Friday the 13th holds a special place in my heart. One of my best friends got married on Friday the 13th in the town in which the movie was shot. At another wedding (at a former boy scout camp on a lake), the movie was shown at an outdoor lakeside screening the night before the ceremony. These things aside, the franchise stands as an iconic example of everything good and bad about horror slasher franchises.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not generally a fan of most of the “classic” slasher movies- which isn’t to say I don’t like serial killer movies, but specifically slashers. I liked the first two Halloween movies, and would watch them back-to-back every Halloween, but I’ve never gotten into the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I get the appeal, but Freddy Krueger never scared me; the one movie in the franchise that I saw was more of a fantasy-action-comedy with some gore than a true horror movie, and while I appreciate the one-liners and Freddy’s cult status, I’ve always liked Michael Myers and the more grounded Ghostface killers from the Scream franchise.
And then there’s Friday the 13th. It’s perhaps my favorite first movie in a franchise if only because it is so different from those that follow.
I watched a couple of the Friday the 13th movies on cable when I was a kid, and maybe it’s because the violence I was used to seeing on TV had desensitized me, but I didn’t find the movies to be scary. I’m not the only one; here’s a review of someone looking back with a modern eye. As the series went on, it became more and more over the top. Jason takes Manhattan. Jason goes to Hell. Jason… in OUTER SPACE. The franchise spans books, comics, videogames, a TV series.
But that first movie…
I watched the first Scream movie when I was in third grade, and so I’ve known who the killer of Friday the 13th was ever since. The revelation plays like a twist in the movie: this random woman who seems to be kindly and caring is actually the mother of a boy named Jason who drowned at the camp years earlier; she was driven crazy by the trauma of losing her son, and hunts down camp counselors out of revenge (and to keep the camp closed). Knowing all of this going in did change the experience when I finally watched it, but that change wasn’t necessarily negative.
It’s fascinating watching old horror movies and trying to place them in history. What iconic horror movies had had a woman as the villain? Traditionally, horror slashers are male, with the final girl being the hero that overcomes and survives. While Friday the 13th does have a “final girl,” we’re also forced to confront challenges to the traditional movie with the motivation of the mother trying to deal with the loss of her son, and misplacing her rage on the new batch of camp counselors- innocent in the death of her son, but guilty of so much more in Mrs. Voorhees’ eyes. It’s a movie that’s grounded in reality… unlike the many sequels, reboot, and spin-off.
The first time I saw the movie from beginning to end was at that wedding I mentioned earlier. Imagine sitting under the stars on a night with no moon and plenty of clouds keeping everything dark. The grass beneath you is spongey and forms a shape that perfectly hugs your body. The wind is whistling in the trees, and crickets are chirping. Everyone is pleasantly buzzed, and then the unknown surprise movie starts screening.
To say I cheered with delight is an understatement.
To this day, that’s one of my favorite movie-viewing experiences. There are a handful of others, like the first Avengers movie and Avengers: Endgame, where the audience was united in nerdy jubilation as we watched characters that we’ve been fans of for decades finally grace the big screen and create some truly iconic moments. But, to me, nothing beats watching a horror movie in public.
There, the audience unites to gasp, scream, chuckle, and groan at everything frightening, scary, cheesy, and campy. It’s one of those genres where the only mistake you can make is TRYING to be bad. If you’re good, you’re good. If you’re bad, then horror is the right genre to be bad in: people love campy horror. It’s why things like Birdemic and Sharknado exist.
Anyway, it’s clear that the first Friday the 13th had a lasting impact on the world. With ten movies in the original series, a crossover movie with Freddy, and a reboot, the legacy of Jason lives on.
But really, that is his mother’s legacy as much as his, so this Friday the 13th, call your mother and thank her for not raising you to be a demon-possessed, hockey-mask-wearing camp counselor killer.
Ch-ch-ch koo-koo-koo ah-ah-ah,
Z
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