Sean S. Cunningham
Venerdì 13

Among the pioneers of the great horror sagas that emerged between the late '70s and the first half of the following decade, "Friday The 13th" ('80) is, in all likelihood, the one that has aged the worst.

If "The Evil Dead" ('82) remains to this day a little gem of direction and humor, if the first "Halloween" ('78) has the benefit of its own historicity and the directorial insights of the then almost unknown Carpenter, if "A Nightmare on Elm Street" ('84) offers us a Wes Craven perhaps at the peak of his horror-focused creativity and a cartload of special effects, none of this can be said of the first installment of the saga featuring the unlucky Jason Voorhees.

The story, for those who are unfamiliar, is about a group of young people (among which stands out a debuting and jawed Kevin Bacon), who found themselves spending the summer working at a camp on the shores of the enchanting "Lake Placid". Unbeknownst to our heroes, however, the Camping is considered a cursed place since, on a Friday the 13th in 1957, an unfortunate boy named Jason drowned in the lake's waters, amidst the semi-indifference of the camp officials (at the time too busy exchanging affectionate indecencies). Since then, Lake Placid Camping has been the scene of a whole series of strange and tragic events, enough to earn the nickname "The Slaughterhouse", and every attempt to bring it back into operation has been smothered in blood...

In short, the formula is more or less the one we all know from the times of Hansel & Gretel: take the unsuspecting and rather foolish protagonists of the story, isolate them in a confined environment, deprive them of any possibility of seeking help from the outside, and leave them at the mercy of a "villain" who knows the terrain much better than they do. A rather banal plot, shamelessly indebted, not only in its lakeside setting, to Bava's '71 "A Bay of Blood – Ecology of Crime" (which is practically the "Barbapapa" of all slashers!), to which are added some contrivances (the policeman who leaves the camp owner at the edge of the forest), some inaccuracies (totally messed up filmic timing in the first part) and, why not, some screenplay banalities (the indispensable generator problem that leaves the camp in darkness). The story's protagonists, far from being able to boast anything that might remotely recall a psychological depth beyond that of a towel, are portrayed quite simplistically and stereotypically, appearing to replicate the usual "youthful caricatures" such as the stud, the beauty, the know-it-all, etc. etc. Cunningham himself does not reveal any particular prodigy with the camera: just compare the first chase in the bush (starring the poor aspiring cook Annie), with the dangling shots at ground level of Raimi's debut, to realize you're facing a decent director, but certainly not a genius.

So, what is there to save in this medley of mediocrity?!

Well, not much. Perhaps only the essentials. Because, despite all its flaws, "Friday The 13th" achieves (but perhaps it would be more correct to say "achieved"), what was likely its main goal: to entertain the audience by giving them moments of genuine terror, moreover using a relatively small budget. Not coincidentally, the best moments remain the murder scenes (thanks also to the skillful hand of the fine gore craftsman Tom Savini), the final twist (not the one spoiled by Craven in the first "Scream") is delightful and the delay that accompanies the killer's point of view is, all in all, a decent device, so much so that it has become over time one of the trademarks of the entire series. The real problem, rather, is the truly erratic pacing of the film as a whole, mainly due to a handful of rather soporific scenes that lead the viewer to lose interest in the unfolding story and anxiously await the next murder.

A film imperfect and naive, then, but overall capable of recycling and re-proposing some of the genre's clichés in a sufficiently effective manner. The first (and unsurpassed?) chapter of a saga that, when closely examined, aside from its protagonist's mask (from the third chapter onwards, "Friday the 13th Part III" of '82), which over time has become part of the collective horror imagination, hasn't left much to the history of cinema.