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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
The Second Scariest Day of the Year, December 22, 2003
Paramount and director Sean Cunningham created FRIDAY THE 13th mainly to ride on the coattails of John Carpenter's wildly successful slasher film, HALLOWEEN (1978). Turns out it was a wise move, as FRIDAY THE 13th was an equally successful box-office smash. And some students of horror cinema would dare to argue that the imitator has actually surpassed the first in terms of revenue, the inexorable number of sequels, and its influence on subsequent genre films.FRIDAY THE 13th ingeniously plays on the audience's youthful fears--or memories of youthful fears--about going to summer camp out in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, the plot is a sort of variation on the campfire story, starting with an urban-legend-like rumor about murders taking place in previous years at Camp Crystal Lake, the very camp in which the movie is set. And it is also said that all of the carnage took place on the very same day each year--Friday the 13th. The legend goes that, once upon a time, a little boy drowned at the camp while the youthful counselors were too preoccupied with petting and partying, and every subsequent year on the anniversary of the boy's death, some camp staff members would get offed. After such a murder in the late 1950s, the camp was officially closed down. Flash forward to the present (relative to the movie's release, that would be 1980). Camp Crystal Lake is finally being re-opened by the owners, as nobody believes those old stories and legends, and a group of youthful counselors and staff show up a few weeks early--on Friday the 13th--to help put the finishing touches on the camp's refurbishing. But as darkness falls on the rural campground and its nearby lake and forest, the young staff members are being picked off one by one. The gruesome ways in which each staff member gets offed are themselves the stuff of legend, and they are surefire crowd-pleasers for gore-hounds. Created by SFX genius Tom Savini--in fact, his reputation for gore FX was built on this film--the bloody death scenes have been imitated countless times since. But then, so has the film's story of a crazed slasher pursuing young people in a rural setting. While the film may have been conceived as a means for hopping onto the HALLOWEEN gravy train, it is nonetheless fresh and intriguing in many ways, and it is certainly much better than most of the other HALLOWEEN holiday-themed rip-offs. The surprising climax, in which the killer is revealed, is an especially nice touch. The acting from the cast of mostly unknowns--watch for Kevin Bacon in one of his earliest roles--is pretty good, and as for direction, Cunningham does a great job at creating suspense, especially in a genre where bloodletting and gory deaths are expected. Although the movie's final line sets things up for the inevitable sequels, none of those sequels ever reach the same level of quality or chills that this film achieves. Best to watch this first one and let the others rest in peace. The Paramount DVD offers a great anamorphic widescreen transfer of this trendsetting film, but the only extra is the theatrical trailer. Still, it's offered at a reasonable price, so genre fans have no reason not to add this one to their growing film collection.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A Horror Masterpiece of Tragedy, Hysteria, Suspense and Terror (beware spoilers!), December 10, 2006
There is so much more to this movie that anyone gives it credit for. When you mention Friday the 13th, many people either dismiss it for being "just a slasher flick" or a "Halloween rip-off." Most people do not see the artistic value in Friday the 13th because they simply do not expect it to be in this kind of movie or do not want to acknowledge it, as a result of already having their closed (typical critic know it all) minds made up.
First off, Friday the 13th is not a Halloween rip-off. When Carpenter's equally classic Halloween generated top box office revenue in 1978 and 1979, many eyebrows raised within the film industry. Among those were the brows of a few people in particular. Sean (director) Cunningham, Victor (credited writer) Miller, Ron (unaccredited writer) Kurz, Steve (producer) Miner, and Georgetown (independent film production company) Productions all wanted in on the profit made by the Halloween. The only sensible thing they could think of doing was to produce a similar product, which became Friday the 13th.
Sean wanted to make the same kind of money that John made, but he knew he would have to make his film a little different. Instead of just having a walking masked madman on the loose, he and Victor came up with a story that is quite brilliant. Sure, certain scenes in Friday the 13th may have been taken from Halloween, but you can say the same thing about Halloween taking some scenes from Psycho. Friday the 13th, whether it was on purpose or not, utilized a couple of really good themes in their story telling, beyond the typical moral theme that everyone associates with these movies like sex leads to death.
The first theme that Friday the 13th throws in your face is the idea of isolated mass hysteria. Camp Crystal Lake and the town of Crystal Lake are haunted. They are not haunted by ghosts and goblins, but by unsuppressed dark memories of a little boy drowning and a string of unsolved murders among other things, in which all have to do with Camp Crystal Lake. Every person in town believes that there is a "Death Curse" upon the camp, and they refer to the place as "Camp Blood." When Annie walks into the restaurant and asks some people how she can get to Camp Crystal Lake, they all look at her and two people try to warn her to stay away from the place. They say the place is jinxed and has a death curse.
Psychology is only a little more then 100 years old, but we know that parents have a strong "connection" to their child even after the umbilical chord is severed. For a parent to have to burry their own child is probably the most devastating thing that can happen in their life. Mrs. Voorhees looses her son to a tragedy and little by little she snaps. She tries to give him life by giving him a voice at one point (just like Norman Bates did for his mother in Psycho), and that voice tells her to murder those responsible for her son's death.
Of course for the horror fan there is enough blood and murder to please. All in all Friday the 13th is a powerful tragic but frightening story of love, loss, superstition, and murder with an ending that is sure to make one jump (no pun intended) right out of one's seat. Also, not revealing the murderer until the end makes the film more suspenseful then showing the murderer in the opening sequence like Halloween did.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Doooomed! You're all doooomed!, July 22, 2003
Hard to beleive this movie came out almost a quarter of a century ago. Friday the 13th came out in 1980, the same year as The Fog, The Shining, He Knows You're Alone, Motel Hell, Mother's Day, and Prom Night. I remember this because my friends and I would pour over various horror rags, Fangoria and such, and talk about all the movies we wanted to see, and Friday the 13th was near the top of all our lists.Although this movie has lost a little of it's intensity from previous viewings, it's still a great little movie (or big movie if you look at all the sequels it spawned). It's the story of a bunch of teenagers going to work at a summer camp that had been closed down for a number of years and dubbed 'Camp Blood' by local residents. Like 20 years prior, there had been a couple of grisly murders, and subsequent fires and such, but no one was ever caught or charged with the crimes. The teenagers are hired to help fix the camp up, and get it ready to open for the summer. Throughout the beginning of the movie, the onminus threat of evil slowly rises. One of my favorite scenes is when the local loon named Crazy Ralph warns one girl on her way to the camp. "You're doooomed! Doooomed!" The local residents pass him off as crazy, but they all have reservations about the camp re-opening. Well, the murders begin, one by one, but so does the mystery. Who is doing the killing? And why? Watch for a young Kevin Bacon to get it in a particularly nasty way. And as for Ned, played by Mark Nelson, I can't say I was sorry to see him go, as he was played as the 'funny' guy, but just came off as really annoying. And it seemed odd to me that he was one of the first to get killed, but no one seemed to miss him until much later in the movie. Oh well... All this leads up to the climatic surpise ending where we find out who the killer is and why. But is it the end? What I really liked about this movie was the ending, and how it was left open. Did Alice dream about what happened on the lake or did it really happen? The sequels kind of spoiled this haunting question, and so I avoid them, as this is the best in the series. By the way, I'm not a big fan of slasher movies, but I feel this one, like the original Halloween movie, had more to offer in not only horror, but mystery and suspense, unlike their respective sequels which just became all about the body count.
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