Friday the 13th - Part 1

There are few to no movies that by themselves pretty much define a whole era of cinema history in the horror genre, but the few movies that have accomplished this definitely deserve to be recognized. Amongst these movies are Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and of course, Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th. These movies have all had significant impact to the genre as a whole, but Friday the 13th was the movie that spawned the most copycats of any of these three movies. There are literally hundreds of movies that were purposely designed to copy the horny teenager slash fest that Friday the 13th (along with John Carpenter's Halloween) pretty much created the blueprint for. Although Friday the 13th has aged considerably well, after watching it about 20 times in my life I can tell you that it's still entertaining after all these years.

Title: Friday the 13th
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Genre: Horror
Year: 1980
Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King

My first experiences with Friday the 13th happened before I was even a teenager, thinking back I must have been about 8 or 9 years old. It was a fairly traumatic experience for me; the day after I watched it I went on a week-long camping trip. This pretty much scarred me for life, but at the same time the experience made me a lifelong fan of the series, this may be why I've grown so fond of the series. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not so blinded as to not be able to tell which sequels are the bad ones, and I don't even hesitate to laugh when a character spits out an obviously cheesy line. When it all comes down to it, I have a sort of "love to hate" relationship with this movie.

Even if you've never seen a horror movie before, I'd be willing to bet that you've at least heard of the Friday the 13th series, as it takes one of the top spots in list of most well known horror movies, it's right up there with A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and the Exorcist. Seriously, if you don't know who Jason is then I'm guessing that you don't own a television. The slasher sub genre is definitely the most well known section of horror movies, and Friday the 13th is one of the movies to thank for this. There are so many copycats to this film, but most of them aren't even worth considering, so I recommend sticking with the classics.

Normally I tend to dislike shallow horror movies, especially modern day slashers, and so why exactly do I like Friday the 13th? Well it could be because of nostalgia, but really the main reason is because of how entertaining it is mainly due to how campy the movie is when compared to modern day horror films. Being so campy actually adds a level of eeriness to the film, and at the same time it shows just how much the genre has transformed from the golden era of horror cinema. I would go so far as to say that Friday the 13th is my favorite slasher film of all time, but there really isn't much competition to tell you the truth, as no single type of movie has generated so many horrible movies.

Story
One of the things I like about Friday the 13th was how quickly the action starts. The movie begins with two camp counselors making their way upstairs with only one thing on their minds; hanky panky of course. Then as you probably could have predicted, an unseen killer shows up and the two counselors don't even have time to explain themselves before they are violently killed. This is just the beginning of the mayhem though, as there's a whole lot more horny teens slashed through in this movie.

That was in the past though, as time fastforwards to the "present day". Here we are introduced to the down home country girl Annie as she arrives in a small town looking for direction to Camp Crystal Lake, which just so happens to be where the two teens were murdered at in the beginning of the film. After getting scoffed at in a local diner, she is offered a ride to the camp, but only after recieving a warning from some crazy guy claiming that the camp has a death curse, but it's ok because it's easy to ignore anything that this guy says, plain and simple he looks like he's completely lost his mind. Annie is dropped off but then picked up by another driver. It isn't until This driver passes by the turn off to the camp with no indication of turning around that Annie starts worrying a little. Annie knows that her life is in danger, and so she carelessly jumps out of the truck and runs into the woods to try to escape. What an unlucky day for Annie though, as the killer is persistant enough to chase after her through the woods, you can probably guess what happens next.

Of course at this point the movie hasn't even really started yet, as the rest of the film focuses around the group of people who are rebuilding Camp Crystal Lake. Of course very little background information is given on any of the characters, but it's better this way, as I would rather watch shallow and fake characters on the recieving end of a knife than characters that seem real.

As you can probably already guess, the acting is often horrible in this movie, with few moments in which the actors pull off a believable line of dialogue. None of the main characters are interesting, but this makes it a little easier to see them get hacked up. Betsy Palmer is the only actress that I liked watching on screen, but I don't want to spoil the movie for the select few people in this world who haven't seen it yet (you know who you are). I was very disappointed at the amount of screentime her character recieved. Really though, she's the only actress in this entire movie (well, maybe besides the guy who plays Ralph) who deserves any praise at all.

There are some good points to the storyline in Friday the 13th though. First off, I liked the way that the story unfolded, very few details to the main plot are revealed in the beginning with subtle hints thrown about, but the story as a whole makes sense in the end and is easy to follow. It's not terribly original, but it does manage to work in this film.

Now if there's one thing this movie has going for it then it's definitely the music. The clashing fast pace violin medleys add a thick layer of tension to the movie, and without this, the movie would be nowhere near as effective as it is. Even if the music does seem to be ripped off from the Psycho, I have to go all out and say that it works just as good if not better (in some places) than it worked for Psycho. The violin isn't the only thing this movie has going for it audiowise, as the ever present "chh chh haa haa" also works well to set up the spooky atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere, there's a lot of it in this movie. The movie is set out in the wilderness, in a pretty secluded section of forest, and a big section of the action takes place at night, which further adds to the tension. This works well to instill fear, even though it doesn't scare me anymore, I was very afraid because of this movie in my younger days.

Final Recommendation
If you haven't seen Friday the 13th before then your missing out. Despite it being one of the most loathed horror movies ever it's still worth a watch in my opinion, but the sequels just kind of ruin the original. If you plan on watching this series than I recommend that you stop watching at part 4, nothing is worth watching after that and you'll only be punishing yourself. All in all I recommend picking this one up for the B movie fan in everyone.