Friday the 13th (1980)

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Movie
German title Friday the 13th.
Original title Friday the 13 th
Friday the 13th Logo.jpg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1980
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Sean S. Cunningham
script Victor Miller
production Sean S. Cunningham
music Harry Manfredini
camera Barry Abrams
cut Bill Freda
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Friday the 13th - Jason returns

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American horror film directed by Sean S. Cunningham . Along with Halloween, it is one of the classics and triggers for the first wave of American slasher films in the early 1980s . With eleven sequels , Friday the 13th is the founder of the longest-running horror film series ever.

action

In 1958, two young guards at Camp Crystal Lake are killed by an unknown perpetrator. The warehouse will then be closed.

Twenty years later, Steve Christy took over the run-down camp. Despite numerous warnings from the population, he and a group of young overseers would like to prepare the holiday camp for the summer season. In the past few years, a stranger is said to have repeatedly prevented a new opening by poisoning the drinking water or by setting fire to it. Annie is also one of the young people on the way to Camp Crystal Lake. In a small town nearby, however, she is warned of the dangers of the camp. After being taken half of the remaining distance by a truck driver who had taken a break in the village, she drives in another car. Its driver, who is not visible to the audience, murders them.

In the meantime, Steve Christy, director of the camp, and seven colleagues are already busy repairing the facility. When it gets dark, the unknown murderer begins to isolate the guards and kills one by one with different weapons. Only Alice, one of the guards, becomes suspicious. When she makes her friend Bill aware of screams and extinguished lights in the camp, the two find a blood-smeared ax in one of the beds. They both notice that neither the phone nor the cars are working in the camp. When all the lights go out, Bill tries to restart the camp's generator, but is also murdered in the process. Distraught, Alice flees to the main building of the camp. When she hears a car coming, she runs towards him and an alleged rescue. The older woman who gets out of the car is called Mrs. Voorhees and pretends to be an acquaintance of the camp owner Steve. She tries to calm Alice down.

It turns out that her son Jason was at camp the year before the first murders and drowned in the lake. She blames it on the guards, who didn't keep an eye on him. For this reason she is now taking revenge on the guards for her son and trying to prevent the camp from reopening. Again and again she says the sentence in a child's voice: "Kill her, Mommy, kill her!" Alice can flee from the woman, who pursues her. Eventually, Alice can behead Mrs. Voorhees with a machete.

In a dream sequence of Alice, who is already being cared for in the hospital, the horror comes back once more: after the decapitation of her persecutor, she escapes in a boat on the lake. As she sits there, disturbed, a disfigured boy suddenly appears (apparently Jason, who has been lying in the water since then) and pulls her down into the depths.

production

The surprising success of John Carpenter's film Halloween - Die Nacht des Horens (1978), which is considered to be the forerunner of the slasher films , inspired producer and director Sean S. Cunningham to shoot Friday the 13th . Cunningham had previously done both jobs for a number of horror films and was hoping for a small financial success in the wake of Halloween , with which he wanted to finance one of his dream projects. With a very low budget of around 550,000 US dollars , the film was shot in a very short time with - except for Betsy Palmer  - exclusively unknown young actors. Nonetheless, the film was a huge surprise hit, grossing $ 39 million in the US alone. Tom Savini , who had previously made a name for himself by working on George A. Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead (1978) , was able to be won over for the special effects .

The horror film was shot near Blairstown , New Jersey , and the camp was shot at the NoBeBoSco youth camp.

The film should initially be called "Long Night at Camp Blood". However, this was changed shortly before filming.

reception

Despite financial success, the film received negative reviews when it was released. So called Gene Siskel Director Cunningham "one of the most despicable creatures that have ever afflicted the movie business." He published Betsy Palmer's address and encouraged other opponents of the film to write to her to express their contempt for the film. However, it was the wrong address. He and his colleague Roger Ebert panned the film in a special episode of Siskel and Ebert . The Variety described the film as "low budget in the most negative sense". The lexicon of international film was also not very open-minded and found Friday the 13th to be “very bloodthirsty, primitive and untrustworthy”, it was “a horror film that was as amateurish as it was repulsive”.

Later, retrospective reviews were much more positive. Dave Kehr wrote in the Chicago Reader that the film "for all its shabbiness" does what it promises. James Kendrick said the film wanted little more than to "create tension" and deliver some "well-timed shocks," which it did "with precision and even a sense of art." Another positive example is a more recent review by Cinema , which summed up: "Yesterday trash - and today cult." The film has now achieved a rating of 59% on the Rotten Tomatoes website . In the Internet Movie Database he achieved an average of 6.5 out of 10 possible points in the user ratings. Both are the best ratings in the entire film series.

Trivia

  • Harry Manfredini composed the film theme as an interpretation of Pamela Voorhees' delusion that her son would ask her to kill ("Kill her Mammy"). This is how the striking "Ki Ki Ki, Ma Ma Ma", recorded by Manfredini himself, was born.
  • Throughout the film, music is only used in those scenes where the killer is nearby. All other scenes are left without background music.
  • Betsy Palmer , who embodies Pamela Voorhees, found the script to be a "piece of shit" according to her own statement. She accepted the role anyway because she needed a new car at the time.
  • Leading actress Adrienne King was stalked by a stalker as a result of the film's showing . In response to this experience, she then withdrew from the film business.
  • In the death scene of Jack ( Kevin Bacon ), Tom Savini , who was responsible for special effects, was lying under the bed and was supposed to push the blood from Bacon's neck, which was real sheep's blood, upwards with a plunger pump . But since this was defective, he blew it up through a hose himself, which explains the shock fountains and the air bubbles that can be seen in the final scene.
  • Savini was also the true archer of the arrow, which hits right next to Brenda ( Laurie Bartram ).
  • During the final match between Pamela Voorhees and Alice, Betsy Palmer struck hard out of theatrical habit until her colleague King burst into tears and Palmer was asked to refrain from real punches.
  • The drowned Jason was originally supposed to be played by director Cunningham's son in the final sequence, but his mother refused.
  • Sean Cunningham found the idea of ​​bringing Jason back into the action horrible. The end of the film should be a dream sequence. As is well known, Jason finally became the killer of the Friday 13th series from the second part.

German versions

Due to its explicit portrayal of violence, paired with a young target group and its great success at the box office, the film was at the forefront in Germany in discussions on the protection of minors and censorship . In Germany, the uncut version was given an age rating of 18 and over by the FSK and was indexed by the Federal Testing Office for media harmful to minors . (At that time this was still possible; since the amendment of the Youth Protection Act 2003, an age approval by the FSK has prevented subsequent indexing.) In March 2008, the film was indexed. This indexing was canceled prematurely in July 2017. A re-examination of the uncut version by the FSK in August 2020 resulted in approval from the age of 18.

The German version is based on the American "Unrated Version" and not on the "R-rated Version". It is therefore a few seconds longer and in some depictions of violence more explicit than the American theatrical version. After the uncut theatrical release from June 13, 1980, the same versions for the video market followed and later on DVD by Warner Home Video . Bootleg versions of the film were offered again and again .

An evaluation on German television did not take place until 2002 through the pay-TV channel Premiere and later on various private channels . In all of these television broadcasts, the film was shortened by some explicit depictions of violence due to the indexing (to varying degrees).

On June 9, 2013, the ARTE cultural channel broadcast the film in its uncut version, which is based on the American "Unrated Version" and not on the "R-Rated Version".

35mm uncut version

On May 19, 2012, the 35mm film uncut version (97 minutes) premiered at the Silver Cinema in Poughkeepsie , New York , as part of the fifth “Hudson Horror Show” .

Remake

A remake was released under the same name worldwide with a few exceptions on February 13, 2009, a Friday, in cinemas. Marcus Nispel ( Pathfinder ) as director and Michael Bay ( Texas Chainsaw Massacre ) as producer were already involved as a duo in the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) entitled Michael Bay's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). As a reboot, it is not a remake , but is just a reinterpretation of the film idea from 1980 without any content identical to the original version.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Return to Crystal Lake: Making 'Friday the 13th of 2003
  2. ↑ a b o.A .: Box office / business for Friday the 13th (1980) . On imdb.com . Accessed April 2, 2007 ( online )
  3. ↑ nobebosco.org
  4. ↑ brettmcbean.com
  5. ↑ a b c Fresh Cuts: New Tales from Friday the 13th of 2009
  6. ^ Original film review by Gene Siskel on fridaythe13thfranchise.com
  7. ↑ a b o.A .: Trivia for Friday the 13th (1980) . On imdb.com . ( online )
  8. ↑ Variety's film review
  9. ↑ Friday the 13th In: Lexicon of international film . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  10. ^ Film review by Dave Kehr
  11. ^ Film review by James Kendrick
  12. ↑ Friday the 13th on cinema.de
  13. ↑ Review on Rotten Tomatoes
  14. ↑ Rating in the Internet Movie Database
  15. ↑ OFDB or schnittberichte.com - indexing March 2008
  16. ↑ http://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=12325
  17. ↑ https://www.schnittberichte.com/ticker.php?ID=7880
  18. ↑ Comparison between the R-rated version and the unrated version from Friday the 13th on Schnittberichte.com
  19. ↑ http://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=5564
  20. ↑ Friday the 13th (Uncut) (97 minutes)> New Yorkers, Consider Yourselves Warned! Hudson Horror Show V Goes Down This Saturday
  21. ↑ Hudson Horror Show V Announces Full Line-Up on Dread Central.com
  22. ↑ fridaythe13thfilms.com ( Memento of the original from August 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fridaythe13thfilms.com