Taglines: A 24-hour nightmare of terror.
Friday the 13th movie storyline. In 1957, at Camp Crystal Lake, young Jason Voorhees drowned. In 1958, two camp counselors were murdered. In 1962, fires and bad water thwarted the camp’s reopening. Now, in 1980, Steve Christy finally reopens Camp Crystal Lake with the help of a few new counselors, ignoring the warnings of a crazy old man. The murders start up again while a mysterious stalker prowls the area. Is the killer seeking revenge? Who will survive the nightmare and live to tell the story?
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. Its plot follows a group of teenage camp counselors who are murdered one by one by an unknown killer while attempting to re-open an abandoned summer camp.
Prompted by the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), director 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 summer of 1979, on an estimated budget of $550,000. A bidding war ensued over the finished film, ending with Paramount Pictures acquiring the film for domestic distribution, while Warner Bros. Pictures secured European distribution rights.
Released on May 9, 1980, Friday the 13th was a major box office success, grossing $59.8 million worldwide. Critical response was divided, with some praising the film’s cinematography, score, and performances, while numerous others derided it for its depiction of graphic violence. 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 was shot in and around the townships of Hardwick, Blairstown, and Hope, New Jersey in September 1979. The camp scenes were shot on a working Boy Scout camp, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco which is located in Hardwick, New Jersey. The camp is still standing and still operates as a summer camp. The cinematography in the film employs recurrent point-of-view shots from the perspective of the villain.
Savini was hired to design the film’s special effects based upon his work in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). Savini’s design contributions included crafting the effects of Marcie’s axe wound to the face, the arrow penetrating Jack’s throat, and Mrs. Voorhees’s decapitation by the machete.
During the filming of the fight sequences between King and Palmer’s characters, Palmer suggested rehearsing the scene based on her theater training: “I said to Adrienne that night ‘Why don’t we rehearse this scene, I have to slap you,’ because on-stage when you slap somebody, you slap them.” While rehearsing, Palmer slapped King in the face, and she began crying: “She collapsed to the floor, crying, ‘Sean! [Cunningham] She hit me.’ I said, well, of course I hit her, we were rehearsing the scene. He said, ‘No, no, no Betsy, we don’t hit people in movies. We miss them.”
Friday the 13th opened theatrically on May 9, 1980 across the United States, ultimately expanding its release to 1,127 theaters. It earned $5,816,321 in its opening weekend, before finishing domestically with $39,754,601, with a total of 14,778,700 admissions. It was the 18th highest-grossing film that year, facing competition from other high-profile horror releases such as The Shining, Dressed To Kill, The Fog, and Prom Night. The worldwide gross for the film was $59,754,601. Of the seventeen films distributed by Paramount in 1980, only one, Airplane!, returned more profits than Friday the 13th.
Friday the 13th was released internationally, which was unusual for an independent film with, at the time, no well-recognized or bankable actors; aside from well-known television and movie actress Betsy Palmer. The film would take in approximately $20 million in international box office receipts. Not factoring in international sales, or the cross-over film with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, the original Friday the 13th is the highest-grossing film of the franchise.
To provide context with the box office gross of films in 2014, the cost of making and promoting Friday the 13th—which includes the $550,000 budget and the $1 million in advertisement—is approximately $4.5 million. With regard to the US box office gross, the film would have made $177.72 million in adjusted 2017 dollars.
On July 13, 2007, Friday the 13th was screened for the first time on Blairstown’s Main Street in the very theater which appears shortly after the opening credits. Overflowing crowds forced the Blairstown Theater Festival, the sponsoring organization, to add an extra screening. A 30th Anniversary Edition was released on March 10, 2010. A 35th-anniversary screening was held in the Griffith Park Zoo as part of the Great Horror Campout on March 13, 2015.
Friday the 13th (1980)
Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham
Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon. Mark Nelson, Peter Brouwer, Debra S. Hayes
Screenplay by: Victor Miller
Production Design by: Virginia Field
Cinematography by: Barry Abrams
Film Editing by: Bill Freda
Costume Design by: Caron Coplan
Art Direction by: Virginia Field, Robert Topol
Music by: Harry Manfredini
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures (United States), Warner Bros. Pictures (International)
Release Date: May 9, 1980 (United States)
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