FRIDAY THE 13TH
Friday the 13th is a 1980 American slasher film produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, written by Victor Miller, and starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, and Kevin Bacon. The plot follows a group of teenage camp counselors who are murdered one by one by an unknown killer while they are attempting to reopen an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past.
Prompted by the success of John Carpenter‘s Halloween (1978), Cunningham put out an advertisement to sell the film in Variety in early 1979, while Miller was still drafting the screenplay. After casting the film in New York City, filming took place in New Jersey in the fall of 1979, on an estimated budget of between $550,000 and $650,000. A bidding war ensued over the finished film, ending with Paramount Pictures acquiring the film for domestic distribution, while Warner Bros. secured international distribution rights. Friday the 13th became the first independent slasher film to be acquired by a major motion picture studio.
Released on May 9, 1980, Friday the 13th was a major box office success, grossing $59.8 million worldwide, making it the fifteenth highest-grossing film of the year, and the second highest-grossing film for Paramount. The film’s critical response was largely unfavorable, with numerous critics deriding it for its graphic violence, though it did receive some praise for its cinematography and score.
Aside from being the first independent film of its kind to secure distribution in the U.S. by a major studio, its box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series, and a 2009 series reboot. A direct sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2, was released one year later. The film has been subject to critical analysis in film studies for its depiction of youth suffering violent deaths after engaging in premarital sex, a trope at the center of the film’s plot that was frequently used in subsequent slasher films. It has received mixed retrospective reviews and garnered a cult following.