Friday the 13th-Return to Camp Blood

An essay on this original movie that spawned a bloody franchise-SPOILERS BEWARE!!!!

As today is Friday the thirteenth and I share the same name to this fictional serial killer, I thought it’d be fun to revisit Camp Crystal Lake and explore the reasons this franchise has endured over the past forty-four bloody years.

It all started on 9th May 1980 when a little known horror movie was released to the public in the United States (The U.K. had to wait till Friday 13th June to see it).

First seen as a cash in to John Carpenter’s Halloween, which came out in 1978, no one then could have predicted that this film would morph into one of the most successful horror series ever made, spawning 12 films in total, so far and counting. Not to mention comics, novels, books, a television series, video games and tie-in merchandise.

The original story was by Victor Miller and Sean S. Cunningham and the movie produced/directed by Sean S. Cunningham. It was released through Paramount Pictures. The script written by Miller was done in two weeks.

It was set at a summer camp because Cunningham and Miller needed a remote location and Miller remembered the spooky stories his brothers used to share from their experience at summer camp.

The name ‘Voorhees’ was the last name of a girl that Miller went to school with.

Cunningham was so confident that the title itself would sell the movie that he took out a full page in ‘Variety’ magazine over the 4th July weekend of 1979, without even a script or any real idea what the movie was going to be about. He was right as thanks to the ad he got financial backing for the project.

The movie follows a group of councillors preparing to reopen a holiday site named Camp Crystal Lake, for the summer, after it had been closed for many years due to an unsolved double murder of two holiday counsellors. The locals say its cursed and call it ‘Camp Blood.’ They keep well away unlike these outsiders.

What could possibly go wrong?

A lot it seems as one by one they are brutally murdered until the ‘final girl’ is left to face the killer.

It follows the same template as Halloween, a group of teenagers getting killed because they’re having sex outside of marriage and drinking or smoking weed until a lone girl faces the maniac killer at the movie’s climatic ending.

Miller borrows the theme from Hitchcock’s Psycho and turns it on its head. Instead of the son pretending to be the mother and killing, its the mum of Jason that does it all in the first movie, Mrs Pamela Voorhees, played by veteran actress, Betsy Palmer. She acts out of revenge believing her son is dead and past camp counsellors were to blame.

Even the screeching and haunting sound track by Harry Manfredini was heavily influenced by Psycho as well. The famous Ki ki ki, ma ma ma in the score is voiced by the composer himself, which are the first syllables in kill Mommy- which makes this pretty cool.

But that’s where the similarity ends. Where that movie and Halloween used suspense and very little blood, Friday the 13th is an entirely different beast. Cunningham used up close and grisly death scenes of attractive, half naked and young characters with copious amounts of blood and gore. A decapitation, axe in the face and someone done with a quiver load of arrows, all were featured on the blood soaked silver screen.

This was a great combination that at the time tapped into an unmined vein of subgenre of horror that would become known as the slasher movie. Paramount loved it too as the total cost to make it was only $600,000 and made at the box office nearly $60,000,000! They didn’t need any well known and expensive stars and loads of stunts. Just a few pots of fake blood, some prop weapons and special effects make up and they were good to go.

So with such a nose bleeding induced profit margin and killer combination it was inevitable that there would be further sequels. It was just no one could ever predict how many there would be and how they would span so many decades.

Betsy Palmer after reading the script described it as ‘a piece of shit’ throwing it in the bin. However she wanted a new car so accepted the role of Jason’s mad mother, thinking the movie would come and go very quickly and no one would ever see it and would soon be forgotten.

Cunningham admits he didn’t care if the cast could act as long as they were likable and could deliver their lines.

Many of the actors came from the world of stage rather than the screen, having little or no T.V or movie experience. Casting was done by TNI Casting who were a well known and respected casting agency in the theatre community in New York. Adrienne King’s scream got her the part of Alice in the movie.

Kevin Bacon appears as one of the unlucky teens, getting an arrow pushed through his throat from behind.

Willie Adams was a production assistant on the movie. Although he was behind the camera for most of the shoot he did play the male counsellor in the 1958 scene, and holds the unique honour of being the first murder victim in the entire Friday the 13th franchise.

The funny thing is that Jason didn’t start killing teenagers until Friday the 13th Part 2. In that movie he’s dressed like a hill billy with fucking dungarees and wearing a sack over his head. Audiences had to wait until the third instalment to see the iconic ice hockey mask in all its glory.

The camp used for Camp Crystal Lake was a boy scout site called, Camp No-Be-BoSco in Blairstown, New Jersey. It’s still in use and has a wall of Friday the 13th memorabilia to celebrate its part in the movie.

Special FX on this project was done by the legendary Tom Savini. The producers loved his special FX on Dawn of the Dead so much so that they asked him to come aboard and he was one of the first to join the film crew.

As most of the crew stayed at local hotels during filming, Savini actually stayed at the camp site. He baked the latex appliances right there in the camp’s pizza ovens!

It was Savini who suggested it would be a good idea to have a resurrected Jason jump out at Alice, the lone survivor at the end, to give the audience a final jump scare and float (pun intended-he he) the idea that Jason was still alive and keep the door open for more movies.

And the rest they say is history.

Jason Duck 2024

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