Review by Leonard Norwitz

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• Commentary by Director Sean S. Cunningham with Cast & Crew
• Fresh Cuts in HD (14:07)
• The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham in HD (8:58)
• Friday the 13th Reunion in HD (16:45)
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood – Part 1 in HD (7:31)
• The Friday the 13th Chronicles in SD (20:34)
• Secrets Galore Behind the Gore in SD (9:32)
• Theatrical Trailer in HD

Description: Friday the 13th is an American horror franchise that consists of eleven slasher films, a television show, novels, comic books, video games and merchandise. The franchise is mainly based on the fictional character of Jason Voorhees, who drowned at Camp Crystal Lake as a boy due to the negligence of the teenage counselors. Decades later, the lake is rumored to be "cursed" and is the setting for a series of mass murders. Jason is featured in all of the films, either as the killer or as the motivation for the killings. The original film was written by Victor Miller, and was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham; later films brought in others for these positions. Originally created to cash in on the success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978),[2] the success led Paramount Pictures to purchase the full rights to the Friday the 13th franchise.

Comment:

The Movie: 5

If you've ever been to summer camp, you'll remember the obligatory scary story around the campfire. There's something about that flickering light across our faces, the blackness beyond the ring of campers, the soft-spoken, cold-blooded delivery of the counselor telling the story – usually a tale about a prior evil that threatens to return and snatch naive children as they walk back to their cabins or tremble under their covers. Such stories are a kind of rite of passage, and waking up the next morning unharmed was enough to shake one's belief in Santa Claus.

I think that transposing such an event to the cinema works in the same way only if the person we identify with isn't actually killed, and certainly not if the killing is explicit. But, then, the target audience for Friday the 13th and its relentless sequels and spin-offs is much older. For them there is no fearful walk back at night to their cabins. No, the intent here is quite different: it is intended to work as a kind of sadomasochistic foreplay to the inevitable sex that is expected to follow. It is, with one's date clinging to your arm while the other reaches for gobs of popcorn, the ultimate date movie.

Perversely, the campier the movie, the more effective it is in its objective. If it's too realistic, too explicit, the dating audience will require something more to numb their fears. Sex alone, even with the assistance of a six pack, probably won't cut it. So even while the sequels speak to this same audience, the effect is different as the gore becomes bloodier, as the hapless victim become smarter but falls to the knife all the same. The titillation is more likely to have run its course when the audience leaves the theatre.

Friday the 13th takes place over a 24-hour period at Camp Crystal Springs as part of the staff make preparations for the kids expected to arrive in a few days. Crystal Springs has earned its reputation as "Camp Blood" following a series of deaths and killings some years ago. This is the first summer in some while that the owners set out to beat the odds. Steve Christy is determined to whip his randy teenage crew into shape and get the mechanics of the camp in full working order. But first he has to leave on an errand in town for the better part of the day, after which the six or seven remaining counselors are dispatched by an unseen hand. One of them doesn't even make it to camp: Annie, the cook, has her throat cut after ignoring warnings by the local townspeople, whose relationship to Crystal Springs is not unlike the Transylvanian village to Dracula's castle.

What I found interesting about these victims was that, except until the last one, none of them suspects they are being cut down until it is too late. There might have been suspicious sounds in the night and power going off and on, but no one knows there is a killer loose on the premises. But the director makes certain they remain ignorant of the danger. Each one is killed as he or she naturally separates him or herself from the others – to go to the bathroom or their cabin and the like. It's like they don't have a chance. For the most part they don't even get to run. Surely there's a point to all this, I asked myself.

There is one idiot girl who chases down a faint cry for help through the woods in the middle of the night in the rain in her nightgown, but she is the exception, not the rule. And then there is the last girl standing who gets the upper hand not just once, but three times, and routinely runs away without ever thinking of tying up her unconscious assailant (who ties up our own loose ends eventually.) Such fools, we might say to ourselves, deserve to die. Of course, we make this pronouncement in the safety of our living rooms.

In any case, Friday the 13th takes its mood from its setting: it is the very definition of "camp." While not exactly a comedy, the movie certainly is funny. I can't say why exactly, considering the subject, but it isn't really mean-spirited, on part because it is not really sexist. The killer is an equal opportunity murderer. The fact that the music is so predictive and the script is so lame (though I've encountered much worse in the genre, then and now) and the line readings often more so, keeps matters light even as events intend to scare us.

Friday the 13th is hardly what we would call a good movie. But it's no Blair Witch Project either. It's shot with clarity on good film stock and with good audio (astoundingly so on this Blu-ray), even though the lighting doesn't always correspond to real events. The movie isn't nearly as suspenseful as Halloween, whose success was the direct inspiration for this movie, nor does it have John Carpenter's narrative drive. Of course, there is that ending (Be still, Carrie)! But, talent aside, I think the success of Friday has much less to do with its artistic merit than it does its, perhaps unconscious, effect on the audience.

By the way, in keeping with the commercialism of the Friday the 13th franchise, the "Uncut" version has an additional 10 seconds of what one could hardly call "footage" not contained in the "R"-rated original.