Friday the 13th - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Friday the 13th or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Friday the 13th

[kyle]

Most of the stars of the original movie were actually Broadway stars; who were sent over by a Broadway casting agency. The movie debuted in a Broadway movie house; not coincidentally.

[violet]

While the Halloween movies have lots of music, the Friday the 13th movies have very little music. In fact, there was a decision made by Harry Manfredini to only have music in the movie when the killer was present. That's why there are only brief quick moments of music in the beginning, but the climax is wall to wall music.

[nicholas]

This was inspired by both Halloween, a blockbuster slasher movie, and Meatballs, a teen sex comedy set in a summer camp, which had come out the year before and were both big hits, focusing on the youth market.

[lynn]

While the teens are playing on the lake Ned asks his friends "if you were a flavor of ice cream, what would it be"? Marcie responds with "rocky road" while doing an impression of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the character made famous by Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

[ivan]

It was the 18th highest grossing film that year, facing stiff horror film competition from such high-profile releases as The Shining (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), The Fog (1980), and Prom Night (1980).

[ava]

The movie was filmed at Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in New Jersey. The camp is still in operation, and it has a wall of Friday the 13th (1980) paraphernalia to honor that the movie was set there.

[ruby]

Betsy Palmer said that if it were not for the fact that she was in desperate need of a new car, she would never have accepted the role of Pamela Voorhees. In fact, after she read the script, she called the movie "a piece of shit". Over the years, however, Palmer did warm up to the film, as it made her more famous than infamous, and made appearances at conventions and in documentaries to discuss it.

[gerald]

In the script, Marcie's death scene was originally meant to show an arrow hitting her chest in the archery area. Despite popular belief, this was never filmed.

[cameron]

The two Jeeps used in this film are actually the same Jeep, shown with and without its soft top. The model is a 1972 CJ-5.

[beth]

The story of who invented the final scare in the film, in which a deformed Jason bursts out of the lake and grabs Alice from her canoe, is disputed. Victor Miller, Tom Savini, and uncredited Screenwriter Ron Kurz all claim credit for it, Kurz because he claims to be the one who made Jason into a "creature," and Savini because he claims the moment was inspired by a similar final scare in Carrie (1976). Whatever the case, it left a lasting impression.

[gabriel]

The company Elston Oil Supply actually exists in real life: it's now Todd/Elston Oil, a gas station off US Interstate 46 in Netcong, NJ. The address in the film is real as Waterloo Rd runs between Hackettstown and Byram Township and uses a Stanhope ZIP code. The number, which uses a Stanhope area code, is still in existence too and the owner still gets calls from time to time.

[tamara]

Adrienne King's scream was the deal maker when she was auditioning for Alice.

[gabriel]

On opening weekend, this film reportedly grossed over ten times the production cost.

[albert]

Steve Miner is the only person that has crossed over from the Friday the 13th films to the Halloween films, having directed both Friday the 13th part 2 and Halloween H20.

[fred]

During the first few weekends of the film's release, Make-up and Effects Artist Tom Savini would go into theaters for the last five minutes of the show to see the audience react to Jason emerging from the lake and grabbing Alice.

[brent]

Laurie Bartram (Brenda) died on May 25th 2007 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 49, 27 years after the movie was released.

[phyllis]

The producers of Friday the 13th also produced the Friday the 13th TV show, even though it has nothing to do with the movies whatsoever.

[michele]

Victor Miller's working title for the script was "Long Night at Camp Blood."

[lynn]

Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller met in 1977 while making a low-budget rip-off of The Bad News Bears (1976) called Here Come the Tigers (1978), which Cunningham directed, and Miller wrote. By that point, Cunningham had experienced no success since The Last House on the Left (1972), and Miller was a former novelist/playwright just getting started with screenwriting.