I probably never saw the original movie until after I'd seen a few of the others for the simple fact that it was long before my time and it was not widely available on cable. Certain images from the film always stayed with me like Mrs. Voorhees in that awful sweater and her short blonde her and of course her decapitation at the end. I also always remembered that scare at the end when Alice is attacked on the lack by the boy Jason leaping out of the water. The series as a whole had a profound effect of fright on me throughout my childhood. Even as a teenager watching some of these films made me nervous to have to turn all the lights off and go to bed.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
People often forget that the killer in the original Friday the 13th was not
Jason, but his mother Mrs. Voorhees. Wes Craven’s self-aware horror film Scream even calls attention to this fact
by having the killer use it as a little-known piece of trivia to taunt a
victim. Jason is nothing more than a sad story of a boy drowning in a lake, the
result of negligence on the part of his camp counselors. Probably what people
don’t forget quite so easily is that Friday
the 13th is a not very competently made slasher film that is not
all that scary to boot.
