Fraser Coffeen
Both as a standalone film and as a series, Friday the 13th has a decidedly spotty relationship with film critics. Upon the film’s initial release, The Hollywood Reporter called it “blatant exploitation of the lowest order… there is nothing to recommend about this ghastly effort”[1] while Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel really upped the ante by giving the film zero stars, intentionally ruining the twist ending so that audiences would not go see it, and calling director Sean S. Cunningham, “one of the most despicable creatures to infest the movie business.” [2] From a purely critical standpoint, things were not off to a good start. Which, of course, mattered not one bit to the audiences who flocked to the movie, ultimately helping the $550,000 film rake in nearly $60 million worldwide.[3] Not bad for such a vile piece of garbage.
Over the years, there has been some mellowing of critical opinions, though the series is still far from being a venerated one. Revisiting the first film in 2000, BBC critic Matt Ford described it as, “undeniably a hugely influential film that contributed to the 1980s horror boom” while at the same time noting it was, “not the first teen ‘stalk-n-slash’ film and certainly not the most creative.”[4] And that seems to generally be where things have landed critically – it’s not the first, it’s not the best, but it’s the one that really brought the slasher genre to the mainstream, and for that, it deserves credit.
But that critical view is perhaps an unfair one, as it paints Friday the 13th as merely a good imitator with no creative pulse of its own, a depiction that ignores the actual innovation it brought to the slasher genre. That innovation is a big part of what sets this film apart from countless others that came out in the early 80s, and it is focused entirely on one specific aspect of the film: its novel use of the traditional “killer’s point of view” (POV) shot. Cunningham took what previous films had done in this area and applied it in new ways, effectively ratcheting up the tension and creating something new in the genre.
Before looking at the movie itself, it’s important to look back at the films that inspired Friday the 13th and, in particular, how they used the killer POV shot. Any discussion of the origin of this killer’s POV pretty much has to start in one place: the shower. With one scene, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) brought the audience into the killer’s head as he attacked, creating a truly unnerving experience that still packs a punch today and left audiences absolutely rattled in 1960. But Hitchcock actually doesn’t use much of the killer’s POV in that scene. The power of that attack comes in large part from the pace of the editing, with Hitchcock employing thirty-three different cuts in the twenty-four-second attack. Only a few of those are from what we would eventually come to know as that killer POV, from Norman’s perspective, while the majority of the thirty-three shots come from a neutral camera view. Nonetheless, the path had been laid.
Despite the prominent position of Psycho in the horror canon, it was more accurately another 1960 film released just before Psycho that really pushed this idea forward. Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom featured a serial killer who films his murders. In the opening scene, the killer meets and murders a prostitute, and we, the audience, watch the scene unfold through the killer’s camera, covertly filming the encounter from his pocket.
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom
As the title implies, this idea of voyeuristically watching the killer commit his crimes was central to Peeping Tom; as a result, more than Psycho, this was the film that established this POV shot as a convention of the emerging slasher genre.
Elements of this POV could be found in the coming years, particularly in the Italian giallo films of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, but the next major step forward came in 1974 with the release of Black Christmas, a nasty take on the most wonderful time of the year directed by Bob Clark (who would go on to present a decidedly different view of Christmas with 1984’s A Christmas Story).
Black Christmas is often held up as the first true slasher, and with good reason. This is the film that established so many of the conventions we now associate with the subgenre – the final girl, the open-ended/twist ending, the holiday setting that was so big in the 80s, and of course, the killer POV. Here, Clark uses that POV for virtually every one of the killer’s attacks, and he establishes it early. At the very beginning of the film, we enter the sorority house with the killer as he breaks into the attic. When the first murder occurs, the killer is hiding in a closet. We learn he is in the room through Clark’s switching to his POV, watching the victim from the back of the closet. As the film continues, Clark keeps returning to that POV in those two ways: either during the actual murders or as the killer is hidden in the attic (typically accompanied by his watching the wrapped-up corpse of his first victim and unnervingly screeching about Billy).
The final bridge before Friday the 13th is, of course, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Carpenter re-uses many of the slasher trappings we saw in Black Christmas, though he actually does not rely heavily on the killer POV. In fact, he breaks with Clark’s conventions by using it sparingly for just one of the murders. In the film’s opening, we see through the eyes of six-year-old Michael Myers as he first spies on his sister with her boyfriend then dons a mask before stalking and murdering her. Perhaps most effectively, Carpenter stays with that POV shot as Michael leaves the house, watching his confused parents approach and remove his mask. It’s only then that we switch to a neutral camera angle, seeing Michael’s face for the first time (the only time we will see him until the film’s climax). It’s an incredibly powerful sequence, made more impactful both by Carpenter’s use of the killer’s POV, and his decision to limit that POV to this one sequence.
With all of these conventions firmly established, Cunningham set out to perform a seemingly typical execution of the genre when he made Friday the 13th two years later, in 1980. In many ways, Cunningham does indeed use the path already laid out for him. There’s the final girl, the twist ending, the vague holiday setting (though not often referenced, the film is not called Friday the 13th for no reason), and even a score that owes a debt to Bernard Hermann’s Psycho score. It also starts with a typical use of the killer POV. Two counselors sneak off, and under the watchful eye of our unseen killer, they proceed to take off their clothes and promptly pay for their indiscretion. As in Halloween, those opening murders immediately show that the killer POV is a part of this film’s toolbox.
During the film’s next section (the daytime portion before the murders begin in earnest), Cunningham uses the killer POV in two ways. First, he again emphasizes that this will be a tool used for the murders themselves. This time, the victim is the unfortunate Annie, who makes the terrible decision to hitchhike and is picked up by the killer, only to be murdered before she even makes it to camp. During the sequences where Annie is with the killer, both in the car and for the actual murder, we watch the scene through the killer’s POV. Again, this is similar to how this shot has previously been used.
The second way is slightly different. As the counselors unwind and swim, the killer watches them from the other side of the lake. There’s a slight break from convention here as no attack is coming and we know no attack is coming – the killer is clearly far away – but we are still using that POV style. Peeping Tom did this a bit, as did Black Christmas with the attic scenes, but it’s a small break from how it had primarily been used until now.
Things change drastically in the scene where Marcie is killed. (You would certainly be forgiven for not knowing any of the counselor’s names; Marcie is the one who gets the axe in the face.) In these movies, when a lone girl goes off by herself to a remote location – in this case, the bathroom – we know her time is up. And at first, this looks like a standard kill. Marcie is in the bathroom, standing at the sink, looking away from the camera and we watch her from what has been established as the killer’s POV. The camera is at a distance, and on the left side of the shot is the frame of the open bathroom door, implying that the killer is partially behind the door, watching. With Marcie turned away, the camera moves forward slowly, advancing on our unsuspecting victim-to-be.
And that’s when Cunningham pulls off a pretty impressive trick.
Marcie turns, looks straight at the camera, and there’s no one there.
Marcie and the neutral camera’s POV
What was staged to look like the killer’s POV is, in fact, not the killer – it’s just the neutral camera. This is a complete shift from what we saw in the murders of the two counselors in the beginning and with Annie; in both of those situations, we watched the killer advance, we saw the victim look to the camera/killer, and then the attack. Here, Cunningham sets it up in exactly the same way, only to subvert our expectations, remove the killer, and deny us the anticipated attack.
The result of this is rather brilliant. As the audience, we thought we knew where the killer was – we felt relatively safe in our knowledge of how this attack was going to play out. And now that feeling of safety is gone. The killer could be anywhere. Cunningham subtly reinforces this notion by showing the scene from outside looking through the window, forcing as to ask if this is the actual killer POV. Again, we don’t know. Marcie then turns to the closed showers, opening the curtains one at a time. This again emphasizes the idea that not only does Marcie not know where the killer is, we don’t either. It is only when we see the shadow of the axe behind her that we know the attack is coming.
Cunningham repeats this trick later with the scene when Bill goes to check on the generator and get the power back on. Like Marcie, he has gone off alone, and like Marcie, we assume this means he’s done for. Just like Marcie at the sink, he begins working on the generator, his back to the camera. Again, the camera slowly moves in, the music swells, the attack feels imminent, Bill turns, and… nothing. It’s not the killer, it’s just the camera.
This trick of setting us up to think we are watching from the killer’s POV, only to find out it is actually the camera is a brilliant innovation. Nowhere in the use of this shot in previous films had a director fooled us like this. Until now, when we saw that killer POV, we knew the attack was coming. By taking that certainty away, Cunningham expertly dials the tension up in this film. Now, the conventions we are used to are failing us. We don’t know where the killer is, when she is attacking. Even worse, we are being tricked into thinking we know, creating a false sense of security that is then yanked away from us. As a result, the tension rises not only in the actual attack scenes, but in all scenes. With that safety gone, we can no longer relax and wait for the next murder sequence to begin. Like the victims in the film, we don’t know when it’s coming, or where it’s coming from, and the result is a big part of the tension of Friday the 13th.
While the two scenes described above best capture this change, there are two other ways the film reinforces the idea. The first is a sort of an inverse of what we saw above. This happens when Alice and Bill break into the office. The camera starts with them and is obviously just a camera. Then, they break a window and enter the office. But the camera stays outside, and moves along the wall, ultimately “watching” Alice and Bill through the window.
The camera “watches” Alice and Bill
We know this is the camera, but Cunningham is again moving it more like it is the actual killer, watching the prey from afar. This contributes to that uneasy feeling of “Is this or isn’t this the killer?”
The other key change Cunningham makes here is that he removes the “tell” from these shots. In previous films, there was never any doubt that we had switched to the killer POV because the directors used various tells to really make the point clear. In Peeping Tom, it’s the cross-hairs of the camera. In Black Christmas, it’s the labored breathing and yells of the killer that always accompany these shots. In Halloween, Carpenter actually starts without a tell; that opening shot of the house could just be the camera before you realize it is Michael. But he then has Michael put on the mask, with us now watching through the eye holes.
Friday the 13th eschews all of that. The killer makes no noise. Often, there is the trademark Mancini music, but that music also plays many times when we are not in the killer’s POV. There’s no clear signal to the viewer that this is the POV shot, and so, again, that sense of disorientation and unease increases as the tension builds.
By first establishing the use of the previously established killer POV trope, then twisting that trope and using it in a new way, Friday the 13th breaks new ground. It is here that the film shows that it is not a mere imitator, but it is taking what has been done and heightening it to instill that sense of fear and tension that every horror viewer craves. Director Sean S. Cunningham and director of photography Barry Abrams seldom get credit for this work, but they deserve it. Not only is the idea of flipping the killer’s POV an inspired one, but with the use of little details like the bathroom door frame, the camera outside the window, and the removal of the tells, the execution of this idea is pulled off perfectly. It is this that rightfully should earn Friday the 13th the credit from critics it has so seldom received.
Sadly, while Jason and the franchise would live on for another 11 films (to date), Cunningham’s work here would not be repeated. Already by Part 2, this trick was left to the side, replaced by a combination of the traditional killer POV, and an emphasis on effective, but completely illogical surprise jump scares. But that’s an article for another time.
Notes:
[1] “Friday the 13th: THR’s 1980 Review.”
[2] Parker
[3] “Box Office History for Friday the 13th Movies.”
[4] Ford
Works Cited:
“Box Office History for Friday the 13th Movies.” The Numbers, n.d., www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Friday-the-13th#tab=summary.
Ford, Matt. “Friday the 13th (1980).” BBC, 10 Oct. 2000 www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/10/10/friday_the_13th_1980_review.shtml.
“Friday the 13th: THR’s 1980 Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Nov. 2014, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/friday-13th-read-thrs-scathing-745573.
Parker, Jason. “Gene Siskel’s Original Friday The 13th Mini Review For The Chicago Tribune.” Friday the 13th, 3 Jun. 2012, www.fridaythe13thfranchise.com/2012/06/gene-siskels-original-friday-13th-mini.html.
