Lowbudget in the worst sense – with no apparent talent or intelligence to offset its technical inadequacies – Friday the 13th has nothing to exploit but its title.
Another teenager-in-jeopardy entry, contrived to lure the profitable Halloween audience, this one is set at a crumbling New Jersey summer camp, shuttered for 20 years after a history of ‘accidental’ deaths and other spooky stuff, and about to be reopened for the summer.
Six would-be counselors arrive to get the place ready, then are progressively dispatched by knife, hatchet, spear and arrow.
Producer-director Sean S. Cunningham telegraphs the six murders too far ahead to keep anyone in even vague suspense, and without building a modicum of tension in between.
