Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Authenticity, creativity, style, and a spine-chilling sensation are some of the most compelling characteristics that make for a truly impressive horror film. Unfortunately, "Friday the 13th" does not even remotely approach those characteristics. This movie is an absolute atrocity that suffers from a variety of unforgivable flaws.

The opening scene takes place in the year 1958 at a summer campsite where a group of teenage camp counselors are enjoying a nice, quiet evening by the campfire. Two of the counselors are brutally murdered by an unknown character after attempting to slip away and make love. Following this incident, the movie fast forwards to the present. The current owner of the campsite, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), decides to revive the campsite for the summer with the assistance of some teenagers. Unbeknownst to them, there is a psychopathic killer lurking somewhere in the vicinity and it is obvious that Christy and the counselors are in grave danger. In addition to the aforementioned murder from years earlier, it is also revealed that a young boy drowned in the lake at the campsite during the year 1957. At this point, the audience is left to wonder what relevant connection these past incidents have to the present.

An immediate problem with this movie is the cardboard characters. They are very unappealing, monotonous individuals. Combine this with heavily uninspired acting and the characters are practically non-existent. They could have been replaced with mannequins and the film would not have been any less exciting.

The movie also becomes bogged down with predictable scenes and plot points. For example, there is a scene where Annie (Robbi Morgan) hitches a ride with a mysterious character driving a Jeep. The driver's identity is not revealed and the entire scene is shown through the eyes of the driver using a point of view shot. Already, one can probably deduce the outcome of this situation. From the moment that Annie looks into the camera and speaks, it is obvious that the killer is sitting right in the driver's seat and Annie is mere moments away from facing her death.

There are scenes that are meant to be fearsome and horrific, but are laughable to say the least. Some of those scenes are slightly more intense than others, but they resort to the following sequence of events: The killer attacks the victim, the victim bleeds vigorously, and the scene ends. The excessive use of this gimmick quickly becomes tiresome and reiterated.

Now for the ultimate disappointment! Approximately twenty minutes before the film ends, the level of excitement finally begins to pick up. This is the film's golden opportunity to slightly redeem itself. Guess what?! That opportunity is completely destroyed thanks to the following two elements: The villain and the music. Without giving too much away, I can say that the villain is a disturbed psychopath whose mind is possessed by a deceased individual. After becoming familiar with this character's background, it became quite evident that I was watching a totally inferior, second-rate imitation of the character, Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960 thriller, "Psycho." This brings me to the point concerning the music. "Psycho" featured one of the most captivating musical scores ever composed, with its two-note motif being a memorable attribute. Amazingly, the music from the climactic scenes in "Friday the 13th" is strikingly similar to that of "Psycho" and at times, it is an exact note-for-note copy!! I was quite dismayed by such shameful rip-offs!

Classic horror films like "Psycho" and "Halloween" give audiences a true sense of artistry without having to resort to lazy, senseless gimmicks. "Friday the 13th" completely fails to be entertaining at that level.

The original Friday the 13th is not the first, the most original, or the best slasher film ever made, but it is arguably the most influential. You almost have to take off one of your socks to count all of the sequels (and impending remake) this slasher granddaddy has spawned, and I daresay the majority of slasher films littering the genre in all the years since were constructed on the generic and simple framework of the Friday the 13th formula. Critics are still foaming at the mouth in indignation over this film all these years later, so you know it did something right. Of course, by today's standards Friday the 13th registers low (if at all) on the fright meter and really isn't all that gory, but no one can dispute the fact that this film set the stage for innumerable bloody slasher films to come.

Halloween, which is technically a much superior film to this one, had already been released and made lots of money, so it's easy to see why Sean S. Cunningham (who had already cut his horror chops on The Last House on the Left) wanted to try his hand at creating a scary slasher film of his own. Cunningham did not have a big studio backing him, so he had to make this an independent, low-budget (barely more than half a million dollars) project. With almost all of the action taking place at Camp Crystal Lake, all Cunningham had to do was to find a viable old campsite, populate it with unknown actors (one of which, Kevin Bacon, went on to become a household name), kill his characters in compellingly different yet simple ways, and smack an ending on top of it. In some ways, it sounds like an almost haphazard project. The controversial gotcha scene near the very end, for example, was never in the original script - instead, it was added late in the game on the advice of special effects makeup guru Tom Savini, who had just seen Carrie. That is only one of several obvious influences worked into the film - even the famous Jason music leaves a trail of musical crumbs back to the shark music in Jaws (30th Anniversary Edition). Despite of everything, though, Paramount liked the final product, bought up the distribution rights, and the film hit box office gold. The rest is horror - and cinema - history.

As we all know by now, little Jason Voorhees drowned in 1957 while the counselors who should have been watching him were busy having sex. A year later, two counselors at the camp were brutally murdered (as they were getting it on, of course), with the murderer never being caught. That was more than Camp Crystal Lake could endure, and it soon closed its cabin doors for good. The residents of Crystal Lake know to stay away from the lake and "Camp Blood," but Steve Christy has decided he's going to open the place back up. He's supposedly been working to get the place ready for a year, but it's still a run-down dump. He's hired all of the requisite randy teens to serve as counselors/murder victims (anybody who plays strip Monopoly out in the middle of the woods is practically begging to be eviscerated by a mad killer), though, so everything is in place for good, old-fashioned bloodbath. All we need is a killer.

The one thing I've always admired most about the slayings in the Friday the 13th movies is the sheer efficiency of them all. Even at the beginning, before Jason himself ever lifted his first machete, the killer is all about getting the job done and going on to the next victim. That's not to say the murders aren't stylish and impressive, though. I just wish they would have been a lot gorier. Clearly, this film does have a few problems and doesn't deserve five stars on its own merits. When you figure in the immense influence this film has had on the horror movie genre and pop culture itself, though, I think it rightly deserves that fifth star.

If you've never seen the original Friday the 13th, you need to see it - especially if you've watched several of the sequels. After all, an incorrect answer to the question of who did the killings in the original Friday the 13th film will get you banned from all horror fan clubs for life.