Friday the 13th is one of the OG slasher movies, directed by Sean Cunningham and starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Robbi Morgan, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Peter Brouwer, Walt Gorney, and oh hey Kevin Bacon!
1958, an unseen killer murders two camp counselors who popped into a cabin for a literal roll in the hay (Willie Adams and Debra S. Hays). Fast forward to 1980, and Mr. Christie (Brouwer) is reopening the camp, despite the warnings of the locals who call it "Camp Blood." He brings in six counselors a couple of weeks early to fix the place up - well, seven, including Annie (Morgan) the cook, but she gets into a jeep with an unseen driver and winds up with her throat slit in the woods.
One of by one, the unseen killer picks off the counselors with various sharp implements until only Alice (King) is left, and then (spoiler alert) she learns that the killer is Mrs. Vorhees (Palmer), the mother of the oft-mentioned boy who drowned in the lake the year before the counselors were killed. Alice, our Final Girl, manages to kill Mrs. Vorhees, but Jason pops out of the lake (maybe? Could've been a dream!) for a final jump-scare.
So, Friday the 13th is one of those movies that people think they know better than they do. It pioneers (or is one of the movies that pioneers; Halloween and Black Christmas being a couple of the others) a lot of the tropes that we associate with slasher movies. To wit, the teens in an isolated location getting knocked off one by one, the notion of slasher-movie-as-morality-play in that the teens drink, smoke grass, and fuck and are punished for it, the idea of the Final Girl being the one to defeat the killer, and so on. But here's the thing: all of the teens get punished, as does the would-be camp owner, and basically anyone else that Mrs. Vorhees feels like Jason wants her to kill. Sure, she's vicariously taking revenge on the kids that let Jason drown, but it's not like she's real selective.
Likewise, the movie does a good job of making us think that anyone could be a victim. No one has plot immunity, and if you're unfamiliar with the genre, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Annie or Brenda (Bartram) are our POV character - they get more screen time and focus early on than Alice. Likewise, while Alice doesn't partake in vice as much as the other characters, she still drinks, smokes, and plays strip Monopoly (what a terrible idea), so it's not like she's "pure" as these movies go.
Another thing that struck me was that the kids weren't jerks. Latter-day slasher movies...I dunno, the characters tend to be kind of unpleasant a lot of the time. They're sarcastic, mean, and just generally bad to each other. In this movie, there's some ribbing and Ned (Nelson) is something of an ass, but there's no bullying or pressure for sex; indeed, the sex that happens is clearly fun for all participants.
The Friday the 13th franchise has been thoroughly run into the ground, but this movie stands apart as a fun, exciting, and sometimes tense (if not actually scary) proto-example of the genre.
My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium-high
Next up: Pet Semetary
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