Friday the 13th (1980)

Any seasoned horror fan will attest that the 1980s represented the golden age of what Roger Ebert declared the "Mad Slasher" film. You know the type: a group of young, attractive, sexually active (some might even say promiscuous) teenagers or young adults gather together at a secluded location, away from their parents and out of sight of almost any form of adult supervision, to enjoy and celebrate their youth, whether by way of getting high, drinking prior to reaching the age of twenty-one, expressing their sexual attraction to members of the opposite sex, or a combination of all three -- only to be stalked and picked off one by one by a masked, knife-wielding psychopath lurking in the darkness. The movie that most have agreed initiated this genre formula is Bob Clark's holiday horror classic, Black Christmas, in 1974. However, two months prior, Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel unleashed their macabre creation on the world that centered around a cannibalistic inbred family of murderers abducting, torturing, and ultimately consuming four young travelers whose only sin was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That trailblazing, unforgettably harrowing masterpiece was titled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it left an imprint on the horror genre that continues to be felt and paid homage to 50 years later.

Then, of course, in 1978, John Carpenter and Debra Hill introduced the horror to the suburbs in Halloween, the movie that unintentionally set the rules for its subgenre that would be openly discussed by Jamie Kennedy's horror-savvy geek, Randy Meeks, in Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's meta horror-comedy, Scream: (1) you can never have sex, (2) you can never drink or do drugs, and (3) never say "I'll be right back" because you simply won't be.

My point is, the slasher genre, my personal favorite subgenre in the world of cinematic horror, has been around for a very long time, well before the '80s. In fact, Ghostface actually made me aware in Scream 4 that the horror movie that started the slasher craze, the first movie to ever put the audience in the killer's POV, was Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, and that was released in 1960, twenty years before the start of the subgenre's official coming-out party. While some film critics such as James Berardinelli lay the blame on filmmakers of the decade for destroying the integrity and legitimate terror of the genre in favor of cheap jump scares, gratuitous gore, and nudity, I personally couldn't be more grateful to filmmakers like Sean S. Cunningham for introducing me to some of my favorite movies, and the villains within them, that made me a horror fan in the first place and reminding audiences of the simple pleasure, the relatively harmless fun, of watching a scary movie.

If Halloween set the standard for modern horror films, and Scream turned the conventions of the slasher subgenre on their head, then Sean S. Cunningham must be credited with solidifying the formula in his 1980 underrated masterpiece, Friday the 13th. As much as I love the previously mentioned titles -- and it was, in fact, Michael Myers standing atop a roof in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers that set my love of the subgenre in motion -- it's Cunningham's low-budget campfire classic that stands as the best of the bunch. It has a simple, quiet, at times downright serene magic that transcends the supernatural elements that characterize many of its competitors, both of today and yesteryear. 

Opening with a peaceful, beautiful shot of a full moon surrounded by the pitch-black night sky, accompanied by the chirps of a loon, Cunningham's camera slowly glides over to an exterior shot of cabins in Camp Crystal Lake. The year is 1958. We can hear the cheerful voices of multiple camp counselors emanating from inside the cabin as they sit around performing a sing-along to "Michael" by The Highwaymen. The guitar-playing leader of the group is Claudette Hayes (Debra S. Hayes), and she's exchanging a loving, flirtatious smile with her boyfriend, Barry Jackson (Willie Adams). Once the song concludes, Claudette mouths, "Come on," to Barry, and they promptly walk off together, allowing the rest of the counselors to start up a new song. 

Meanwhile, in the tradition of the masterful POV opening shot of Halloween, a mysterious, unseen assailant has entered the cabin of sleeping children, walking past their beds at a slow pace, as if to ensure they're in a deep sleep. This person is obviously getting ready to do something quite despicable, and Cunningham does an equally brilliant job of putting us, the viewer, behind the eyes of this silent madman (or woman), whose menacing presence is compounded by a suspenseful, delightfully old-fashioned musical score composed by Harry Manfredini in a manner reminiscent of Carpenter's simple theme. Making the music even more horrifying and memorable is the inclusion of the whispery signature sound of "ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma", which will be given a clear meaning toward the end of the nightmare.

Up in a barn, Barry and Claudette begin to make out and slowly undress, collapsing to the floor. The amazing Manfredini score plays as the camera ascends the stairs, headed straight toward the canoodling couple. "Someone's here," whispers a startled Claudette, responding to the creak of the top step. Barry swiftly rises to his feet and pulls up his shorts, seeming to recognize the person walking toward him. With a guilty smile, Barry insists, "We weren't doing anything. We were just mess--", but before he has a chance to finish his sentence, a sharp blade pierces his stomach, only we don't see it. We only hear a distressed grunt, followed by the piercing scream of Claudette. Barry collapses to the floor, his hands clutching a bloody gaping wound in his abdomen. Claudette tries to get away, but finds herself cornered. She begs the killer to stop, and desperately throws random items in their direction. It's no use. Backed into a corner, Claudette falls down, lets out one final helpless, blood-curdling scream, her hands on either side of her head, as Barry Abrams' camera slowly pushes in on her terrified face, her mouth agape and eyes wide open. The screen cuts to black, and the title card rushes in in giant white blocks, breaking through glass. This is one of the all-time greatest opening scenes in horror history, a mix of subversive camerawork, creepy music, implicit violence, and slow-building dread. 

We are then transported to the present day, Friday, June 13th, 1979. A young, optimistic soon-to-be camp cook named Annie Phillips (Robbi Morgan) is backpacking through a sunny, fairly deserted street, captured in wide shots that capitalize on the beauty of her surroundings. She walks into a diner and asks aloud how far it is to Camp Crystal Lake, which immediately draws the attention of everyone inside. Their expressions are of dismay and fear. "Camp Blood, they're opening that place again?" one customer asks. Clearly, the townsfolk know terrible things have happened there, and no one wants to talk about it. Annie is obviously an outsider, and she greets their suspicion and surprise with a devil-may-care smile. A nice trucker named Enos Tucker (Rex Everhart) agrees to drive her to a crossroads. On their way to his truck, an eccentric old man nicknamed "Crazy Ralph" (Walt Gorney) rushes up to warn Annie against going to the camp, claiming, "You'll never come back again!" and "It's got a death curse." Enos initially brushes off Ralph's rantings, calling him "a real prophet of doom," but en route to the crossroads, he echoes the same warning, admitting that a series of atrocious events have taken place at the camp, beginning in 1957 with the unsolved drowning of an 11-year-old boy, and followed up in 1958 with the murder of the two counselors from the cold open. Thereafter, the camp shut down, and all efforts to reopen have been met with further complications: tainted water in 1962, several fires committed by an unidentified arsonist. Enos strongly urges Annie to quit right now and find another summer job, but she remains unconvinced.

In a more conventional version of the story, Annie would earn the instant loathing of the audience for refusing to turn around and head back home as advised, but alas, Morgan carries with her such an effervescence, a credible, endearing optimism. She's bursting with youthful confidence, exuberance, and positivity. It's impossible to resent her for having such a perky attitude when Morgan makes it entirely believable. Her innocent smile, sweet voice, snarky facial expressions render her a guaranteed victim, but not a desirable one. Think about it: if you had a dream to do something, would you allow some superstitious fables and pessimistic adults to deter you before you even had the chance to start? Annie loves children (she hates when people refer to them as kids; "sounds like little goats.") and is understandably eager to spend her summer cooking for inner-city campers. 

At the camp, we become acquainted with the central characters: Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), the owner who is opening up the camp following the retirement of his parents and has invested $25,000 and a year of his life; his ex-girlfriend, Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), a budding artist who recently left behind a former relationship in California; Bill Brown (Harry Crosby), Alice's new love interest; Brenda Jones (Laurie Bartram), the most responsible and educated counselor in the group; Ned Rubenstein (Mark Nelson), the juvenile jokester; Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), and his girlfriend, Marcie Stanler (Jeannine Taylor).

Taking place within one day, the titular ominous holiday, no less, Cunningham, directing from a brilliantly minimalist screenplay from Victor Miller, spends the remainder of the film essentially following these characters, all of whom are eminently likable, realistic, fun, and intentionally unremarkable, as they go about their day, setting up around the camp, getting the place ready for their arriving charges, hanging out with one another, and never forgetting to enjoy themselves. After all, they get to spend the entire summer (as far as they know) away from their parents, free to be on their own, to do as they desire, swim in a lake, and form new relationships... oh, and probably spend a little time with the children once they arrive, too. But it's the first day. They have two blissful weeks to themselves before they become 3-monthlong parents, right? They might as well make the most of it. And so they do, swimming in the lake, playing strip monopoly (my personal favorite of all the downtime scenes in the picture), getting caught in the rain. Cunningham is an extraordinarily patient director, allowing Abrams' camera to linger with these kids, showing the ways in which they enjoy themselves and each other's company, never in a rush to isolate them so they can be axed out of the story (figuratively and literally).

At one point, Ned, ever the prankster, stages a drowning, compelling his five new friends to rush into the water to save him. The characters are so caring and refreshingly human, unlike the most egregious types in the worst modern slasher films who don't seem to care at all about the people they call their friends. Not just one, but every one of the five adults rushes into action and plays a part in rescuing Ned, with Brenda ultimately being the one who goes under and pulls out the assumed victim. While giving him mouth-to-mouth, Ned comes alive, so to speak, and kisses Brenda, drawing the annoyance and disbelief of everyone else. "I'm sorry," he insists earnestly, only after realizing how dumb and worrying a joke that was. But you know what? I like Ned. He's a little immature, but never malicious or overly obnoxious to a detrimental degree. His penchant for silly practical jokes is what defines him, and while watching Jack and Marcie hold onto each other and kiss later in the day, it becomes apparent that his personality is born from a furtive feeling of loneliness. Take the scene where we first meet him. He's driving his truck to the camp with Jack and Marcie beside him in the passenger seat, making out as always. "Hey, Marcie," he asks, "you really think there will be other gorgeous women at Camp Crystal Lake besides yourself?" "Is sex all you ever think about, Ned?" Marcie retorts. "Hey, no. No. Absolutely not. Sometimes I just think about kissing women." Based on this brief, innocuous exchange, we can infer that Ned, in spite of his goofy exterior, truly does ache for a connection with a woman. He's always been the single pringle, the guy who watches other guys make out with their girlfriends while he's left all alone, wishing that could be him. He's essentially a wallflower, so he acts out for the sake of attention. It's harmless and amusing, but also a little sad. Nelson conducts himself superbly in a scene where he puts on a headdress and runs around howling crazily while smacking his mouth repeatedly like a wild Indian. It's incredibly offensive, I would imagine, but there's an undeniable charisma to Nelson that makes what would come across as cringeworthy in a less capable actor's hands look exceptionally easy, almost like he isn't playing a character, but rather a variation of his real-life self. As a result, when Ned spots the killer in a nearby cabin, and follows them inside to see if they need help, I couldn't help urging him from behind the screen, "Don't go in there! Please don't go in there!"

Fortunately, there's nary a weak link in the entire cast. Every actor, while not exactly tasked with bringing to life the most fully developed, three-dimensional characters ever written, delivers their lines capably and helps forge a connection between their roles and the viewer. These are decent, hardworking, gregarious people who have a sense of humor and an enthusiasm for life. They feel like real people, and because of this, it's easy to care about them and not feel overjoyed that by the end of the nigh, most, if not all, of them will find themselves on the receiving end of a blade.

During an approaching thunderstorm, Marcie and Jack are sitting in front of the water. The sky is beginning to dim. Marcie recounts a childhood nightmare that resurfaces every time a storm is about to come, her "shower dream", as she calls it. Taylor delivers this monologue beautifully, with a quiet seriousness and restrained anxiety that enables us to envision the raindrops pounding on the ground, sounding at first like little pebbles, then growing louder and louder. No matter how hard she tries to block out the noise with her hands, it won't cease. Then finally the rain turns to blood. It's one of two sobering moments of foreshadowing, the first being when Annie is dropped off at the crossroads in front of a cemetery. Cunningham is sure to capture that image in yet another wide shot, driving home the message that within minutes, Annie will be the first to belong there. She failed to heed the warnings, and now she has reached her final destination. 

Adrienne King delivers the most physically demanding performance of all her costars, and she has a set of pipes that give Jamie Lee Curtis a run for her money. Not dissimilar to the scream queens who came before her (Curtis, Marilyn Burns), King is required to scream her head off, run for her life, endure slaps to the face, being thrown into a table, and having her arm bitten -- and she bears the brunt of these requirements with aplomb. She also has the benefit of portraying one of the most underappreciated final girls in horror cinema. Alice appears as any other mature teen, with no immediately striking attributes that set her apart from Brenda, Marcie, or Annie. However, once she realizes her predicament, and because of the isolated nature of her setting, that no one is around to help her, she is galvanized into action. Resourceful, intelligent, and just as relentless as her attacker, Alice knows how to put up a fight and do the best she can to protect herself given her limited resources and admittedly vulnerable position. She understands that she is trapped in these woods with no outside help to turn to, and that the nearest crossroads is 10 miles away. So she utilizes every device at her disposal, closing the window curtains, blocking the door to her cabin with three chairs, a chest, and a log, and tossing a rope noose over a ceiling beam and tying it around the door handle. She proceeds to arm herself with two of the only weapons available: a baseball bat and a carving fork. Could any of us say with certainty what we would do in this situation, with dead bodies popping up left and right, and we're all alone in a camp cabin in the nighttime? Would we even be as smart as Alice? 

Whereas more well-remembered protagonists like Laurie Strode had never smoked a joint in their lives, and were too timid to ask out the guy they had a crush on in high school, Alice stands as a subversion of the "good girl" stereotype. Alice isn't just in the process of getting to know Bill, she just recently got out of two relationships with other men. One of them is her boss, Steve. While she's busy nailing in the gutter of the roof to a cabin, Steve discovers sketches of himself in Alice's scrapbook from the night before and deduces that she's thinking about leaving, to which she admits, "I don't know, I may have to go back to California and straighten something out." The romantic tension between these two is light yet palpable, reaffirmed by his hand gently caressing her face. Later in the night, when Brenda initiates her improvised game of strip monopoly, Alice eagerly joins her and Bill, taking hits off one of Marcie's joints and drinking beer. Neither a slut nor a prude, a stoner, a drinker, nor straitlaced, Alice is a perfectly normal, sociable, engaging teen who isn't afraid to partake in some minor transgressions in the name of having fun with her coworkers. This doesn't make her any less lovable or sympathetic. Like the rest of the characters, it just makes her human.

As for the remaining young women in the cast, Jeannine Taylor provides the appropriate dose of sex appeal, but Miller doesn't dehumanize or sexualize Marcie by forcing her to flaunt her beauty for the other men or sleep around; she's a loyal woman sincerely in (young) love with Jack. In one scene, Marcie washes her hands in the outhouse and stares at herself in the mirror, mimicking the voice and self-loathing remarks of some unknown-to-me but clearly older woman ("When I looked into that mirror, I knew I'd always be ugly. I said, 'Lady, you'll always be plain'"). I don't have the slightest idea as to what that means or why she says it, but it nonetheless adds a hint of quirkiness to the character, and that helps to further endear me to her during her final moments.

Laurie Bartram exudes a maturity in her appearance and her voice that's reminiscent of Jamie Lee Curtis. She's beautiful, but in a more grownup fashion, with a genuine maternal instinct that makes her ideal for the role of an aspiring camp counselor. In addition to saving Ned from supposedly drowning, Brenda literally, however unintentionally, risks her own life to try to help a frightened child caught outside in the rain. Just before she meets her demise, Brenda is lying in bed in a nightgown reading a book. "Help me!" a voice calls out. She looks up from her book and waits to hear something more, unsure if she actually heard what she thinks. After a moment of silence, she returns to her book. "Help me!" This time, she knows for a fact something's wrong. Armed with nothing but a flashlight, the underdressed Brenda wanders out into the pouring rain, calling out for the child in distress. The voice persists, but no one materializes. Just then, the lights to the archery range turn on at once. Brenda turns around, convinced someone is playing a prank on her. Perhaps Neddy? And then the camera cuts away, and we hear her prolonged scream in the distance. 

Cunningham distinguishes Friday the 13th from other teen slasher films through his sheer presentation of the carnage. While certain kills are featured on-screen, and in gory detail courtesy of Tom Savini's outstanding makeup effects, others are cleverly committed off-screen, and therefore left to the imagination of the viewer. For instance, the first kill is executed (no pun intended) against Annie. Running through the woods with a limp caused by jumping out of the killer's Jeep, Annie runs straight into the psychopath, falls down, and backs away against a tree. We see a hand gripping a hunting knife, Annie quietly pleading for her life, the hand makes a forward motion, then the assailant moves out of the frame to reveal a gaping slit in Annie's throat, the blood pouring out. This is truly brilliant blocking, and Cunningham doesn't linger on the gruesome image for more than a few seconds. Similarly, when a hand reaches out from underneath a bed to grab Jack's forehead, a spear slowly and agonizingly protrudes from his chest, and a fountain of blood squirts out. I've seen this scene countless times throughout my 25 years, and yet it still held the power to make my jaw drop last night. Marcie, alone in the outhouse, hears a strange noise and slowly approaches a shower curtain, believing that one of her friends, most likely Ned, is trying to scare her. She pulls it back. Nothing. Then she playfully opens another one. Nothing. "Must be my imagination," she whispers to herself, as the shadow of an axe rises against the wall. When she turns around, the axe fills the frame, Marcie emits a helpless scream, the axe comes down, knocking the lamp hanging from the ceiling, causing it to swing back and forth. Marcie falls to the floor, the axe embedded into the entire left side of her face. After assaulting our eyes with that shocking, upsetting image, Cunningham returns to the ceiling lamp as it continues to swing. Back and forth. The brilliance of the makeup and riveting music cannot be overstated. It's moments like these that make it unpredictable as to which kills will be shown, and which will occur just out of sight. 

Before I perpetuate the completely false impression that Friday the 13th is a typical hack-and-slash splatter fest like its reputation will mislead you to believe, Cunningham has far more on his mind than racking up an impressive body count or drowning horror fans in bucketloads of viscera (both of which he offers generously). When the average moviegoer is asked to define a slasher movie, they will probably describe them as vile, nihilistic morality fables that punish teenagers for engaging in premarital sex. And yes, it is true that, shortly after Marcie and Jack get done having sex, both suffer the "consequence". But that would be an oversimplification in this context. Let's focus on the sex scene itself. The two lovers seclude themselves from the rain in a dark cabin. Jack lights a candle, while Marcie pulls her pants down and sits on a bed, her underwear just lowered enough to show the tantalizing top of her crevice. Jack then lies down on top of her, Marcie helping to take his shirt off as they kiss. Cunningham performs a close-up of Taylor's face, moaning with pleasure, her eyes closed. Next Abrams displays a close-up shot of her hand squeezing Bacon's bare butt -- another unconventional choice for this type of feature, a shot of the male bottom. Cunningham lingers far longer on this sequence of pure, uninhibited lovemaking than any of the graphic murder ones. He's not punishing his characters for expressing their physical attraction to and romantic affection for one another; rather, he's celebrating the act of sex. He's reveling in their joy, their passion, their ecstasy. This movie is a beautiful work of art, just with a healthy supply of butchery.

Barry Abrams' cinematography is the key ingredient that cements Friday the 13th as a gorgeously crafted, poetic slice of cinema. Under Cunningham's artful, scenic eye for detail, Abrams populates his frames with visually stunning wide shots to display the greenery of a vast amount of trees that encompass the characters. He offers several stunning shots of the lake water, still, silent, and sometimes sprinkled with raindrops. Tree branches sway with the wind. There's one beautiful exterior shot of a diner at night with incessant rain pouring down. So many shots are luscious enough to intoxicate on their own merits, outside the movie containing them. Cunningham, in what is arguably his greatest display of craft, juxtaposes the picturesque beauty and serenity of nature with its inherent potential for danger and the formidable isolation of a campground. For every exquisite wide shot of the trees, water, and rainfall, Cunningham provides voyeuristic POV shots of the killer watching their unsuspecting prey from afar, imbuing his film with a sense of dread and the message that, when you put yourself in an isolated location, that euphoric feeling of freedom and bliss comes at a price of cutting yourself off from a protected, civilized society and rendering yourself nearly powerless to a vengeful, inhumane force of evil, should one manifest. Most of the stalker POV shots are accompanied by creepy music to signify the presence of the killer, but then there are others, like when Alice is walking through the woods down to the lake in broad daylight to ask Bill if he needs more paint, where the camera is positioned in a way that implies she's being watched, even though the killer hasn't arrived yet. It still puts us on edge early in the proceedings. When the coworkers are relaxing around the lake, Cunningham places the camera behind the trees, staring out at them, while a hand wearing a class ring on one of its fingers emerges into frame to push aside a branch. The level of suspense and tension accomplished in this first installment is far greater than that of any of the sequels that would follow in its success. 

Since this movie debuted four decades ago, and jumpstarted one of the most phenomenally successful franchises in horror, it should come as no spoiler to reveal that the killer is not the hockey-masked, machete-happy, hideously disfigured humanoid, Jason Voorhees, although he would go on to become the face of the franchise well before the end of the 1980s. No, in this original entry, Jason is nothing more than a deformed 11-year-old victim of a drowning, the catalyst for the murders. And a very effective one, indeed. The killer is revealed to be his mother, Pamela (Betsy Palmer), the former cook of Camp Crystal Lake who was working in the kitchen the day of her son's disappearance. Chalk it up to women's intuition, because I don't know how she could know this for sure, but Pamela insists that Jason's drowning was the fault of the two counselors killed in the opening, Barry and Claudette, accusing them of having made love while they were supposed to be watching her son, who "wasn't a very good swimmer." 

Upon her first appearance, stepping out of a Jeep and illuminated in the dark by the headlights, Betsy Palmer makes Pamela a warm, maternal source of comfort. Her voice is soft, soothing, calm. She has an effervescent smile that could light up any room, which means a lot here considering the final act takes place almost entirely in the dark, save a few natural sources of light. Claiming to be an old friend of the Christys, Pamela insists to a hysterically sobbing Alice that everything will be okay, that "It's just this place, and the storm. That's why you're upset." If Pamela were not the killer, this would actually be a laughable line of dialogue, considering Alice just got done telling her that all of her friends are dead. Observing the lifeless body of Brenda, Pamela's mood instantly shifts, not to horror or panic, but rather grief. She resents Steve for trying to open the camp after all the trouble that's taken place there, and begins to recount the tragic tale of her son's death. But she isn't just telling a sad story, she's becoming aggressive with Alice, grabbing her by her arms and shaking her. "Jason should've been watched! Every minute!" As if Alice wasn't a toddler twenty years earlier and had played a role in what happened to Jason. Suddenly, Pamela looks off into space and imagines her son drowning in the lake, flailing his arms helplessly, screaming for the help of his mother. "I am, Jason. I am." 

Palmer is sensationally good in this role. The irony of that statement is that, when she read the script, she flat-out dismissed it as "a piece of shit." The only reason she agreed to accept the role was because her Mercedes-Benz had broken down on the highway, and her daughter suggested that she purchase a Volkswagen Scirocco, which was priced at $9,900.99; Palmer was offered $1,000 a day to film for ten days. That car must have really been worth it, because Palmer poured her heart and soul into a multilayered performance, imbuing Pamela Voorhees with a heart-wrenching relatability that makes her an uncomfortably sympathetic and somewhat understandable antagonist. Although she's clearly mentally unhinged and delusional, misdirecting her fury and resentment at a group of young, innocent people who have done absolutely nothing to deserve the fates dealt to them, Palmer ensures we never forget that Pamela is coming from a deeply human place of grief and suffering. Jason was her only child, her whole world. And because of his deformities, nobody wanted anything to do with him. Pamela was the only person who cared about and loved him, and Jason was the only thing in her life that mattered. In her own words, Jason was sweet and innocent, but what she is incapable of grasping is that her victims were sweet, innocent human beings as well. In her fractured, grief-poisoned mind, they are nothing more than impediments, obstacles that prevent her from achieving her goal of keeping the camp closed.

To an extent, I understand her mission: Camp Crystal Lake is the place where her son died, it symbolizes her eternal anguish. All she wants, or all she thinks she wants, is for the camp to remain closed so that her grief can rest in peace along with Jason. To a rational thinking person's mind, that doesn't make much sense. No matter whether the camp reopens, remains permanently closed, or gets burned to the ground, Pamela's heart will never be mended. Her son will never come back to life, at least not while she's alive. Kudos to Victor Miller for weaving into a standard teen slasher framework serious psychological commentary about the irrationality of grief and how it can drive someone to believe things and commit certain acts that they would never conceive of otherwise. Vacillating between motherly concern, disarming sweetness, mournful grief, inexplicable aggressiveness, and deluded, misguided rage, Betsy Palmer delivers an unforgettable, larger-than-life portrait of a mother who will do anything to avenge the death of her beloved child, a performance so iconic and so fully committed you not only forget that she's only on-screen for approximately 15 minutes, but you're also reminded of Jack Nicholson's delightfully over-the-top performance in The Shining. I can honestly say Palmer's work is deserving of such a lofty comparison. The way she unpredictably and seamlessly shifts from a concerned, warm tone to unsheathing a hunting knife and mimicking a little boy's voice ("Kill her, Mommy! Kill her! Don't let her get away, Mommy! Don't let her live!") is nothing short of a miraculous display of deranged acting. 

Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Pamela's own resurrected son, Jason, may be more iconic due to their Halloween-friendly costumes, superhuman attributes, and certainly longer-lasting appearances throughout their franchises, but Pamela stands out from those more physically advantageous guys for a few reasons. First of all, she's a human being, and therefore vulnerable to getting knocked unconscious and ultimately killed. And rest assured, once Friday the 13th transitions into an exciting chase thriller in the final act, Pamela does get knocked down a number of times by Alice -- she's whacked in the armpit with a fireplace poker, hit over the head with a frying pan, punched in the stomach, and hit in the face with a bulletless rifle. Each time, she goes down for a brief moment, then regains consciousness and continues her pursuit. It's genuinely intimidating how relentless this madwoman is, how determined she is to kill this one last survivor in the name of avenging her Jason. It may be tempting to shout indignantly at our heroine, "Don't run away! She's on the ground, kill her already!" but I don't feel that way. Alice is an extremely good fighter, every bit as determined to survive as Pamela is to terminate her survival, but she's not a killer. Taking a human life is not an easy decision to make outside of playing a video game, and if she feels she can get away with her life without taking that of a tortured mother's, she would prefer to. That strikes me as a realistic decision. Alice isn't a badass who grew up in a survivalist compound, trained to annihilate another human being if her life is being threatened. She's a normal, innocent, once-happy-go-lucky teenager who just wanted a chance to be on her own for one summer and make a little extra money. 

Back to Pamela, though, another aspect that distinguishes her as a slasher -- apart from the obvious fact that she's a middle-aged female -- is that she has a motivation for being the way she is. While her grief over her son's death, and resentment over his counselors' potential negligence which enabled it, in no way qualifies as an excuse, it's easier to understand the context that led Pamela to take such a dark, twisted, nihilistic turn in her life, how she lost her capacity for reason, her ability to empathize with other people, and to distinguish emotion from logic. She's not an implacable, unmotivated, personality-deprived killing machine like Myers or a supernatural, sadistic child killer entity like Krueger. She's a thoroughly, achingly human woman who loved her son, and in her mind is only doing what she feels she needs to in order to set the remaining, dwindling pieces of her life straight. (Unlike Laurie Strode or Nancy Thompson, Alice actually gets to permanently defeat her opponent in a fast, dramatic, immaculately filmed and edited climax.) 

Whereas Michael is infamous for a white spray-painted William Shatner mask, Jason a hockey mask, and Leatherface a mask made of human flesh, Pamela never wears a mask of any kind to shield her identity, and is remembered primarily for a simple blue cable-knit turtleneck sweater and a pair of black khaki pants. Palmer's facial expressions are a frightening mask in and of themselves, what with her wide eyes flashing with insanity, gritted teeth, and disarming, bloodthirsty smile.

Ralph may function as a red herring, deployed to sound the alarm for the savagery that will inevitably overtake the blissfully unconcerned protagonists, and possibly raise suspicion against himself as the possible murderer, but Walt Gorney still leaves an impression. He succeeds in feeding into the atmosphere of disquiet and creepiness with his bone-chilling line delivery, a pleasing mixture of gleeful camp and desperate sincerity. The sheer sight of him riding off on his bike while the creepy score plays him off leaves a bitter chill in the air, foretelling the nightmare that lies ahead.

Without the groundbreaking low-budget triumph of John Carpenter's 1978 holiday slasher, there would most likely not be Friday the 13th. The brilliant POV camerawork that puts us in the viewpoint of the killer, the elegantly terrifying score employed to ratchet up tension and often indicate their presence, the powerful, independent final girl, and the equation of sex with death were certainly not invented by Victor Miller and Sean Cunningham. That's an indisputable fact. However, they put their own unique stamp on those classic ingredients without lazily ripping off the movies that deployed them first. Sure, there may have been sexually active teenagers getting isolated and impaled in Halloween. We already had the final girl trope ahead of that courtesy of Texas Chainsaw's Sally Hardesty. And Michael Powell may have been the first filmmaker to present a horror story from the perspective of its villain. But with Friday the 13th, we were gifted with a greater body count (and hey, who says more can't be more sometimes?), a more remote setting in which to entrap our doomed protagonists, and a flesh-and-blood human being for a serial killer, one enriched with a deliciously unpredictable personality and a tragic backstory to supply context and internal motivation to all the bloodshed. We were given a young, cute protagonist who wasn't afraid to do a little social drinking and weed-smoking, and who was permitted to have not just one, but three romantic relationships, and still managed to survive. Oh, and unlike a lot of the women who preceded and followed, Alice didn't have to settle for just evading her assailant, she got to cathartically chop their head off.

Then, as she drifts out into the lake, asleep in a canoe, basking in an oasis of serenity (accentuated by a joyful, triumphant melody that will play over the end credits), with one hand dangling peacefully in the clear, blue water, Cunningham unleashes one of the most clever jump scares in horror history, heralding the arrival of a destined icon. "The boy, is he dead too?" asks Alice after she wakes up in a hospital, physically safe but emotionally shattered. "Ma'am, we didn't find any boy," assures the baffled sergeant who helped rescue her from near death." "But he... then he's still there." They say Friday the 13th is a bad-luck day, but boy, how lucky I feel every day that that closing line proved to be as haunting as it was portentous.

8.7/10