31 Days of Halloween: They’re all doomed in Friday the 13th (1980)
By Joey Click
With today being Friday the 13th, and 31 Days of Halloween swinging like a machete, we’re continuing with the original 1980 classic.
You let him drown! You never paid any attention. Look what you did to him. LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO HIM! — Pamela Voorhees
A Ragging Renaissance Bound in Blood
In the late ’70s, horror is seeing the end of its part in the film renaissance. With The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left and Halloween changing film forever, horror is beginning to emerge as a force in multiplexes. Away from studio notes and inartistic hand, fright films are breathing — and one film is about to take its breath away (in more way than one).
A Long Night at Camp Blood
— Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
The film is Friday the 13th. With buckets of blood and body parts flying like a 757, the film forever changes the face of modern horror. Telling a tale of maternal revenge, the movie is a rip of John Carpenter’s classic — but so much more.
Featuring brilliant special effects by Tom Savini, the movie is fresh, fun and downright scary. Aided in no small part by Harry Manfredini‘s brilliant score, the movie takes over the summer of 1980. Causing kids to tell kids, and parents to unsuccessfully try to stop the movement, the Sean Cunningham picture is a true classic. But you already knew that did you….
Bloody Brilliant — Bloody Effective
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- Jason and Friends: A Saturday-morning cartoon bloodbath
Over the summer of 1980, Friday the 13th changed the face of fear for many reasons but one is arguably the biggest. Sure the score is amazing, the kills inventive, but what works most in the film is it’s empathetic story.
You see, Mrs. Voorhees isn’t killing in vein. Her baby’s been taken from her, ripped from her life as she presumably prepares food for other people’s little ones. Feeling wronged, Pamela vows to never let this happen to anyone else — she just goes too freaking far.
It’s always been one of the film’s best aspects for me. We all have lost loved ones and would do anything to see them again. While we don’t kill for it (I hope not) it’s a relatable aspect in an otherwise despicable killer. It’s a reason the first film work so well….why the experience resonates.
A Legacy Longer Than A Machete
It’s been almost 40 years since a small group of desperate filmmakers forever took the face of film and made it better. Without Friday the 13th’s treatment by Paramount — giving a low-budget film the big boy treatment — ’80s horror would be a much emptier landscape. Yeah, we got a lot of crap in horror’s heyday. But we got so much brilliance that it’s worth sitting through the garbage. And actually, it’s worth much more pain than that.
Happy Friday the 13th horror family, let’s all be doomed together.
Next: Friday the 13th (1980): 10 Things You Didn’t Know