When I was a kid, I wanted to see this movie badly because I saw images from it everywhere around Halloween, all over the TV, all over the horror magazines my brother sneaked into the house. I didn't even know what it was about except that a bunch of teenagers die and they're killed by a guy named Jason who wears a hockey mask. Little did I know that this particular film, the one that started the Friday the 13th craze, features very little Jason action at all and instead focuses on his backstory. It set the stage for the mythos that was to follow, which is funny, because at the time this movie was made and released, no one knew what they had on their hands. None of the filmmakers or the actors could have imagined that this cheap little grainy fright flick would spawn one of the most successful horror series in history. A lot has been said about this movie and a lot of people discount it and its impact, which I think is a shame, because even if the people making it didn't intend for it to have any depth and just wanted it to make money, I think the movie has a lot to offer fans of the horror genre.

The setting is pretty simple. Something horrible happened at Camp Crystal Lake, some teenage counselors died horrible deaths, and the camp has sat empty for years. Now someone wants to re-open the camp and cater to at-risk kids who need a retreat from their lives. He hires a bunch of idealistic teens to be counselors and they all trek out to the camp to work and restore it the week before kids are set to arrive. First of all, they spend way too much time dicking around when they're supposed to be working on restoring the camp, and second, I don't really think they have enough time to finish restoring a whole camp before kids arrive, but ignore all that. I think a lot of the communal spirit of the 70s was still alive at the time this movie was released, because I've read Young Adult Novels from the early 80s and most all of them seem to focus on groups of teens coming together, living in the woods, and creating a society that changes the world. I think a lot of that is lost in translation here, because when the character of Annie speaks at the beginning of this movie about living in the woods and helping children it sounds kind of silly, but that kind of rhetoric filled YA novels of the generation, so I think a lot of teenagers had this idealistic "we can change the world" attitude, and it's not at stupid as it sounds. The horrible things that happen to Annie after she gives this speech have a greater impact when seen in this context.

The secluded woodland setting is another plus for the movie. In the ages before cellphones, characters in the woods really were isolated from all civilization, so someone could easily pick them off without people knowing. Add to that how these kids are working in a huge camp, and they could easily disappear one by one with the others simply assuming that the missing friends were working in disparate areas of the camp. The slaughter could go unnoticed for hours this way. Adding to the tension, there's a huge rainstorm in the middle of the film, so the broken groups of teens each assume the the kids have taken shelter in other cabins and no one knows that anything sinister is going on until it's much too late. At this point in the movie, things get even nastier.

I'The gruesome death scene with her boyfriend was something I also didn't see coming. I knew he was going to die, but I didn't know it would be like that. He's relaxing, thinking everything is fine, resting, at peace, when suddenly...BAM! Bloody death. It's a very effective death scene even by today's standards. I'm pretty sure that by now, anyone reading this review will know who the killer is in this movie, but if you don't, and you don't want to know, stop reading now, ok? I'm going to ruin it for you. So Mrs. Voorhees is far from the only woman ever seen killing people onscreen (Hell, Bette Davis did it on a daily basis) but it still unnerves me seeing this slight woman who seems nice and friendly suddenly turning cold and swaying and talking to her dead son while she methodically stalks the only survivor of her killing spree. Good LORD but that woman was freaky! Betsey Palmer deserves all the credit in the world for making this movie give me goosebumps even today, even after seeing it over and over, that kindly grandma looking woman who turns batshit insane right in front of my eyes? That shit is SCARY, and I don't care if I look like a wuss for saying it. I watched the documentary that came with the boxed set, so I know that no one thought this movie was going to become anything close to a classic, and I know people still decry it as trash today, and I know that it sounds silly to claim the movie has any artistic value, but I don't care. I was one of the deriders myself once. I'd forgotten the excitement of my youth and I was an uppity college student who knew everything and only rented the movie to prove how right I was. But when I slipped that ancient VHS into my player and watched this movie one dark night, I found out how wrong I was.

I'll say it again: this movie is scary. It has it's problems, and if you want to say I'm full of shit for saying it has artistic value and just watch it for the collection of bloody deaths contained therein, be my guest. But that's really my point. This movie can be watched however you want to view it, and you'll enjoy it. If you just want some bloody deaths, they're here and they're gross and they're fun, but if you want to look deeper at how the scare scenes are set up and why they're effective, you can also do that; this movie has value for me because of the way it subverted and played on my deeply ingrained fears in order to be scary. Isolation, getting a ride from a kind looking stranger who turns out to be a killer, being cut off from civilization (in the woods, no one can hear you scream...just ask that tree that fell in the woods, no one heard it crash, did they?) watching a sane looking person turn into a psycho right in front of me...these are the stuff of nightmares, every scary dream I ever had was wrapped up in this one movie, and this movie used these scenes to their full effect to scare the shit out of me and generations of other moviegoers. That takes talent. You show me a Hollywood movie made today that spends millions of dollars ostensibly trying to scare people, and I'll show you my brain forgetting every single thing that happened the second that I leave the theater. But I can't do that with Friday the 13th...the images in this movie stay ingrained in my psyche because they WORK, and for that, I give it all the respect in the world, because you know what? I don't care what anyone says, it deserves that respect.

From that creepy ass music to every scary little scene to the gory deaths to that goddamn jump scare at the end that makes me jump every time even though I've seen this movie a thousand million times, this movie is a keeper, and it's definitely worth a watch even if you swore you'd never see it. Give it a chance. It's scary in a way that few movies are.