31 Days of Horror Movie 10

Friday the 13th
1980
Paramount Deluxe DVD

Now I figure most people reading this review know the plot of this film. The film that helped jumpstart the 80s slasher boom. Counselors are at a summer camp on a lake. They are killed one by one. At the end there is one lady left alive and she finds out who the killer is.

I have now owned this film 5 times. Got it on VHS back in the late 80s. Then sometime in the mid 90s bought the laserdisc. But both of those were the slightly cut version. The film got some minor trims to get an R rating in the USA. So in the late 90s/early 2000s I imported an uncut VCD. Paid way too much for what amounted to about 15 seconds of additional footage. In 2008 I bought the original release DVD for $5. Then finally 2 years ago got the four pack of the deluxe versions of the first 4 films extremely cheap. Finally I owned a nice looking copy of the fully uncut version. And this deluxe dvd is loaded with interesting extra features. We get an informative commentary with Sean Cunningham. A featurette on Sean. A so called Friday the 13th Reunion. The only extra that sucks is the "Lost tales from Camp Blood part 1". Which feels like some crappy fan film.

Now the Friday the 13th films seem to be the most popular slasher series for my generation. They have never been my favorite. That would be the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. But I do enjoy the Friday films more than the Elm Street series or the Halloween series. The Friday films never try to be more than they are. They are just pretty much brainless gore films.

Friday the 13th gets a B-.