Written by: Jase Marsiglia
There’s a stretch of forest in upper New Jersey surrounding a lake soaked in tragedy that horror fans have been revisiting for the last 46 years. We know the grounds. We know the cabins. We know the campfire stories.
A young, deformed boy named Jason Voorhees drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957 after being left unsupervised by the camp’s distracted counselors. The following year brought a brutal double homicide inside one of the cabins. In 1962, the water supply was poisoned during the camp’s first attempt at reopening. Fires soon followed whenever anyone tried bringing Camp Crystal Lake back to life.
Before long, the once peaceful summer camp earned a far more sinister nickname: “Camp Blood.”
Locals became convinced something evil lived in those woods. A death curse. A place people simply weren’t supposed to return to.
In 1980, a new attempt to reopen the camp began and would lead to an infamous weekend of carnage and a franchise that no one – not the filmmakers or audiences alike – could ever imagine. A genre juggernaut was born, and FRIDAY THE 13th became a horror mainstay for years to come.
Friday the 13th (1980)
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A group of rowdy camp counselors head over to Crystal Lake to clean the place up for a re-opening 23 years after the initial tragedies of the young boy drowning and the murder of two camp counselors. Unperturbed by local superstition, the teens get to work with periodic breaks to smoke some pot and have some sex — until a maniac makes themselves known and begins bumping them off in gruesome ways.
Someone doesn't want Camp Crystal Lake to reopen and is using axes, arrows, machetes, and hunting knives to dispatch those unlucky enough to try.
Two films redefined their respective genres in 1980: Airplane! and Friday the 13th. The former took the “film spoof,” popularized by Mel Brooks with films like "Young Frankenstein", "Blazing Saddles", and "High Anxiety", and morphed it into a non-stop barrage of sight gags, bad puns, wordplay, and a surreal, almost cartoonish level of silliness while mocking the famous Airport disaster films of the ‘70s.
Absurdist comedy had raised the bar. Meanwhile, John Carpenter’s "Halloween" may have set the gold standard for the teen slasher genre in 1978, but director Sean S. Cunningham, screenwriter Victor Miller, and "Dawn of the Dead" gore effects legend Tom Savini kicked the blueprint into the air with, up to that point, such a gleeful array of gore and shocking death that every slasher film from that point on was trying to compete with “the new kid on the block,” Friday the 13th.
WATCH THE OFFICIAL TRAILER FOR FRIDAY THE 13TH BELOW
Cunningham’s film utilized the killer’s point-of-view to stalk each victim, accompanied by composer Harry Manfredini’s tense, high-string score, to wrack the nerves as “we” peered out from behind branches and into cabin windows. The combined cinematography and music cues, reminiscent of Jaws, clued the audience in to who was next on the virtual “chopping block.”
But it was Savini’s masterful gore effects that caused Friday the 13th both its infamy and popularity. Axes to the face, throat impalement, and a finale decapitation were far more graphic than the subtle shocks of "Halloween" and became the carnage everyone was talking about at the playground at school the next day.
But its popularity also came with harsh critique. The burgeoning new “slasher” genre that began with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho had not taken the high road into suspense the way Carpenter’s Halloween, nor its predecessor, Black Christmas, had. No, Friday the 13th ducked under the high road and followed the murky, subterranean trail blazed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, opting instead for the type of gory violence the other films merely hinted at.
Critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were incensed by the film’s gruesome kills, not to mention a “sleazy” script that made every character a clichéd archetype — the stoner, the goofball, the promiscuous girl, the intellect, etc. — that existed solely to be grist for the mill. Soon, Friday the 13th became the poster child for what was wrong with horror, and to horror filmmakers and fans alike, you can’t buy that kind of publicity. The film was a bona fide hit when it slashed into theaters on May 9, 1980, making nearly $6 million in its opening weekend on only 1,100 screens countrywide.
Critics be damned — and they usually are in this genre — audiences ate up the shocks and bloodshed that Cunningham had offered, leading to, as of this writing, no less than ten sequels, a remake/reboot, a spin-off television series, a prequel series produced by A24 called "Crystal Lake" set to premiere on Peacock sometime this year, and literal mountains of toys, books, video games, comics, and assorted other media. All of this, and at the time, we were still two movies away from introducing the iconic hockey mask that’s become synonymous with the title.
Ironically, by today’s standards, Friday the 13th is a walk in the park compared to the graphic, hyper-realistic gore we’ve seen in films and even network television, since its release in 1980. But in its day, it caused a hell of an uproar for its violent imagery, rivaled maybe only by William Lustig’s "Maniac" soon after, gore also orchestrated by Savini, and was demonized for contributing to cinema critics believed only spoke to delinquents and gorehounds. It’s simply untrue.
Friday the 13th, while predictable and a little corny, was a fresh, frightening take on the slasher genre that built deliberate suspense, laid out a believable mythology and backstory for itself, and executed, no pun intended, a series of gory kills that had audiences shocked, repulsed, and clamoring for more. It drove horror fans to newsstands to pick up the latest issue of Fangoria to learn the film’s gruesome secrets and single-handedly opened the floodgates for nearly a decade of imitators, all wanting to push the envelope in myriad ways. Love it, hate it, or have yet to discover it, Friday the 13th is an undisputed pillar in the museum of horror and a must-watch for fans who haven’t dipped a toe into the cold, unforgiving waters of Camp Crystal Lake.
HOME VIDEO
Friday the 13th has had a lengthy, healthy life on home video since the VHS hit video stores on January 12, 1981. It became a weekend favorite for new fans to discover along with each subsequent sequel. Laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, Steelbooks, boxed sets, “deluxe” editions… you name it, it’s made the transition from one form of media to the next.
But for my money, the Scream Factory series boxed set released on Blu-ray in October, the 13th, of 2020 is the best, most immersive set for fans.
Limited to an appropriate 13,000 units, this impressive 16-disc collection housed every Friday the 13th film to date in a single box and packaged with a limited number of posters and lithographs, 7,000 each, as well as a collectible 56-page essay booklet, and a few of the movies having reversible cover artwork that featured both foreign and domestic poster artwork.
Since we’re only talking about the original film today, I’ll focus on that, but if readers want a full-franchise overview one day, be sure to let us know!
Disc 1 features the original theatrical version of the film, scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, and comes with:
• U.S. Theatrical Trailer (ported over from the 1999 Paramount DVD)
• International Theatrical Trailer
• TV Spot
• U.S. Radio Spots
• U.K. Radio Spot
• Movie Stills Gallery
• Poster and Lobby Cards Gallery
Disc 2 features the Unrated Version of the film, also scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, and comes with lots of archival material from other releases, like the 2009 “Deluxe Edition,” including:
• A “stitched” group audio commentary with director Sean S. Cunningham, screenwriter Victor Miller, editor Bill Freda, assistant editor Jay Keuper, composer Harry Manfredini, actress Adrienne King, actress Betsy Palmer, and moderated by author Peter Bracke. This commentary was originally released in 2003 for a Warner Home Video release in Europe that was ported over to this set.
• Fresh Cuts: New Tales from Friday the 13th
• The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham
• A Friday the 13th Reunion
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood – Part 1
• BD-ROM: Vintage Fangoria Magazine Articles
• Reversible Cover Insert featuring both foreign and domestic poster art.
For more on the original film, we would jump to Disc 15 for more bonus material, much of which came from Paramount’s 2004 boxed set “From Crystal Lake to Manhattan,” as well as newly produced features, including:
• Crystal Lake Confidential: Interview with Producer/Director Sean S. Cunningham
• Chicago to Connecticut: The Early Career of Harry Manfredini
• The Magic Keyboard: Harry Manfredini on Scoring Friday the 13th
• Blood Types: Interview with Actor Harry Crosby
• It Came from the Vaults: Interview with La-La Land Records’ Matt Verboys, Michael V. Gerhard, and composer Harry Manfredini
• The Friday the 13th Chronicles: Friday the 13th (1980)
• Secrets Galore Behind the Gore: Friday the 13th (1980)
• Crystal Lake Victims Tell All!
• Tales from the Cutting Room Floor
• Friday the 13th Artifacts and Collectibles
• Slasher Films: Going for the Jugular
• Jason Forever: Q&A with Ari Lehman, Warrington Gillette, C.J. Graham, and Kane Hodder
• Friday the 13th Playing Card Gallery
• Location Featurettes
And finally, Disc 16 for some straggling items related to the original film, which include:
• The Road to Crystal Lake: Interview with Director/Producer Sean S. Cunningham
• Scream Queens: Horror Heroines Exposed
• Slice and Dice: The Slasher Film Forever
• Trailer Reel
• Easter Egg – Vintage Cinemax TV Ads for Friday the 13th
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Traum-A-Meter:
2 out of 4.
It’s hilarious that in 1980 this would have been 4 out of 4, but today’s audiences can handle this, for better or worse. It does contain some nastiness, including an axe to the face, arrows through the neck and face, slit throats, stabbings, and a decapitation.
Today’s Jam: If you drove to the cinema to see what all the fuss was about this weekend in 1980, you just might have heard You May Be Right by Billy Joel, the country’s #1 song when Friday the 13th opened.
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