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...