Friday The 13th - Special Edition (2 Disc Set) (1980) ~ DVD

The Terror Before The Mask Eleven years ago, a small boy drowned while attending a summer camp on Crystal Lake. The camp was shut down soon after the incident, but has recently been re-opened by a young couple. The local residents have not yet recovered from the tragedy and warn the counselors not to stay. While preparing the camp for the summer season, the counselors begin to disappear, one by one, as a murderer attempts to stop the rebirth of Camp Crystal Lake. Special Features Disc 1 Commentary by Director Sean S. Cunningham Featurette Return to Crystal Lake: The Making of Friday the 13th Theatrical Trailer Disc 2 A Friday the 13th Reunion: Cast Members Betsy Palmer and Adrienne King, Writer Victor Miller and Composer Harry Manfredini Reunite Fresh Cuts: New Tales from Friday the 13th: New Recollections About the Making of the Film The Man Behind the Legacy: Sean S. Cunningham Lost Tales from Camp Blood Part 1: New Vignette Styled After the Original Movie Vintage Featurettes The Friday the 13th Chronicles & Secrets Galore Behind the Gore Review "This splatter flick, along with John Carpenter's Halloween, helped spawn the great horror-movie movement of the '80s, not to mention eight sequels, many of which had nothing to do with the films that preceded them. It also gave birth to Jason Voorhees, one of the three biggest horror-movie psychos of the modern era (the other two being Halloween's Michael Myers and A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger). Forever duplicated, the original Friday the 13th popularized a number of themes and techniques that today are now clichés: the increasingly gory murders, the remote forest location, the anonymous and nubile cast, the murderer as cult hero, and, of course, the moral that if you have sex, you will die, very painfully. Still, if you have to see a Friday the 13th movie, this is the one to check out. A group of eager (and horny) teenagers decide to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, which 20 years earlier was closed after the shocking and mysterious murders of two amorous camp counselors. You can take it from there, as the teens get picked off one by one, during a dark and stormy night; of course, their car won't start and there's no phone. The ending stole shamelessly from Brian De Palma's Carrie, but it still provides a slight if campy shock. Look for a young Kevin Bacon as the requisite stud--you can tell that's what he is because when the cast appears in swimsuits, he's wearing a Speedo--who's the beneficiary of the film's best murder sequence, an arrowhead to the throat. Right after having sex, of course." --Mark Englehart