User:Bignole/Friday the 13th (films)


 * NOTE-To any and all readers of this sandbox, it is rather chaotic and spaced between each reference. I do this for my benefit, as editing a section where the info is all crammed it a little hard. It won't appear that way when I have all the info I plan to use.

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American independent horror film directed by Sean S. Cunningham, and written by Victor Miller. The film stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby and Kevin Bacon in one of his earliest roles. The film concerns a group of teenagers who re-open an abandoned camp site years after a young boy drowned in a lake located nearby. One by one, the teens fall victim to a mysterious killer.

Friday the 13th, inspired by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween, was made on an estimated budget of $550,000. Although it was poorly received by film critics, it grossed over $39.7 million at the box office in the United States, and went on to become one of the most profitable slasher films in cinema history; it was also the first movie of its kind to secure distribution in the USA by a major studio, Paramount Pictures. The film's box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with Freddy Krueger and a remake currently in development.

Plot
In the summer of 1958, two summer camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake sneak away from a campfire sing-along to have sex. Before they can completely undress, an unseen assailant sneaks into the room and murders them both. Flashing ahead 20 years later, a young woman named Annie enters a small diner and asks for directions to the newly re-opened Camp Crystal Lake. Enos, a truck driver, agrees to give Annie a lift halfway to the camp. An old man named Ralph reacts to the news of the camp's reopening by warning Annie that the camp has a "death curse". During the drive, Enos explains the history of the camp, informing her that a young boy drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957, and that two counselors were murdered the following year. After Enos lets her out, Annie hitches a ride with a passing vehicle. The second driver, whose face is never seen, murders Annie in the woods.

At the camp, the other counselors, Ned, Jack, Bill, Marcie, Brenda, Alice and the camp's owner, Steve Christy, are refurbishing the cabins and facilities. As a storm closes in, Steve leaves the campgrounds to get more supplies. The unidentified killer arrives at the camp and begins to isolate and murder the remaining counselors. Later that evening, Steve returns from town and is also murdered. Alice begins to worry after she hears someone screaming in the dark, so she and Bill, the only two left alive and unaware of what is going on, leave the cabin to investigate. The pair discovers a bloody axe in Brenda's bed. They attempt to phone the police, but the phones are dead and the cars will not start when they try to leave. When the lights go out all over the camp, Bill goes to check on the power generator, alone. Alice heads out looking for Bill when he does not return; she finds his dead body pinned to the door of the shed. Alice flees back to the main cabin and hides.

Alice hears a vehicle outside the cabin and, thinking it to be Steve, runs out to warn him. Instead, she finds a middle-aged woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Voorhees, stating that she is an "old friend of the Christys". As Alice tries to tell her about the murders, Mrs. Voorhees reveals herself to be the mother of the boy who drowned in the lake in 1957. Talking mostly to herself, she blames her son Jason's drowning on the fact that two counselors were having sex and were unaware of Jason struggling in the lake. Mrs. Voorhees suddenly turns violent and pulls out a knife, rushing at Alice. A chase ensues, with Alice and Mrs. Voorhees have multiple confrontations, each time with Alice believing she has finally beaten Mrs. Voorhees. During their final fight, Alice manages to decapitate Mrs. Voorhees with a machete.

Afterward, Alice boards a canoe and floats to the middle of the lake. Just as Alice notices the police arriving on the embankment, the decomposing of Jason attacks Alice while she waits for help in a canoe. Just as she is dragged under water Alice awakens in a hospital, where a police officer tells her that they pulled her out of the lake. Alice is informed that everyone is dead; when she asks about Jason, the officer informs her they never found any boy, which leaves her with the impression that he is still in the lake.

Development
Friday the 13th was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously worked with filmmaker Wes Craven on the film The Last House on the Left (1972). Cunningham, mainly inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), wanted Friday the 13th to be shocking, visually stunning, and "[make] you jump out of your seat". Wanting to distance himself from The Last House on the Left, Cunningham wanted Friday the 13th to be more of a "roller-coaster ride". This film was intended to be "a real scary movie", but at the same time make the audiences laugh. thumb|left|upright|Friday the 13th did not even have a completed script when Sean S. Cunningham took out this advertisement in Variety International magazine. Friday the 13th began its life as nothing more than a title. Initially, "Long Night at Camp Blood" was the working title during the writing process, but Cunningham believed in his "Friday the 13th" moniker, and quickly rushed out to place an advertisement in Variety International. Worried that someone else owned the rights to the title and wanting to avoid potential lawsuits, Cunningham thought it would be best to find out immediately. He commissioned a New York advertising agency to develop his concept of the Friday the 13th logo, which consisted of big block letters bursting through a pane of glass. In the end, Cunningham believed there were "no problems" with the title, but distributor George Mansour stated, "There was a movie before ours called Friday the 13th: The Orphan. Moderately successful. But someone still threatened to sue. I don't know whether Phil [Scuderi] paid them off, but it was finally resolved."

Following the ad, Cunningham started receiving offers from foreign distributors around the world who wanted to see the film. Cunningham also received an offer from Mansour and Scuderi, after he placed the ad, who wanted to put up $125,000 of Cunningham’s estimated $500,000 budget. After Miller sent them an early draft, the distributing pair wanted to back the entire $500,000; as a consequence, Cunningham was forced to give up more control over the creation of the film to Mansour and Scuderi than he wanted to. Although they had an early draft, according to the director, he and Miller and writer Victor Miller had to figure out how to create a marketable film. In his words, "We [...] had a really tough bullet to bite—that there is no discount for the patron at the box office to see a low-budget movie." Cunningham stated that the idea of putting Friday the 13th as a second featured in a drive-in movie theater was nixed, as that type of set-up "almost didn't exist anymore". In Cunningham's estimation, he and Miller had to create a film that people would choose to see over others. When the time came to hire a production crew, Cunningham surrounded himself with friends, mostly those that had worked on his previous projects, like Here Come the Tigers and Manny's Orphans. Cunningham already had Miller, who was with him when he first decided to develop the movie, working on the script. After the script was finished, and he had full financial support, Cunningham set out to find the rest of his crew. One of the more important people hired, since Cunningham knew that Friday was going to be "very gory", was special makeup effects expert Tom Savini.

Writing
The script was written by Victor Miller, who had written Cunningham's previous directorial efforts, Here Come the Tigers and Manny's Orphans; the former was written under the pseudonym Arch McCoy. Miller, after learning of the success of Halloween from Cunningham, was sent to the cinema to watch the film and get ideas on how to replicate its success. He returned several times to study the genre itself and the techniques Carpenter used. After the repeated viewings of Halloween, Cunningham and Miller decided that there needed to be a set of rules. Cunningham's initial outline involved teenagers who were in an isolated setting that had not been used before, and after multiple locations thrown out as suggestions, it was decided that a summer camp would be perfect. It was Miller's idea to use a summer camp, more specifically a summer camp that was about to open so that there would not be a worry about all the kids that normally attend camp during the summer. It was decided that the camp would need some sort of curse, or a past event that haunts the present. This event would eventually become the drowning of young Jason Voorhees. The kids would need to be alone, with no one to help them, and if any of them had sex then they had to die. Miller explains, "Sex equals death." Miller and Cunningham were additionally inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho. Hitchcock set up the idea that the first main character introduced into the film could be killed. The creative pair liked the idea of making the audience believe that the girl they are first seeing is the main protagonist of the film, only to kill the character shortly after introduction. Cunningham liked Miller's finalized script, but felt it could use some dialogue adjustments – Steve Minasian, another financial backer, and Phil Scuderi hated the script. Ron Kurz, the film's unaccredited writer, explained, "Phil [Scuderi] told me that he was approached by a man named Sean Cunningham, all Sean had to offer was a great-sounding title and a tepid script by Victor Miller." Kurz was hired to add humor to the script, which he describes as his "forté". After Kurz was finished, and Scuderi was happy with the result, Cunningham was granted an estimated $550,000 to shoot the film. By the beginning of filming, Kurz suggests that out of the 97 pages of script, 45 of them were either completely new scenes, or revised scenes that he wrote. But because he was not a full member of the Writer's Guild, Miller received full credit for the screenplay. Miller claimed that the only scene that he did not write was the scene where Officer Dorf, portrayed by Ron Millkie, arrives on his motorcycle and warns the kids about "Crazy Ralph". According to Miller, the scene was crafted by Scuderi and negated Miller's attempt to create a world where the kids could not find help from the outside world.

The addition of humor was not the only thing to change in Miller's script. As soon as Makeup designer Tom Savini arrived, he and Cunningham agreed that the ending needed something extra. The idea of Jason appearing at the end of the film was not in the original script, nor was the concept of Jason being deformed. According to Victor Miller, Jason was never a deformed "creature from the 'Black Lagoon'", but, it is Miller's belief that the ending would have suffered if Jason was "a cute blonde kid who looked like Betsy Palmer at 8 years old." Miller had scripted Jason as a mentally disabled young boy; it was Savini who would make Jason deformed during filming. Tom Savini takes credit for the inclusion of Jason at the end of the film. Savini explains, "The whole reason for the cliffhanger at the end was I had just seen Carrie, so we thought that we need a 'chair jumper' like that and I said, 'let's bring in Jason.'" Ron Kurz confirms that Miller's version of Jason was that of a normal child, but claims that it was his idea to turn Jason into a "mongoloid creature", and have him jump out at the end of the film. In Miller's original script, Alice climbs into a canoe after fighting Mrs. Voorhees, just like in the finished film. Alice drifts for hours before Mrs. Voorhees attacks her again, in the canoe. Alice then decapitates Mrs. Voorhees in the water, whereas in the finished film this all took place before Alice ever got into the canoe. Alice is found by a couple of state troopers, who spot her as she walks onto the road. At this point Miller’s script ended with a shot of the lake before fading out. Miller delights in inventing a serial killer who turned out to be somebody's mother, a murderer whose only motivation was her love for her child. "I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun. Mrs. Voorhees was the mother I'd always wanted - a mother who would have killed for her kids."

Casting
A New York-based firm, headed by Julie Hughes and Barry Moss, was hired to find eight young actors to play the camp's staff members. Cunningham admits that he was not looking for "great actors", but anyone that was likable, and appeared to be a responsible camp counselor. The way Cunningham saw it, the actors would need to look good, read the dialogue somewhat well, and work cheap. Moss and Hughes were happy to find four actors, Kevin Bacon, Laurie Bartram, Peter Brouwer, and Adrienne King, who had previously appeared on soap operas. The role of "Alice" was set up as an open casting call, a publicity stunt used to attract more attention to the film. King earned an audition primarily because she was the friend of someone working in Moss and Hughes’s office. After she auditioned, Moss recalls Cunningham commenting that they saved the best actress for last. As Cunningham explains, he was looking for people that could behavior naturally, and King was able to show that to him in the audition.

With King cast in the role of lead heroine Alice, Laurie Bartram was hired to play Brenda. Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson and Jeannine Taylor, who had known each other prior to the film, were cast as Jack, Ned, and Marcie respectively. It is Bacon and Nelson's contention that, because the three already knew each other, they already had the specific chemistry the casting director was looking for in the roles of Jack, Ned, and Marcie. Taylor has stated that Hughes and Moss were highly regarded while she was an actress, so when they offered her an audition she felt that whatever the part would "be a good opportunity". Friday the 13th was Nelson’s first feature film, and when he went in for his first audition the only thing he was given to read were some comedic scenes. Nelson received a call back for a second audition, which required him to wear a bathing suit, which Nelson acknowledges made him start to wonder if something was off about this film. He did not fully realize what was going on until he got the part and was given the full script to read. Nelson explains, "It certainly was not a straight dramatic role, and it was only after they offered me the part that they gave me the full script to read and I realized how much blood was in it." Nelson believes that Ned used humor to hide his insecurities, especially around Brenda, whom the actor believes Ned was attracted to. Nelson recalls an early draft of the script stating that Ned suffered from polio, and his legs were deformed while his upper body was muscular. Ned is believed to have given birth to the "practical joker victim" of horror films. According to author David Grove, there was no equivalent character in John Carpenter's Halloween, or Black Christmas before that. He served as a model for the slasher films that would follow Friday the 13th.

The part of Bill was handed over to Harry Crosby, son of Bing Crosby. Robbi Morgan, who plays Annie, was not auditioning for the film was she was offered the role. While in her office, Hughes just looked a Morgan and proclaimed "you're a camp counselor". The next day Morgan was on the set. Morgan only appeared on-set for a day to shoot all her scenes. Rex Everhart, who portrays Enos, did not film the truck scenes with Morgan, so she had to either act with an imaginary Enos, or exchange dialogue with Taso Stavrakis—Savini's assistant—who would sit in the truck with her. It was Peter Brouwer's girlfriend that helped him land a role on Friday the 13th. After recently being written off the show Love of Life, Brouwer moved back to Connecticut to look for work. Learning that his girlfriend was working as an assistant director for Friday the 13th, Brouwer asked about any openings. Initially told casting was looking for big stars to fill the role of Steve Christy, it was not until Sean Cunningham dropped by to deliver a message to Brouwer's girlfriend, and saw him working in a garden, that Brouwer was hired. Estelle Parsons was initially asked to portray the film's killer, Mrs. Voorhees, but eventually declined. Her agent cited that the film was too violent, and didn't know what kind of actress would play such a part. Hughes and Moss sent a copy of the script to Betsy Palmer, in hopes that she would accept the part. Palmer could not understand why someone would want her for a part in a horror film, as she had previously starred in films such as Mister Roberts, The Angry Man, and The Tin Star. Palmer only agreed to play the role because she needed to buy a new car, even when she believed the film to "be a piece of shit." Stavrakis subbed for Betsy Palmer as well, which involved Morgan's character being chased through the woods by Mrs. Voorhees, although you only see a pair of legs running after Morgan. Palmer had just arrived into town when those scenes were about to be filmed, and was not in the physical shape necessary to chase Morgan around the woods. Morgan's training as an acrobat assisted her in these scenes, as her character was required to leap out of a moving jeep when she discovers that Mrs. Voorhees does not intend to take her to the camp. Betsy Palmer explains how she developed the character of Mrs. Voorhees: "'Being an actress who uses the Stanislavsky method, I always try to find details about my character. With Pamela […] I began with a class ring that I remember reading in the script that she'd worn. Starting with that, I traced Pamela back to my own high school days in the early 1940s. So it's 1944, a very conservative time, and Pamela has a steady boyfriend. They have sex—which is very bad of course—and Pamela soon gets pregnant with Jason. The father takes off and when Pamela tells her parents, they disown her because having […] babies out of wedlock isn't something that good girls do. I think she took Jason and raised him the best she could, but he turned out to be a very strange boy. [She took] lots of odd jobs and one of those jobs was as a cook at a summer camp. Then Jason drowns and her whole world collapses. What were the counselors doing instead of watching Jason? They were having sex, which is the way that she got into trouble. From that point on, Pamela became very psychotic and puritanical in her attitudes as she was determined to kill all of the immoral camp counselors.'"

Cunningham wanted to make the Mrs. Voorhees character "terrifying", and to that he believed it was important that Palmer not act "over the top", which had become commonplace since Jack Nicholson's turn as Jack Torrance in The Shining. There was also the fear that Palmer's past credits, as more of a wholesome character, would make it difficult to believe she could be scary. Ari Lehman, who had previously auditioned for Cunningham's Manny's Orphans, failing to get the part, was determined to land the role of Jason Voorhees. According to Lehman, he went in very intense and afterward Cunningham told him he was perfect for the part. In addition to the main cast, Walt Gorney came on as "Crazy Ralph", the town's soothsayer. The character of Crazy Ralph was meant to establish two functions: foreshadow the events to come, and insinuate that he could actually be the murderer. Cunningham has stated that he was apprehensive about including the character, and is not sure if he accomplished his goal of creating a new suspect.

Filming
Although the film had been greenlit with a production budget between $550,000 and $600,000, the filmmakers had difficulty securing the money. According to unit photographer Richard Feury, Cunningham and associate producer Steve Miner had stated that there were money problems, and the pair wanted to know if the crew would forgo their salary in favor of taking a percentage of the film's box office. The crew opted to continue to receive their paychecks. According to Cunningham, the problem with the money was not that Georgetown Productions did not have it, but was more a matter of Cunningham pressuring the financiers to write the checks he needed to the film crew. As a result, the film had to make alterations during filming based on the available funds they had. Cunningham admits that he was not invested in the film on an artistic level, but simply wanted to tell a story in the easiest way possible. According to Cunningham, a combination of the location, the script calling for a storm and loss of power, and a limited budget led to an overly dark film. Cunningham acknowledges the criticism that was received, and notes that the director of photography, Barry Abrams, frequently requested additional lighting. Cunningham views these problems as a blessing in disguise, as t provided a more realistic look to the film and offered the audience a way of saying, "This could happen to me". Adams wanted the film to look like a documentary, so he used "practical lighting in the film – from any source [they] could find, and flashes of the negative to accentuate the shadows and atmosphere. Cunningham did some research and determined that there was a Friday the 13th that fell in June 1980, so he tried to adapt his schedule so that the film would be ready for wide release on that date. As casting was underway in July, Cunningham and Miner decided to scout locations for their fabled "Crystal Lake", so they sent Art Director Virginia Fields out to various summer camps to find a place to shoot their film. Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco eventually opened their doors to the film makers. In order for Cunningham to secure permission to film at the Boy Scout camp, he had to wait four weeks for the camp to close, and also make a contribution to the Boy Scouts of America. Production began in mid-September, and lasted for approximately 30 days, giving the production team an ideal window for making their movie, as the camp only operates from June to August. For the most part, the camp did not require any additional applications. Miner recalls the camp site being "almost ready-made for the film".

One of the few techniques that Cunningham used from The Last House on the Left was to give Friday the 13th a "primitive look and feel". His reasoning behind this was because he knew he would have very little money for the film. Cunningham wanted to make Friday a "real viewing experience", while at the same time make it entertaining to watch, unlike his work on Last House on the Left. Cunninghamd also utilized the "stalker [point of view]" technique—something estabished in Halloween—to help create a sense of anxiety and tension. For him, it was about getting the audience to buy into the idea that they are aware of something the characters are not when they are entering a supposedly empty room. In order to keep the audience guessing "when and how" a character was going to be killed, Cunningham would draw out the death scenes, waiting till the last moment to kill the characters. He wanted to create a sense of anxiety in the audience with this technique.

Cunningham decided to shoot all the day scenes first. This created a challenge; by the time they were ready to shoot the opening scenes for the film, which take place at night, the cold weather had set in and the production generator had died. With no money in the budget to make the adequate adjustments to get the scenes they wanted, the crew was forced to alter the opening sequence. The original opening began in a baseball field, with Barry and Claudette arguing over Barry's involvement with another girl. When the couple move to the lake they are confronted by "The Prowler", where they are chased around the camp before being killed. It took three months just to shoot the final scare of the film, where Jason leaps from the lake and attacks Alice. Initially, the scene was shot during main shooting in September, but additional shoots had to take place in October and November to complete the final scene. The majority was shot on-location at the Blairstone set, but close-ups were shot in Connecticut near Cunningham's home.

Effects


Enjoying the recent success of Dawn of the Dead and Martin, Tom Savini, and his assistant Taso Stavrakis, were hired to do the effects for Friday the 13th with a budget just under $20,000.

On the night Cunningham was ready to shoot Barry and Claudette's deaths, Savini had not yet arrive. With Savini absent, the script had to be altered to something the present crew could actually accomplish. Originally, the audience was supposed to see Claudette get hit in the neck with a machete and fall down to the floor with her screaming face frozen in the camera frame. Since Savini had not arrived to apply the machete to Debra Hayes's (Claudette) neck, Cunningham chose to freeze the frame just before Claudette is killed.

The scene where Bill kills a black snake in one of the cabins was inspired from an experience by Tom Savini. After finding a snake in one of the cabins, Savini decided it would be a good idea to include a scene where a snake is killed.

Jack's death was not specifically detailed in Victor Miller's script, so it was Steve Miner and Tom Savini that developed the elaborate scene. Miner storyboarded the entire scene, which involved an arrow head pushing its way through Jack's neck, with blood squirting out all the while. Savini started by making a cast of Bacon's neck. The pre-cast neck was made from John Maldonado during the filming of Martin, where a similar scene had been shot. There were at least four people, at any given time, underneath the bed while they filmed Jack's death. For most of the scene, it was Bacon, Savini, Stavrakis and the still photographer (Feury) hidden beneath the bed. Savini and Stavrakis worked the arrow and blood tubes while underneath. Feury was originally only hired to take photographs before and after they filmed scenes for the movie. When Cunningham and Miner realized they needed an extra hand to hold Bacon's head, Feury was elected. The effect did not go as planned while filming the scene, and since it had to be done in one take Stavrakis had to improvise to save the shot. When the moment came for the blood to shoot through Bacon's prosthetic neck, the pump that controlled the blood came loose. Stavrakis quickly grabbed the tube and blew as hard as he could; the result was what Stavrakis calls a "serendipitous arterial spray spurt".

Savini took a full cast of Jeannine Taylor's face for the scene where her character, Marcie, has an axe swung into her face. The intent of the shot was to show the axe cutting down the side of her face, in full detail. The mould of Taylor's face was not holding together well for the scene—the axe would just slide off the mold—so the team had to resort to a cut-away shot and apply a fake axe to Taylor's face.

Bill's death was the one death most detailed in the script, which was described as similar to the "martyrdom of St. Sebastian" – St. Sebastion was killed by a multitude of arrows puncturing his body. The scene for Bill's death called for Alice to discover Bill's body pinned by arrows to the door of the generator's cabin. Savini and Stavrakis first built a small ledge onto the cabin door, so Crosby would have something to stand on to give the appearance that he was hanging above the ground. They then applied the fake arrows and make-up to Crosby's face. Unfortunately, the applications used a liquid called "Photoflo"—designed for processing photographs—to thing the fake blood that would be applied to Crosby's face. The chemical was placed over Crosby's eyes, acting like a mask, but when it was removed and the oxygen outside met Crosby's eyes they began to burn. Friday the 13th was the first frilm where Savini had used Dick Smith's "blood formula", and he was not yet sure which chemicals could be used safely around the mouth and eyes, with this new forumula, to saturate and thin the blood. Crosby learned the hard way that Photoflo was not one of the safe chemicals that could be used with the new formula. Fortunately, there were no lasting effects for Crosby's eyesight.

Apart from applying make-up effects to the characters, Savini would also perform some of the physical effects personally. For the final act of the film, Savini dawned a wig and night gown, pretending to be Brenda, and jumped through a window in the cabin Alice was hiding in. It is insinuated in the scene that Brenda's corpse was thrown through the window by the mysterious assailant who had killed everyone but Alice by that point.

Like Jack's death scene, Savini had to accomplish the decapitation of Mrs. Voorhees in one-take. Stavrakis stood-in for Palmer, wearing a head and shoulder prosthetic replica of Palmer. Savini swung the machete cutting off the fake head, which was being held in place by toothpicks so it would detach with ease.

Music
When Harry Manfredini began working on the musical score, the decision was made to only play the music alongside the killer so it would not "manipulate the audience" into thinking the killer was present when they were not. Manfredini pointed out the lack of music for certain scenes: "There's a scene where one of the girls […] is setting up the archery area of the film. One of the guys shoots an arrow into the target and just misses her. It's a huge scare, but if you notice, there's no music. That was a choice." Manfredini also noted that when something was going to happen, the music would cut off so that the audience would relax a bit, and the scare would be that much more effective.

Since Mrs. Voorhees, the killer in the original Friday the 13th, does not show up until the final reel of the film, Manfredini had the job of creating a score that would represent the killer in her absence. Manfredini was inspired by the 1975 film Jaws, where the shark is not seen for the majority of the film but the motif created by John Williams cued the audience on when the shark was present during scenes when you could not see it. Sean S. Cunningham sought a chorus, but the budget would not allow it. While listening to a Krzysztof Penderecki piece of music, which contained a chorus with "striking pronunciations", Manfredini was inspired to recreate a similar sound. He came up with the sound "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" from the final reel when Mrs. Voorhees arrives and is reciting "Kill her mommy!" The "ki" comes from "kill", and the "ma" from "mommy". To achieve the unique sound he wanted for the film, Manfredini spoke the two words "harshly, distinctly and rhythmically into a microphone" and ran them into an echo reverberation machine. Manfredini finished the original score after a couple of weeks, and then recorded the score in a friend's basement. Victor Miller and assistant editor Jay Keuper have commented on how memorable the music is, with Keuper describing it as "iconographic". Manfredini says, "Everybody thinks it's cha, cha, cha. I'm like, 'Cha, cha, cha?  What are you talking about?"

The music was composed by Harry Manfredini, who first met Sean S. Cunningham when he composed the music for Here Come the Tigers and Manny's Orphans.

Manfredini recals the difficulty of creating the now trademark Friday the 13th theme. He had no money and he was trying to mouth "ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma" into a microphone while playing with symbols and an orchestration. The music was meant to provide a look into "the mind of a madwoman", but only contained three chords. Manfredini modeled the theme after the killer's psyche:"'I Looked at Mrs. Voorhees as someone who heard voices that made her kill. At the end of the film you see Betsy Palmer mouthing the words, 'Kill her, mommy', which kind of reveals everything, and she's using a child's voice too. Really, ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma represetns her saying 'Kill her, mommmy' and I created teh sound by talking into a microphone.'"

When Harry Manfredini began working on the musical score, the decision was made to only play the music alongside the killer so it would not "manipulate the audience" into thinking the killer was present when they were not.

Manfredini pointed out the lack of music for certain scenes: "There's a scene where one of the girls […] is setting up the archery area of the film. One of the guys shoots an arrow into the target and just misses her. It's a huge scare, but if you notice, there's no music. That was a choice."

Manfredini also noted that when something was going to happen, the music would cut off so that the audience would relax a bit, and the scare would be that much more effective. Since Mrs. Voorhees, the killer in the original Friday the 13th, does not show up until the final reel of the film, Manfredini had the job of creating a score that would represent the killer in her absence.

Manfredini was inspired by the 1975 film Jaws, where the shark is not seen for the majority of the film but the motif created by John Williams cued the audience on when the shark was present during scenes when you could not see it.

Sean S. Cunningham sought a chorus, but the budget would not allow it. While listening to a Krzysztof Penderecki piece of music, which contained a chorus with "striking pronunciations", Manfredini was inspired to recreate a similar sound. He came up with the sound "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" from the final reel when Mrs. Voorhees arrives and is reciting "Kill her mommy!" The "ki" comes from "kill", and the "ma" from "mommy". To achieve the unique sound he wanted for the film, Manfredini spoke the two words "harshly, distinctly and rhythmically into a microphone" and ran them into an echo reverberation machine.

Manfredini finished the original score after a couple of weeks, and then recorded the score in a friend's basement.

Victor Miller and assistant editor Jay Keuper have commented on how memorable the music is, with Keuper describing it as "iconographic". Manfredini says, "Everybody thinks it's cha, cha, cha. I'm like, 'Cha, cha, cha?  What are you talking about?"

Release
Paramount bought Friday the 13th's distribution rights for $1.5 million, after seeing a screening of the film. They spent approximately $500,000 in advertisements for the film, and then an additional $500,000 when the film began performing well at the box office. Friday the 13th opened theatrically on May 9, 1980 across the United States in 1,100 theaters. Eventually, Friday the 13th was released internationally, which was unusual for an independent film with, at the time, no well-recognized or bankable actors. On Friday, July 13, 2007, Friday the 13th was screened for the first time on Blairstown's Main Street in the very theater that appears in the film shortly after the opening. Overflowing crowds forced the Blairstown Theater Festival, the sponsoring organization, to add an extra screening at 11:00 PM. The event was covered by local media and New York City's Channel 11.

Box office
It took in $5,816,321 in its opening weekend, claiming the top spot at the box office for that weekend, before finishing domestically with $39,754,601. The film would go on to finish as the eighteenth highest grossing film of 1980. Friday the 13th took in an additional $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 Kreuger, the original Friday the 13th is the highest grossing film of the ten film series in unadjusted dollars. To provide context with the box office gross of films in 2015, the cost of making and promoting Friday the 13th—which includes the $550,000 budget and the $1 million in advertisement—is approximately $4.2 million. With regard to the domestic box office gross, the film would have made $108.8 million in adjusted 2015 dollars. In terms of recent box-office performance, Friday the 13th would be the highest grossing horror film of 2012 using the adjusted figures. Compared to other films in the slasher genre, Friday the 13th is the eighteenth highest grossing slasher film of all time in unadjusted dollars between the years of 1978 and 2011, as of February 2012. When adjusting for the 2012 inflation, the film would reside as the sixth highest grossing slasher film, when including slasher films from before 1978.

Recognition

 * The film came in at #31 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the ending sequence, and was voted #15 in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Scariest Moments.


 * Golden Raspberry Awards
 * Nominated: Worst Picture
 * Nominated: Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Betsy Palmer)


 * Mystfest
 * Nominated: Mystfest Award for Best Film


 * This film was #31 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Original critical response

 * Variety claimed the film was "[l]owbudget in the worst sense - with no apparent talent or intelligence to offset its technical inadequacies - Friday the 13th has nothing to exploit but its title."

Modern critical response

 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=1&rid=1207506


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=1&rid=308055


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=2&rid=1548939


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=2&rid=202847


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=2&rid=1710056


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=2&rid=1671123


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=1&rid=1182994


 * http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1007896/reviews.php?critic=movies&sortby=default&page=1&rid=1761450

Retrospective

 * http://theweek.com/articles/446191/friday-13th-accidentally-perfected-slasher-movie#axzz34We7YBg7

Sequels
As of 2009, Friday the 13th has spawned eleven sequels, which includes a crossover film with A Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Kruger and a remake that merged elements from the first four Friday the 13th films. Jason Voorhees was introduced as the primary antagonist in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), something that would continue for the remaining sequels and related works. Victor Miller was unhappy about the subsequent filmmakers' decision to make Jason the killer in the sequels. In Miller’s opinion, "Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain." Most of the sequels were filmed on larger budgets than the original. By comparison, Friday the 13th had a budget of $550,000, while the first sequel was given a budget of $1.25 million. The crossover film, Freddy vs. Jason had the largest budget at $25 million. All of the sequels repeated the same premise as the original, so the filmmakers made tweaks to provide freshness. Changes involved the addition of a subtitle—as opposed to just a number attached to the end—like "The Final Chapter" and "Jason Takes Manhattan", or filming the movie in 3-D, as Steve Miner did for Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982). One major tweak that would affect the entire film series was the addition of Jason's hockey mask in the third film; this mask would go on to become a widely recognized image in popular culture.

Adaptations
In 1987, seven years after the release of the motion picture, Simon Hawke adapted a novelization of Friday the 13th. One of the few additions to the book was Mrs. Voorhees begging the Christy family to take her back after the loss of her son; they agreed. Another addition in the novel is more understanding in Mrs. Voorhees' actions. Hawke felt the character had attempted to move on when Jason died, but her psychosis got the best of her. When Steve Christy reopened the camp, Mrs. Voorhees saw it as a chance that what happened to her son could happen again. Her murders were against the counselors, because she saw them all as responsible for Jason's death.