Friday the 13th Part 1 Review

The film starts with camp songs inside of a cabin followed by two young people getting murdered by a mystery assailant after fooling around. To me this is a great way to start a franchise here. You basically get promised sex and death within the first five minutes. Anyways, since that scene takes place only a year after Jason is dead is should be obvious for anyone watching this for the first time that it isn't going to be Jason doing the killing. I watched this with someone who had never seen it before, and it didn't dawn on him until Pamela Voorhees showed up that "oh yeah, his mother is the killer in this one".

After that first scene we are following a young girl who we think is going to be the lead, but within 10 minutes her throat is slit in the woods. All she did was hitchhike. I just touch on this slightly: horror movie rules. Yeah, it was cool and funny when Wes Craven did it in Scream, but every jackass who watches a horror movie spouts these "rules" off as gospel. As if they are smarter than the material.

Well fuck you. These "rules" were a joke in Scream making fun of cliches. Most of the Friday the 13th movies don't even follow these rules. For instance, the fat kid in Part 3 gets murdered for no reason as does the girl near the lake. In fact, Alice Hardy drinks alcohol in this movie and doesn't die (she does get killed in the second movie, but that is irrelevant). I never want to hear anybody say these "rules" out loud again. You're not funny and you have ruined the joke in Scream.

Back to the movie. I feel that Steve Christy, the guy who is re-opening the camp, was creepy in his few scenes. There was almost an undertone of him being a pervert, but it is never rightly explored. I think had he raped someone or been peeping it would have added another dynamic, almost another villain, to this movie. Perhaps he could have been killed while peeping, or been a plot device as the suspected killer? They planted those seeds by having him drive the same looking jeep as Mrs. Voorhees and such, but again I feel they either dropped the plot line or didn't even realize it.

Ralph in this movie is incredible. If you're seeing this for the first time he could easily be suspected as the killer, especially after he pops out of the closet. That scene is actually quite hilarious looking back. He's says all this ominous stuff, and then rides a bicycle with a little basket on the front of it in to the woods.

Speaking of hilarious, watching this again that cop on the motorcycle is really funny. The motorcycle sound effect they used was way too loud for a bike just moving two feet down the road at 2 miles an hour, and add that with the actor almost losing control of it and I thought it was as goofy as Ralph. I can't tell if this was intentional or not because of the way Kevin Bacon and the other kids mess with the cop, but I'll just pretend it wasn't and enjoy it.

One more thing: since I was a kid I always though Pamela gave Alice the bird after getting her head chopped off. If you had asked me before I watched this again I would have swore to god that it played out like that...perhaps I was watching a different cut on the movie as a kid? I know some uncut version is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, but I don't think that was the version I watched on VHS as a kid. The version I watched yesterday was from the boxet. If anyone has any information about that I'd like to know.

So anyway, yeah. This isn't much of a review but more of a collection of misc thoughts I had while watching the movie. I like this style a little better than a full on review, because a lot of re-hashing of plot details and fluff aren't interesting to read for a 30 year old movie.

Now I'm off to re-watch Part 2.