‘Friday the 13th’ Turns 45! 8 Things You Didn’t Know About the Iconic Slasher Film

FRIDAY THE 13TH, Jeannine Taylor, 1980, — © Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

Jason Voorhees first started haunting campers — and moviegoers — 45 years ago today, with the release of Friday the 13th on May 9, 1980. The slasher film followed camp counselors (including a very young Kevin Bacon) as they were picked off one by one by a killer who turns out to be — spoiler alert! — the mother of Jason, the young boy whose drowning death she blames on the teens.

Today, after 10 sequels, more than $400 million in box office receipts, and countless jump scares, the hockey-masked baddie still remains one of horror’s most terrifying villains. And considering that there might be a prequel series in the works (more on that later), it’s a great time to brush up on all the machete-wielding chaos. So read on for eight things you didn’t know about the film that taught us all to be scared of summer camp.

1The first Jason has a band called First Jason

Ari Lehman, the former child actor who originated the role of the franchise’s Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th, later started a punk metal band called First Jason. In a 2012 interview (per The Telegraph), Lehman said, “First Jason is a musical experience that channels the inner workings of the mind of Jason Voorhees. Jason is silent: First Jason is the voice of Jason Voorhees.”

2Betsy Palmer thought the script was a “piece of junk”

Though Betsy Palmer made a name for herself among horror fans as Mrs. Voorhees, she initially resisted the job. “I read [the script] and I said, ‘What a piece of junk! Nobody is ever going to see this piece of crap,’” she said in a 2004 interview, per The Telegraph.

But Palmer’s old Mercedes was also turning into a piece of junk, apparently, and so the actor signed on for Friday the 13th to earn the $1,000-per-day fee and buy herself a new Volkswagen.

3Cinematographer Barry Abrams had a horrifying encounter with a beaver

While cinematographer Barry Abrams was filming Friday the 13th, a beaver tried to bite his genitals, as Dave Grove wrote in the book On Location in Blairstown: The Making of Friday the 13th.

“He went down to the lake to take a pee and the beaver snapped at his privates. He ran back up and said, ‘There’s an anti-semitic beaver down at the lake!’” Grove recounted to Entertainment Weekly with a laugh in 2013. “These people were out in the middle of nowhere.”

4The film score has a spoiler

The “ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma” sound effect heard in Harry Manfredini’s Friday the 13th score hints at the fact that it’s Mrs. Voorhees who’s the killer. “If you remember the movie, there’s a scene towards the end where there’s a close-up on Mrs Voorhees’ mouth,” the composer once explained to Slasherama.com. “It goes between the sound of Jason saying, ‘Kill her mommy!’, then the mother’s voice, and back and forth. So I got the idea of taking the ‘ki’ from ‘kill’ and the ‘ma’ from ‘mommy,’ but spoke them very harshly, distinctly, and rhythmically into a microphone and run them through this ’70s echo thing. It came up as you hear it today! So every time there was the perspective of the stalker, I put that into the score.”

5It got nominations at the first Razzie Awards

At the inaugural Razzie Awards in 1981, Friday the 13th was nominated for Worst Picture, and Betsy Palmer was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress. Luckily for the film, it “lost” Worst Picture to Village People musical Can’t Stop the Music, and Palmer’s category went to Honeysuckle Rose star Amy Irving.

6A prequel series may be forthcoming

Camp Crystal Lake promo art

In October 2022, Peacock gave a straight-to-series order to a Friday the 13th prequel series titled Crystal Lake. “Friday the 13th is one of the most iconic horror franchises in movie history, and we were dying to revisit this story with our upcoming drama series,” Susan Rovner, then chairman of entertainment content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, said at the time, per Variety.

Nearly two years later, Brad Caleb Kane (It: Welcome to Derry) boarded the project as showrunner, and just weeks ago, Linda Cardellini signed on the dotted line to play Pamela Voorhees, as Variety reported.

7There was a previous spin-off series … sort of

A syndicated show called Friday the 13th: The Series began airing in 1987, but it had nothing to do with Jason or buxom camp counselors in danger; instead, it was about an antiques store that sold cursed objects. Its main connection to the franchise was that it was co-created by Frank Mancuso Jr., who produced multiple Friday the 13th sequels. Despite the lack of connection to the film, it still ran for three seasons and 72 episodes.

8The summer camp was real … and is still in operation

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A post shared by Crystal Lake Tours (@crystallaketours)

Friday the 13th found its Camp Crystal Lake at the real-life Camp NoBeBoSco in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, which remains a working Scouting America campground. The NoBeBoSco website makes no mention of the site’s brush with Hollywood fame, but the Crystal Lake Tours outfit offers fans to visit the camp when scouts aren’t there.