I feel like I used to have a radar that would automatically catch when the 13th day of the month would fall on a Friday. Like in elementary school, I could rattle off which months were going to be considerably ~spookier~. As an adult, it only really registers when I look at the calendar on the day of. Isn’t it funny how that happens?

Anyways, obviously this is a movie blog and it’s Friday the 13th. Of course I’m going to talk about Friday the 13th (1980).

For those who are not familiar, Friday the 13th centers around a group of camp counselors who are being hunted by what is believed to be a camper that drowned years earlier, Jason Voohees. Spoiler alert: they got 50% of the name right. The counselors are brutally murdered one by one, and it even features a young Kevin Bacon,, which is something I always forget until you see his face pop up on your screen.

Friday the 13th spawned an astonishing amount of sequels, and one remake (which somehow I own on Blu-Ray?). In one, Jason makes the journey into hell. It’s a whole thing. It’s also widely considered the film that sparked the slasher genre of the 80’s. The slasher genre is by far my favorite kind of horror movie. A good slasher has you putting your feet up in your chair because you fear your achilles heel might be attacked at any moment. Friday the 13th is one of those movies – there is a reason it’s pointed to and still has an impact on pop culture today. Even today, more than 40 years later, if you go to any campground in the United States, chances are you’ll hear someone make a Jason references, or hear the faint mimics of the iconic theme song.

This is not my favorite slasher by any means (Scream (1996)), but like I mentioned above, it holds up and its impact on pop culture is not one we can ignore. It’s fundamental to horror film. I think a part of me just wishes it hadn’t become a snake that ate itself through the subsequent films. But hey, it’s a quality watch for days like today, when you forget all about how spooky Friday the 13th’s used to be.

Friday the 13th is streaming on Hulu and Amazon with a STARZ add-on.