FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)

DIRECTED by Sean S. Cunningham.

SCREENPLAY by Victor Miller.

STARRING  - Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees,  Adrienne King as Alice,  Harry Crosby as Bill,  Jeannine Taylor as Marcie,  Laurie Bartram as Brenda,  Kevin Bacon as Jack,  Mark Nelson as Ned,  Robbi Morgan as Annie,  Peter Brouwer as Steve Christy,  Rex Everhart as Enos,  Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph,  Ari Lehman as Jason Voorhees.

PLOT - Camp Crystal Lake was closed for over twenty years after two camp councillors where brutally murdered there, now it is being reopened...

But things are already starting to go wrong, one councillor - Annie - has already failed to turn up (little known to everybody she has had her throat slit in the woods by a mysterious attacker), a local eccentric known as Crazy Ralph is hanging around predicting that all the councillors are going to die and the inhabitants of the nearby town all seem on edge and reluctant to welcome the youngsters into thier community.

Very soon, one by one, the councillors are being savagely killed, eventually only one girl is left alive - Alice. 

Who is the twisted maniac carrying out the murders ? Will Alice be able to escape from the camp with her life and what has all this to do with a small boy who drowned in Crystal Lake all those years ago ?...

DIALOUGE  - Pamela Voorhees - "Kill her, Mommy ! Kill her..."

PERFORMANCES  - I'm going to wade right in with spoilers for a 43 year old film. So in the highly unlikely event that you've never seen this movie, continue reading only after you've watched the film...

Right...here goes...In this, the film that launched the series that made hockey mask wearing, machete weilding, musclebound undead redneck zombie serial killer Jason Voorhees a household name...he's NOT the one doing the killings. In fact he's barely in it, only appearing in the last couple of minutes for the sequal hook. Even then he's completely unrecognisable.

This isn't a problem though because instead we get Jason's mum, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) doing the killings...and she's absolutely brilliant.

Palmer gives a great performance, she's only in a few scenes near the end when the killer's identity is revealed, but when she's onscreen she steals the entire movie and in the process delivers a truly insane, memorable and iconic portrayal of a grieving woman consumed by madness who has gone down a dark and deadly path.

Pamela flips from being a kindly seeming middle aged woman into a twisted sneering psychopath. She also sometimes appears to be talking to herself in the voice of her dead son, Jason (who drowned twenty two years ago, whilst the camp councillors where off having sex somewhere when they should have been making sure the boy was safe in the water). It's a creepy and compelling performance.

 The only problem is that Pamela should have been introduced earlier, she just turns up out of nowhere in the last fifteen minutes. So you instantly know something is off with her. It would have been better if she had been in a few scenes earlier, establishing her as a "friendly" member of the local community, then I feel the revelation that she's batshit insane would have been more of a surprise.

The soon to be iconic Jason does appear, here he's played by Ari Lehman, he's a far cry from what he becomes later. Jason is still just a kid in this film, we see him in a flashback to when he drowns in 1958 and later in the film's closing moments when he leaps out of the water as a "zombie ghost" to terrify final girl Alice (Adrienne King). Lehman never played Jason again but he continued to embrace his key role in the franchise's legacy, for many years he was lead singer in his own rock band which went by the name... "First Jason".

All the camp councillors in this film merely serve as nubile young bodies to be sliced and diced by Pamela. We get the usual character types you'd expect and none of them make a huge impression. All the performances are good enough but you never really form an attachment to any of these people as you know they're all going to be bumped off shortly.

Most noteable is Adrienne King as Alice. She's the film's heroine, the final girl, and King sells the terror that Alice must be feeling very effectively. She comes over as likeable and sweet, she's also not quite as promiscuous as some of the other girls on the camp which always qualifies someone for survival in a slasher film. 

The other noteable councillor is future Hollywood star Kevin Bacon in one of his earliest roles. Here he plays Jack and he doesn't get a lot to do except have sex and then die horribly. Great death scene though...

Finally theres Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph. He's the town oddball and crops up at inopportune moments to creep out the kids by saying things like "You're all going to die ! You're doomed !" He's nicely O.T.T. and sticks around till the second movie as well.

SFX - All of the makeup and gore effects where created by SFX legend Tom Savini and they're all as good as we've come to expect from the maestro.

Savini did a great job with the look of young Jason - he's hideously deformed with a hydrocephalic looking head. It's never mentioned who Jason's father actually was but I'm guessing Pamela got a little bit too friendly with her own brother...

We see Jason again at the film's end, this time he's spent a couple of decades mouldering away at the bottom of Crystal Lake so he's suitablely scabby looking as a result...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - As this is a slasher movie having sex usually ends up getting you murdered, this film is no exception - especially if your name's Kevin Bacon.

There's a scene where Jack and his girlfriend Marcie are having sex, after they've bumped uglies the two are swiftly killed by Pamela. In the film's most iconic kill - Jack is stabbed through the throat whilst lying in bed. You see, what Jack didn't know was that all that time, Pamela was hiding under the bed waiting for her moment to strike. She shoves an arrow through the back of his neck, leaving Jack to choke to death on his own blood. Sliced Bacon anyone ?

Definitely one of Tom Savini's finest hours.

Marcie is then killed in the bathroom like this...

Not something she would have AXED for, I'm guessing...

The other councillors are killed in a variety of ways, some off camera, some on camera. It makes no difference as we get to see the gory results either way...

Hmm... Pamela does seem to have a bit of a thing for arrows doesn't she ? If the machete is Jason's signature weapon then the archery arrow is definitely Pamela's.

Best of all we get the death of Pamela herself. Finally, having had enough of being menaced and slapped about by Pamela, Alice finally snaps and lops Pamela's head clean off her shoulders with a handy shovel...

I really like the way her hands are still clenching and unclenching, it's like when a chicken gets it's head cut off and runs around the farmyard.

RATING  - The original Friday the 13th is a well crafted, suspenseful slasher film. It has all the tropes you'd expect but that's only because this was one of the first films to establish them. THIS is the original, everything that comes after are just variations on a theme.

It's also an incredibly atmospheric film. The first half of the movie is shot in bright sunshine, perfectly evoking long, hot Summer days. The second half, the night of Friday the 13th itself, takes place against the backdrop of a raging thunderstorm. It lends both a feeling of cosy dread and horror to the terrifying events that unfold before our eyes.

5 murderous mums out of 5. A stone cold horror classic.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  -

If you're looking for Hockey masks in this film then you're shit outta luck. Jason doesn't even wear one until Part 3...

I love this one, it's just so typically "Friday the 13th" and yet is nothing like what we actually get to see here, and what's with the girl in the pink bikini giving Jason the glad eye ?