Friday the 13th is a 1980 American independent slasher film produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, written by Victor Miller, and starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, and Kevin Bacon.

Prompted by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), director Cunningham put out an advertisement to sell the film in Variety in early 1979, while Miller was still drafting the screenplay.

When she awakes, Jason's decomposing corpse emerges from the lake and drags her underwater, at which point she awakens in a hospital, surrounded by a police sergeant and medical staff.

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.

[10] 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.

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.

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.

[17] 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.

[17] Savini's design contributions included crafting the effects of Marcie's axe wound to the face, the arrow penetrating Jack's throat, and Mrs. Voorhees's decapitation by the machete.

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.

[35] A full one-sheet poster, featuring a group of teenagers imposed beneath the silhouette of a knife-wielding figure, was designed by artist Alex Ebel to promote the film's U.S.

[36] Scholar Richard Nowell has observed that the poster and marketing campaign presented Friday the 13th as a "light-hearted" and "youth-oriented" horror film in an attempt to draw interest from America's prime theater-going demographic of young adults and teenagers.

[1] It was the 18th highest-grossing film that year, facing competition from other high-profile horror releases such as The Shining, Dressed To Kill, The Fog, and Prom Night.

[49] Friday the 13th was released internationally, which was unusual for an independent film with, at the time, no well-recognized or bankable actors; aside from well-known television and movie actress Betsy Palmer.

[55] Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times referred to the film as a "silly, boring, youth-geared horror movie", though she praised Manfredini's "nervous musical score", the cinematography, as well as the performances, which she deemed "natural and appealing", particularly from Taylor, Bacon, Nelson, and Bartram.

"[57] The Miami News's Bill von Maurer praised Cunningham's "low-key" direction, but noted: "After building terrific suspense and turning over the audience's stomachs, he doesn't quite know where to go from there.

"[59] Many critics compared the film unfavorably against John Carpenter's Halloween, among them Marylynn Uricchio of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who added: "Friday the 13th is minimal on plot, suspense, and characterization.

"[60] Dick Shippy of the Akron Beacon Journal similarly suggested that Carpenter's Halloween played "like Hitchcock when compared to Cunningham's dreadful tale of butchery.

"[61] The Burlington Free Press's Mike Hughes wrote that the film "copies everything, that is, except the quality" of Halloween, concluding: "The lowest point of the movie comes near the end, when it exploits the genuine grief and madness of the villain.

"[64] Michael Blowen of The Boston Globe similarly referred to the film as "nauseating", warning audiences: "Unless your idea of a good time is to watch a woman have her head split by an ax or a man stuck to a door with arrows, you should stay away from Friday the 13th.

"[66] He also published the address for Charles Bluhdorn, the chairman of the board of Gulf+Western, which owned Paramount, as well as Betsy Palmer's home city and encouraged fellow detractors to write to them and express their contempt for the film.

The site's critics' consensus reads: "Rather quaint by today's standards, Friday the 13th still has its share of bloody surprises and a '70s-holdover aesthetic to slightly compel.

[73] Critic Kim Newman, in a 2000 review, awarded the film two out of five stars, referring to it as "a pallid Halloween rip-off, with a mediocre shock count and a botched ending... As the bodies pile up amongst this testy crowd of horny teens, there remains a vacant hole were [sic] someone scary should be.

"[74] Jeremiah Kipp of Slant Magazine reviewed the film in 2009, noting "a kind of minimalism at work, eschewing anything special in terms of mood, pacing, character, plot, and tension.

"[75] Further commenting on the revelation of the killer's identity, Kipp observed: The murderer turns out to be a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) with a butch haircut and a gigantic bulky sweater, whose line readings are akin to nails on a chalkboard ("They were making love while that boy drowned!

On the positive side, Tom Savini's make-up work is flawless, and Betsy Palmer's turn as big bad Pamela V. has to go down in history as one of the meanest 'mothers' in the entire horror genre.

Clover notes the revelation of Pamela Voorhees as the killer as "the most dramatic case of pulling out the gender rug" in horror film history.

[81] Commenting on the first-person point-of-view shots from the killer, Clover writes: "'We' [the audience] stalk and kill a number of teenagers over the course of an hour of movie time without even knowing who 'we' are; we are invited, by conventional expectation and by glimpses of 'our' own bodily parts—a heavily booted foot, a roughly gloved hand—to suppose that 'we' are male, but 'we' are revealed, at the film's end, as a woman.

Changes involved an addition to the title—as opposed to a number attached to the end—like "The Final Chapter" and "Jason Takes Manhattan", or filming the movie in 3-D, as Miner did for Friday the 13th Part III (1982).

[93] A reboot to Friday the 13th was released theatrically in February 2009, with Freddy vs. Jason writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift hired to script the new film.