'Friday the 13tht will scare the bejabbers out of you It really looks like It will be a peachy summer at Camp Crystal Lake deep in New Jersey 's forest prime. 111. The kids from Newark and Perth Amboy haven't even arrived yet, but who needs them anyway? The six camp counselors who have been hired for the. season are on hand, and talk about your role models! They're supposed to be getting things ready for the Influx of little campers, but it's hard to see how they will get anything done. When they're not loilygagging around the floating dock in the lake, they're smoking grass, playing "strip" Monopoly and swigging beer. What they should have been doing instead is check. log out the calendar, Look what it says right there "Friday the 13th." And you know what that means. The date is the title of a quirky, bizarre movie that scared the bejabbers out of me, even though.I'm old enough to know better. Independent producerdirector Sean S. Cunningham is new to the horrorsuspense movie field, but he's off to a good start. He knows how to get an audience all strung out and laughing out loud in nervous relief as "Friday the 13th" gets more and more outrageous but more and more scary, too. That's what makes this low budget thriller a grabber. That Is if you can stand the sadistic, kinky murders and the buckets of gore. Cunningham stays clear of the creaking door, sudden encounters with people in the dark who don't turn out to be the killer at all but a friendly face and things that go bump in the night that have become horror movie and have taken the fun out of most of them. FRIDAY THE I3TH, starring not anybody in particular, unless you want to count Betsy Palmer: rated vicious bloodletting and one scene in which simulated sex is highlighted. Playing at Normandy Loewe Kendall 2, Coral, the Movies at the Falls, Omni O. Golden Glades Drivein, Cinema 4 (Pembroke Pineal, Wows 167th Mall Theatres (Diplomat Mal II. Concord 1, Apollo. o. Instead. Cunningham keeps things low-key, relying on a squeaky little child's voice making inaudible sounds to suggest the eerie possibilities that lurk in the woods that surround the summer camp. But when he hits. he hits hard with some of the most grisly slayings to come along on film lately. The man knows how to make the blood flow, there's po doubt about that. And he's dead (excuse the pun) serious about what he's doing. This is no high camp hor rorsuspense film, but one that deliberately sets out to shake you up. Cunningham doesn't escape one pitfall of such mov- les, however. After building terrific suspense and turning over the audience's stomachs, he doesn't quite know where to go from there. The movie begins to sag in the middle and the expectations he has built up begin to sour a bit. He makes a notable attempt at the end to rescue his film and almost succeeds with a novel twist, but it just isn't enough to make this an outstanding horror genre movie. It's pretty good, however: not bad for a first Not fosr the easily unsettled, naturally. Cunning-, ham's cunning murders could cause your dreams to kick up real bad. 0
