Two years after a young boy named Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake, two camp counselors were murdered. The killer was never found and the camp was closed. Several years later Steve Christy, a goofy looking mustache man without the common decency to wear a shirt, decides to re-open the camp.
Thus he hires several young camp counselors to come help him fix up the old camp in preparation for opening. But the teens discover that someone else has different plans as they are killed off one after another by an unknown assailant using a hunting knife and an axe. Guess they should have listened to Ralph, the town crazy, who warned them they'd be "doomed".
Soon only Alice (Adrienne King) remains and she is confronted by the killer who explains the reasons for her rampage. It doesn't count as a spoiler for me to say who it is because this movie is 30 years old and one of the best known horror movies in history so you should know already, it isn't Jason Voorhees. Believe it or not, Jason doesn't turn up as the primary villain until the second movie and doesn't don his famous hockey mask till the third one, although that still gave him numerous additional sequels with which to make that mask a pop culture icon. As it turns out, Jason's mom is the slasher this time around, driven mad by the loss of her son which she blames on camp counselors who failed to save her son from drowning in Camp Crystal Lake.
What ensues is a battle to the death between Mrs. Voorhees, and Alice. As much as this movie is awesome, this bit of the movie is a little drawn out. How many times does Alice need to knock her attacked down and run away before she realizes that she has to finish the job or else crazy old Mrs. Voorhees will just keep on coming? Either way the job gets done and Alice survives, allowing for her appearance in the impending sequel.
Friday the 13th was beaten to the punch in terms of launching the the slasher genre by earlier films like Black Christmas and Halloween, but its arrival undoubtedly added to, and helped to propel, the sub-genre further into popularity. It undoubtedly one-upped its predecessors on the gore factor, and held on to the suspense that was gradually lost by most of those in the droves of slasher flicks to follow it. If not the best, it is definitely one of the best of its series and puts the recent attempt at a remake to shame. Truly a classic.
5 reasons to look under your bed out of 5
Rated R for violence/gore, sexual content, nudity, frightening scenes.
Watch the Friday the 13th trailer.
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