What is so special about Friday the 13th?

Answer 1

By today's standards it's not very scary at all. I'm not sure it was even considered to be THAT scary when it first came out, either.

But bloody slasher/stalker movies were a relatively new thing when this movie first came out, in May 1980. Before it were Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978)...and that was about it. Terror Train, which was another slasher movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, came out several months after Friday the 13th, in October 1980. Of course there was Psycho, in 1960, but Psycho really only has one bloody kill scene, and you never even see the knife stab into flesh: it's all suggestive.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out in 1974, and while it is also extremely violent, it's more of an exploitation Horror movie than a slasher/stalker one. For one thing, about half of it takes place during the day. Slasher/stalker movies usually take place at night, with lots of creeping around and a quiet, sparse soundtrack. The loud noise of a chainsaw would be all wrong in a slasher/stalker film.

So Friday the 13th was only like, the third slasher/stalker movie ever. Nowadays, we've seen tons and tons of these movies, and they've gotten much, much gorier. The blood and gore in Friday the 13th is positively tame compared to movies like Hostel and Saw. But back then, the genre was new, and people weren't accustomed to horror movies with multiple bloody, graphic kill scenes.

So even though Friday the 13th probably never really scared people, even back then, that particular style of film was still new, so it wasn't boring and cliched the way it is now. People probably thought it was spooky and fun, if not actually terrifying. Also, the blood and gore was pretty extreme for the time, which gave it at lot of shock value.

Answer 2

Friday the 13th has nothing to do with Christianity.

Because Jesus Christ was believed to have been crucified on Friday, the day before the Jewish Sabbath, and because there were thirteen people present at the Last Supper (Jesus and the 12 disciples), some people made the connection that linking Friday and 13 together meant bad luck. It is purely a superstition, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity.

The superstition gained more ground when Philip IV of France ordered e arrest of all of the Knights Templar in France on 13 October 1307, which just so happened to be a Friday. The knights were put on trial, tortured and executed. They had many sympathisers, and through folklore which was handed down through the generations, the part that Friday the 13th had to play in the events became imbued with superstitious horror and a sense of evil being attached to the day. Once again, there was, and remains, no link between Friday the 13th and Christianity. It is all to do with folklore and man's natural tendency to be superstitious.

Answer 3

Friday the 13th can't remember the year was the day the knights Templar was executed by the Vatican

Answer 4

the movie is supposed to be so scary because you can never really kill Jason because he keeps coming back. (my opinion though is that they got to stupid with it)

Answer 5

because it is the name of that day