For his directorial debut, producer Sean S. Cunningham looked to the startling success of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978) as the template for how to create a low-budget horror movie that might similarly catch fire with young thrill-seeker audiences. He must have been as surprised as Carpenter to find that this date on which to hang his conceit had never been used in the genre before.
According to Wikipedia, the fear of this date has multiple possible origins across differing cultures.13 was of course the total number of Christ's disciples plus himself at the Last Supper. To the Greeks, the fear of Friday the 13th is paraskevidekatriaphobia, derived from the Greek Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, meaning "Friday"), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς - "thirteen").
Watching Paramount's first FRIDAY THE 13TH again after over thirty years, it holds up pretty well. The pace is tight and the performances from the mostly very young cast of Camp Crystal Lake's counsellors (including future star Kevin Bacon) are engaging. Their late '70s innocence is plausible without being too cute, aside from intended camp cook Annie (Robbi Morgan)who is so naive that she throws her rucksack into the back of a flagged-down jeep without even vetting the driver. This is a cleverly conceived scene as it disguises the driver's identity by being shot subjectively from 'their' point of view. (*SPOILER* Since the film has been out for forty years, maybe I can dispense with the non-binary gender as horror fans will almost all know the killer is ultimately female).
Another smart plot decision noticed from this viewing is that for the first two acts, no impending victim finds the dead body of a previous one, disabling them from knowing enough to simply flee the camp in terror. Not that this would really help mind you, since it's a staple commandment in the genre that 'Thou shalt disregard common sense and unwisely go toward whatever maketh dubious noises'.
The kills are well executed by much-loved FX gore supremo Tom Savini. Inevitably though time has taken the edge off their shock value even in this uncut U.S. version.
The casting of Betsy Palmer as Mrs Voorhees in the third act proved a bonus. She was a beguilingly wholesome actress whose career spanned over 50 years including twelve as a panellist on TV game show I'VE GOT A SECRET - an ironically prescient title since part of this film's fun hinges on her hidden identity as the real serial killer! She initially shows a disarming protective motherliness in front of final girl Alice (Adrienne King) before crumbling into a deliciously batshit insanity as the memory of how her son Jason was tragically neglected by counsellors back in 1958 overcomes her poise. The resulting catfight climax on the shore is shoddily staged - the two ladies wrestle like a couple of schoolkids squabbling in a sandpit - but Savini and Cunningham give us a lovingly slo-mo'ed machete decapitation by Alice.
The handsome string-centric music score by Harry Manfredini helps to differentiate the overall movie's production values from the slasher herd as being a major studio release, albeit with some emphatic nods toward Bernard Herrmann's PSYCHO score. His own compositions are attractive and the last one does much to augment the power of the contentious final horror set piece. Taking its cue, as it were, from the erupting hand closer of Brian de Palma's CARRIE (1976), we are sold an idyllic seeming end as a sleepy Alice drifts on the lake in a canoe. As the sheriff's men arrive at the lakeside, the camera slowly pushes in amid a Manfredini romantic swell. All is well at last - until a deformed Jason bursts up from the water and pulls Alice to a watery grave.
It still hits the spot as a jump shock, and would have been all the more powerful if Cunningham cut to black and then the credits right there. But no; maddeningly, he sabotages its power by then cutting to Alice in a hospital bed epilogue quizzing the cops about the mysterious boy whom they never saw when retrieving her from the lake. What also doesn't help is that King's perplexity is her least convincing acting scene.
A bigger nitpicking issue however, the type that horror fans like myself love to debate, centres around Voorhees junior appearing at all. As someone points out in CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES, if that was Jason, where the hell has he been for twenty years and why hasn't anyone spotted him before now? I had questions of my own: why didn't he carry out his own vendetta the rest of the time instead of his mum? And what did he live on for two decades - plankton? - whilst swimming about undetected like THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON?
These questions naturally were never answered as a FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise thus developed from this film's huge success to cover the next twenty-nine years. In fact, many more queries would replace them as the sequels continually tried to tinker with the source movie's playbook and timeline. What this original and intermittent sequels proved is that, like any movie property, it works only when treating the audience with a little respect in choosing screenwriters and directors.
All too often the producers behaved liked trustafarians who've inherited a sausage factory.
Join me as we horror health inspectors gradually peruse every squeezed link from 1980 to 2009....
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