Years after a boy drowns at a summer camp, the camp is reopened, and young, sexually active camp counselors begin to die in gruesome ways. Is it the boy, back from the dead or someone else slicing and dicing?
It would be silly for me to try and review Friday the 13th like other films. Saying that the directing is amateurish, the plot non-existent, and the acting up there with the average junior high play should mean something. But for Slashers, no one cares about any of that, particularly for a teen-Slasher with no theme. What counts is: does this film deliver thrills? Is it frightening and shocking and a little arousing? Obviously not. I remember watching this at the theater when it was initially released, tapping my fingers and waiting for a moment that even reached mildly tense. It never came. What I got was excessive dialog about what’s for dinner and if there is enough paint thinner, plus scenes of looking for a snake and making coffee (or was it tea? So much time is spent following her heating the water and spooning out the sugar that it must have been important).
Give me some real horror: a ghastly, gory moment that will hit me in the gut, and maybe some lewd nudity that will make me sweat. Friday the 13th failed to deliver any of that. It is a mild, placid film. Perhaps there is enough here to perk up a particularly inexperienced twelve-year-old, but for anyone else, there are far more exciting horror films out there. I suppose for 1980, this could be considered bloody, but for those of us with Dawn of the Dead on our shelves, this is like an episode of Happy Days.
The “climax” makes everything that came before it silly (and impossible as there is no suggestion of supernatural strength). The hulk with the hockey mask and machete is the killer in the sequels, not here. The murderer in this first film isn’t shown until the end; the character isn’t even introduced till then, so there is no way to guess who might be responsible before that moment.
If you feel a need to see a psycho-at-a-summer-camp movie, try the far better Sleepaway Camp.