In 1980, a new horror film was released. This film, while not the first of its kind, would epitomize the slasher genre for a generation. Multiple sequels would be spawned and the central character would quickly become iconic. Like its central character, this franchise simply will not die; it may appear to die from time to time, but it always comes back, usually looking all the worse for it. The story began with a drowned boy and his mother on Friday the 13th.
Bloody, gory horror movies were nothing new in 1980. George Romero released the second of his Dead films a couple years prior. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was still getting midnight showings at theaters across the country. John Carpenter's Halloween had introduced what would be the standard for silent, masked killers. Friday The 13th was different. It was definitely inspired by Halloween, but while Carpenter's masterpiece set up a creepy atmosphere with a "boogeyman" type of killer, Friday The 13th offered a stripped down interpretation of that theme. The murders start in broad daylight and are quite graphic with little left to the imagination. The killer is nonthreatening to it's victims at first. Only at the end is the killer fully revealed; you realize it at the same time as the final would-be victim. It was pretty much straight murder, nothing fancy.
The sixth installment had just come out when I first got into this series. I knew the central character was Jason Voorhees and I knew of his reputation, but unfortunately I did not get to experience this film as a stand alone story like audiences in 1980. This puts a different perspective on the story. For all intents and purposes, Jason is not in this movie. He's dead. Drowned in the lake for over twenty years. His drowning is discussed briefly early on, but that's it until the end when we get our first glimpse of Jason in a flashback. This is right around the time when Jason's mother reveals herself as the killer, seeking revenge for her boy's death. Of course, she herself is killed in the following minutes, the last remaining camp counselor gets in a canoe and drifts out into the lake to gather herself, and that's that. Until...
It's only at the end where we get to see Jason Voorhees in all his glory as he jumps out of the lake and grabs the last survivor. This scene, however, is open to interpretation. Its intent was to be one final scare with no purpose beyond that. Is that really Jason or just a dream? Did he survive his drowning or was he somehow resurrected? Some of the sequels suggested answers to these questions, but here, at the end of this film, none of them are important. It's a mystery to take home with you.
The producers of Friday The 13th intended this to be an anthology series, connected only in name. The next film would be something completely different if they stuck with that. Jason drowned in 1957. His mother. in avenging his death, was herself killed. The surviving counselor got out more or less unscathed. The end. By including that last scare, however, they succeeded in creating a legend.
Summer camps are a breeding ground for urban legends. Stories are told around campfires of the strange, the unusual, the supernatural. By introducing Jason at the end, this movie brought him into the pantheon of urban legends, at least as far as cinema is concerned. I would hope that no one actually believes Jason is a real person, and I don't think Jason stories are told around campfires, but through suspension of disbelief he becomes as close to being real as anyone told of in those campfire stories. What Jason would eventually become will scare kids at camp more than most run of the mill urban legends if they were to encounter someone dressed as the part out in the woods.
Had this concluded Jason's story, I'm not sure if we would still be talking about him today. Certainly he would not be of the iconic status he is now, but would people even remember his name? One-offs generally don't make it. Even Leatherface, as great of a character as he was in the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre film, would not be as well known if they didn't start making sequels ten years later. Sequels, I might add, that greatly watered down the character. So no, if the first film was the first and last we heard of Jason, I wouldn't be typing this right now. He might be remembered semi-fondly like the girl who was a boy from Sleepaway Camp, but he'd just be a special needs boy who drowned and set his mom on the path to crazy town. I'm not going into any of the sequels here. Those will come in due time, and believe me, do I have a thing or two to say about some of those.
As I mentioned before, I was a latecomer to this franchise. After all, I was only nine years old when the first film was released. If not for Alice Cooper, I might not have got into these films at all, but I digress. So knowing that Jason was going to be the focal point of the later films, and being a teenage boy, this film was never my favorite. It introduced Jason but it wasn't a Jason movie. I wish I could have watched it unspoiled like 1980 audiences did because I likely would have thoroughly enjoyed it. The building mystery of who is killing everyone. The misdirection of suggesting it could be Crazy Ralph or even the camp director. The way the pieces quickly fall into place quickly once you see Mrs. Voorhees' Jeep pull up. The action and suspense of the final fight. It's all really well done, regardless of the low budget and the low-brow reputation of such films. Unfortunately, it became the movie I had to go through to get to the Jason movies and I never paid it much attention. It was the least viewed of all my Friday The 13th VHS tapes.
If you haven't watched this film in a long time, give it another look. Try to forget everything you ever knew about Jason Voorhees and enjoy this with as much of a clean slate as you can. I would really love to make my own commentary track for this film, and perhaps I will one day, there is just so much more I can say about this movie. As a fan of the genre, I recognize this is not the first film of this sort, or even the best example of the genre, but without it, the slasher genre might not have even been realized beyond a few films from the 1970s. Friday The 13th set the standard that even the films that inspired it were forced to adhere to in order for the respective franchises to thrive.