Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American independent horror film directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller. The film stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby and Kevin Bacon in one of his earliest roles. The film concerns a group of teenagers who re-open an abandoned camp site years after a young boy drowned in a lake located nearby. One by one, the teens fall victim to a mysterious killer.

Friday the 13th, inspired by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween, was made on an estimated budget of $550,000. Although it was poorly received by film critics, it grossed over $39.7 million at the box office in the United States, and went on to become one of the most profitable slasher films in cinema history; it was also the first movie of its kind to secure distribution in the USA by a major studio, Paramount Pictures. The film's box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with Freddy Krueger and a reimagining currently in development.

Reception

Upon release, Friday the 13th and panned by critcs. It's most vocal dectractor was Gene Siskel who in his review called Cunningham "one of the most despictable creatures ever to infest the movie business". He also published Betsy Palmer's home address and encourage fellow detractors to write to her and express their contempt for the film. Variety claimed the film was "[l]owbudget in the worst sense - with no apparent talent or intelligence to offset its technical inadequacies - Friday the 13th has nothing to exploit but its title."

The film came in at #31 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the ending sequence,and was voted #15 in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Scariest Moments.

Adaptations

In 1987, seven years after the release of the motion picture, Simon Hawke adapted a novelization of Friday the 13th. One of the few additions to the book was Mrs. Voorhees begging the Christy family to take her back after the loss of her son; they agreed. Another addition in the novel is more understanding in Mrs. Voorhees' actions. Hawke felt the character had attempted to move on when Jason died, but her psychosis got the best of her. When Steve Christy reopened the camp, Mrs. Voorhees saw it as a chance that what happened to her son could happen again. Her murders were against the counselors, because she saw them all as responsible for Jason's death. Hawke had previously written the novelization of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives in 1986, and would go on to write the novelizations for Part 2 and Part 3. All four novels were originally published by Signet, but are currently out-of-print.