Friday the 13th poster (1980)
Ch ch ch ch ch ha ha ha ha ha ch ch ch ch ha ha ha ha…In 1980 a movie came out that gave children new things to have nightmares about and started a new horror franchise. That’s right Friday the 13th was released! Some people wonder where the whole Friday the 13th being bad luck thing came from. Wikipedia states that the earliest known reference is “Henry Sutherland Edwards’ 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini, who died on a Friday 13th.”
Here are some more things that Wikipedia has to say about it:
“One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.
-In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the clock, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, the 12 successors of Muhammad in Shia Islam, twelve signs of the Zodiac, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
-Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century’s The Canterbury Tales, and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects.
-One author, noting that references are all but nonexistent before 1907 but frequently seen thereafter, has argued that its popularity derives from the publication that year of Thomas W. Lawson’s popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth, in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.
-Records of the superstition are rarely found before the 20th century, when it became extremely common. The connection between the Friday the 13th superstition and the Knights Templar was popularized in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and in John J. Robinson’s 1989 work Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry. On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of the Knights Templar were arrested in France, an action apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this ruthless move, but it has also tarnished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V’s coronation, the king falsely charged the Templars with heresy, immorality and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were compromised by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church, but would proceed independently. However, experts agree that this is a relatively recent correlation, and most likely a modern-day invention.”
Continue reading to learn about the actual film…
Friday the 13th was directed by Sean S. Cunningham. It was written by Victor Miller and Ron Kurz (uncredited). That wrote about a summer camp that was the site of a child’s drowning. A group of camp counselors are trying to reopen the camp but are stalked and murdered by an unknown killer. This film stars Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan and of course Kevin Bacon. Ari Lehman played the first Jason Voorhees. We were able to meet him and hang out at the Fright Night Film Fest with none other than Roger Corman! This movie features make up effects by Tom Savini. This helped put him on the map as a great make up effects artist.
Now what you’ve all been waiting for….the videos!
