Who can forget the Herrmann-esque score, the jump-scares, the chu-chu-chu… ha-ha-ha, and the gruesomely original, in-your-face murder gore?
I saw Friday the 13th upon its release in May of 1980. Carpenter’s Halloween was still fresh in my mind, as I had seen a re-release of it the previous fall. There’s no comparison. Halloween is far superior. But something about this step-child of a horror franchise lingers with me… and apparently with pop culture, as we are to see this week with American Horror Story: 1984.
It wasn’t the first slasher film by a long stretch. That honor began back 1932 with a movie called 13 Women, and there was also Fritz Lang’s M… all the way through the Italian giallo films of the 1960s and 70s—Bava’s Bay of Blood, which was likely the inspiration for Paramount’s and Sean Cunningham’s jinxed holiday cash cow.