Friday the 13th (1980)

by Rizzy

Wow, I mean, wow, I can't even tell you how epic writing this feels to me. Friday the 13th is one of my favorite... no is my favorite movie series of all time. For better or worse I love each and every move in it equally. It's almost wrong for me to do a Bview on any of them, because I love them all way too much.  So I hereby make a pledge to you all that I will give love and dedication to each Bview I write on these films.  They might get a little long, but they are all out of love.  All out of mad love. Hopefully I'll be able to show you all how each film is unique, amazing and wonderful in its own right.  That's my goal, I love these ones so so so much.

Though this is not the first film that used Kill-O-Vision... you know where the camera is placed from the viewpoint of the killer for suspense... no, that credit goes to the original Black Christmas (1974)... well, for using it well, at least, nor does film not have the best use of Kill-O-Vision, which I'd give credit to the opening scene in John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) (where we see young Michael Meyer's stab his sister through a mask), it does still use this well. They still treat it new and overstylized, which to me is always refreshing. In the newer movies where they use it they don't place the camera as awkwardly and I find that actually takes away from the effect of it.

What I love best about the opening scene to this film is, in fact, the extended use of this camera angle.  They push it longer than maybe they should have, but it works really well. In this film maybe more than any other of the big Slasher greats, they really play with hiding the killer from you in order to build suspense for the ending.  You don't have a mask for the killer to hide behind so they have to show the kills more creatively, which really works in the movie's favor. Don't get me wrong, I love me some machete toting, hockey mask wearing Jason, but in this film, the first, it works well to keep you wondering why all of this is happening.

Another thing done really, really terribly well in this film is the casting. All of the cast looks like really All-American and wholesome, but young and fun. Kevin Bacon is the only one well known now, but everyone in the cast does a great job of capturing that care free feeling of youth that movies like this capitalize on. That "this could have happened to your neighbor" feel to it... or worse yet "this could happen to you" feel.

This film covers all the basic "classic slasher" musts so well that it is one of the films that actually helped define the genre. Granted it blatantly ripped off the formula from Halloween, but it knew that and didn't find any shame with it. It had a good title: Friday the 13th and went from there blatantly out to make as much money as it could off of coat tailing the greats. In the end, I think that's why I love these films so much.  They were the first of the Slasher greats to understand the money potential and blatantly milk the public for every penny they could with absolutely no shame. I respect a movie that knows that's what it is and rolls with it.

I need to take a moment here to comment on the fashion of this guy in the film.  Yes, that is a bandana around his neck... yes those are unusually tight cut off jeans... yes, that is a proud display of chest hair. Yes those socks go half way up his calves... Don't get me started on his porn stash.  For those of you reading this right now: don't be that guy.  For real. /mockery

Ok, I lied, one more shot of that chest hair, the neckerchief, that stash and that guys ultra creepy stare. Ick. *shudders* Seriously, no! He's not in it THAT much, I promise.  This girl here though? On the right, the one with he TERRIBLE hair that looks like a bad wig/helmet and is about the twice the size of her actual head? Yeah, she's our final girl, which mean we get LOADS of this terrible haircut during the film. It fits the entire man/woman mix that the final girl is supposed to epitomize though.  The masculine is strong with this one.

The snake death.  Oh, yes, the snake death. This film, more than most, show the prey's ability to fight back early in the film by showing them killing a snake. Little known fact: this was prior to the PETA outrage days and so when it came time to show them "fighting back" by killing a snake, they just, you know, killed a snake. Rumor has it the snake owner sat in the corner crying while they killed his pet.  How wrong is that? Still, I think this is an important scene.  It shows that if these kids were paying more attention and really stayed smart they probably would have been able to stay alive. Most slasher films don't go out of their way to make that statement.

The real hero of this film is actually someone behind the scenes: Tom Savini who is my own personal god. This is before CGI and a lot of the advancements we have now in special effects technology, but Savini never once batted an eye at anything they threw at him.  Show a arrow coming out of someone's throat? Sure!!! Decapitate someone on screen? Not a problem!  Friday the 13th films are known for their amazing death scenes and that is all because of the great Savini who started it all and set the bar so high that topping it would be the mark of the series.

The final scare that started a franchise. Now everybody knows that Jason is the main evil of the Friday the 13th series, so much so that they've stopped caring about the date and just naming the sequels after him: Jason X anyone? And here it is, a semi-dream sequence that launched his empire.  The movie felt lacking and so they threw in this hokey scene to get one last scare out of the audience.  They didn't know it at the time, but they gave birth to so much more than one last jump when they did this.  Money signs impregnated this scene with sequel after sequel and I am forever in debt to it.

God, there is so much I've left out, but any more than this and people will come hunt me down and kill me for overloading them with too much Friday the 13th goodness!! Seriously though, if you're a fan of horror films at all and especially slasher films, then you should watch this immediately if you haven't already.  It's definitely a classic that is still concerned about plot and telling a story and not just showing a lot of awesome kills. I highly recommend it!!  It's one of my favorites!!