Friday The 13th

Of all the things to lead to a genre-defining series, the original Friday The 13th movie (yes, I did choose a Friday the 13th to review that movie) is one of the most bizarre and mystifying. Instead of the iconic hockey-masked monster, there’s a middle-aged woman and a vague attempt at a mystery. Not one element of it stands out from the pack of later slashers. If it had been made as little as a year later, no one would have paid it any mind.

The plot is simple: A bunch of would-be camp counselors are killed by a vengeful mother until one of them, Final Girl Alice, turns the tables and kills her. Yet it was in the right place and the right time, and the rest is history.

(Weirdly, the later and more goofy Friday films are actually the best-made, but that’s a story for another post).