Friday The 13th
You know what? This is a cool film. Sure, the 80's hair and terrible acting makes it feel like it's constantly on the verge of bursting out to be a full-on porno, but you got to respect a film that helped redefine horror flicks for a new era, started the career of one Kevin Bacon, brilliantly utilised the killer's-point-of-view shot that has been heavily mined ever since, and spurred a fucking ton of sequels, each more hilariously ludicrous than the next. (Just when I thought they peaked with Friday the 13 th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan , they went and sent him to fucking space in Jason X .)
In lieu of the gleeful crapiness of all that followed, this first Friday the 13th film is refreshingly simple affair. Teens on a camp get slashed to bits one by one. Brilliant! You can see they kindda ran out of ideas at the end, when the token screaming white-girl heroine finally gets one-up in her scuffle with the assailant and knocks her down (yes, her . I'm not ruining anything Scream didn't already), and then runs off to hide in another cabin without finishing the job, while anyone watching screams ‘Stab the bitch while she's down you fucking idiot!!!' This repeats four or five more times in one hell of a drawn out climatic battle that's actually one of the more boring parts of the film. I mean, two chicks fighting each other, and not a single article of clothing gets ripped off? Hardly believable.
Then there's the money shot. The killer revealed and decapitated, everything is once again serene at Crystal Lake…until the very deceased Jason emerges from the murky depths and finishes the job his mother started. And as those with a weak constitution wet themselves, a new cinematic Bogeyman is born. Kind of strange when you think that there wasn't any other sign of the supernatural in the whole film until the final few frames. Strange, but cool.