Camp Crystal Lake
Friday the 13th tells the story of a group of young adults who are trying to rebuild and re-open an old campground site that was abandoned many years earlier in the late 50s after a young boy drowned and two other people were murdered about a year later. A local in town warns a young girl on her way to the camp that it’s cursed, but he is dismissed as being crazy; but as we all know by now, he was right, there is indeed something very wrong at Camp Crystal Lake.
Most of the actors in Friday the 13th you likely won’t recognize, except for Kevin Bacon who has a small role as one of the young adults who comes to the Camp to help prepare it for opening. He along with nearly a dozen friends get settled in their first night at the camp, oblivious to the warnings of the local who repeatedly warns them to leave the camp. Predictably, each and every one of the camp goers are brutally murdered, except for of course one, who escapes in the end. The murders are certainly violent and somewhat creative, and this uncut version doesn’t hold much of anything back as far as that goes.
That said, over the course of this one horrific night, all but Alice (Adrienne King) are murdered but Alice doesn’t escape unscathed – she had a horrible nightmare after she thought she was safe of being pulled into the lake by a disfigured young boy. If you haven’t yet seen this original Friday the 13th, I don’t want to spoil it for you because the ending is quite good – the other Friday movies in comparison are more direct and don’t conceal elements as well as this first one does. Regardless, this was the one that started them all, and even by today’s standards it’s a well done slasher film that has me not only interested in the remaining sequels, but Bay’s new version coming out this Friday as well.
Slashing Onto Uncut DVD
This new DVD release of the original slasher hit contains a few extra features in addition to an uncut version of the film. I don’t know if this uncut edition has been released before or not, I don’t believe so, and not having seen a previous version of the film I don’t have anything to compare it by. In terms of presentation quality, the old 1980 horror classic cleaned up nicely and frankly looks like a modern day DVD release in terms of picture quality. I wasn’t as impressed with the audio however as a lot of the dialogue seemed very quiet and I found myself having to tweak my volume controls while watching the film a bit too often. Lastly, Harry Manfredini’s chilling soundtrack sounds great, right from the menu and throughout the feature.
This new DVD release contains several extra features; they are:
-Audio Commentary track with Director Cunningham with several members of the cast and crew.
-Friday the 13th Reunion – This is a taping of a September 13th, 2008, meeting that included a handful of original cast and crew members including Ari Lehman, Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Manfredini. The feature runs seventeen minutes and is basically a Q&A and anecdote based feature.
-Fresh Cuts: New Tales From Friday the 13th – Small featurettes involving topics of concept and casting, for example, make up this fourteen minute feature. Interviews with some of the cast and crew and some production stills are shown.
-The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S Cunningham – A nine minute feature with a fairly recent interview of the Director. He talks about his memories of the film and shows us some of his nice house and production office.
-Lost Tales From Camp Blood: Part 1 – A cheesy seven and a half minute short film whereby a couple gets brutally murdered by Jason at the camp; it’s a recent production and doesn’t really add up to much.
-Original Trailer – The laughable original trailer is also included; neat for historical purposes, but it’s a pretty bad trailer.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…
