Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)

It was hit or miss in 1980 whether I could get into R rated movies as I turned 16 years old. Some movie theaters looked the other way and didn't bother checking your ID. Other movie theaters were more vigilant and turned you away if you weren't 18 years old (unless you were accompanied by a parent or guardian). Somehow, I got into Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING when it was released in the summer of 1980. The other big scary film of 1980 was Sean S. Cunningham's low budget FRIDAY THE 13TH, released by Paramount. I don't recall if my parents put the breaks on my desire to see it like they had with JAWS or ROLLERBALL a few years earlier. Or was the terrifying feedback from my friends who saw the film plus the gory, color photos from FRIDAY THE 13TH in my favorite horror film magazine Fangoria enough to make me sidestep the second most popular slasher film to be released after John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978). Whatever the reason, I never did see FRIDAY THE 13TH in its initial release. 

As I start this review four days away from Friday, September 13th, 2024 (coincidence?), I don't believe I've seen the original theatrical version of FRIDAY THE 13TH. Even with some basic cable channels like Turner Classic Movies now showing more contemporary movies uncut with bad language and nudity, a recent viewing of FRIDAY THE 13TH last year on AMC revealed it was not the definitive, blood-spattered version. A couple of death scenes that I had heard about and had seen the stills in Fangoria did not show the full gory reveal. AMC's version had been edited. I am determined this Halloween to watch the uncut original FRIDAY THE 13TH and explore one of its early sequels FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III (1982) that first introduced the hockey goalie mask to the seemingly indestructible killer Jason Vorhees (more about him later). 

Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) is the grandfather of slasher films. Carpenter's HALLOWEEN would modernize the genre to a new generation of moviegoers. FRIDAY THE 13TH would be the first follow up film to cash in on HALLOWEEN'S success. FRIDAY THE 13TH did a few things right. It smartly moved the horny teenage/college boys and girls from the suburbs to a summer camp in the woods - Camp Crystal Lake to be exact. We all remember those scary campfire ghost stories about the escaped prisoner with a hook for a right hand that had been sighted near the summer camp we all attended.  That urban myth's DNA was embedded in the young movie audience that flocked to see this little horror film that cost $550,000 to make and made $59 million at the box office.  HALLOWEEN implied more violence and gore than it actually showed. FRIDAY THE 13TH took advantage of the burgeoning make up effects and hired up and coming make up effects artist Tom Savini (DAWN OF THE DEAD) to create some memorable and gory death scenes. 

With an original screenplay by Victor Miller and directed by Sean S. Cunningham (he produced Wes Craven's 1972 THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), FRIDAY THE 13TH opens up with a flashback to Camp Crystal Lake circa 1958.  A group of camp counselors sing camp songs in a cabin. Two counselors Barry (Willie Adams) and Claudette (Debra S. Hayes) sneak away to have sex. They are both stabbed to death by an unseen assailant. Flash forward to the present. Newly hired camp cook Annie (Robbi Morgan) hitchhikes her way to the soon to be reopened Camp Crystal Lake. When the locals at the diner hear where Annie's going, they refer to it as "Camp Blood". Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), the town derelict warns her the camp is cursed. After catching a ride half way with a kind truck driver (Rex Everhart) to the camp's entrance, Annie is picked up by an unseen driver for the last section. The mysterious driver slashes Annie's throat. 

The rest of the victims, er, I mean counselors arrive at Camp Crystal Lake including Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), his girlfriend Marcie Cunningham (Jeannine Taylor), the lovable but lonely Ned Rubinstein (Mark Nelson), the extroverted Brenda (Laurie Bartram), and the athletic Bill (Harry Crosby).  They're greeted by owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) whose family originally owned and ran the camp and head counselor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King). Steve heads back into town to pick up supplies. The counselors prepare the camp for the upcoming season. They discover a snake in one of the cabins and kill it with a machete. Ned thinks he sees someone go into a cabin and investigates. Bill powers up the generator. A storm comes over the lake bringing torrential rain. Jack and Marcie duck into a cabin and make love in a lower bunk. In the top bunk above, Ned lies dead with his throat slit. As Jack has a post coital smoke, the killer jabs an arrow up through Jack's throat from under the bunk.  Marcie catches a machete in the skull after taking a shower.

In the main cabin, Brenda, Alice, and Bill play Strip Monopoly. Brenda grows tired and heads back to her cabin. She thinks she hears someone calling for help.  Brenda wanders into the archery range. The lights are turned on, blinding her. Alice and Bill hear a scream. They check the nearby cabins.  They can't find any of the counselors, only a bloody machete. Alice tries to call for help but the phone line has been cut. They try to start one of the cars. The engine won't turn over. Up the road, the owner Steve is dropped off by Sgt. Tierney (Ronn Carroll) after some car trouble. Walking toward camp, Steve runs into someone familiar (off screen) who stabs him.  The killer cuts off the generator to the camp. Bill goes to investigate. When Bill doesn't return, Alice searches for him.  She finds Bill impaled by arrows, pinned to the back of a door. 

Alice is now the Final Girl. She barricades herself in the kitchen.  Brenda's bloody body is thrown through the window.  A jeep arrives at the camp. Alice rushes out, thinking it's Steve. Instead, it's an older woman, Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). She tells Alice she's a former counselor at Camp Crystal Lake. Mrs. Vorhees reveals years ago her son Jason Voorhees drowned in the lake at at the camp. She blames two counselors for fooling around when they should have been on lifeguard duty. His birthday was on Friday the 13th, this very night. Alice realizes Mrs. Voorhees is the killer. Mrs. Voorhees tries to stab Alice. Alice hits her with a fireplace poker.  Alice stumbles across two more of her dead counselors. Alice hides in the pantry.  When Mrs. Voorhees attacks again, Alice knocks her down with a cast iron skillet. Alice thinks she's killed the mad woman and rests by the canoes.  The indestructible Mrs. Voorhees shows up again. In their final struggle, Alice grabs the machete and decapitates Mrs. Voorhees. Alice climbs into a canoe and floats out into the middle of the lake where she falls asleep until the morning when the sheriff arrives. As Alice begins to paddle toward them, the dead and moldy young Jason Voorhees leaps from out of the water and pulls Alice into the water. But it's just a dream as Alice awakens in the hospital, alive but shaken by the traumatic events.

I always had a bias against FRIDAY THE 13TH as a copycat, ripoff slasher film, riding the coattails of HALLOWEEN'S tremendous success. But like a good scary campfire tale, FRIDAY THE 13TH is a decent chiller that copies some of HALLOWEEN'S tropes but distinguishes itself as well. Having the location at a summer camp is its best decision. Rustic cabins surrounded by a thick forest and dark lake just screams for something horrible to happen. Rather than go with a different holiday title like Labor Day or Valentine's Day (MY BLOODY VALENTINE anyone?), the filmmakers chose Friday the 13th, a day associated with bad luck and misfortune. The death scenes are suspenseful, shocking, and surprisingly quick. George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD lingered on Tom Savini's gore effects longer than horror fans were used to.  For FRIDAY THE 13TH, the death scenes are brief. We see a little gore.  Most is left to our imagination. A few murders occur offscreen (most likely budgetary decisions) with their bloody bodies showing up in the finale. Like HALLOWEEN, characters in FRIDAY THE 13TH are killed after having sex while the virginal Final Girl Alice survives.

Another of my silly prejudices against FRIDAY THE 13TH was none of the actors (except Kevin Bacon) went on to have a major film career afterward. HALLOWEEN made Jamie Lee Curtis and P.J. Soles into movie stars. Watching FRIDAY THE 13TH more closely this time, the ensemble cast of new, unknown actors play their young, awkward characters realistically. We're able to distinguish who's who before they start getting picked off. Bacon is the best looking of the bunch so he gets the best looking actress Jeannine Taylor as his girlfriend. Adrienne King as Alice is a strong character who deserves to be the Final Girl, the survivor. And there was one more actor in the counselor group who was from a famous lineage. Harry Crosby who plays the camp painter/fixer upper Bill is the son of actor/crooner Bing Crosby (THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S).  Harry's rewarded with the best death scene as he's found by Alice impaled on a cabin door with arrows, including one protruding through his eye.

The killer in the original FRIDAY THE 13TH is not Jason Voorhees who will be the villain for the rest of the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise. Instead, it's his mother Mrs. Voorhees, an early Helicopter Mom.  She seeks revenge on a new batch of counselors, blaming them for Jason's drowning back in 1958 due to a couple of camp counselors negligence. Mrs. Voorhees is reminiscent of another overprotective mother, PSYCHO'S Mrs. Bates. Her son Norman took on Mrs.  Bates's overprotective personality (with wig and wardrobe), killing motel guests who either inflame her son sexually or threaten him. Mrs. Voorhees switches to Jason's childish voice at times, talking to herself as Jason similar to Norman mimicking his mother's voice in PSYCHO. FRIDAY THE 13TH would continue a tradition of casting older veteran actors in horror films like Melvyn Douglas in THE CHANGELING (1980), Rory Calhoun in MOTEL HELL (also 1980), Shelly Duvall in her last film role THE FOREST HILLS (2023) or Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in Roger Corman's TALES OF TERROR (1962). Actress Betsy Palmer who plays the murderous Mrs. Voorhees hadn't really appeared in a theatrical feature film since MISTER ROBERTS (1955) and Anthony Mann's THE TIN STAR (1957).  She turned to TV broadcasting for a while. FRIDAY THE 13TH for good or bad, resurrected her film career.

Just like HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH would spawn numerous sequels, one almost every year after 1980, 12 in total. Like the HALLOWEEN sequels, the FRIDAY THE 13TH  sequels never fulfilled the promise of the original. FRIDAY THE 13TH had the summer camp locale, a young Kevin Bacon for a brief time, some good Tom Savini gore make-up effects, and that creepy music that sounded like "Kill, kill, kill, die, die, die." The sequels just seemed to be a retread of the original, hoping to capture that box office lightning in a bottle a second, third, and seventh time. The sequels never brought any fresh take on the original even when the locale was changed to Manhattan or even outer space. However, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (for good or bad) did manage to creatively figure out one dilemma that FRIDAY THE 13TH left them that neither original director Sean S. Cunningham or make up artist Tom Savini supported.

The villain of FRIDAY THE 13TH, the vengeful, psychotic Mrs. Voorhees was dead, her head lopped off by the plucky Alice. Who would take the place of Mrs. Voorhees? In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (1981), new director Steve Miner and screenwriter Ron Kurz resurrect the seemingly drowned and dead Jason, Mrs. Voorhees son. It turns out Jason didn't drown back in 1958.  He somehow survived and has been living as a hermit in the woods near Camp Crystal Lake all these years (yes, a bit of a stretch), living on squirrels and berries. PART II implies that Jason may have witnessed his mother's decapitation, transforming him into a killer thirsty for revenge on the next group of unsuspecting camp counselors. 

Amy Steel in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II (1981)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II is set 5 years after the murders at Camp Crystal Lake. A new summer camp is starting up next to the cursed camp (not a good idea but hey, it's horror film logic). PART II spends its first five minutes replaying FRIDY THE 13TH's climax with Alice slicing off Mrs. Voorhees head and Alice's dream sequence (ripped off from Brian DePalma's CARRIE) with dead Jason rising from the depths of the lake to pull Alice underwater from the canoe. The prologue is to remind us who Jason is. FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II is basically the same story as the original except with a slightly bigger budget (allowing for more attractive counselors this time) and the introduction of the previously believed dead, now living Jason Voorhees. Adrienne King as the survivor Alice and Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph briefly reprise their roles from FRIDAY THE 13TH for PART II. Jason makes sure their appearances are only cameos. Betsy Palmer even returns as Mrs. Voorhees in a flashback sequence as Ginny (Amy Steel) pretends to channel Jason's mother to keep him from slaughtering her.

Just as FRIDAY THE 13TH kept Mrs. Voorhees hidden until the film's finale, PART II does the same with Jason early on besides showing an occasional arm or boot before he kills. As the body count grows, the filmmakers begin to show more of Jason minus his face. Jason finally throws on a burlap sack with holes cut out for his eyes. Jason's a big man, probably in his early 30s, and bald. We still don't know what his face looks like. FRIDAY THE 13TH hinted in the dream sequence that Jason was possibly disfigured or a almost Elephant Man like (it was a dream however). In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART II, Jason's burlap sack hood is ripped off, revealing a disfigured or burned face (it's not entirely clear). HALLOWEEN made sure its killer was recognizable once he began his rampage. Slasher Michael Myers wears a William Shatner Captain Kirk Halloween mask he stole from a hardware store. The FRIDAY THE 13TH filmmakers now have their new franchise killer but they don't have an iconic look for Jason. The burlap sack hood is not going to fly.  That will change with a random decision by director Steve Miner in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III (1982) that will solidify Jason Voorhees in the pantheon of cinema killers.

Of the first three FRIDAY films, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III is the weakest of the three. Like PART II, PART III opens with a recap of the finale of PART II replaying PART II's best moment as Ginny stumbles across Jason's shack and discovers the altar to his dead mother complete with her severed rotting head. PART III takes place the day after PART II. A group of friends led by Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmel) take her van to spend a weekend at her parents lake house known as Higgins Haven which just happens to be next door to Camp Crystal Lake. The friends include the couple who will have sex and be slaughtered  Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) and Debbie (Tracie Savage); the comic relief Shelly (Larry Zerner); nice girl Vera Sanchez (Catherine Parks), and stoner hippie couple Chuck (David Katims) and Chili (Rachel Howard). Waiting for them at the lake house is Chris's old flame Rick (Paul Kratka). Naturally, they're unaware that eight counselors have just been murdered at the camp  next door. Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) will wander over from his carnage in PART II and proceed to dispatch each character in a variety of grisly ways (pitchfork, spear gun, machete, axe) until only Chris and Jason are left to face off in a battle to the death (or another sequel).

What's wrong with FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III? Plenty. Since it's the 3rd FRIDAY THE 13TH film, the filmmakers (or some VP of Marketing for Paramount) decided to film it in 3-D. In the film, we're subjected to numerous gratuitous objects pointed right into the camera (and if you're not watching it in 3-D, it's annoying). Because the 3-D technology and experts were in Southern California, PART III was filmed in the Los Angeles area even though the story takes place on the East Coast.  FRIDAY THE 13TH was filmed in New Jersey and PART II in Connecticut, more authentic rustic camp locations. Screenwriters Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson's dialogue is terrible (especially at the beginning). PART III even resorts to ripping of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH in a couple of scenes.  Tracie Savage's Debbie has drops of blood fall on her from above before her death similar to Kevin Bacon's Jack in the first film. And like Adrienne King's Alice in the original, Dana Trammel's Chris stumbles into a canoe after killing Jason and paddles into the lake where this time not the young dead Jason but the dead Mrs. Voorhees springs from the water and pulls her under (only for Chris to awake from her dream). Look for thinly veiled homages to PSYCHO (a shower scene) and THE SHINING (an axe breaking down a door scene). 

Dana Trammel in FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III

Fortunately for FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III it will be remembered as the first in the series where Jason dons a hockey mask, a modified Detroit Red Wings to be exact. The film's 3-D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff is credited with having the mask on set and director Steve Miner liked it. Larry Zerner's Shelly actually wears it first as a scuba mask when he comes out of the water and scares Vera. Jason dons the mask later after dispatching Shelly and his hockey mask cinema legacy was born. Former trapeze artist Richard Brooker would play Jason and be the first to get screen billing on the opening credits as Jason. PART III would lose Jason's hillbilly clothes from PART II and opt for a more modern jeans and lumberjack shirt look. PART III does have an interesting backstory on why Chris has trepidations about going back to her parents house. A flashback sequence reveals two years earlier she had encountered Jason in the woods and managed to escape an attack by him. FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III even spoofs itself. Jokester Shelly fakes his own death early in the film with a fake hatchet in the head and blood, scaring his friends.  It's a funny/scary moment that hints at things to come. When Shelly does get his throat slit by Jason later in the film, his friends don't believe him. 

No one will ever confuse the first three FRIDAY THE 13TH films with the first three THE GODFATHER or STAR WARS films.  But I have to give credit to the original FRIDAY THE 13TH with taking the same basic elements from HALLOWEEN and giving its tale a different location, back story, and killer to separate it from all the other slasher films to follow like PROM NIGHT (1980), TERROR TRAIN (1980), and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981). When director/producer Michael Bay rebooted FRIDAY THE 13TH in 2009 with a bigger budget and effects, his production still couldn't top the original for scares or originality. The original FRIDAY THE 13TH turned out not to be bad luck for the filmmakers, the cast and crew, and Paramount Pictures. To my surprise, this little low budget film that I ignored when I was a teenager and a fan of horror films, deserves to be ranked right behind HALLOWEEN as a classic chiller.