There's a curse at Camp Crystal Lake. It's going to be a Long Night at Camp Blood. Except that didn't turn out to be the title of this movie.

The original Friday the 13th cleverly subverts horror tropes by making the killer a middle-aged mother, capitalizing on the fears associated with the number 13, as well as the success of Halloween in 1978.

Betsy Palmer's portrayal of Pamela Voorhees, who only shows up in the final moments, makes her one of horror's most subversive, and yet misremembered villains. Remember that scene in Scream? The answer is not Jason Voorhees, but it is for the myriad sequels to follow...

With memorable effects by Tom Savini, the success of Friday the 13th led to a surge of slasher movies throughout the early 1980s, not all as successful as this one, and also led to the death of the slasher, until A Nightmare on Elm Street came along to revive it...

They all should have listened to Crazy Ralph!

Hi, everyone. I'm Em. Welcome to Verbal Diorama, episode 276, Friday the 13th.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't. And as always, a huge hi and welcome to Verbal Diorama.

Whether you are a brand new listener, whether you are a regular returning listener, thank you for being here. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast.

Among all of the other podcasts that are currently putting out Halloween or horror or spooky content right now, I am literally exactly the same as all of those. But I'm so happy to have you here for the history and legacy of Friday the 13th.

And obviously, if you're a brand new listener, welcome to this podcast for the very first time. But if you are a regular returning listener, huge thank you to you for continuing to listen, continuing to support this podcast.

This podcast has been going for almost six years.

275 episodes have been put out into the Ethereum, and it really does mean so much for a little indie podcast like me to have your support and lovely comments, things on social media, emails, all that sort of stuff. It's so nice. It really genuinely does keep me going. The most recent episodes of this podcast have been on child's play and a nightmare on Elm street.

And I wanted to do a slasher season. I wanted to go across the seventies and eighties, and I was thinking about the Mount Rushmore of slasher horror.

Now, a lot of people don't include Chucky in that Mount Rushmore, but they do include the three main slushers, a nightmare on Elm street, obviously, and Friday the 13th, a bonf up there. I mean, you could probably hazard a guess to what's coming next.

It's hardly rocket science, but it was important for me to represent something a bit different, and that's kind of where child's play came in to.

But last episode we had Freddy Krueger and this one, the infamous misses Voorhees, because we'll never get that question wrong if Ghostface ever calls.

Jason Voorhees isn't really in this one, but this really gave a bit stab at subverting the horror genre, making us think we had a final girl and then killing her off and giving us a point of view villain before revealing she was just this tiny lady with a huge jumper and an even bigger vendetta against horny teens. Here's the trailer for Friday the 13th.

As a thunderstorm approaches, Steve leads the supplies with no one realizing that hitchhiking Annie has also been murdered. The perky young counsellors drink, smoke weed and have sex, and they start to get killed one by one by someone in the camp. Let's run through the cast.

We have Adrian King as Alice, Harry Crosby as Bill, Janine Taylor as Marcy, Laurie Bartram as Brenda, Kevin Bacon as Jack, Mark Nelson as Ned, Robbie Morgan as Annie, Peter Brower as Steve Christie and Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees. Friday the 13th was written by Victor Miller and was directed by Sean S. Cunningham. So 13 has always been considered an unlucky number.

In the Bible, Judas, who betrayed Jesus, is thought to have been the 13th guest to sit down at the last Supper. In Norse mythology, a dinner party of the gods was ruined by the 13th guest, Loki, who caused the world to be plunged into darkness.

Entire streets have no. 13 missing a partner, blocks refused to have a 13th floor, and hotels won't have a room. 13.

A fear of the number 13 is Trisker decaphobia in Geoffrey Chaucer's famous Canterbury tales, written in the 14th century, he says, and on a Friday fell all this mischance. In Britain, Friday was once known as Hryn runs day because it was usually when people who had been condemned to death would be hanged.

Jesus himself was crucified on a Friday, the day after the last Supper, only to return three days later with the day being named good Friday. To perhaps book the trend of unfortunate Fridays. The fear of Friday the 13th is parascebi decaturiophobia.

There's always at least one Friday the 13th every calendar year, but there can be no more than three in a single calendar year. In the last episode on A Nightmare on Elm Street, I talked a little about the friendship between Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham.

They'd worked together on the last house on the left, which was kind of extreme when it came to visual horror. And then Cunningham had gone off to make Friday the 13th. He would go on to help his friend with some second unit shots on a nightmare on Elm street.

But arguably a nightmare on Elm street wouldn't have existed without Friday the 13th before it. And Friday the 13th wouldn't have existed without Halloween before that.

And why not rip it off and also make bank? He tried to make sports movies for kids, but sports movies for kids weren't really selling at the box office.

But what was selling at the box office was social horror.

Victor Miller had already completed a first draft of what he was tentatively calling long night at Camp blood when Shaun Cunningham proposed the title of Friday the 13th. Miller had already completed a first draft of long night at Camp Blood, but there was no reason in that script for the name Friday the 13th.

Miller loved the idea of turning the tropes of slashes on their heads by having a mother be the killer, because no one would suspect the sweet middle aged lady of anything. But Cunningham didn't actually know if they could use the name Friday the 13th.

It was essentially to try and determine whether anyone else had the rights to the name Friday the 13th, but it also happened to attract financing and it led to investors in Germany and Japan interested in buying into it, as well as 25% of the investment coming from Phil Scuderi, the principal of Georgetown Productions, who also can finance the last house on the left.

But while Cunningham used Hollywood's lust for the next big horror movie post Halloween to his advantage with the ad, Georgetown would request complete creative control over the screenplay and they weren't bowled over by Millers draft. And so they hired Ron Kurz to do an uncredited rewrite.

Kurz would eventually go on to write with credit the screenplay for Friday the 13th part two, but the bare bones of the idea were that it would be set in a summer camp and it would have an unseen assailant.

Friday the 13th would share Halloween's premise of an existing evil entity and good looking horny teenagers who get bumped off after they have sex that Friday, that their teeth would have something. Halloween didn't go, but back to that in a bit because they needed a shooting location and they needed those good looking teenagers.

It was and still is, a working Boy Scout camp housing the Bergen Council Boy Scouts with many of the original buildings still intact as they are portrayed in this movie. A little work was done to the interiors to make it fit the vision they had in mind, but many of those original buildings still stand.

The lake is not called Crystal Lake, but it's actually called Sand Pond and you can book a Crystal Lake tour, the proceeds of which go towards New Jersey councillors properties and programmes. The movie was also filmed in nearby Blairstown, Hope and Hardwicke townships.

To cast the movie, Cunningham contacted Barry Moss and Julie Hughes, who were known for casting Broadway. He wanted good looking actors, not necessarily the best in the business, but a bunch of newcomers who looked like camp counsellors.

They put out an open casting call, a general call rather than casting for specific roles. And hundreds of young wannabe actors in New York came to the audition for Adrian King.

She auditioned for Marcy Abrenda as well as Alice, and got to the final few actresses for the role of Alice. Reportedly the production wanted to hire a known actress.

Sally Field was top of the list for Alice but they couldn't afford Sally Field so it was decided to go with a bunch of unknowns. King got the role after a pretty drawn out screen test where she had to act out an entire scene and also scream repeatedly.

With King cast in the role of lead heroine Alice, Laurie Bartram was hired to play Brenda. Kevin Bacon, Mark Nelson and Janine Taylor, who already knew each other, were cast as Jack, Ned, and Marcy respectively.

And Kevin Bacon in one of his first roles has always been pretty open and honest about the fact he was a jobbing actor and he needed to pay his rent and so he wasn't picky about the jobs he chose.

And now everyone who worked on Friday the 13th is only one degree of Kevin Bacon and technically also two degrees of Bing Crosby, even though that's not a thing because Bing Crosbys son Harry Crosby was given the part of Bill and Robbie Morgan got the part of Annie accidentally as she was auditioning for something else and Moss and Hughes just thought she looked like a camp counsellor. And while the movie would set you up to believe Annie was the final girl, it would be one of many tropes that Friday the 13th would turn on its head.

Cindy Veazy was working as an assistant director on this movie and her boyfriend at the time had just been written out of a tv show. He was working in the garden when Sean Cunningham arrived to speak with Veazey. He saw her boyfriend and thought he would be a great Steve Christie.

And that's how Peter Brower got the role of camp leader Steve Christie. And it would turn out that Steve Christie would know who the Kinner was.

So it wasn't Christie himself, even though the movie attempts to make us think it is by reusing his blue jeep. This was a necessity during filming because they didn't actually have the budget for a separate car. The killer wasn't Estelle Parsons. It almost was.

Parsons would allegedly decline the role, saying it was too violent. Also declining was Shelley Winters.

It made sense to give the role of Pamela Voorhees to a well known film, tv and stage actress who was also known for her news reporting and being a long running quiz panellist. Betsy Palmer was driving home in her Mercedes on a Wednesday from her Broadway play to Connecticut when her car broke down.

She needed a new car and her daughter suggested in Volkswagen Scirocco it was $9,999. But Palmer didn't have the money to buy a new car.

Her agent called her on the Friday and asked her if shed like to do a movie in New Jersey which would pay her $1,000 a day. The only drawback was it was a horror film. Her initial reaction was to say no, but the money would come in handy.

So she asked her agent to send her the script, which she didn't like. She used to swear to refer to it, but it was only ten days of work and would raise the $10,000 she needed to buy the new car.

And to be honest, Betsy Palmer was a consumer professional. She also grew up next to a place called Crystal Lake in Warsaw, Indiana, so she felt like it was a good omen.

Misses Voorhees didn't really have much of a backstory before Pamela arrived on Zed, so she created her own backstory for Pamela that shed gotten pregnant young. Her father had thrown her out of the house and so she ends up at the Salvation army where she gives birth to a baby boy with special needs.

But she does what she can to provide for Jason, taking odd jobs cooking and cleaning, and takes a job at a summer camp when Jason is a young boy, thinking she can work and he can be with children his own age.

But then disaster strikes and she becomes obsessive in her grief and rage, psychotic and almost puritanical about her attitudes to young people having sex and being immoral. Palmer would come to set two weeks after filming started. Film her ten days and by that Volkswagen Sirocco.

And ever since then she's embraced the character. She's appeared on the convention circuit and has completely reversed her opinion on the rubbish movie she signed up to for a $10,000 pay check.

Costume designer Karen Coplan originally envisaged misses Voorhees in a peasant blouse, but the temperature was so cold during the shoot. Parlour was given the famous thick blue sweater to ward off the freezing temperatures and the bouts of rain and snow.

It wasn't, as it's believed, to make Palmer look bulkier and more intimidating. But back to the gore. Because to get that gore, Cunningham went to the man who created the gore in George A. Romero's dawn of the dead. Tom Savini.

Savini was inspired by great makeup artists of the past, like Jack Pearce, who famously created Boris Karloffs Frankenstein, as well as the other universal monsters, Dick Smith, who'd worked on the Godfather and taxi driver, but was most well known for his work on the Exorcist, creating Linda Blairs spinning head and pea soup vomit.

And seven time Academy Award winning makeup artist Rick Baker, who won for an American werewolf in London the first time the award had ever been created. And Savini was tasked with bringing millers kills to life.

Savini had missed out on working with Giorgio Romero on Night of the Living Dead, but he made up for it on dawn of the Dead, and his work on Friday the 13th would lead to him becoming one of the most well regarded makeup effects creators in the eighties. Miller himself would say how he came up with the kills in a Q and A on his website.

All the deaths in that film were borrowed liberally from my childhood nightmares. Until I was ten or eleven, I checked under my bed to make sure nobody was hiding there.

So that's why I had the killer in Friday stab Kevin Bacon from beneath the camp bed. Further, I was always afraid of being smashed in the face. That's why I had the actress get axed in the face.

In that way, I managed to exercise my childhood fears in what I feel was a very healthy way.

Together with his assistant Taso Stavrakis, who also stepped in as an off camera stand in, as well as the pov hands and feet of the killer, they created the lifelike appendages for the various death scenes. But as this was a no budget movie, everything was done quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Savini and Stavrakis set up a makeshift studio within the camp, as well as sleeping in the camp too. When it came to Annies death, they were losing the light while filming.

But Sevini said he could set her up with prosthetic and be back in the woods in 30 minutes. And he was. And that was a simple neck prosthetic that opened as spewed blood.

As actress Robbie Morgan tilted her head back, the effects got a little more rudimentary as the sheet progressed.

With time and money hastily running out, the axe to the face of Marcy ended up just being a joke magic store axe glued to actress Janine Taylors face. And the piece de resistance would be the finale, where misses Voorhees was decapitated.

It was a shoulder rig worn by Tasso Stavrakis, which was decapitated. And if you pause the movie at just the right moment, you can see Mrs Voorhees has surprisingly hairy knuckles.

Savini and Stavrakis would come up with the imaginative kills in the movie, as well as the blood itself. A mix of karo syrup, red food colouring and Kodak photoflow, a chemical for photo developing which aided in both colour and viscosity.

But Kodak photoflow is actually quite poisonous and seriously injured Harry Crosby when his character is impaled with an arrow.

The scream blood seeped between the latex mould of his fake injured eye and Crosbys real eye, exposing him to the chemicals where he started to lose his vision, and he was rushed to hospital. It took six months for his vision to return in that eye. There was also an incident by Kevin Bacons character Jacks death scene on the bed.

His character would get an arrow to the throat from behind, and bacon was kneeling under the bed and his head was attached to a dummy body with the arrow to pierce the neck and release the blood spurt.

But the tube used to pump the blood into the wound separated from its container, and the crew only had one chance to get the shot before the only dummy body they had was ruined. So Stavrakis blew the screen blood through the tube with his mouth in a desperate attempt to save the shot.

But obviously the fake blood completely poisonous. So he hurried to the lake to rinse his mouth, and Bacon himself also got some of the fake blood in his mouth and had to ensure he spat it all out.

Luckily, since those days, a number of new safe blood formulas have been invented specifically for use in the eye and the mouth that are not toxic or poisonous in any way. It is ever so slightly ironic, though, that the human deaths are all faked, with some pain and temporary blindness thrown in for good measure.

But that luxury wasn't afforded to an animal on set. The infamous snake death, which wasnt in the original script, really was a genuine death.

The snake in Friday the 13th was a harmless indigo snake, and it was genuinely hacked to death by a machete.

The handler of the snake apparently didn't know this was going to happen and was incredibly upset, as you would be for the death of an innocent animal.

In another twist of fate, it was he who suggested the seed after finding a snake in his cabin on set, because as I mentioned, he was actually staying in the cabins on set. During filming. Everyone else was set up in a hotel, but he was actually staying in the cabins.

The original ending for Friday the 13th had Alice killing Pamela Voorhees looking out to the lake, relieved that she survived and bendy and credits rolling.

But to give viewers one final jump scare, a new ending was conceived where the presumed dead Jason seeks revenge on his mothers death and grabs Alice with Tom Savini creating a half facial prosthetic for actor Ari Lemon to wear. As the disfigured decomposing Jason.

Not only would it become an infamous twist ending, there was no boy in the lake question mark, but it would also lead to Jason becoming the star of the sequels. Something that wouldn't have been possible without the idea.

And there's really no ideal time to segue from a slasher horror into the obligatory Keanu reference. But this is kind of the only real opportunity I have to do it.

So it's time for the obligatory Keanu reference and this is where I try and the movie that I'm featuring with Keanu Reeves. And this was really tough because Keanu Reeves doesn't really start in slashers. He's not really a horror kind of guy and it's very tenuous.

But about a year ago his band Dogstar, which has him on bass, covered a song originally by the cure during a soundcheck in Sacramento. The song was Friday I'm in love. Now I know it's not Friday the 13th, but you could be in love on Friday the 13th.

Might be unlucky in love, I don't know, but Friday I'm in love. That's kind of the closest I'm gonna get to an obligatory Keanu reference for Friday the 13th in my head canon.

It's Friday, parentheses, the 13th, close parentheses I'm in love. That's the real title of that song.

But speaking of the music, Harry Manfredini was tasked with writing a soundtrack that was stand in for the murderer. In the absence of the visuals of misses Voorhees, who only makes an appearance on screen in the film's final scenes.

Otherwise, the movie is mostly music free.

The sound ki Ki ki mun munma at Misses Voorhees arrival, which originated from her vocalisations of Jason telling her kill her mommy with key coming from Kill and the Ma from mummy. It's not, as many think, chi chi chi ma ma in is kiki ki ma ma.

So unlike for a nightmare on Elm street, which attempted to get distribution with Paramount and failed. Friday the 13th entered into a bidding war for distribution between Paramount, Warner Bros. And United Artists, with Paramount winning.

After putting up $1.5 million, Warner Brothers would acquire the international distribution rights. The success of Halloween led them to believe it was a low risk, high profit deal.

Even with the approximate $1 million spent on advertising, it would rake in over 100 times its budget, making it one of the most profitable movies and making millionaires of those who had taken a profit percentage in lieu of salary, such as director Sean Cunningham and associate producer Steve Minor. Friday the 13th, though, was panned by critics, with many comparing it unfavourably to the movie that inspired it, John Carpenters Halloween.

Gene Siskel even invited people to write letters to Betsy Palmer to let her know what they thought of her decision to take the role. He actually published her home address in his review.

However, thanks to that response, it actually fuelled the publics desire to see what critics were so offended by, and people waited in long lines to see what Friday the 13th was all about and experience how gory and disgusting it was in real life. And of course, following Friday the 13th success, Paramount Pictures immediately acquired the worldwide distribution rights for Warner Bros.

And started planning a sequel.

The original plans for a sequel called for using the Friday the 13th title to refer to a series, odd films that would be released annually and each be a standalone scary movie in its own right.

Even though Jason Voorhees appearance at the end of the first movie was only supposed to be a joke, Phil Scuderi insisted that the sequel had to feature Pamela's son Jason.

The first movies associate producer Steve Miner supported the concept of, and when Cunningham decided not to take over as director again, minor went on to direct the first two sequels, Friday the 13th part two and Friday the 13th part three, which was also filmed in 3d.

The future of the series has been clouded with lawsuits, but there's still hope for more unlucky Fridays.

Miller had only temporarily assigned the rights to his script and was entitled to terminate the transfer of his copyright, with Sean Cunningham retaining international rights. But copyright isn't always so simple as the first child's play.

That Millers work on Friday the 13th means he is only the intellectual property holder of that movie, and Sean Cunningham retains the intellectual property from the sequels. So if Miller wanted to create, let's say, a new Friday the 13th, it wouldn't be able to have Jason Voorhees in it, only his mother.

Because the Jason Voorhees everybody knows with the hockey mask was created in Friday the 13th part three which is owned by Sean Cunningham. So Miller has the right but he's limited to what he can do with them.

For his part, Miller isn't happy with the direction the sequels went in and when asked about them in a Q and A on his website. To be honest I have not seen any of the sequels but I have a major problem with all of them because they make Jason the villain.

I still believe that the best part of my screenplay was the fact that a mother figure was the serial killer working from a horribly twisted desire to avenge the senseless death of her son Jason. Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain. But I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun.

Mrs Voorhees was the mother id always wanted, a mother who would have killed for her kids unquote. And I will admit this is my least favourite of the movies that I've covered this far in October.

I don't think its a bad movie, I actually think it has some of the best jump scares and outlandish deaths.

But you really want me to believe that Misses Voorhees is lying underneath the bed Kevin Bacon is in and is strong enough to drive an arrow up through the springs, the mattress through his back, his chest muscles, up through his neck. I mean it's a great moment but realistically I don't think this tiny angry lady has that in her.

But I do love the whole bait and switch of a dead body above dripping blood onto his face and the real danger is below. The kills in this movie are fun and Tom Savini's effects have aged a little but are still effective.

A monster under the bed really is the ultimate in terror. The snake though, that's a real problem for me. I'm not a fan.

There's no reason to kill an innocent, harmless animal, especially when Tom Savini could have easily made a fake snake.

Anyway, last episode Johnny Depp was the huge celebrity in the cast this time around is Kevin Bacon and unlike deck, I'm always surprised at how open Kevin Bacon is about his casting, about how he needed the money and also regularly interviews about this movie, about his experiences making it, and speaks very fondly of being given this break. Kelly Bacon seems like a good guy.

Four years later his style would explode with foot news and he'd obviously go on to star in huge movies like JFK, Apollon 13, my personal fave, tremors, a few good men, X Men first class. The list goes on. Friday the 13th wasn't his first movie but he's so notable by it mostly because his death is so good.

I do like that this movie also sets up a bait and switch on Annie as the typical final girl only to kill her off. And having misses Voorhees as the villain is so standout. Friday the 13th wouldn't be anything without that reveal.

Twelve sequels later her beloved son is rampaging about killing people in imaginative ways, but mommy dearest was the original and best. I mentioned last episode about how much I enjoyed Wes Craven's new nightmare, and I might still do that next October.

I'm seriously considering it for this series. I haven't actually really seen any of the sequels except for a few clips, but Jason X seems like the craziest sequel.

So maybe if I'm gonna do new Nightmare next October I'll also do Jason X as well.

While this franchise notably erodes because of Halloween, you could also see the inspiration of Psycho with the musical references and the Oedipal complex.

While it might be slower in its setup, focusing a lot on the beautiful young counsellors doing beautiful young counsellor things, once it starts going round hunting each team one by one, it's really quite genius and also really quite well paced as well. This is yet another short movie. All of the movies in this season so far have been around 90 minutes long.

This movie is 95 minutes, so it really zips through.

But really the biggest genius in this movie is Betsy Palmer, who once actually introduced Gough's full psychotic episode, hearing the voices of her dead child begging her to kill. She totally sells this movie. The first person camera sells this movie, the score sells this movie, and the special effects sell this movie.

And as I mentioned last episode around Nightmare on Elm street. This movie then generated a lot of carbon copies.

Thank you for listening. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Friday the 13th. And as always, thank you for your continued support of this podcast.

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I am @verbaldiorama on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram threads, Bluesky and Letterboxd and the next episode spooky season concludes with the seminal slasher I told you it wasn't rocket science.

It wasn't received well at the time, but like many of John Carpenter's movies, is now regarded as a horror classic and the slasher to inspire all future slashers made independently and cheaply.

Like a lot of the movies that I featured this month, it sets up the inimitable Jamie Lee Curtis to become the original Scream queen and to set horror in suburbia, as well as have a truly terrifying villain referred to as the shape, who doesn't speak or communicate and whose only motivation is to kill.

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