MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Friday the 13th" (1980)

With Mother's Day just passed, let us take a moment to muse on what makes a mother a mother - her children. A mother's love for her child is unconditional, reaching depths that no one who isn't a mother can never really understand. A mother would do anything for her children, even risking life and limb and possible imprisonment to make sure that nobody crosses her babies. Seriously, there's a reason why the trope of the Mama Bear exists: if you piss one off, she will cut you.

...at least this was what the makers of this film had firmly in mind while creating this film, though you wouldn't know that in the beginning and it's actually the big twist at the end - spoiler alert. But yes, Friday the 13th was one of many films that came off the success of Halloween (1978), becoming the second of the three biggest franchises in the newly minted  "Slasher Film" subgenre of horror. Indeed, much like Halloween, this movie was responsible for setting into place many of the cliches and plot devices used by slasher films even to this day.

Indeed, Friday the 13th seems in many places like Halloween: Summer Camp Edition with many of the first person views from the killer to obscure their identity until the dramatic reveal. However, the body count is quite a bit higher than in Halloween, which will - of course - set the standard for later films that will be high death tolls and buckets of blood and gore that Slasher fans love and I personally rather loathe, but that's a topic for another day. And that's not to say there aren't some creative deaths in this film - such as a woman getting axed in the face, Kevin Bacon getting an arrow through the neck (yes, Kevin Bacon. That Kevin Bacon. He's the guy), and another one getting a death so gruesome we don't even get to see it onscreen by see the body after Kevin Bacon has sex (no, I'm not kidding, it's actually Kevin Bacon).

Which brings me to the actual characters themselves. To the film's credit they do try to give them at least a little personality, but not so much any backstory except for Alice (Adrienne King), so gets a few piecemeal remarks in the beginning but that's later thrown to the wayside when the killing starts. Then again, you aren't really supposed to care about the people being killed off - that's not what we're here for.

But the film stands up as a classic with good reason. It's an enjoyable watch and, for those who haven't seen it, it's a legitimate twist at the end with someone other than the iconic hockey mask-clad killer known as Jason Voorhees showing up to deal out some of the hurt. I won't spoil just who it is in case you haven't seen the movie, but it's not Jason and it's not his father and it's his mother.

...oops.

Yes, Betsy Palmer plays Pamela Voorhees in the first of only two appearances she's had as the character outside of archive footage. I'm here to tell you, folks, for a film that she reportedly thought was a piece of shit (exact quotation there) she really doesn't seem like she's phoning it in at all and is absolutely horrifying as the killer in question - a mother having completely slipped right into coconut and arsenic sandwich crazy over the death of her little boy. Spare me your silent, menacing lunk of a serial killer, I'll be too busy running from the sweater-clad angel of vengeance who wants to see Crystal Lake and everyone in it burned to the ground for what they did to her sweet, innocent Jason.

Of course, even with Pamela's end, the franchise has only begun. Despite a machete-wielding psychopath running around killing for Mommy, summer camp numbers never seem to suffer at Camp Crystal Lake and many, many more sequels were made that we'll no doubt get to at some point in the future. As for this film, I say it still holds up. Though the cliches and tropes that are commonplace in most slasher films are here in full force, it is important to remember that this is one of the films that originated those cliches, and that's likely why this doesn't have the rather jaded and tired feel that other films later on in the series do.

It also is an entry in the series that gets away with very little nudity and a lack of the buckets upon buckets of gore that later entries in the series are known (and loved) for.

Definitely worth a watch, be it a Friday the 13th, a Mother's Day, or any other day of the year.

Friday the 13th  is now available from Paramount Pictures, Sean S. Cunningham Films and Georgetown Productions Inc.

Current franchise rights owned by New Line Cinema.

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