DIRECTED BY: Sean S. Cunningham
WRITTEN BY: Victor Miller
MUSIC BY: Henry Manfredini
DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures
RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes
STARING: Betsy Palmer; Adrienne King; Jeannine Taylor; Kevin Bacon; Harry Crosby; Laurie Bartram; Mark Nelson; Peter Brouwer
A group of perspective councilors try to reopen Camp Crystal Lake; which has been closed for years after a series of bizarre "accidents". When the new councilors start dropping like flies they discover that a woman named Mrs. Voorhees has been staging the "accidents" and murders. Her son, Jason, died at that camp in 1957. She talks to her self in his voice and wants to exact revenge on all of the councilors. Mrs. Voorhees kills all of the councilors except for Alice, who decapitates her. While attempting to get to safety via canoe Alice appears to be pulled under water by Jason. She wakes up in a hospital to be told that they found no body for Jason, and that he was probably just a dream.
Friday the 13th is the classic story of the little film that could. It began as a script written by Victor Miller, who was a graduate of Yale university of all places. The script was picked up by struggling film maker Sean S. Cunningham. He had made a drive in splatter film (Last House on the Left), 2 pornos and a rip off of the Bad News Bears. To raise money for the project he took out several full page adds in daily variety (a Hollywood news magazine). The project was budgeted at $500,000.
Cunningham and Co. cast the film with mostly unknowns. Betsy Palmer being the one exception. She was hardly a big star, but she was somewhat famous. Reportedly one of the major reasons that she was cast was because she had a car and could provide her own transport to the set. Tom Savini, who was famous for his work on George Romoro's Dawn of the Dead provided the extremely gory make-up effects. Associate producer Steve Miner had worked with Cunningham several times, beginning with Last House on the Left.
The film was shot in Blairstown, New Jersey from September to November 1979. When shooting they did not have any bright Hollywood style lights, this ended up working toward the film's advantage, by giving it a dark, shadowy visual style. While they were working on the film they wanted to have some kind of a final gimmick scare at then end, like Brian DePalma had done on Carrie. They chose to have Jason come out of the water an attack Alice. Writer Victor Miller said that he wrote the scene as a dream and never imagined that their would ever be a sequel made. <>Another trademark of the series that began on this one was the Music. Jazz musician Henry Manfredini was hired to write a musical score to the film. He wanted to give the film a very simple score to go with its simple nature. He was inspired by the Psycho score. Sean S. Cunningham told him that he wanted their to be a chorus of something in the movie. Manfredini did not have the money to hire a chorus to do anything, but was inspired by a Khrystoff Penderecki recording in which a chorus was speaking nothing by syllables. He decided to use lift from the scene where Mrs. Voorhees, mimicking Jason's voice, says "kill her mommy, Kill her" Taking from kill & mommy he came up with Ki, Ki, Ki, Ma, Ma, Ma. He recorded his voice and put it through some synthesizers to get the unnerving background noise that became synonymous with the films.
Once the film was made the rights were sold to Paramount for $1.5 million. They believed that they could turn this low rent horror movie into a big event. They shelled out $4 million for a publicity campaign. The film was released (Friday) June 13, 1980 to critical score; but the audiences loved it. It made $70 million at the box office and was one of the biggest hits of the year, behind The Empire Strikes Back.