Two years after Halloween came out, Sean S. Cunningham, Steve Miner, Ron Kurz, & Victor Miller started the longest running horror series from the '80s. As everyone knows, they're up to Jason X. Cunningham had produced "Last House on the Left" for Wes Craven. While there's no gang rape in "Friday the 13th", but Tom Savini provides most of the bloody goodness, including the axe to the face.
Anyhow, this fucker cements the standard slasher formula that's been hashed & rehashed for the past 25 plus years. There're the same nameless death scene fodder that everyone's familiar w\. And they all split up to get killed individually. What makes this film succeed where imitators failed is that what we've here isn't a showcase for the killer. This is a flick that lives or dies based on the fact that you don't know exactly who the killer is till the finale. The suspense builds up over the course of the story and isn't released a fucking bit till the end. Sure, the victims are all damn near carbon copies of each other, but they're at least a bit more likable than usual.
Films buffs should check this out. It's an interesting time capsule. It perfectly preserves right about when the slasher genre went to hell during which time both the Halloween and Friday the 13th series would vie for shittiest sequel on an almost yearly basis. It wouldn't recover till Wes Craven fucked w\ the formula four years later & made Freddy Krueger.
Verdict : 2.5 stars
Edited By Malcolm on 1142457825