The original Friday the 13th is probably one of the most influential films of all time. Now before you choke from laughing too hard, try to remember that before this film, no franchise (besides James Bond) was able to consistently put out product year after year for a decade. Friday the 13th started the mold that horror films would follow (even Halloween): cheap films that make a ton of money in the first weekend. And these movies made a ton of money, though the studios were embarrassed as hell about them. The original Friday the 13th was more of a cousin of John Carpenter's Halloween. A group of kids getting a cursed camp ready for re-opening slowly get picked off one by one until it's the final heroine vs. the killer. Friday the 13th took those things and added a little bit of spice, particularly in the way the kids are dealt with (amazing effects by Tom Savini) and little things like the addition of the crazy old man yelling that they're all doomed.
As a film it's not great. The script cheats (and for the four people who don't know who the killer is I won't spoil it but I consider it a cheat) and the acting isn't the greatest, though it is better than most of Kevin Bacon's work from the last decade (Mystic River excluded). Sean S. Cunningham directs the film like a cold prom date- it's the kills that get you.You sit there waiting to see who's going to get bumped off next and how heinous it's going to be.
But all in all Friday the 13th is a piece of history. An entire generation of films was born out of this and Halloween. Both those films wrote the text book that masked slashers would use to terminate victims for the next twenty years.
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