Friday's characterization is minimal, to say the least, but the inclusion on the DVD of a "bonus" short entitled "Lost Tales of Camp Blood — Part One" establishes that Miller & Cunningham knew enough about storytelling to at least provide some recognizable character types (the goofy guy who's always playing pranks on the rest of the cast, the pot-smoking party girl, the crazy coot who delivers an unheeded warning, etc.) In contrast, "Lost Tales" doesn't make the slightest effort at establishing its two victims before it snuffs them out. For all the lambasting that the original received at the hands of mainstream movie critics, at least it worked to hook its teenage audience.
As someone who saw the first Friday the 13th in an old and odiferous Central Illinois movie house the year it came out, I'll admit to having a small soft-spot when it comes to this flick. The movie may be cheap, but it has a go-for-broke honesty that few of its slicker followers can muster. I can still remember jumping during its Deliverance/Carrie-inspired final dream sequence: the one that showed us Jason Voorhees as a moldering mongoloid child corpse leaping onto Adrienne King's canoe to drag her into the depths of Crystal Lake. "He's still out there," the freaked-out heroine tells us at the close of this exploitation classic.
He still is.
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