Friday the 13th (1980)

Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham | 95 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Jeannine Taylor, Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson, Robbi Morgan, Peter Brouwer, Rex Everhart, Ronn Carroll, Ron Millkie, Walt Gorney, Willie Adams, Debra S. Hayes, Dorothy Kobs, Sally Anne Golden, Ari Lehman

A horror star was born! Horror icon Jason Voorhees, together with Freddy Krueger (‘Nightmare on Elm Street’) and Michael Myers (‘Halloween’), form the (un)holy trinity of the modern horror slasher/stalker. And that while the makers of this first part saw Jason as little more than a gimmick that they could use as a plot element in the end of the film.

The fact that there are now about ten sequels shows that it didn’t stop with that one ‘Friday’ for Mr. Voorhees. He and Michael Myers are in fact the banners of the so-called ‘slasher film’, a genre that made its appearance in the late 1970s and in turn was inspired by films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’. ‘Slasher films’ are horror films usually populated by masked or otherwise unidentifiable killers who gruesomely butcher groups of young people. Characteristic of this is that the murders are generally filmed as graphically as possible.

This genre spawned a veritable boom in movies especially in the 80’s and these were all variations on the theme of ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13th’. Serious critics labeled the film as vulgar junk, but the film was a huge success in America as well as in other countries. And not unjustly because despite its low budget, mediocre acting and superficial plot, ‘Friday the 13th’ managed to create a grubby and ‘campy’ atmosphere that struck a chord with a large group of people(!). Partly responsible for this was the music of Harry Manfredini, which can be considered one of the greatest trump cards of this film. Simple but very effective.

The film will be especially appreciated by the more hardened horror fans although it is no more than a simple story mainly intended to serve up a series of murders and to leave the viewer wondering who is actually wielding the weapon until the end. But it is precisely the basic and overtly gruesome character of these kinds of films that must have appealed to a considerable group of people. The plot twist we get at the end is pretty nonsensical, but it does add to the myth surrounding the character Jason Voorhees, which made him a cult figure. An excellent night of horror for fans of the genre, but the average film buff probably already sees the mood hanging from the cover of the film.