Friday the 13th (1980 film)

| runtime = 95 minutes

| country = United States

| language = English

| budget = $550,000–$650,000

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American slasher film produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, written by Victor Miller, and starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, and Kevin Bacon. The plot follows a group of teenage camp counselors who are murdered one by one by an unknown killer while they are attempting to reopen an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past.

Prompted by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Cunningham put out an advertisement to sell the film in Variety in early 1979, while Miller was still drafting the screenplay. After casting the film in New York City, filming took place in New Jersey in the fall of 1979, on an estimated budget of between $550,000 and $650,000. A bidding war ensued over the finished film, ending with Paramount Pictures acquiring the film for domestic distribution, while Warner Bros. secured international distribution rights. Friday the 13th became the first independent slasher film to be acquired by a major motion picture studio.

Released on May 9, 1980, Friday the 13th was a major box office success, grossing $59.8 million worldwide, making it the fifteenth highest-grossing film of the year, and the second highest-grossing film for Paramount. The film's critical response was largely unfavorable, with numerous critics deriding it for its graphic violence, though it did receive some praise for its cinematography and score.

Aside from being the first independent film of its kind to secure distribution in the U.S. by a major studio, its box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series, and a 2009 series reboot. A direct sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2, was released one year later. The film has been subject to critical analysis in film studies for its depiction of youth suffering violent deaths after engaging in premarital sex, a trope at the center of the film's plot that was frequently used in subsequent slasher films. It has received mixed retrospective reviews and garnered a cult following.

Plot

In 1958 at Camp Crystal Lake, camp counselors Barry and Claudette sneak away from other counselors for a late night rendezvous in a supply shed. An unseen assailant attacks and murders them.

On Friday, June 13, 1980, camp counselor and cook Annie hitchhikes with truck driver Enos toward the reopened Camp Crystal Lake. Enos warns her about the camp's troubled past, beginning when a young boy drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957. After Enos drops Annie off at a crossroads, she hitches another ride from an unseen person driving a Jeep. After the driver passes the camp entrance, Annie becomes fearful and leaps from the vehicle, fleeing into the woods where the driver eventually slashes her throat.

Counselors Ned, Jack, Bill, Marcie, Brenda, and Alice arrive at the camp. Alice, along with owner Steve Christy, refurbish the cabins and prepare for incoming campers. As a thunderstorm approaches, Steve leaves for supplies. Ned sees a cloaked figure walk into a cabin and follows. Later, while Jack and Marcie have sex, they are unaware of Ned's dead body above them in the bunk bed. When Marcie leaves the cabin for the public bathroom, the killer pierces Jack's throat with an arrow before following Marcie into the bathroom and killing her with an axe. After playing strip Monopoly with Alice and Bill, Brenda returns to her cabin. She is lured outside by a little boy's voice calling for help and ventures toward the camp's archery range, where the floodlights suddenly turn on.

Alice hears Brenda screaming. Worried by their friends' disappearances, Alice and Bill investigate. They find a bloodied axe in Brenda's bed, and the phones disconnected. Steve returns and, at the camp's entrance, recognizes the unseen killer, who stabs him. When the power goes out, Bill goes to check on the generator. Alice later finds his body pinned to the door with arrows. She flees to the main cabin and barricades herself inside, before the killer hurls Brenda's body through a window.

Mrs. Voorhees, a middle-aged woman who claims to be a friend of the Christys, arrives at the camp. She reveals that it is her son Jason's birthday and that he was the young boy who drowned in 1958. She blames his death on the counselors who failed to supervise him, instead having sex. Revealing herself as the killer, she brutally attacks Alice. Alice flees, discovering the bodies of Annie and Steve in the process. Following a chase throughout the camp and several physical altercations, Mrs. Voorhees finally confronts Alice on the lakeshore. The two struggle until Alice decapitates Mrs. Voorhees with a machete. Exhausted, Alice seeks refuge inside a canoe, which she pushes out onto the lake, and falls asleep.

At dawn, police officers arrive moments before Jason's decomposing corpse emerges from the lake and drags Alice underwater. She then awakens in a hospital, surrounded by a police sergeant and medical staff. The sergeant says there was no sign of a boy at the lake. Alice replies, "Then he's still there."

Cast

Production

Development

thumb|upright|left|Friday the 13th did not have a completed script when Sean S. Cunningham took out this advertisement in [[Variety (magazine)|Variety.|alt="Friday the 13th" in large block letters that appear to be crashing through breaking glass against a dark backdrop.]]

Friday the 13th was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously worked with filmmaker Wes Craven on the film The Last House on the Left (1972). Cunningham, inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), wanted Friday the 13th to be shocking, visually stunning and "[make] you jump out of your seat." Wanting to distance himself from The Last House on the Left, Cunningham wanted Friday the 13th to be more of a "roller-coaster ride".

The original screenplay was tentatively titled A Long Night at Camp Blood. While working on a redraft of the screenplay, Cunningham proposed the title Friday the 13th, after which Miller began redeveloping. Cunningham initially proposed the title Friday the 13th for a list of titles for his comedy film Manny's Orphans (1978). Cunningham rushed out to place an advertisement in Variety using the Friday the 13th title. Worried that someone else owned the rights to the title and wanting to avoid potential lawsuits, Cunningham thought it would be best to find out immediately. He commissioned a New York advertising agency to develop his concept of the Friday the 13th logo, which consisted of big block letters bursting through a pane of glass. In the end, Cunningham believed there were "no problems" with the title, but distributor George Mansour stated, "There was a movie before ours called Friday the 13th: The Orphan. It was moderately successful. But someone still threatened to sue. Either Phil Scuderi paid them off, but it was finally resolved."

The screenplay was completed in mid-1979 by Victor Miller, who later went on to write for several television soap operas, including Guiding Light, One Life to Live and All My Children; at the time, Miller was living in Stratford, Connecticut, near Cunningham, and the two had begun collaborating on potential film projects. Miller delighted in inventing a serial killer who turned out to be somebody's mother, a murderer whose only motivation was her love for her child: "I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun. Mrs. Voorhees was the mother I'd always wanted—a mother who would have killed for her kids." Miller was unhappy about the filmmakers' decision to make Jason Voorhees the killer in the sequels, saying "Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain."

Casting

A New York-based firm, headed by Julie Hughes and Barry Moss, was hired to find eight young actors to play the camp's staff members. Cunningham admits that he was not looking for "great actors", but anyone that was likable, and appeared to be a responsible camp counselor. The way Cunningham saw it, the actors would need to look good, read the dialogue somewhat well, and work cheap. Moss and Hughes were happy to find four actors, Kevin Bacon, Laurie Bartram, Peter Brouwer, and Adrienne King, who had previously appeared on soap operas. The role of Alice was set up as an open casting call, a publicity stunt used to attract more attention to the film. The producers originally wanted Sally Field for the role of Alice, but realized that they could not afford an established high-profile actress and went for unknowns instead. As Cunningham explains, he was looking for actors that could behave naturally, which he felt King demonstrated.

With King cast in the role of lead heroine Alice, Laurie Bartram was hired to play Brenda. Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson and Jeannine Taylor, who had known each other prior through mutual stage work, were cast as Jack, Ned, and Marcie respectively. It is Bacon and Nelson's contention that, because the three already knew each other, they already had the specific chemistry the casting director was looking for in their roles. Taylor has stated that Hughes and Moss were highly regarded while she was an actress, so when they offered her an audition she felt that, whatever the part, it would "be a good opportunity."

Friday the 13th was Nelson's first feature film, and when he went in for his first audition, the only thing he was given to read were some comedic scenes. Nelson received a call back for a second audition, which required him to wear a bathing suit. The character is regarded as one of the first "practical joker victim[s]," a trope seen in subsequent slasher films. According to author David Grove, there was no equivalent character in John Carpenter's Halloween, or Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) before that. He served as a model for the slasher films that would follow Friday the 13th.

Estelle Parsons was the first choice to portray the film's killer, Mrs. Voorhees, but declined with her agent citing that the film was too violent, though Miller later stated that Parsons could not do it due to a scheduling change. Shelley Winters and Dorothy Malone were also offered the part, but turned it down, while Louise Lasser was considered. Hughes and Moss sent a copy of the script to Betsy Palmer, in hopes that she would accept the part. Palmer could not understand why someone would want her for a part in a horror film, as she felt the role was casting against type. Palmer only agreed to play the role because she needed the funds to purchase a new car, even though she believed the film would "be a piece of shit." Stavrakis performed as a double for Palmer as well, primarily during the stalking scene involving Morgan's character, where only the killer's feet and legs are seen. Morgan's training as an acrobat assisted her in these scenes, as her character was required to leap out of a moving Jeep when she discovers that Mrs. Voorhees does not intend to take her to the camp.

Palmer, an adherent to the Stanislavsky method, created her own backstory for Pamela Voorhees in preparation for the role: Palmer envisioned that, while a teenager, Pamela had given birth to her son, Jason, out of wedlock, and was disowned by her family. After struggling to raise Jason as a single mother, and following his subsequent drowning due to the counselors' negligence, she "became very psychotic and puritanical in her attitudes as she was determined to kill all of the immoral camp counselors." Cunningham wanted to make the Mrs. Voorhees character "terrifying", and to that end he believed it was important that Palmer not act "over the top." There was also the fear that Palmer's past credits, as more of a wholesome character, would make it difficult to believe she could be scary. Palmer was paid $1000 per day for her ten days on set.

Ari Lehman, who had previously auditioned for Cunningham's Manny's Orphans, failing to get the part, was determined to land the role of Jason Voorhees. According to Lehman, he went in very intense and afterward Cunningham told him he was perfect for the part.

Filming

thumb|right|upright=1|[[Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, where much of the film was shot|alt=A lake and dock with a boat drifting in the water.]]

Friday the 13th was shot in and around the townships of Hardwick, Blairstown, and Hope, in Warren County, New Jersey beginning in early September 1979.