By Chris Summerfield
When Friday the 13th appears on your calendar, what do you think? I naturally feel something may go wrong, then having to pinch myself and remind myself it is only a superstition… Well that was not the case for the poor young folks at Crystal Lake in this movie from yesteryear, and this movie doesn’t really need an introduction as I would imagine you have probably watched it… Or have you?
Okay, maybe you haven’t or perhaps it has been a while, so I will just do a brief introduction to the movie; just too kind of jog your memory.
“Camp Crystal lake” is to be reopened and youngsters, Alice (Adrienne King) Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), Jack (Kevin Bacon), Bill (Harry Crosby), Brenda (Laurie Bartram) and Ned (Mark Nelson) are to run the new summer camp with, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) being the owner and having had the camp within his family name since the tragedy of 1957, in which a young boy named Jason, drowned within the lake, while the counsellors who were supposed to have been watching over him were too busy flirting and basically neglecting to do their duty. And ever since that day the camp as had nothing but bad luck, becoming known by the locals as camp blood.
Annie (Robbi Morgan) is also to work at the camp though is the first to die after being picked up by the murderer, as she was backpacking her way there.
Then it isn’t too long before the young folk at the camp begin to be murdered one by one and what is so surprising, before one or two of them are killed, obviously unaware they have met the killer they seem friendly towards the killer, until it is too late…
Well it isn’t too long until the Antagonist as evened the odds and there is just one remaining, young Alice…
Now let’s go back to the beginning, when Jason drowned, imagine that it was our present day and a young boy had drowned while on summer camp, I am sure heads would roll, law suits would be chasing the camp owners, as for the mother of the drowned boy, don’t they say there is no greater love than mother and child and what lengths would that woman go to for revenge of her son…
“Jason should have been watched, every minute.”
“He was just a boy.”
In many ways this movie like most slasher films is a story of tragedy and how unfortunately the innocent become the victims of that tragedy.
It leaves me to say, this Friday the 13th being the one that launched the franchise will always be to me the best of the entire franchise, why? Oh come on, you know why, we all were suspecting a man to be the killer wasn’t we now…
Rating: 10/10
