Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)
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ROBBI MORGAN, "Annie":
I was a child actress. At age 5, I did an episode of this TV show called "Kraft Musical," and Rock Hudson, believe it or not, was on that particular show along with a group of little girls who played Shirley Temple, and I was one of them. Then by the time I was 6 years old until I was 9, I was the lead in off-Broadway show called Curly McDimple. It was a very coveted role to get—an amazing showcase for a little girl. Then I did a horror movie called What's the Matter With Helen?, starring Debbie Reynolds and Shelly Winters. They were looking for a girl to do the Shirley Temple part but felt I was already a bit too old. But there was another part for a girl to do Mae West, so I got that role instead.
I originally went in to audition for Barry Moss and Julie Hughes for something else. They said, "You know, Robbi, you're not really right for this, but there's a movie called Friday the 13th and they need an adorable camp counselor." I was 17 or 18 years old. And when Sean called me to tell me I had gotten the part, he just said, "I just want to make sure you're joining us!" And I said, "Absolutely!" It was only going to be a day or two of work, but I was just thrilled.
RON MILLKIE, "Officer Dorf":
I had known director Sean Cunningham back in the days when he was doing industrial films. Even then I remember thinking he was going to make it. I told him that, too. "You're going to be big someday." Because Sean's really sharp. A short man, but good-looking. And he was always easy to work with. Then a few years later I saw the notice in Variety: "Now filming—Friday the 13th, directed by Sean Cunningham." So I called him up and he said, "Come to think of it, there might be a part for you. I was going to play Dorf myself. Why don't you come on up?" It was the only part that had not been cast. And in the script, Officer Dorf was not specifically comic relief. But the first time I read it, I saw the humor, so I did it real funny. And Sean said, "No, no, don't do that. Just play it more like a real cop." So I did it that way, and he was right. And Sean just said, "Great, you got the part."
Filming Friday the 13th. Actors Jeannine Taylor and Mark Nelson rehearse a scene as Kevin Bacon looks on (top left)—this still was taken on the very first day of principal photography, September 4, 1979. Bottom left: Director of Barry Abrams grabs a few winks during a break in filming, while the crew (right) manage to steal a catnap between setups.
RONN CARROLL, "Sgt. Tierney":
The majority of the work I've done has been on Broadway and in New York, but throughout the 1970s I had done a tremendous amount of commercials. I would always have people recognize me at grocery stores, or sit next to me in airplanes and say things like, "Weren't you the apple in the Fruit of the Loom commercial?" But I'm always delighted when someone remembers me. And in my situation as sort of a character actor, I've played bigger roles, and not so big roles, but I've always wanted to do things that I wanted to do, or I thought would be fun to do. The size of the role has never been an issue with me. And work begets work.
My agents called and said Sean Cunningham asked if I would come in and read for this policeman. I had no idea what kind of movie it was, except that they said it was "sort of a horror film." I never even saw an entire script, only the sides of my scenes. Then, a couple of weeks after I read, they called back and said Sean wanted me for the role. I said to my agents, "But I'm doing a show." I was actually doing On Golden Pond on Broadway at the time. And they said, "We know, but it is shooting entirely at night—late at night. So they'll pick you up after the show is over, and drive you out to Blairstown where the camp is." So for about one week, I was doing On Golden Pond during the day, and Friday the 13th at night.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
One of the things that Barry Moss brought was Harry Crosby. Who, as it turned out, was Bing Crosby's son. That doesn't necessarily make him a good actor, but I was aware that that would be something for people to talk about. And he was very conscious of being Bing's son—but never to use it. At that time, he was just trying to just do something on his own. And it turned out he really served us very well.
BARRY MOSS:
There has been talk about the casting of Harry Crosby in the movie, as Bill—that it came about because of Halloween, where you had another up and coming actor with famous parents, in Jamie Lee Curtis. But we weren't copying Halloween—that was not intentional. Next to Alice, Bill is ostensibly the male lead in the movie, and I did want to get a name in that role. Harry wasn't a name on his own, but there was an interest about the fact that he was acting.
ADRIENNE KING, "Alice":
My mother started me and my sister and my brother in commercials when I was 6 months old. I was pretty young—I didn't have a lot to say about it. Then I quit school. I'd commute to New York, take my lessons, I did a few soaps, off-off-off Broadway, just the thing every young actor in New York does when they want to be a serious actor. You do it 100 percent of the time, whatever you can. And commercials kept me alive. I was a Burger King girl for a while. I even had someone put a reel together for me at one point—a history of my life through commercials. And the last commercial was me holding a baby in a Dolby spot. It was totally full circle.
At that point, in 1979, I had spent a few weeks as a dancing extra on Saturday Night Fever. I'm one of like two blondes in the dance scene. They used us for everything—the continuity is so off that I had different hairstyles and dresses during the same song! But it was great—I felt like things were clicking and happening. At the same point I was auditioning for Friday the 13th, I was auditioning for Grease on Broadway. It was a very exciting time.
BARRY MOSS:
There was an open casting call for the lead, Alice, a promotional thing to get people excited about the project. Adrienne King was a friend of somebody who worked in our office, who had told us about this girl she thought was marvelous. So we brought her in as a favor to this woman, and after she read, Sean said, "You sneaky guys! You saved the best one for last!"
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
They brought in every young actress in New York. I liked Adrienne King when I met her. Vulnerable, girl-next-door type. She didn't seem like an actress, she seemed like a kid, which was true for most of the actors in the movie. I wanted a sense of real people who could act and behave naturally, and Adrienne gave me that sense. I liked what she brought to the table. It's one of those things where she just had something.
ADRIENNE KING:
The audition process took an entire summer. The funny thing was, I heard that they were looking for a star name. I even heard Sally Field was being considered at one point—thankfully, she didn't do it. The first time I auditioned was in one of those rehearsal houses and there were hundreds of people in the hallway. Hundreds. And it wasn't even a scene, it was just "Hello, here's my picture. I'm young and nubile and I can scream really well." I think that's what locked it for me, I really do. My scream was bloodcurdling. My mother was in the room at the time and she jumped up and thought I had been hurt.
It wasn't until late August, almost Labor Day, when I got a letter and that made it official. It was magical, just magical. I didn't sleep that whole summer.
Dated August 21, 1979, Victor Miller's third draft of "Long Night at Camp Blood" deviated unusually little from the final shooting script of Friday the 13th, and it was with this draft in hand that Sean Cunningham had completed pre-production for the film, including scouting locations, assembling his crew and completing casting sessions in New York City.
Production on Friday the 13th officially commenced on September 4, 1979. Budgeted at approximately $600,000, the film was shot on location in rural Blairstown and Hope, New Jersey, over a period of seven weeks. If the adventurous team of filmmakers was initially aghast at the marginal accommodations afforded by the movie's modest budget, the early days of the production would see a cast and crew brimming with an enthusiasm and optimism that assuaged any complaints. Though no one involved could possibly know that they were at ground zero for the birth of a franchise, in retrospect they would collectively create what became the productio
n template for all Friday the 13ths that followed. It was, by all accounts, a true filmmaking summer camp—albeit one with a body count.
"It was a movie about kids having a blast at a summer camp, and we really were a bunch of young, carefree actors having a blast," says actress Jeannine Taylor. "A little bit of cinema verité there."
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
When I ran the ad, it said I would have the film ready by December, and I didn't think at the time that it would be such a daunting task. I had discovered that a Friday the 13th fell in June 1980, and hoped to be able to get the film into national release by then. We set about trying to lay the foundation over the month of July and August by finding locations. We shot in a tiny little town in New Jersey called Blairstown that is a bedroom community for New York. I used my art director Virginia Field and sent her out to find camps to get the thing rolling. We went in completely below the radar out at a Boy Scout camp—and only after we made a contribution to the Boy Scouts of America—waiting for them to go back to school before we could take over for a few weeks and shoot the movie. We set up shop in these little rustic cabins, with the production offices next to bunk beds. There was also a little motel down at the end of the lane called Travelers' Lodge, but a lot of the crew stayed in the cabins instead.
MARK NELSON:
Jeannine, Kevin and the rest of the cast and I were all on the same bus out of Port Authority in New York to the set. I remember the first day, people just introduced themselves to each other on the bus as we got closer. And the motel was on the highway, and so they would pick us up and bring us to the location. It really was like summer camp.
ADRIENNE KING:
It was Camp No-Be-Bos-Co, or as we all called it, "Not-a-Very-Good-Boy-Scout-Camp." Most of us stayed at that little motel, with its tiny rooms and no bathtubs, and the Delaware River running behind it. And there really was nothing to do—you'd wake up and then go to the set, shoot all day and night long, and then come back and go to bed. We did all the day shooting for a couple of weeks, six days a week. We maybe got one day off.
When I look back on it now, it's just a flash—most of my scenes I was on my own, so I worked maybe only a week with most of the cast. For me, there wasn't time on the set to really get to know and hang, or for socializing. And I was kind of a loner. I think the dominant factor was that you had to be a trooper—you had to be willing to go the full count and not be expecting any special treatment. But it was one of those things where there immediately was a great bonding energy because there was no money. When there's nothing you just have to hang in there. For all of us, it was everyone's first big possibility. Everybody was so psyched and hopeful. That was the feeling on the entire set.
JEANNINE TAYLOR:
Some people might think it surprising that the set of Friday the 13th was so sunny and devoid of neuroses, but it was in absolute contrast to the movie's ghoulish subject matter. There was a jokey, breezy, carefree atmosphere on the set. We didn't really have to act that—that was real. The location was part of it. It was a beautiful, bucolic setting. We ate a lot of our meals together in the dining hall, and we were even given the option of staying in the cabins. So the cast fell into a kind of laugh-a-minute relationship with one another and I think it added to the movie.
RICHARD FEURY, Still Photographer:
My friend Marty Kitrosser got hired to be the script supervisor on Friday the 13th, and he called me up and said that he was doing a movie with these nice people and they needed someone to do stills. So I showed them my portfolio and got hired on the spot, $200 a week. I ended up staying there for every day of the shooting, from call to wrap. They had all these beautiful boy scout cabins along the lake to stay in, so every morning I'd walk down to the mess hall and have breakfast while everybody else was piling in. I also had a rowboat right by the cabin, and I'd go out and take pictures of the fog coming off the lake. It was great.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM, "Young Camper":
I always knew what my dad did. It's the same as if I was the son of a train conductor—it's just dad's job. Especially doing low-budget films. Back then it didn't have as much allure as it does now. So going to the set was very much like just going to see dad at work. I even played one of the kids in the opening prologue of Friday the 13th. Just for a brief little stint in the cabin, the flashback scene where the killer's P.O.V. walks around. I'm the kid in the second bunk on the left. I was 12 years old.
In our small town, Westport, people had always known about Sean because he had made a couple films in the area. And my dad always said that you want to work with people you like. He compared it to going to battle—it's you and a bunch of other people working really hard to get something done, and you're with each other 24-7. I remember a Fourth of July party at the late Barry Abrams' house, who was the director of photography, where we were lighting off fireworks. And I remember everyone called Steve Miner "The Kid" because he was just a young guy. Though all of this kind of changed after Friday the 13th—I guess things just blew up after that.
BILL FREDA:
Friday the 13th was all shot on location. There was no option to go into a studio or shoot on a set—Sean didn't have the money for that. And in those days, shooting on location was more interesting anyway. But I think it was an easy shoot for Sean. He didn't have a big impersonal crew like you'd have today, and there were no unions. It was like a family—Sean was able to use people he had worked with and had a relationship with already. Steve Miner was a good friend, and I think Harry Manfredini came up a couple of times. Sean has always been the kind of guy who likes to be able to say to his crew, "This is what I need here," and they just get it.
The dailies weren't very impressive, to be honest. It was like home movies. Everyone was young and overacting. It wasn't anything to get negative about. They were actors, they were doing a good job, but they were young. It's an off-shoot of the director, too, and how much he wants to settle for. Although maybe I felt that way because I was coming into this from outside—I wasn't living it, down in Connecticut. It may have been a different feeling for them.
"Many people have criticized some of the early scenes in Friday the 13th, that they are too slow and chit-chatty," says director Sean Cunningham. "Take the scene where Ned fakes his own drowning. By itself this scene doesn't play, but in the context of our expectation of what is in store for these characters, it means something different. All of this is eventually what will make the last act of the film work—you carry that emotional investment in what happens to these characters."
ADRIENNE KING:
Oh, yeah right, major rehearsals on Friday the 13th! Not a whole lot. But there were a lot of script changes along the way. I only had half the script when I got the role, and it changed throughout, even on the day sometimes, so by the afternoon we'd have new pages. And the revisions would be in a different color—by the end, there were 15 colors.
I think everybody just developed their own character. It wasn't that difficult because I was nervous. I think that's why the first Friday is so special. Everybody just dug in his or her heels and said, "You know, something's happening here." I felt that innocence when I was shooting it. I remember my first day was the scene with Steve Christy, where I hammer on the roof. Alice didn't really have any carpentry skills, did she? Believe me, when I watch that scene, I start laughing—I hit one nail in the roof, get down off the ladder, move it about an inch, then climb up again and hit another nail. But I think the reason that Friday the 13th has endured is because we were the kids next door. I think a lot of the teens that saw the movie could identify with the characters: "That could have been me out there."
And Sean was right there with us. I adore him—Sean is the best director you could have on a first film. He was so great and patient and encouraging. There were a lot of one-takes, but he was real clear about what he wanted, so if it wasn't right we'd do it again until we got it right. There's one shot, the very first one of me in the film, when I slap my knee once before saying hello to e
veryone. We kept having to do it over and over again—I must have slapped my leg a hundred times during that scene. They were like, "Would you hold your hands together, please?" And I was like, "Could you do a take with my hands tied behind my back, please?"
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
The wonderful part about making a movie at that point in everyone's career is that we were so thrilled just to be seeing an image. We'd look at the dailies, and it had color and sound! This was young filmmaking by young people. It's a wonderful place to be, because a big part of our industry is about becoming jaded and spoiled.
MARK NELSON:
I think the acting is kind of naïve, but enthusiastic. I remember I was really nervous on my first day. It was the scene where Kevin and Jeannine and I are driving and then arrive at camp in a truck. And I remember that, living in New York, neither of us were really drivers—Kevin didn't even have a driver's license. So they had to change it. Originally I was in the middle and Kevin was driving, but now suddenly I had to drive. I did all right with most of it, but then we had to get the shot where I drive in to the camp, park it and we get out. I wasn't familiar with the truck at all, and I kept parking in the wrong spot for the camera. Barry Abrams was real patient. He just said, "No problem, just do it again." Then, finally, I park in the right spot, but we get out of the truck and I slam the door behind me without realizing I never turned off the ignition. I was totally embarrassed.
Sean was always very forgiving about things like that. He was a great guy and really tolerant as a director, and always fun and excited to be there. Though everything was shot very fast so Sean could also sometimes be really businesslike. I remember I was under the water for a very long time for the scene where my character fakes his drowning, and when the shot was over I was really winded. I was completely out of breath and I just lying on the shore on the grass and heaving. And I remember Sean stood over me and I was wheezing and he said, "What's up with you?" Like I was some kind of a wuss for not jumping up and doing a dozen push-ups after that.