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1* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: When Betsy Palmer was approached for the role, [[MoneyDearBoy it turned out it paid exactly enough for her to buy a new car, since her old one had just died.]] Upon reading the script, she declared it the worst she'd ever seen and that no one would ever see the movie, and she'd take the part.
2* AssPull: You can't really call the killer's reveal a twist, since [[spoiler:Pamela is never once seen or even mentioned before it happens, and her murders imply someone with a lot more muscle than her]].
3* BigLippedAlligatorMoment:
4** When a policeman shows up at the camp looking for Crazy Ralph, it is badly timed to Ned running out of the cabin dressed as an Indian, screaming and dancing around. He says "oh shit" when he spots the cop but the characters don't bat an eyelid. It adds nothing to the plot and is just so random.
5** Right before she's killed, Marcy is in the outhouse and randomly looks into the mirror to do a Creator/KatharineHepburn impression, quoting ''The Rainmaker''.
6* CriticProof: Would you believe that it was nominated for a "Worst Picture" MediaNotes/GoldenRaspberryAward? Critics more or less hated it (it's been better-received in retrospect), but it went on to be one of the biggest slasher films ever made.
7* EnsembleDarkhorse:
8** Believe it or not, [[spoiler: Jason Voorhees. He's dead and only appears in a dream sequence and flashback but is one of the most memorable parts of the film. So much so he became the BigBad of the franchise starting with the second film and became one of the most iconic slasher villains of all time.]]
9** Crazy Ralph is very memorable among viewers thanks to his over-the-top paranoid demeanor.
10* EpilepticTrees: Before [[spoiler: Brenda]] dies, she's lured to her fate by the sound of a child calling for help. When we see [[spoiler: "Jason" talking through Pamela's voice, Pamela just uses a slightly higher version of her voice, nothing like the child]]. Another thing to note is that when [[spoiler: Brenda's body gets thrown through the window]], it would have been difficult for [[spoiler: Pamela to run to her Jeep from that distance from the cabin right before she meets Alice]]. When [[spoiler: Pamela sees Brenda's body]], she apparently feigns innocence by wondering who did that to her before [[spoiler: immediately dropping the act to chase Alice]]. This has led some to theorize that [[spoiler: it was actually Jason that killed Brenda rather than Pamela]]. However, [[spoiler: the glimpse you get of the hand that turns the lights on in the archery range is Mrs. Voorhees']].
11** Around seventeen minutes into the film, there is a shaky camera shot from behind some trees that initially appears to be a MurdererPOV accompanied by a scary musical cue, which on first glance seems to imply that [[spoiler:Mrs. Voorhees]] is stalking Alice. While it is remotely possible that it was indeed [[spoiler:Mrs. Voorhees]] reconnoitering the area and hearing that Annie had not yet arrived at the camp (thus allowing [[spoiler:her to target Annie as her first onscreen victim in 1979]]), the chronology of the narrative and the fact that [[spoiler:her Jeep is driving toward rather than away from the camp when it appears in the following scene]] would lead a viewer to believe that this shot takes place around the same time that [[spoiler:Mrs. Voorhees]] is already driving to pick up a hitchhiking Annie from the opposite direction (and therefore when [[spoiler:she]] should not be physically present at the camp). Given this, an alternative explanation unintended by the filmmakers at the time but that would be an easy {{Retcon}} might be that [[spoiler:Jason is the one that is actually spying on Alice in this moment]] (which would also explain how [[spoiler:he knows what she looks like to target her]] in the opening sequence of the [[Film/FridayThe13thPart2 following film]]).
12* FirstInstallmentWins: While there are a decent number of fans who prefer the sequels, [[Film/FridayThe13th1980 the original]] (with ''[[Film/FridayThe13thPartVIJasonLives Part VI: Jason Lives]]'' as its closest competition) is still widely considered the one film in the series the whole fandom can agree is good and the one critics are most likely to give good remarks on.
13* HarsherInHindsight: Alice getting stalked by psycho-killers is uncomfortable to watch if you hear about Adrienne King's bad experience with a LoonyFan after the movie came out - and it made her quit acting.
14* HoYay: The strip Monopoly game has as much tension with the female members as the men.
15* HypeBacklash: While seen in a [[VindicatedByHistory much more favorable light now than it was when it initially came out]], many contemporary critics have cited the film as still being [[SoOkayItsAverage rather mediocre]] for its genre despite being one of the most iconic slasher movies, citing issues such as an awkward pacing, too many plot elements "borrowed" from similar films which preceded it, and flat protagonists (albeit still sympathetic and well-acted).
16* ItWasHisSled: By now, the twist regarding the killer is pretty well known, especially thanks to the opening of ''Film/Scream1996'' famously spoiling it.
17** This might be a bit of a cyclical trope. People who only know of Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees from pop culture (and perhaps having only seen a few of the recent movies) might find the first movie surprising, if they don't know the ending already. Later entries in the series serendipitously make the first movie all that much more surprising for people who haven't seen it nor been spoiled about it.
18* JerkassWoobie: [[spoiler:Pamela Voorhees. The novelization implies she only went on a killing spree to save further campers from Jason's fate.]] Betsy Palmer even viewed her as one, giving her a sympathetic backstory that involved getting disowned by her parents for a TeenPregnancy.
19* MisaimedFandom: Betsy Palmer has been consistently baffled over the decades during autographs and convention appearances how many people seem to sincerely love her character. There have been numerous mothers who have expressed their sympathy for her loss, and bring their young children for Palmer to hold in photos. [[spoiler:While Pamela ''is'' meant to be at least somewhat sympathetic (particularly in the novelization, where she's a WellIntentionedExtremist who wants to spare other parents from having to go through what she did), at the end of the day, she's a broken, deranged woman whose murderous rampage accomplishes absolutely nothing besides getting herself and a group of innocent teenagers killed, while likely motivating her NotQuiteDead son to become a serial murderer himself in the later movies.]]
20* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler: Pamela's rampage against Crystal Lake may be lashing out in grief for negligence, but she also kills many innocent teens who had ''nothing'' to do with her son's death. Her murders of Annie (who specifically wanted to be a councilor [[FriendToAllChildren to support and help children]]) and Brenda (who was searching for a [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished scared and lost child]]) shows just how low she's sunk in her pursuit of vengeance.]]
21* NarmCharm:
22** Marcie's [[spoiler:death via an axe to the face]] can be hilarious due to how she just stands there and screams instead of trying to run away. Doesn't stop it from being an iconic death though.
23** Marcie's infamous Katharine Hepburn impression might be random, but it's quite funny.
24** [[spoiler:Mrs. Voorhees alternating her voice between her own and "Jason's", due to it selling how far gone she is]].
25* ObviousJudas: A notable example overlapping with AssPull, since it had more to do with the "Judas" in question suddenly appearing rather than how they were foreshadowed as such. Towards the end of a film where the killer's identity has been shrouded in mystery with practically no hints whatsoever, [[spoiler:in steps one Pamela Voorhees, claiming to be an old friend of the camp's owner. It doesn't take long before this woman who showed up out of nowhere and with no buildup or explanation reveals herself as the killer, shortly after telling Alice her [[MamaBear motive]].]]
26* OneSceneWonder:
27** Crazy Ralph appears twice in the film, and steals the show both times.
28** Rex Everhart has only a few minutes of screen time as Enos, the trucker who gives Annie a lift, but he provides some important exposition and foreshadows what's going to happen.
29** [[spoiler:Jason Voorhees in Alice's pre-ending-nightmare, which has him rising from Crystal Lake, dead and rotting, and pulling her under the surface]].
30* {{Padding}}:
31** The overly long scene where Alice makes and drinks a cup of coffee.
32** The sequence of Alice finding a snake in the cabin and the teens all banding together to kill it does very little but pad the run time. Perhaps the only thing it accomplishes is providing a RedHerring by making Bill look like TheHero and Alice squeamish - possibly for his death to be more of a surprise. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't in the script and was a random suggestion by Tom Savini.
33** Marcie and Jack's talk in the thunder storm seems like a flimsy attempt at a 'character moment'. Marcie's ominous dream does little to {{Foreshadow}} that something bad is going to happen, since Annie and Ned have already been killed (although Ned's body isn't found until later).
34* ParanoiaFuel: [[spoiler:Unlike in the sequels, where the killer is obviously bad news, the killer is a seemingly-ordinary woman [[TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse you could see on the street and not look twice at]]. Not helping matters is how she's able to present herself as a decent, helpful person, at least for a time.]]
35* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/KevinBacon has one of his earliest appearances in this film as Jack Burrell, thus giving everyone in the film a [[SixDegreesOfKevinBacon Bacon score]] of 1.
36* SignatureScene:
37** The opening couple being swiftly murdered after lovemaking. Giving us the first kills of the now-iconic franchise.
38** The reveal that the killer is [[spoiler: Pamela Voorhees. Who decided to kill the camp counselors in vengeance for her seemingly dead son, Jason.]]
39** Alice [[spoiler: slicing off the head of Pamela with a machete]]. One of the series’ most iconic scenes for setting the plots of the later sequels in motion.
40** Alice [[spoiler: getting pulled underwater by the still-alive Jason. As well as the bone-chilling ending revealing that Jason is still underwater]].
41* SpecialEffectFailure:
42** Offscreen lightning strikes are simulated by flashing lightbulbs at actors.
43** When [[spoiler:Pamela]] is decapitated, it's very obvious that [[spoiler:Pamela]]'s hands in the scene don't belong to [[spoiler:Betsy Palmer]] but a very hairy man.
44*** Plus if you watch it in slow motion, you can see her head comes off right as the machete strikes her neck, not after going through it.
45** When [[spoiler: Jack Burell]] is stabbed through the neck, the neck is very obviously fake and he's just sticking his head through a hole in the pillow since the neck is a different skin tone than the head.
46* TearJerker:
47** [[spoiler: The villain isn't Jason, but rather his mother Pamela, who went completely insane after the supposed "death" of her son. Then the ending and the sequels reveal ''he was never dead to begin with'', meaning her horrible deeds accomplished nothing -- except to inspire an innocent child to become a violent serial killer in her name.]]
48** Annie's death. She's set up as a DecoyProtagonist, making viewers think she'll be in the film for a while. She seems to be a NiceGirl whose dream is to work with children. And she's the first one killed off, right as she pleads with [[spoiler: Pamela]] to spare her.
49** Brenda's death as well. She's lured out to the archery range when she hears what sounds like a crying child. Even though it's a storm outside, she goes out to help a child in trouble, and gets killed for it.
50** Poor Alice breaks apart as she tells [[spoiler: Mrs Voorhees]] about how all her friends have been killed. She's given a HopeSpot but then realises she's with ''the killer'', and she's even begging when [[spoiler: Pamela]] raises a weapon to her.
51* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter:
52** Rather than stock characters, the counsellors themselves have shades of some interesting personas - Jack possibly obsessed with motorcycles, Marcy having ominous dreams and being a surrogate big sister to Ned, Alice supposedly having been with Steve and also being a budding artist - but few of these traits are fleshed out or incorporated into the story proper.
53** [[spoiler:Pamela Voorhees could have been a much more compelling character if she wasn't introduced in the last fifteen minutes of the film]].
54* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The ending JumpScare of [[spoiler: a zombie Jason Voorhees rising out of the lake to grab Alice]] is immediately squandered by it being AllJustADream. A perfect SequelHook and twist is ruined for an ambiguous TheEndOrIsIt that rips off the ending of ''Film/Carrie1976'' and doesn't even make sense in the context of the film, since, [[spoiler: unlike ''Carrie'', nothing explicitly supernatural happens or is suggested to have happened (ignoring the sequels where Jason really is undead)]]. It makes even less sense with [[Film/FridayThe13thPart2 the sequel]], which blatantly {{retcon}}ned the ending to Jason [[{{Asspull}} never having drowned at all]] in order to exist. Even if you didn't mind the ending however, it could become harder to stomach in a marathon viewing, considering [[spoiler: they did the exact same ending fake-out ''three movies in a row'']].
55* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Betsy Palmer was only in the film because she needed money and thought it was a piece of shit from beginning, but this didn't stop her from trying to make it better. She was the one who came up with [[spoiler:Pamela's]] backstory and tried to have the producers foreshadow her before [[spoiler:the killer twist]] (which obviously didn't happen), and she delivers an A-Game performance her whole time on screen. Critics [[VindicatedByHistory at the time]] frequently pointed to her performance as the one saving grace of the entire movie.
56* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
57** Steve wears jean cut-off short-shorts and a neckerchief in his first scene, a get-up that inspires snickers today.
58** Teens quoting Creator/HumphreyBogart and Creator/KatharineHepburn, which were already pretty old-fashioned references at the time.
59* UnintentionallySympathetic: Despite smoking weed and getting into strip games with the rest of the cast, Brenda proves to be exactly the kind of camp attendant [[spoiler: Mrs. Voorhees would have wanted watching over her son]] when she tries to save Ned from drowning (who's only playing around) and runs off into a thunderstorm because she thinks a child needs help. This makes [[spoiler: her death]] all the more tragic.
60* ValuesDissonance:
61** When the film originally came out, it was considered incredibly shocking and exploitative (Creator/GeneSiskel even stated it should have had an X rating and that it was "one of the most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business"), with reviews using terms such as "sickening", "nauseating", and "trash". By modern standards, it's very tame for a SlasherMovie (including its own sequels), especially with the rise of the TorturePorn genre, some contemporary critics even citing ''not enough kills'' as a criticism.
62** When Bill cuts the head off the snake, it's a real, live snake being killed on-screen. You can't get away with something like that today. Reportedly, the snake's handler didn't know the snake was going to be killed and became so enraged that he had to be held back by crew members backstage. However, [[http://www.onstage.goodmantheatre.org/2020/10/29/alice-maguire-on-friday-the-13th-kevin-bacon-jason-voorhees-and-a-rubber-frying-pan-oh-my/ according to Alice Maguire]], who worked in the film’s art department, “the handler that brought it said it was a sick snake and would have been killed anyway.”
63** A middle-aged trucker giving a young teenage girl a ride would raise a few eyebrows now, him asking if all the camp counselors are as cute as her would sound alarm bells, let alone grabbing her butt to support her.
64** Ned's 'Indian dance' complete with a dollar-store quality 'war bonnet' is intensely cringe-worthy nowadays.
65* VindicatedByHistory: Was trashed by critics at the time that saw it as exploitive, misogynistic garbage that only sadists love. Nowadays it’s been retroactively re-evaluated as a horror classic with great scares and impressive kills, and an essential horror film that helped jumpstart the Slasher genre.
66* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Believe it or not, there were at least a few critics, most notably Creator/GeneSiskel, who thought this movie was a response to the women’s rights movement and that it and the filmmakers were anti-woman with how many women get killed. This is in spite of the fact that every male main character gets killed just as brutally (if not more so) then the women and encourages the FinalGirl (who averts TokenWholesome) as a survivor who is successful in fending off the killer [[spoiler: who is also a woman]].

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