Friday The 13th (1980)
This quintessential ‘Teenagers Having Sex Get Killed’ horror movie is set at Camp Crystal Lake and is directed by Sean S. Cunningham, from a script by Victor Miller. In addition to spawning a lengthy franchise, and creating an iconic serial killer in the character Jason Voorhees, Friday The 13th employs a number of tropes that would soon become clichés – including ‘The Final Girl’ and the identity of the actual killer being a shocking plot twist.
Camp Crystal Lake has a long and bloody history, and a reputation for having a ‘death curse’ – but that doesn’t stop the owner preparing the camp for operation in 1979. Along with a team of counsellors (played by, among others, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, and Kevin Bacon), he works to refurbish the cabins. When he leaves to collect supplies, the counsellors are slowly picked off in gruesome fashion by a mysterious and brutal killer.
With the owner also killed, one counsellor – Alice – remains alive. She hears a car approaching and rushes out to warn the female driver that there is a killer on the loose, only to discover that the woman is in fact the murderer. She identifies herself as Pamela Voorhees, and explains that she is motivated to kill because her son, Jason, drowned in the lake while camp counsellors were having sex. A chase ensues and Alice manages to kill Mrs. Voorhees and save herself.
Traumatized, she climbs into a boat and allows herself to float out into the lake, whereupon the decaying Jason Voorhees rises from the water to grab her.
