Friday the 13th (1980)

A slasher film can be simply defined as a film with a body count, in which an attractive cast is slowly killed off one by one. Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood and Bob Clark's Black Christmas are often credited with helping originate the concept of slasher films, and John Carpenter showed us slasher perfection with Halloween in 1978. But on June 13, 1980, slasher films blossomed into a money-making juggernaut when Paramount Pictures released Friday the 13th.

On a budget of 700,000 dollars, it grossed nearly six million dollars in its opening weekend and inspired hundreds of knockoffs and wannabes (rumored to be over eighty in just one year). Halloween is a classic, but Friday the 13th started the great slasher boom of the '80s. Originally conceived as just a way to make a quick buck, Friday the 13th became a cultural phenomenon. It spawned ten sequels, a video game, comic books, novels, action figures, legions of devoted fans, and over time, earned a spot as one of horror's most iconic franchises.

So if you're unfamiliar with the series, here's how it all began. We're taken to the long-closed Camp Crystal Lake, which young entrepreneur Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) fully intends to open back up for business. The locals in the nearby neighborhood don't exactly think that's a good idea, however, as they'll be the first to tell you that this summer camp should probably stay closed due to its horrible history. A camper drowned in 1957, and subsequent attempts to reopen the camp saw a series of fires, poisoned water sources, and even two murders. There's a reason Camp Crystal Lake has been nicknamed "Camp Blood," after all.

But no matter how much they're warned about the camp's past, Steve and his team of counselors are determined to reopen the camp. But there's a little something that stands in their way: the murderer that arrives at the camp and starts picking them off one by one.

Director Sean Cunningham had just finished the 1978 film Here Come the Tigers, a low-budget soccer-themed knockoff of The Bad News Bears. He was preparing to start a TV show based on the movie, and after seeing Halloween, Cunningham decided to make a similar film as a way to make a little money to fund the show. So I guess we can blame the whole thing on Halloween and a Bad News Bears rip-off? Cunningham, whose prior experience in the horror genre was as the producer of Wes Craven's 1972 cult classic The Last House on the Left, assembled a cast, crew, and a script by Here Come the Tigers writer Victor Miller, not expecting Friday the 13th to become anything more than a detour on the way to bigger fame and fortune.

But when the movie was picked up by Paramount and released, it started raking in money like gangbusters. Says Cunningham, "I thought the big hit I was gonna have was gonna be a TV series, but it was Friday the 13th. The TV series never got picked up, and Friday the 13th put my kids through college."

So Victor Miller's script isn't all that groundbreaking, and the acting seems a little hokey at times, but that's probably to be expected. I mean, a group of twenty-somethings at a summer camp in the middle of New Jersey in 1980 would probably act like that. I hadn't been born yet, so don't quote me on that. With the exception of a pre-Footloose Kevin Bacon as one of the camp counselors, the majority of the cast would eventually fall off the face of the earth, so I guess I really shouldn't be bothered if they gave crappy performances or not because at least they didn't do much of anything afterwards.

Despite the cast full of no-names, Betsy Palmer proves herself to be one of the two true stars of the movie. Everybody recognizes Jason Voorhees as the franchise's primary villain, right? But the killer in this first movie is Jason's beloved mother, whom Palmer plays wonderfully. She makes you really believe that she really is a homicidal maniac fresh out of the asylum. I'll admit that a tiny woman in her 50s committing nine horrific murders is a bit of a stretch, but she pulls it off to perfection.

I think it's worth noting is that when the film was released, the late Gene Siskel encouraged readers of his newspaper column to write letters to both Paramount and Palmer herself to express their displeasure with the movie. It was less than successful. "Somebody showed me the review," Palmer said in an interview, "but I didn't get any hate mail. He [mentioned] the wrong place. He [said I lived in] Connecticut, but my real hometown's in Indiana." But in all honesty, I think Siskel overreacted big time. A horror movie is only as good as its villain, and I've always thought that Palmer was absolutely wonderful in the role. She brings a very fun level of intensity to the role, and with a lesser actress in the role, I don't think it would have worked.

The other big star in the movie isn't even a member of the cast. Tom Savini did the makeup effects, and he did a smash-up job. He'd just come off George Romero's classic zombie movie Dawn of the Dead, which the MPAA slapped with an X rating due to his makeup effects, and with the fame he got from that film and Friday the 13th, he became the hottest makeup man in the horror industry. He even joined the press tour on the 1981 slasher movie The Burning. Not counting Stan Winston's work on the Terminator trilogy, how many makeup/special effects guys do press for movies?

Countless imitators and nearly three decades later, Friday the 13th still holds up as one of the true classics of the horror genre. While those that don't appreciate films like this view Friday the 13th and films like it as a joke, I do appreciate it and I do enjoy it. So while it might be one of the oddities of the Friday the 13th movies due to its lack of the franchise's most famous character, I'm going out on a limb and giving the movie hearty recommendation. Go check it out. 

Final Rating: ***½