Q: Why does Camp Crystal Lake have such a bad reputation?

Friday the 13th (1980)

X | 1h 35min | Horror, Mystery | 9 May 1980 (USA)

A group of camp counselors is stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer camp which, years before, was the site of a child's drowning.

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Writers: Victor Miller, Sean S. Cunningham (story) | 1 more credit »

Stars: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080761/

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American slasher horror film directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller. The film tells the story of a group of teenagers who are murdered one by one while attempting to re-open an abandoned campground, and stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Kevin Bacon, Jeannine Taylor, Mark Nelson and Robbi Morgan. It is considered one of the first "true" slasher movies.

Prompted by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween,[1] the film was made on an estimated budget of $550,000 and released by Paramount Pictures in the United States and by Warner Bros. in Europe. When originally released, the film received negative reviews from film critics. It grossed over $39.7 million at the box office in the United States.[2] In the years that followed, the film has received much more positive retrospective reviews, and it has become a cult classic. It was also the first movie of its kind to secure distribution in the USA by a major studio, Paramount Pictures.[3] The film's box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and a 2009 series reboot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th_(1980_film)

Synopsis by Robert Firsching

One of the longest-running horror film series began with this gory shocker from director Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously produced Wes Craven's classic Last House on the Left. Entrepreneur Steve Christie (Peter Brouwer) re-opens Camp Crystal Lake after many years during which it has been cursed by murders and bad luck. The young and nubile counselors all begin to die extremely bloody deaths at the hands of an unseen killer during a rainstorm which isolates the camp. A woman is chopped in the face with an axe, another has her throat sliced in amazingly gruesome fashion, a male counselor (Harry Crosby) is pinned to a door with arrows, and a young Kevin Bacon has an arrow shoved through his throat from below a bed. Victor Miller's script is not particularly impressive, but Cunningham's tense direction, and some remarkable special-effects by acclaimed makeup artist Tom Savini are enough to make it worthwhile. 1950s quiz show regular Betsy Palmer appears as the cook whose son, Jason (Ari Lehman), drowned 25 years earlier while neglected by romancing counselors. Palmer was reportedly cast because she was willing to drive her own car to and from the set. Trivia buffs should note the decapitation scene near the end, in which the female killer exhibits rather hirsute hands clutching at the air. The hands belong to Savini's assistant, Taso N. Stavrakis. Friday the 13th made over 20 million dollars at the box office and spawned numerous sequels.

http://www.allmovie.com/movie/friday-the-13th-v18658

A classic, in spite of itself!

7 August 2003 | by Maciste_Brother (the rock) – See all my reviews

I consider Friday THE 13TH a classic, despite everything seemingly going against it. Yes, the original Friday THE 13TH part 1 and part 2 owe a lot to BAY OF BLOOD (or TWITCH OF DEATH NERVE). There's no question about it. The similarities between the two films are obvious. The film is responsible for spawning an endless number of truly awful sequels. The acting is nothing spectacular. The script is barely there. And the film sorta drags a bit in the middle. And the ending of Friday THE 13TH is an indirect rip-off of the ending in CARRIE. But the backwoods atmosphere/mystique behind Friday THE 13TH is totally original and effective (much more than any of the sequels), and the ending of FT13 is, imo, WAY better than the ending of CARRIE. The ending of FT13 makes the movie. The entire FT13 series exists merely on the strength of that ending. It created a myth, in the name of Jason. The story (or script) is wonderfully absurd (when you think about it) which gives the murders an even more psychotic edge to them, and in my mind, are more effective than the ones in BAY OF BLOOD or in any other Friday THE 13TH sequels because of the kooky reasoning behind them. Watching Jason kill his victims in the sequels quickly got boring. And the fact that Tom Savini created the excellent gory FX is a definite plus. The acting is average (some of it even poor) but let's face it, the characters, aside from their individual death scenes, don't have a lot of dramatic things to do, except for Betsy Palmer and Adrienne King, who is good but is not the best "last surviving female" actress ever to appear in a slasher. On the other hand, Betsy Palmer is amazing as Mrs. Voorhees. She's a combination of total sweetness, insanity and camp all rolled into one. Once Betsy appears on screen the film is thrilling and she adds a lot of life (no pun intended) to the whole proceeding, which was lacking from a good part of the film. And let's not forget the good score. Very effective even if it sometimes sounds derivative. And the original poster is great!

The funny thing about Friday THE 13TH is that when I first saw it 20 years ago I thought it was good but not as good as HALLOWEEN. Fast forward 20 years, and today I sorta prefer Friday THE 13TH slightly more than HALLOWEEN now, which has lost a lot of its luster, due mainly to HALLOWEEN's awful sequels and their stupid story-lines. Artistically, HALLOWEEN is still the better film of the two. There's no comparison there. But it has lost its edge, while FT13's trashiness has oddly kept it fresh. While HALLOWEEN has irremediably lost a lot of its mystique with each subsequent sequels, Friday THE 13TH, on the other hand, actually gained more credibility with every release of its seemingly endless number of ultra-stupid sequels. After seeing some of those sequels, the original FT13 looks positively brilliant compared to those horrendous sequels. It's a classic in its own special way.