1958 and we get to watch a couple of teenagers get slaughtered for no rhyme or reason in the same POV shots made famous by Halloween (also done quite a bit in 1974’s Black Christmas but I believe you have to be American for American’s to give you credit in terms of American movies).
Then back in present day we’re introduced to the Annie on her way to Camp Crystal Lake. She’s given warnings from diner patrons, Crazy Ralph, a prophet of doom if you will (he literally says their doomed, so the moniker sticks) and then hitches another ride from crazy old Maurice, I mean Enos, a random trucker who has no trouble touching some tush. The ride with Enos is a giant exposition dump, explaining how in 1957 a boy drowned and after that there was a fire, water contamination, and 2 murders in 1958. After he drops her off, she hitches another ride from someone not shown (way to tell the audience this chick ’bout to be dead). After the driver passes the camp, Annie jumps from the vehicle and runs. The killer catches up to her and slits her throat.
Nothing like 20 minutes of exposition and meeting characters who aren’t doing much to push us to the finish line in this movie, but this is also the fastest and debatably most interesting part of the movie. Between the scenes of Annie leaving Enos and getting herself killed, we meet the actual cast of characters we’re going to follow around and watch die. This is a slasher, after all, even if it’s an early one. The entirety of the second act is cliché dumb teenager antics, with one by one these teenagers going off by themselves and “disappearing” (or to the audience, getting brutally murdered). The introduction to the boobs and blood era, if you will.
By the end, the last remaining character, a girl (final girl as it were), Alice, is left trying to find her missing friends and discovers them all dead, one by one. This was one of the best reveals for the time but I don’t think it really holds up now. Pamela Voorhees introduces herself to Alice and explains that she was the mother of the little boy who drowned and that every time someone tries to open the camp back up she stops them, you know…by fire, contaminating the water, or by killing a few of them. This is why she’s killed all of these people, so this camp will never open and what happened to her son won’t happen again. The reason I say it wouldn’t hold up now is because this is a who-dunnit but we never meet Pamela until now. The reveal would be great if they show her throughout the movie but doesn’t explain who she is until the reveal. I guess they couldn’t afford more Betsy Palmer than that.
Either way, she gets her head lobbed off and that’s the end. Minus a jump scare at the end where a water logged Jason jumps out of the lake and grabs Alice, not ripping off Carrie at all. I don’t like taking lightly that a filmmaker ripped off another filmmaker, but they openly admit it in several of the readily available documentaries. If you enjoy the franchise enough to be reading my thoughts on it, check out Crystal Lake Memories. It gets a fairly steady rotation on Shudder if you can catch it.
Plot: 6/10
The story of Friday the 13th or any of its sequels are hardly ever great, but they are always fun to watch. I’m not sure how likely a mother would ever go ham on a plot of land as suggested, but I don’t think that really detracts from the enjoyment of this film. I mention how cliché a lot of this plot is, but this movie sets these clichés so it’s fairly excusable. I know other films like Halloween did them first by having a bunch of horny teens having sex, doing drugs and getting killed, but this movie really drove those home and popularized them. I’d give this film a 5, but I think the lore set up deserves a point on its own. Not the most believable, but still a fun story in a fun setting. I’ve seen a lot of complaining about the pacing of this film, and there are a few areas that do move fairly slow but overall it’s never really bothered me in any of the times I’ve watched this.
Characters: 6/10
Background of the main characters, what characters I enjoy, how relatable they are, actors who portray these characters and what else they’ve done as well as how well they portray the characters versus how they are written
Barry Moss and Julie Hughes cast a bunch of stage actors versus character actors I’d assume to save money, but this is another way in which this film set a standard in the industry. Grab a bunch of no name actors who will work for peanuts and dump your whole budget on makeup, music and blood. It helps that these young actors were all decent and had good chemistry together. Your main character, Alice, is played by Adrienne King. She’s…fine. Not my favorite final girl by any stretch but she’s at least adequate. The rest are more clichés. You have the creepy owner Steve, the balanced Brenda, Bill the love interest for Alice when she’s not being harassed by Steve, the prankster Ned and then the horny couple Jack and Marcie, played by Kevin Bacon and Jeannine Taylor respectively. Yes, Kevin Bacon, the Kevin Bacon. This isn’t his first film, but its safe to say that it helped him land his role in Footloose, which is what skyrocketed his career until he peaked at Tremors (that’s a joke. Or is it.). All of these roles are played naturally and to be honest I think Kevin Bacon was probably the worst out of all of them. That’s the way things go though, I suppose.
Lastly you have Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees. She was the only recognizable face when the film was released, showing up on many TV series and game shows. She received a lot of praise for this role even though she initially hated it and even with a long list of credits over the decades this is still probably her most notable role to date. Unpopular opinion, while she seems amazing off camera, she hams it up in this movie more than anyone else, slightly edging out Kevin Bacon in that regard. On of my biggest pet peeves in independent films is the actors overacting and I feel like the two biggest names are the biggest offenders in that regard. I try to give it a bit of a pass because that’s how things were done in those days but I still prefer the more natural acting by the minor cast members.
I’ll give this film a 6 because the acting and character designs themselves are above adequate but still a mile from being great.
Cinematography: 9/10
The cinematography is one of the things that makes this movie great, and probably one of the reasons it was as successful as it was. The shots of the camp, the lake, how every kill is shot, it’s all amazing. A lot of the weather in the film is a symbolism to the dangers that are present and the way Barry Abrams brings that to you keeps the tension high through a good chunk of the movie. Abrams had worked with Cunningham, Miller, and Steve Miner before on Manny’s Orphans so I’m sure was a shoe in for the job.
Music / Score: 9/10
Harry Manfredini made a masterful score for this movie. From the intense themes during kills and the bright melody when the sun is finally out and Alice is on the lake even to when it tenses back up for Jason to do his jump scare, it’s one of the best in horror history. I’d give this movie a 10 if it weren’t for that goofy banjo playing when we meet the minor cast and they are riding to camp. It’s incredibly out of place. The rest is about as perfect as it gets.
The Kills / Makeup and Effects: 10/10
I’m going to do something I don’t do often and give this movie a perfect 10 out of 10 for the kills / makeup. Looking at it today it doesn’t look that special, but for the time it was one of the reasons for the founding of the MPAA. Tom Savini had already made a bit of a name for himself with Martin but really impressed the world with his contributions to this movie. There are a few cheap kills in here that is off screen, but most of them are in your face gore.
Cheese / Camp Factor: 8/10
This movie basically set the bar for campy slasher movies and how they can be good. I’m not going to give it a perfect score, however, because while this movie does some things better than the sequels, the sequels are definitely better in how successful they are at being campy. Looking at you, part 6.
Rewatchability: 7/10
I watched this movie today to freshen up for this review and I can’t say for sure how many times I’ve watched it before that. This isn’t close to being my favorite Friday film, and even isn’t close to being the best in terms of quality even though I’m giving it fairly high marks. But I can definitely seeing myself watching it again.
Conclusion: 7.8/10
Keep in mind, I these ratings on how good the film was for the time it was released. If this movie were released today, the score would be miserably low. That said, I’ll probably have movies that I like more than this one in this franchise with much lower ratings. Maybe I’ll do some variety of ranking, but for now I’m just settling with these reviews as well as the Kill Analysis. I still think this is a fair assessment considering how much this film influenced the next decade of slashers.