John Carpenter’s Halloween is often credited for creating modern slasher film genre, but it took series of its cheap and often uninspired imitations for the subgenre to take its recognisable and formulaic form. Among those imitations the most successful and arguably the most iconic was Friday the 13th, 1980 film directed by Sean S. Cunningham, that would start the most successful horror film franchise of all times.
The plot takes place set in a summer camp at Crystal Lake, New Jersey and begins with prologue set in 1958. Two young counsellors are about to have sex before they are viciously stabbed by someone. The apparently unsolved murders, together with tragic drowning of a boy one year earlier, brought notoriety to an isolated camp, but two decades later its owner Steve Christy (played by Peter Bouwer) wants to open it and number of young men and women are hired as counsellors and brought to premises to prepare it for the opening. They are all having fun enjoying sun, sports, various games and sex and, despite cryptic warnings from few menacing-looking locals, are unaware that they will become prey for a relentless killer that will begin to kill them one by one.
Friday the 13th isn’t particularly good film, nor is was envisioned to be particularly good. Cunnigham, until that time known mostly for working with Wes Craven on low budget and ultra-violent rape and revenge film Last House on the Left, admitted that he wanted nothing more than cheap imitation of Halloween. Its screenwriter Victor Miller copied the most obvious elements of that film’s formula – lone and seemingly unstoppable maniac who murders vulnerable teenagers until being more or less successfully challenged by Final Girl – and added only few alterations like the isolated camp setting, bigger body count and the identity of the killer not being revealed until the twist ending. Cunnigham made violence more explicit and gory (although some of the killings actually happened off screen) and added glimpses of explicit nudity. His direction is, however, of very poor quality compared with Carpenter’s and Friday the 13th doesn’t hide its extremely low budget, making it rough around the edges. The acting, with an exception of Betsy Palmer in the role of Mrs. Voorhes, isn’t anything to write home about and most of the characters are easily forgettable. Unsurprisingly, most of the young cast, with exception of Kevin Bacon, didn’t have much of a career afterwards. What works in this film is tight pacing, simple but effective musical score by Harry Manfredini that adds iconic vocal leitmotif of the killer, as well as make up effects by Tom Savini who made gruesome killings look realistic. Friday the 13th, despite angering influential critics like Gene Siskel, made excellent business at the box office and paved the way for the films of similar nature. In the end, it was Savini that made the franchise; his idea to end the film with disturbing dreamlike sequence like the one in De Palma’s Carrie opened the way for inevitable sequel and the series that would feature iconic character of Jason Voorhes and his hockey mask.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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