Golden Title: Friday the 13th (1980)

Review: Friday the 13th (1980)
Rating: *****
Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King and Jeannine Taylor

Well, here I go, my first review…in a blog…to be shown…in public. God help me.

Summer of 58, after a night of jamboree and kum-ba-yahs, two camp counselors decide to do more than just singing campfire song songs. After every good lil' boys and girls are tucked in, the two make-out at the cabin's attic. Only, they aren't alone that night and not too long, someone startles the two and buries a knife on the good lad's gut, down in the count as the girl tries in frenzy to fend away her attacker, only to bite the big one as the killer looms closer...

In 1979, young Annie hitches a ride from a local diner to the camp, now re(-re-re-re-)opened by Steve Christy; despite Crazy Ralph, a local doom-sayer, rambling that the camp has a death curse, as well as a friendly truck driver telling her that the camp is jinxed, Annie still heads on towards the camp, only to be picked up by a driver for a quick lift. Good luck turns bad when the driver's eerie silence starts to creep Annie, forcing her to jump out and lead to a chase. Not for long, the maniac catches up to her and slices her neck open.

All the while, the camp continues its renovation as the new, young, and enthusiastic counselors set the place up, while Mr. Christy leaves for town to gather some supplies. The counselors have their share of fun, swimming in the lake, having lunch. (hopefully not that snake they just killed...) Crazy Ralph even drops by to greet them "You're all doom!" before taking the ride back home in his bike.

As a storm rolls in, the counselors take shelter, some in the cabin, some in the bunkhouse. The two lovers in the bunkhouse find the opportunity to grab their gnarls and do each other, unaware that one of their friends just got murdered, laid bleeding dead from his neck cut above the top bunk. After finishing their bedroom business, ole Kevin Bacon decides to smoke a cig, only to get an early demise by an arrow to the throat. His girl goes next when the killer buries an axe into her face. All this went unnoticed by the three in another cabin, who are busy playing "strip-monopoly".

Christy gets an escort back to the cabin when his car breaks down in the middle on the rain, but upon arrival, he gets a bright light flashed at his face and a knife stabbing his gut and chest. Soon after that, the counselors stop their game for a moment when one of them hears a cry for help. One of them leaves and never came back, leaving the two no choice but to split up and investigate the weird noises, the damaged phone lines and the bloody axe on the bed. When her friend also fails to return after checking all the weird ongoings, Annie, the remaining counselor, heads out to looks for them by herself, only to find her friends dead or dying. Frantic, she's about to run out of the camp when, ole' Mrs. Voorhees came and calms her down.

First calm, Mrs. Voorhees looks around and spots the bodies; she then begins telling Alice about her son, who'd drown years ago when the counselors failed to pay attention to him. Alice snaps out of her hysteria and ran out to defend herself from Mrs. Voorhees, now insane and revealing herself as the one who murdered everyone to avenge her son's death.

After a struggle against the crone, Alice knocks her own with a frying pan before lumbering her way away from the camp, but Mrs. Voorhees is far from dead and attacks her once more at the lake shore. There, Annie manages to knock off the killer's machete and uses it to decapitate her. As death rattle flails the matriarch's arms, Alice climbs into a canoe and floats away towards the lake.

That morning, the cops arrive to help her, but a zombified corpse of Jason, as a boy, leaps out of the water and pulls her in. Whether this really happened or not is never fully explained, as she later finds herself in a hospital, being interrogated by police. When she mentioned about the boy, Jason, the cops were baffled and tells her that they didn't find any boy.

Thus, "... he's still there..."

The Friday the 13th movies are considered by many as the grand name helmed in slasherdom; I love these movies to death, and I really love the hulking killer who dons a 1970s Hockey Mask with the red war paint named Jason Voorhees. But with big boy absent here, what we have here instead is good ole' Mama Voorhees donning the machete and slashing the kiddies to ribbons for our entertainment, making herself one of the most iconic female slashers in history; wonderfully played by Betsy Palmer, she’s the mean mom nobody would ever have, willing to kill off those who she believes has caused her son’s untimely “demise”, 'hearing' his voice to kill them all while packing a teeth of pure grit, simply a whole cake that celebrates an evolution of the hagsploitation villainesses back in the 50s/60s.

What makes this movie so enjoyable is the fact that it’s perfect…well, perfect in a sense that it is the primary example of a backwoods slasher done right. From isolated locations almost devoid of any help and authorities, red herrings, stereotyped characters and, of course, a high and gory body count. Yes, for a franchise that reaches 300 deaths or so, this one takes the easy (and partially tame) step to stardom.

Aside from that, this also marks the starting point of one of cinema’s most successful horror franchise (among others, of course) which, I have to admit, has its on and off entries, various amount of cheese, and various amount of (heavy) body count.

Director Sean S. Cunningham and Writer Victor Miller may not have been sure on how big their little movie would have become eventually, but judging from the fans this movie still have from then til today, it definitely earned its gory glory. Now, would it's sequel do better? Well...

Bodycount:
1 male knifed to the gut
1 female killed (offscreen)
1 female neck slashed with hunting knife
1 male found with neck slit
1 male gets an arrow driven through his neck from under the bed
1 female had face split with hatchet
1 male stabbed on the gut and neck with knife
1 male found pinned to the door via shot arrows
1 female thrown through a window, seen dying
1 female decapitated with machete.
Total: 10

aaaaaaaaaaaaand CUE SEQUEL!