Paramount celebrates Friday the 13th's 40th anniversary with a new collectible steelbook edition of the film.
“Rip into the chilling UNCUT EDITION of Friday the 13th. With the addition of unrated footage, and insightful special features, plunge deeper into the film that spawned eleven sequels and the genre’s unstoppable bad guy, Jason Voorhees. A new owner and several young counselors gather to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, where a young boy drowned and several vicious murders occurred years earlier. They’ve ignored the locals’ warnings that the place has a death curse… and one by one they find out how unlucky Friday the 13th can be as they are stalked by a violent killer.”
The film opens years before the events of the film. Someone is creeping through the bunks at Camp Crystal Lake, watching the counselors as they sleep, making their way to a group of them that are celebrating around a campfire, playing songs and having fun. Two of the counselors slip away to a secluded area to get a little more friendly, when the mysterious onlooker slaughters them. Years later, despite the warnings from the local townspeople and resident crazy old man, the camp reopens with a new group of counselors eager to get to know each other. While they do, the killer returns to finish what they started all those years ago as each person is picked off one at a time.
Perhaps one of the most iconic horror movie franchises in existence, Friday the 13th made Jason a household name, as one of the most unrelenting killers of the genre. It’s interesting that despite Jason being synonymous with the franchise, his role didn’t take shape until the sequel. Despite this, the film still manages to deliver tons of gore and horrific death scenes that we’ve now come to expect from a slasher film, providing a great start to one of the longest running horror franchises in cinema.
Although the film primarily rides on the success of Halloween, freely admitted by the filmmakers, it does a lot of things differently that sets it apart. While it in no way comes even close to Halloween in terms of craft and suspense, the biggest difference is the graphic and unique gore scenes in which the counselors all meet their respective demise, which for the horror genre is a pretty important thing. It sets the bar pretty high for the time, with gore master Tom Savini crafting some of the coolest makeup effects. While in the Blu-Ray high definition you can clearly see where the human flesh ends and the makeup begins (especially on Kevin Bacon’s head), the way they creatively accomplish the desired look is still very impressive.
Horror films began to take a different direction in the 80s from their counterparts a decade prior. While you still see a lot of similarities, like the camera peeking out from behind a tree like it’s the point of view of the killer, the stories are what begins to change. Friday the 13th sets the groundwork for a horror legend, one that focuses mainly on the antagonist, and not the protagonist, and although it doesn’t actively follow this itself, you can see the gravitation toward the legend of the drowned boy Jason Voorhees and eluding to him still being there.
As much as the genre has evolved since the 70s, it has evolved even more over the past 40 years. Films in general are much faster pace and engaging, and what was revolutionary at the time can honestly come off as rather dull. It had been quite awhile since I’ve revisited this film, and although the gore and the overall feel of the camp slasher holds up, the pacing of the story does not. Each counselor gets quite a lot of time given to their respective story, stalking, and eventual brutal murder, it can get pretty repetitive, with pacing that slows to a crawl at some points. You don’t learn much about the history of the camp until the last few minutes of the film, where instead of admiring the twist of the storytelling, you can’t help but question why when the last survivor pushes down the killer, she runs about 30 feet and stops, four times in a row, letting the killer catch up. Despite these drawbacks of the film, it’s still one of the staples of the horror genre, providing the introduction to one of its most iconic characters.
Video
Friday the 13th is presented in 1080p High Definition Widescreen 1.85:1. This disc is the same as previous Blu-Ray releases, so if you’ve seen it before you know what to expect. The film looks quite good, with some nice detail in the majority of the scenes. There are some noticeable issues with the source print, but usually only occur in some of the darker sequences, nothing that detracts from the experience. Color balance is looks very good, as I mentioned before, you can really tell the difference in the makeup effects in this high definition transfer.
Audio
The audio is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. This track sounds great, especially the well-known sound effect that is synonymous with the films when the killer is near, echoing throughout the surrounds, chilling you to the core. Besides some atmospheric effects and other horror type effects, most of the sound comes through the center channel in the form of dialogue.
Special Features
The 40th anniversary of the film is celebrated in this set by the Steelbook case only. The disc is the same as previous releases, containing the same features. These include:
- Commentary by Director Sean S. Cunningham with Cast and Crew
- Friday the 13th Reunion HD
- Fresh Cuts: New Tales from Friday the 13th HD
- The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham HD
- Lost Tales from Camp Blood – Part 1 HD
- The Friday the 13th Chronicles
- Secrets Galore Behind the Gore – Friday the 13th
While I respect celebrating a film like this for any anniversary, Paramount kind of skimped on doing anything special for it besides the case. Considering this was among the first wave of Blu-Rays to come out when the format was release (it was my first Blu-Ray purchase ever), it was about time for an upgrade on the transfer. Steelbook collectors out there will surely want to add this to their collection for the collectible nature, but honestly you can get Paramount’s 8-Movie Friday the 13th collection for about the same price when it goes on sale, which it does fairly often, and you’ll also get the complete Lost Tales from Camp Blood 6 part featurette.
