Film Opening 7: Friday the 13th (1980)

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Release Date: 9th of May 1980 (USA)

Actors: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan 

Production Companies: Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Georgetown Productions Inc., Sean S. Cunningham Films  

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Budget: $550,000 (estimated)

Box Office Domestic:  $39,754,601



Right at the beginning of the film, we see a shot of a lake and a house and hear an audio bridge of people singing. At the same time, the title "Camp Crystal Lake 1958" appears on screen, which denotes the setting.

The audience is taken inside the house, where we see several people around a campfire singing and one playing the guitar. This establishes a state of equilibrium, where all is well and the narrative enigma. However, there is quickly a disruption of the equilibrium, which we notice with the sudden change of non-diegetic music and the shaky footage denoting somebody's point-of-view when walking into the lake house.

After the shaky footage, there is a crosscut back to the room, where the people are sitting around the bonfire. This connotes that something bad is about to happen, since it creates tension by crosscutting from the one creepy shot to the other one where there is a state of equilibrium. 

During the scene of the bonfire, we are introduced to a couple with the use of the rule of thirds. The first shot is of the girl with the guitar who looks over at someone with a smile.

There is then a boy who is a bit more in the left of the screen and after a while they are then both in the middle of the screen. This denotes that they are a couple and is confirmed when they kiss and hold hands.

The Rule of Thirds, is specifically often used in rom-coms, produced by Working Title, such as Love Actually.


The two go to the attic in a barn and start kissing eachother. The audience sees how the killer is then moving closer and closer to the two young people, by following his point-of-view from up the stairs with the use of shaky footage.



The boy is killed first and afterwards we see how the girl is trying to escape without any luck. At first, she doesn't even look scared when someone is coming up the stairs and she only starts saying something after her boyfriend is killed.
Furthermore, she also has blonde hair and the heavy kissing denotes that she is also sexually active. This is therefore a clear example of the stereotype of the scream queen, which is often used in horror movies. A scream queen, is also portrayed as dumb and therefore the one who gets killed first. In this scene, the girl did attept to escape, however she didn't really run but more moved a bit backward rather than running like a clever final girl would have done.
In my first evaluation question, I will be discussing how we challenged this stereotypical convention of the scream queen.