Friday The 13th: Review By slysnide

May 16th, 2008 by slysnide
Originality and Simplicity counts.
  • OVERALL
    3.5
    GREAT
  • Story
  • Acting
  • Directing
  • Visuals
The best of the series, though still not that great, and a rip-off of HALLOWEEN(1978), this film was one of the many '80s imitators that just happened to take off into it's own series that stars the "unkillable" monster.

Set at a summer camp in the woodland realm, the movie focuses on camp counselors being stalked and killed by a maniac with an agenda, and constantly toys around with what you see, and what you don't see.

A lack of severe amounts of blood/guts/gore assist in making the film more believable, as it isn't just a modern horror movie gorefest that only THINKS it does well.

The coming upon the victims after the killings is similar to that of the blockbuster hit "Se7en" which did the same thing. This film has suspense however, and may show up to the point of the attack on one killing, but totally skip it on another.

The simplicity of it is even more apparent as the story takes place in one night (like Halloween) and features camp counselors/lifegaurds playing strip poker or monopoly or whatever it was, while every once in a while a couple leaves for sex, only to get diced, or someone leaves to fix the generator, only to get arrowed to the door.

This was perhaps one of the best HALLOWEEN imitator slasher films of the '80s, but it's sequels proved to not even come close to it's success in cult horror film status.

An enjoyable film that must be viewed alone in the dark to derive the ultimate horrifying experience, despite that I didn't find this film to be scary at all, but still stayed up 'til 4:00am to catch it from the beginning when I was 11yrs old, but alas, it wasn't scary then either. If you scare easily, or just love cult classics like this, then check it out sometime.

The overall message that today's slasher film-makers can learn from this: Originality and Simplicity counts above all else when it comes to the perfect horror script.

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Comments (2)

  1. slysnide

    someone may have ignorantly called it that. perhaps someone from the very same studio. but flicks like this didn't exist before "Halloween" (1978). at least not since Hitchc*ck's "Psycho" (1960) which was "too intense" for moviemakers to follow up back then, at least not as shockingly, though that movie needed work too.

    And this along with other rip-offs may in fact be from other companies, but the lack of any like this from said companies prior to Halloween's success contradicts it, for while sure, Halloween coulda just happened to get there first, but it was the phenomenal reviews and box office intake that had studios re-designating their course to make those types of horror flicks, and not wanting to totally rip off Halloween like "Terror Train" (1980), they figured making them more gory would be a decent substitute, but not in my opinion, nor in many others for that matter.

    3 years agoby @slysnideFlag

  2. CBF

    Good outlook on the whole thing.

    I thought, however, that this was at one point dubbed, "The ORIGINAL Slasher Flick," not having anything to do with Halloween. I see where you were going with that, but I think a lot of these horror icon movies came out around the same time, didn't they? Just different franchises under different companies.

    I agree with the idea of originality and simplicity. Very unlike today's quote-unquote "horror" films, not very scary even to kids.

    4 years agoby @comicbookfanFlag