Amazon.co.uk Review
No matter how many sequels they've made or how big a hit it was in 1980, it's difficult to view the first Friday the 13th as anything but a quickie designed to cram in as many elements from horror movies that had been hits in the late 1970s--most obviously, Halloween and Carrie--while adding as little as possible to the formula. Director Sean S Cunningham has an archetypal plot at his disposal as a group of attractive, shallow teenagers out in the woods to reopen a once-cursed summer camp are murdered in manners designed to show off Tom Savini's gore effects. Kevin Bacon, killed early (arrow through the throat), is the only player who went on to have a career, and he hardly stands out from the strip-Monopoly-playing, goon-acting meat-on-the-hoof teens who fall prey to the mostly unseen murderer. That it's not a total write-off is down to a few neatly edited bits of classical suspense and, two decades on, a simmering nostalgia for a world of bouffant-haired bubbleheads in short shorts (and that's just the guys) observed by edgy subjective camera as the music hisses "kill kill kill".
On the DVD: Friday the 13th may be the least worthy of all horror "classics", but it's still nice to have an edition that (unlike earlier video releases) offers a 16x9-enhanced 1.85:1 restored image and a healthy dose of extras. The hard-sell trailer gives away most of the big scares, and so should be sampled after the film. The making of the movie is covered by a 20-minute "Return to Crystal Lake" featurette and a commentary track with input from many of the creatives (Cunningham, composer Harry Manfredini, stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer, writer Victor Miller). Some anecdotes get repeated, but there's a lot of solid background material. --Kim Newman
Customer Reviews:
Classic beginning to a classic horror series.......2008-02-24
Friday THE 13TH (1980)
directed by: Sean S. Cunningham
starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, and Kevin Bacon
plot: Seven camp councilors head to Camp Crystal Lake to fix it up for the summer. Despite warnings of a dark past and a 'death curse', the teens decide to have a good time anyway, and at night indulge in sex, drugs, and strip poker. Unfortunately for them, a psycho killer is prowling the camp grounds, picking them off one by one. When only one is left, she must discover the identity of the killer and fight for her life.
my thoughts: Ever since I can remember, I've loved this film. When I was a child, it scared the crap out of me. That chilling noise playing in the stalk sequences (which has now become the most famous sound in horror films) haunted my nightmares, and some of the gore scenes were really graphic.
Viewing it now, it is no longer that scary but it is still a lot of fun. I liked how these earlier Friday films ignored the stereotypical teenage characters. There's no slut, no jock, no token anything. Every character felt really natural and for some of them, I cared when they died.
The gore scenes are great, thanks to Tom Savini. We get stabbings, decapitations, and plenty more. Gore hounds will love this. Well since every gore hound has seen this, gore hounds mostly already love this.
And then there's the two key things in making a good horror film. The directing and the music. Sean S. Cunningham is a really good director and establishes the camp setting perfectly. He adds beautiful shots of the wind blowing against the trees, the lake at sunrise, that you wouldn't find in later entries.
The music is also great. Harry Manfredini is one of my favorite composers, because he makes the chase scenes so much more exciting. The music in the final scene also works like a charm.
I forgot to mention that this film has one of the most popular and remembered horror endings of all time. And while it may have stolen from CARRIE, it works just as well here and is the cherry on top of a classic slasher film.
Who knew a little old lady could be so terrifiying!.......2008-01-31
Ah, you gotta love them classics!
Friday The 13th, is indeed "A Classic". It's your typical teen slasher horror, but one of the better ones. Actually it's probably better than any the new "2007" oh so generic ones - seriously. The movie is genuinely creepy and unsetteling at times. It holds a great deal of suspense and those 'Don't go in there, moments'. For a 80's slasher, the acting is spot on. You have the stereotypical cast. The good girl (survivor obviously), the slut, the cool guy, the goofy guy, the nerdy but slightly naughty girl, and of course the Mr nice guy. The movie has a very creepy vibe, mostly because you can't actually see the killer. Just the unlucky victims starring at him (or her), so you start imagining what they're seeing - which is much scarier than the killer always in your face. The movie holds your attention throughout with no dull moments. It's always on 100%, meaning there is always a head or leg being dismembered - isn't that what we want??
All in all "Friday The 13th" is slasher/horror at it's best, and that's why it's such a classic. Even though there are some poor special effects (come on it was the 80's) it still outshines the great CGI, fake new Hollywood suckfests.
I'm not gonna give away who the killer is. But, If you've seen the movie, You'll know which part of my review gives it away!
What are you waiting for?? Purchase this great horror already.
One of the first and one of the best.......2008-01-08
Friday The 13th is one of the most famous slasher movies out there. It may not have been the FIRST slasher movie - Black Christmas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween all came out before it - but (as far as I know!) it was the first slasher movie that used lots of gore and creative death scenes.
In the 1950's a 13 year old boy called Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake, because the Camp Councellers were too busy to watch him like they should have been. In the Present Day (AKA 1980) and ten teenagers are working at Camp Crystal Lake (known as Camp Blood to the locals) spending two weeks revovating it so that it can be reopened to a new group of kids for the first time in years. Unfortunatly for the unlucky teens it's friday the 13th and somebody is out to get them, killing them off one by one - will any of them survive the bloody massacre...?
One of my favourite slasher movies (and I have seen a lot). It's suspenceful and gory and actually has well developed and likeable charcters! It comes as a surprise when you find out who the killer is and the killer is quite creepy, too.
THE GREATEST SLASHER FILM OF ALL TIME.......2007-11-04
In 1957, a group of counselors at Camp Crystal Lake let 13-year old Jason Voorhees drown in the lake. The next year, there are a couple of murders at the camp. Every time that the camp tries to open, there are unexplained accidents to keep them away. The camp remains closed until 1980, when it's reopened again by Steve Christy, (Peter Brouwer) and counselors Alice, (Adrienne King) Bill, (Harry Crosby) Marcie, (Jeannie Taylor) Jack, (Kevin Bacon) Brenda, (Laurie Bartham) and Annie (Robbi Morgan). While fixing up the camp, Steve goes into town for some supplies, and the other counselors begin forgetting their chores and start concentrating on goofing around with each. As night falls, the counselors bunk up in the main hall. A raging thunderstorm strikes, forcing everyone off into positions to be murdered. When it's decided to go off looking for everybody, the slaughtered remains strewn around the camp and the killer are found.
The Good News: The Good News: This movie triumphs over most other slashers. This movie is all about the body count, which is the reason for this movie. It is an impressive one at that, with a wide variety of kills. We have multiple arrows shot into the body, including one in the eye, another person has an arrow shoved through the neck, one gets an ax in the head and one is impaled in the stomach with a knife. There are more, but those are important to the plot. What makes it so great is mostly the time period when it was made. At the time, this was the only other slasher film ever made, outside of "Halloween," and this film takes it to another level. "Halloween" may have seen the scarier of the two, but this one far exceeds it in terms of gore. It is quite a shock when the killer is revealed. In the few, brief glimpses that we have of the killer before the realization, it doesn't add up to the perpetrator. Another great innovation is that there is a lot more suspense than one would think for this movie. Since all the killings are done before the realization, all brief shots of the killer show only a small amount of clothing that is nearly indistinguishable from everything else they are wearing. The creepiest scene is in the outhouse, where one person is looking for another, and she begins looking inside the stalls. She can't find anyone, and on the wall behind her there is a shadow of someone holding an ax and then wielding it up. She turns around and is struck in the face with the ax. We see it coming, but it works because we are waiting for the ax to come down. The fact that this plays into the Italian style of slasher films is a great accomplishment. Brief repeated flashes of a certain piece of clothing, hyper-stylized kills and chase shots done from the point-of-view of the killer are just some examples of this style, and for an American film to emulate this is a major feat. What is also so great is that the film sets up so many other "body count" films by introducing the idea of attacking them individually and away from anyone else. Every other slasher film to follow uses this idea to varying degrees of success. The historical significance of this one should not be missed.
The Bad News: There are a couple of non-kill scenes where you can tell how they made it, but other than that, this movie has no faults.
The Final Verdict: This is the greatest slasher film of all time and deserves every ounce of respect that it has. Everything about it screams classic and should not be bashed for any reason. It has something for everyone and all horror fans will want to see this at some point in their lives.
One of my all time top ten horror movies.......2007-07-19
In my opinion this is easily one of the best horror films ever and I have seen a hell of a lot. I think it is totally unfair to class this as a rip off of John Carpenter's original Halloween, just because one film is similar in some way to another doesn't mean it is a rip off, in fact personally the more I think about it the more I think that this is nothing like Halloween (but almost as outstanding) apart from it being classed as a slasher flick, it is like saying one western film is a rip off of another or one action film is a rip off of another etc., a very lazy kind of criticism in my opinion. The fact is that I think that this is one of the best and scariest horror films ever and surely that is the biggest compliment that I can make for a horror film from someone who loves the horror genre.
As a horror film this gets so many things right, for a start the timing of each murder, if this had been a case of one murder after the next right from the beginning, it would have been truly awful, so thankfully it is a case of slowly one by one and all the better for it. Then there is the location, the brilliantly named Camp Crystal Lake, it is a beautiful and green location surrounded by plenty of woods but as soon as that camera angle from the viewpoint of the killer and that now legendary and totally unique sound effect comes onto the screen for the first time, then my opinion completely changes, it suddenly makes the place look so creepy and isolated and I love the way that (apart from the opening scene) this starts off in daylight and so by the time it gets dark, it just feels even more creepy and isolated. Another thing I really like about this is the way that everybody on the camp is completely unaware that there is a killer hanging around and so there is no contstantly running around screaming because most of the time they are all too busy doing their own separate thing, it's brilliantly done.
If you have never seen this before, without going into too much detail so I won't spoil it for you, it all starts properly in the present day with a girl asking for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, she ends up getting a lift so far by one of the locals and then as to walk the rest of the way but ends up hitching a lift, only this time we don't see the driver but just the drivers point of view and I am not going to say another word about what happens next, just that even though there are plenty of them, for some reason I always find this particular scene really creepy. I have always been a big fan of gore effects master Tom Savini and the fact that he worked on this is definitely a bonus.
That is about all I need to say about this classic horror film, the story in this is not in any way complex but it doesn't need to be, it is a low budget but timeless and just as creepy on repeated viewing horror movie that I am sure will continue to scare and impress future generations. A LOW BUDGET HORROR CLASSIC.
Amazon.co.uk Review
No matter how many sequels they've made or how big a hit it was in 1980, it's difficult to view the first Friday the 13th as anything but a quickie designed to cram in as many elements from horror movies that had been hits in the late 1970s--most obviously, Halloween and Carrie--while adding as little as possible to the formula. Director Sean S Cunningham has an archetypal plot at his disposal as a group of attractive, shallow teenagers out in the woods to reopen a once-cursed summer camp are murdered in manners designed to show off Tom Savini's gore effects. Kevin Bacon, killed early (arrow through the throat), is the only player who went on to have a career, and he hardly stands out from the strip-Monopoly-playing, goon-acting meat-on-the-hoof teens who fall prey to the mostly unseen murderer. That it's not a total write-off is down to a few neatly edited bits of classical suspense and, two decades on, a simmering nostalgia for a world of bouffant-haired bubbleheads in short shorts (and that's just the guys) observed by edgy subjective camera as the music hisses "kill kill kill".
On the DVD: Friday the 13th may be the least worthy of all horror "classics", but it's still nice to have an edition that (unlike earlier video releases) offers a 16x9-enhanced 1.85:1 restored image and a healthy dose of extras. The hard-sell trailer gives away most of the big scares, and so should be sampled after the film. The making of the movie is covered by a 20-minute "Return to Crystal Lake" featurette and a commentary track with input from many of the creatives (Cunningham, composer Harry Manfredini, stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer, writer Victor Miller). Some anecdotes get repeated, but there's a lot of solid background material. --Kim Newman
Customer Reviews:
Classic beginning to a classic horror series.......2008-02-24
Friday THE 13TH (1980)
directed by: Sean S. Cunningham
starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, and Kevin Bacon
plot: Seven camp councilors head to Camp Crystal Lake to fix it up for the summer. Despite warnings of a dark past and a 'death curse', the teens decide to have a good time anyway, and at night indulge in sex, drugs, and strip poker. Unfortunately for them, a psycho killer is prowling the camp grounds, picking them off one by one. When only one is left, she must discover the identity of the killer and fight for her life.
my thoughts: Ever since I can remember, I've loved this film. When I was a child, it scared the crap out of me. That chilling noise playing in the stalk sequences (which has now become the most famous sound in horror films) haunted my nightmares, and some of the gore scenes were really graphic.
Viewing it now, it is no longer that scary but it is still a lot of fun. I liked how these earlier Friday films ignored the stereotypical teenage characters. There's no slut, no jock, no token anything. Every character felt really natural and for some of them, I cared when they died.
The gore scenes are great, thanks to Tom Savini. We get stabbings, decapitations, and plenty more. Gore hounds will love this. Well since every gore hound has seen this, gore hounds mostly already love this.
And then there's the two key things in making a good horror film. The directing and the music. Sean S. Cunningham is a really good director and establishes the camp setting perfectly. He adds beautiful shots of the wind blowing against the trees, the lake at sunrise, that you wouldn't find in later entries.
The music is also great. Harry Manfredini is one of my favorite composers, because he makes the chase scenes so much more exciting. The music in the final scene also works like a charm.
I forgot to mention that this film has one of the most popular and remembered horror endings of all time. And while it may have stolen from CARRIE, it works just as well here and is the cherry on top of a classic slasher film.
Who knew a little old lady could be so terrifiying!.......2008-01-31
Ah, you gotta love them classics!
Friday The 13th, is indeed "A Classic". It's your typical teen slasher horror, but one of the better ones. Actually it's probably better than any the new "2007" oh so generic ones - seriously. The movie is genuinely creepy and unsetteling at times. It holds a great deal of suspense and those 'Don't go in there, moments'. For a 80's slasher, the acting is spot on. You have the stereotypical cast. The good girl (survivor obviously), the slut, the cool guy, the goofy guy, the nerdy but slightly naughty girl, and of course the Mr nice guy. The movie has a very creepy vibe, mostly because you can't actually see the killer. Just the unlucky victims starring at him (or her), so you start imagining what they're seeing - which is much scarier than the killer always in your face. The movie holds your attention throughout with no dull moments. It's always on 100%, meaning there is always a head or leg being dismembered - isn't that what we want??
All in all "Friday The 13th" is slasher/horror at it's best, and that's why it's such a classic. Even though there are some poor special effects (come on it was the 80's) it still outshines the great CGI, fake new Hollywood suckfests.
I'm not gonna give away who the killer is. But, If you've seen the movie, You'll know which part of my review gives it away!
What are you waiting for?? Purchase this great horror already.
One of the first and one of the best.......2008-01-08
Friday The 13th is one of the most famous slasher movies out there. It may not have been the FIRST slasher movie - Black Christmas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween all came out before it - but (as far as I know!) it was the first slasher movie that used lots of gore and creative death scenes.
In the 1950's a 13 year old boy called Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake, because the Camp Councellers were too busy to watch him like they should have been. In the Present Day (AKA 1980) and ten teenagers are working at Camp Crystal Lake (known as Camp Blood to the locals) spending two weeks revovating it so that it can be reopened to a new group of kids for the first time in years. Unfortunatly for the unlucky teens it's friday the 13th and somebody is out to get them, killing them off one by one - will any of them survive the bloody massacre...?
One of my favourite slasher movies (and I have seen a lot). It's suspenceful and gory and actually has well developed and likeable charcters! It comes as a surprise when you find out who the killer is and the killer is quite creepy, too.
THE GREATEST SLASHER FILM OF ALL TIME.......2007-11-04
In 1957, a group of counselors at Camp Crystal Lake let 13-year old Jason Voorhees drown in the lake. The next year, there are a couple of murders at the camp. Every time that the camp tries to open, there are unexplained accidents to keep them away. The camp remains closed until 1980, when it's reopened again by Steve Christy, (Peter Brouwer) and counselors Alice, (Adrienne King) Bill, (Harry Crosby) Marcie, (Jeannie Taylor) Jack, (Kevin Bacon) Brenda, (Laurie Bartham) and Annie (Robbi Morgan). While fixing up the camp, Steve goes into town for some supplies, and the other counselors begin forgetting their chores and start concentrating on goofing around with each. As night falls, the counselors bunk up in the main hall. A raging thunderstorm strikes, forcing everyone off into positions to be murdered. When it's decided to go off looking for everybody, the slaughtered remains strewn around the camp and the killer are found.
The Good News: The Good News: This movie triumphs over most other slashers. This movie is all about the body count, which is the reason for this movie. It is an impressive one at that, with a wide variety of kills. We have multiple arrows shot into the body, including one in the eye, another person has an arrow shoved through the neck, one gets an ax in the head and one is impaled in the stomach with a knife. There are more, but those are important to the plot. What makes it so great is mostly the time period when it was made. At the time, this was the only other slasher film ever made, outside of "Halloween," and this film takes it to another level. "Halloween" may have seen the scarier of the two, but this one far exceeds it in terms of gore. It is quite a shock when the killer is revealed. In the few, brief glimpses that we have of the killer before the realization, it doesn't add up to the perpetrator. Another great innovation is that there is a lot more suspense than one would think for this movie. Since all the killings are done before the realization, all brief shots of the killer show only a small amount of clothing that is nearly indistinguishable from everything else they are wearing. The creepiest scene is in the outhouse, where one person is looking for another, and she begins looking inside the stalls. She can't find anyone, and on the wall behind her there is a shadow of someone holding an ax and then wielding it up. She turns around and is struck in the face with the ax. We see it coming, but it works because we are waiting for the ax to come down. The fact that this plays into the Italian style of slasher films is a great accomplishment. Brief repeated flashes of a certain piece of clothing, hyper-stylized kills and chase shots done from the point-of-view of the killer are just some examples of this style, and for an American film to emulate this is a major feat. What is also so great is that the film sets up so many other "body count" films by introducing the idea of attacking them individually and away from anyone else. Every other slasher film to follow uses this idea to varying degrees of success. The historical significance of this one should not be missed.
The Bad News: There are a couple of non-kill scenes where you can tell how they made it, but other than that, this movie has no faults.
The Final Verdict: This is the greatest slasher film of all time and deserves every ounce of respect that it has. Everything about it screams classic and should not be bashed for any reason. It has something for everyone and all horror fans will want to see this at some point in their lives.
One of my all time top ten horror movies.......2007-07-19
In my opinion this is easily one of the best horror films ever and I have seen a hell of a lot. I think it is totally unfair to class this as a rip off of John Carpenter's original Halloween, just because one film is similar in some way to another doesn't mean it is a rip off, in fact personally the more I think about it the more I think that this is nothing like Halloween (but almost as outstanding) apart from it being classed as a slasher flick, it is like saying one western film is a rip off of another or one action film is a rip off of another etc., a very lazy kind of criticism in my opinion. The fact is that I think that this is one of the best and scariest horror films ever and surely that is the biggest compliment that I can make for a horror film from someone who loves the horror genre.
As a horror film this gets so many things right, for a start the timing of each murder, if this had been a case of one murder after the next right from the beginning, it would have been truly awful, so thankfully it is a case of slowly one by one and all the better for it. Then there is the location, the brilliantly named Camp Crystal Lake, it is a beautiful and green location surrounded by plenty of woods but as soon as that camera angle from the viewpoint of the killer and that now legendary and totally unique sound effect comes onto the screen for the first time, then my opinion completely changes, it suddenly makes the place look so creepy and isolated and I love the way that (apart from the opening scene) this starts off in daylight and so by the time it gets dark, it just feels even more creepy and isolated. Another thing I really like about this is the way that everybody on the camp is completely unaware that there is a killer hanging around and so there is no contstantly running around screaming because most of the time they are all too busy doing their own separate thing, it's brilliantly done.
If you have never seen this before, without going into too much detail so I won't spoil it for you, it all starts properly in the present day with a girl asking for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, she ends up getting a lift so far by one of the locals and then as to walk the rest of the way but ends up hitching a lift, only this time we don't see the driver but just the drivers point of view and I am not going to say another word about what happens next, just that even though there are plenty of them, for some reason I always find this particular scene really creepy. I have always been a big fan of gore effects master Tom Savini and the fact that he worked on this is definitely a bonus.
That is about all I need to say about this classic horror film, the story in this is not in any way complex but it doesn't need to be, it is a low budget but timeless and just as creepy on repeated viewing horror movie that I am sure will continue to scare and impress future generations. A LOW BUDGET HORROR CLASSIC.
Amazon.co.uk Review
No matter how many sequels they've made or how big a hit it was in 1980, it's difficult to view the first Friday the 13th as anything but a quickie designed to cram in as many elements from horror movies that had been hits in the late 1970s--most obviously, Halloween and Carrie--while adding as little as possible to the formula. Director Sean S Cunningham has an archetypal plot at his disposal as a group of attractive, shallow teenagers out in the woods to reopen a once-cursed summer camp are murdered in manners designed to show off Tom Savini's gore effects. Kevin Bacon, killed early (arrow through the throat), is the only player who went on to have a career, and he hardly stands out from the strip-Monopoly-playing, goon-acting meat-on-the-hoof teens who fall prey to the mostly unseen murderer. That it's not a total write-off is down to a few neatly edited bits of classical suspense and, two decades on, a simmering nostalgia for a world of bouffant-haired bubbleheads in short shorts (and that's just the guys) observed by edgy subjective camera as the music hisses "kill kill kill".
On the DVD: Friday the 13th may be the least worthy of all horror "classics", but it's still nice to have an edition that (unlike earlier video releases) offers a 16x9-enhanced 1.85:1 restored image and a healthy dose of extras. The hard-sell trailer gives away most of the big scares, and so should be sampled after the film. The making of the movie is covered by a 20-minute "Return to Crystal Lake" featurette and a commentary track with input from many of the creatives (Cunningham, composer Harry Manfredini, stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer, writer Victor Miller). Some anecdotes get repeated, but there's a lot of solid background material. --Kim Newman
Customer Reviews:
Classic beginning to a classic horror series.......2008-02-24
Friday THE 13TH (1980)
directed by: Sean S. Cunningham
starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, and Kevin Bacon
plot: Seven camp councilors head to Camp Crystal Lake to fix it up for the summer. Despite warnings of a dark past and a 'death curse', the teens decide to have a good time anyway, and at night indulge in sex, drugs, and strip poker. Unfortunately for them, a psycho killer is prowling the camp grounds, picking them off one by one. When only one is left, she must discover the identity of the killer and fight for her life.
my thoughts: Ever since I can remember, I've loved this film. When I was a child, it scared the crap out of me. That chilling noise playing in the stalk sequences (which has now become the most famous sound in horror films) haunted my nightmares, and some of the gore scenes were really graphic.
Viewing it now, it is no longer that scary but it is still a lot of fun. I liked how these earlier Friday films ignored the stereotypical teenage characters. There's no slut, no jock, no token anything. Every character felt really natural and for some of them, I cared when they died.
The gore scenes are great, thanks to Tom Savini. We get stabbings, decapitations, and plenty more. Gore hounds will love this. Well since every gore hound has seen this, gore hounds mostly already love this.
And then there's the two key things in making a good horror film. The directing and the music. Sean S. Cunningham is a really good director and establishes the camp setting perfectly. He adds beautiful shots of the wind blowing against the trees, the lake at sunrise, that you wouldn't find in later entries.
The music is also great. Harry Manfredini is one of my favorite composers, because he makes the chase scenes so much more exciting. The music in the final scene also works like a charm.
I forgot to mention that this film has one of the most popular and remembered horror endings of all time. And while it may have stolen from CARRIE, it works just as well here and is the cherry on top of a classic slasher film.
Who knew a little old lady could be so terrifiying!.......2008-01-31
Ah, you gotta love them classics!
Friday The 13th, is indeed "A Classic". It's your typical teen slasher horror, but one of the better ones. Actually it's probably better than any the new "2007" oh so generic ones - seriously. The movie is genuinely creepy and unsetteling at times. It holds a great deal of suspense and those 'Don't go in there, moments'. For a 80's slasher, the acting is spot on. You have the stereotypical cast. The good girl (survivor obviously), the slut, the cool guy, the goofy guy, the nerdy but slightly naughty girl, and of course the Mr nice guy. The movie has a very creepy vibe, mostly because you can't actually see the killer. Just the unlucky victims starring at him (or her), so you start imagining what they're seeing - which is much scarier than the killer always in your face. The movie holds your attention throughout with no dull moments. It's always on 100%, meaning there is always a head or leg being dismembered - isn't that what we want??
All in all "Friday The 13th" is slasher/horror at it's best, and that's why it's such a classic. Even though there are some poor special effects (come on it was the 80's) it still outshines the great CGI, fake new Hollywood suckfests.
I'm not gonna give away who the killer is. But, If you've seen the movie, You'll know which part of my review gives it away!
What are you waiting for?? Purchase this great horror already.
One of the first and one of the best.......2008-01-08
Friday The 13th is one of the most famous slasher movies out there. It may not have been the FIRST slasher movie - Black Christmas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween all came out before it - but (as far as I know!) it was the first slasher movie that used lots of gore and creative death scenes.
In the 1950's a 13 year old boy called Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake, because the Camp Councellers were too busy to watch him like they should have been. In the Present Day (AKA 1980) and ten teenagers are working at Camp Crystal Lake (known as Camp Blood to the locals) spending two weeks revovating it so that it can be reopened to a new group of kids for the first time in years. Unfortunatly for the unlucky teens it's friday the 13th and somebody is out to get them, killing them off one by one - will any of them survive the bloody massacre...?
One of my favourite slasher movies (and I have seen a lot). It's suspenceful and gory and actually has well developed and likeable charcters! It comes as a surprise when you find out who the killer is and the killer is quite creepy, too.
THE GREATEST SLASHER FILM OF ALL TIME.......2007-11-04
In 1957, a group of counselors at Camp Crystal Lake let 13-year old Jason Voorhees drown in the lake. The next year, there are a couple of murders at the camp. Every time that the camp tries to open, there are unexplained accidents to keep them away. The camp remains closed until 1980, when it's reopened again by Steve Christy, (Peter Brouwer) and counselors Alice, (Adrienne King) Bill, (Harry Crosby) Marcie, (Jeannie Taylor) Jack, (Kevin Bacon) Brenda, (Laurie Bartham) and Annie (Robbi Morgan). While fixing up the camp, Steve goes into town for some supplies, and the other counselors begin forgetting their chores and start concentrating on goofing around with each. As night falls, the counselors bunk up in the main hall. A raging thunderstorm strikes, forcing everyone off into positions to be murdered. When it's decided to go off looking for everybody, the slaughtered remains strewn around the camp and the killer are found.
The Good News: The Good News: This movie triumphs over most other slashers. This movie is all about the body count, which is the reason for this movie. It is an impressive one at that, with a wide variety of kills. We have multiple arrows shot into the body, including one in the eye, another person has an arrow shoved through the neck, one gets an ax in the head and one is impaled in the stomach with a knife. There are more, but those are important to the plot. What makes it so great is mostly the time period when it was made. At the time, this was the only other slasher film ever made, outside of "Halloween," and this film takes it to another level. "Halloween" may have seen the scarier of the two, but this one far exceeds it in terms of gore. It is quite a shock when the killer is revealed. In the few, brief glimpses that we have of the killer before the realization, it doesn't add up to the perpetrator. Another great innovation is that there is a lot more suspense than one would think for this movie. Since all the killings are done before the realization, all brief shots of the killer show only a small amount of clothing that is nearly indistinguishable from everything else they are wearing. The creepiest scene is in the outhouse, where one person is looking for another, and she begins looking inside the stalls. She can't find anyone, and on the wall behind her there is a shadow of someone holding an ax and then wielding it up. She turns around and is struck in the face with the ax. We see it coming, but it works because we are waiting for the ax to come down. The fact that this plays into the Italian style of slasher films is a great accomplishment. Brief repeated flashes of a certain piece of clothing, hyper-stylized kills and chase shots done from the point-of-view of the killer are just some examples of this style, and for an American film to emulate this is a major feat. What is also so great is that the film sets up so many other "body count" films by introducing the idea of attacking them individually and away from anyone else. Every other slasher film to follow uses this idea to varying degrees of success. The historical significance of this one should not be missed.
The Bad News: There are a couple of non-kill scenes where you can tell how they made it, but other than that, this movie has no faults.
The Final Verdict: This is the greatest slasher film of all time and deserves every ounce of respect that it has. Everything about it screams classic and should not be bashed for any reason. It has something for everyone and all horror fans will want to see this at some point in their lives.
One of my all time top ten horror movies.......2007-07-19
In my opinion this is easily one of the best horror films ever and I have seen a hell of a lot. I think it is totally unfair to class this as a rip off of John Carpenter's original Halloween, just because one film is similar in some way to another doesn't mean it is a rip off, in fact personally the more I think about it the more I think that this is nothing like Halloween (but almost as outstanding) apart from it being classed as a slasher flick, it is like saying one western film is a rip off of another or one action film is a rip off of another etc., a very lazy kind of criticism in my opinion. The fact is that I think that this is one of the best and scariest horror films ever and surely that is the biggest compliment that I can make for a horror film from someone who loves the horror genre.
As a horror film this gets so many things right, for a start the timing of each murder, if this had been a case of one murder after the next right from the beginning, it would have been truly awful, so thankfully it is a case of slowly one by one and all the better for it. Then there is the location, the brilliantly named Camp Crystal Lake, it is a beautiful and green location surrounded by plenty of woods but as soon as that camera angle from the viewpoint of the killer and that now legendary and totally unique sound effect comes onto the screen for the first time, then my opinion completely changes, it suddenly makes the place look so creepy and isolated and I love the way that (apart from the opening scene) this starts off in daylight and so by the time it gets dark, it just feels even more creepy and isolated. Another thing I really like about this is the way that everybody on the camp is completely unaware that there is a killer hanging around and so there is no contstantly running around screaming because most of the time they are all too busy doing their own separate thing, it's brilliantly done.
If you have never seen this before, without going into too much detail so I won't spoil it for you, it all starts properly in the present day with a girl asking for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, she ends up getting a lift so far by one of the locals and then as to walk the rest of the way but ends up hitching a lift, only this time we don't see the driver but just the drivers point of view and I am not going to say another word about what happens next, just that even though there are plenty of them, for some reason I always find this particular scene really creepy. I have always been a big fan of gore effects master Tom Savini and the fact that he worked on this is definitely a bonus.
That is about all I need to say about this classic horror film, the story in this is not in any way complex but it doesn't need to be, it is a low budget but timeless and just as creepy on repeated viewing horror movie that I am sure will continue to scare and impress future generations. A LOW BUDGET HORROR CLASSIC.
UK DVD:
- Ghost Ship [2003]
- Graham Chapman's Personal Best (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- Gremlins / Gremlins 2 - The New Batch [1984]
- Guillermo Del Toro Collection (Pan's Labyrinth, Cronos, The Devil's Backbone) [2006]
- Halloween [1978]
- Hammer House Of Horror - Complete Collection [1980]
- Hatchet [2007]
- Hostel 1 & 2 Box Set[2005] [2006]
- House Of Wax [2005]
- House On Haunted Hill [2000]
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