Okay, okay. This series jumped the shark probably as early as the 90th minute of this first entry but, strip away all the horrible reviews of various sequels and remakes and here you find a surprisingly tense movie which plays on very simple fears we all feel when out in the wilderness. The 1958 prologue shows two young Crystal Lake camp counsellors engaging in some fumbling foreplay before an unknown person appears and murders them. Cut forward to Friday the 13th 1980 and we find Steve Christy attempting to open the camp again for a new stream of summer dwelling children. What Steve and the other arriving counsellors don't realise, however, is that the same murderer from 1958 is stalking the woods and picking them off one by one, this fulfilling Crazy Ralph's prophecy that they're 'all doomed'. If you've read anything about this film, or seen the opening of Scream, you'll know who the killer is but, in a way, that's not important. Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller perhaps knew they couldn't match Carpenter's incredible Halloween, but shifted the action to the woods. Here, they play on the simple fears of not knowing who is behind that tree or even, how long it'll take to get help. Like many films on this list, it succeeds because it takes a very simple premise and doesn't try to add anything. Like Bay of Blood and Black Christmas before it, all you need is one stalker and one victim and you have a horror film.
