1. Sean S. Cunningham thought that Friday The 13th would be a great title for a film, so he placed an ad in the trade papers to create interest in the movie. At that time he had no story, but as interest rolled in he quickly developed one.
2. After he came up with the story, Victor Miller was bought in to develop the screenplay. He used his own working title for his script - "Long Night at Camp Blood".
3. Jason Voorhees was originally called Josh, right up to the last minute before filming that was his name. Good job they changed it because Freddy vs Josh just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
4. Mind you, it nearly didn't matter what he was called, because originally 'Josh' was never intended to be carried over into any other movie. He was solely created as a plot device and not to continue on his mother's grisly work.
5. The Summer camp in the movie, Camp Crystal Lake, is actually a real Boy Scout camp near Blairstown, New Jersey which is still active today. It goes by the name of Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco. However, there is a real summer camp named Camp Crystal Lake in Florida.
6. Betsy Palmer, who played Pamela Voorhees, has said that if it were not for the fact that she was in desperate need of a new car, she would never have signed on for the movie, because after she read the script she felt it was "a piece of shit". She agreed to 10 days work and was paid $1,000 per day - the exact amount she needed for her new car.
7. All he had to do was jump up out of the water, so creator Sean S. Cunningham wanted to cast his son, Noel, in that scene as Jason. However, his wife absolutely forbid it!
8. Friday The 13th was Kevin Bacon's first leading film role, having previously had a supporting part in National Lampoon's Animal House, and a credit as '2nd Teenager' in the John Ritter movie, Hero At Large.
9. In the scene where Alice finds Bill's body hanging on the back of the door to the generator room, the producers purposely did not tell Adrianne King what they were going to do to the body nor did they let her see the body beforehand, so when she saw the body during filming it was for the first time. The scream she produced was genuine as it scared her badly. Needless to say, that entire scene was shot in one take.
10. Adrienne King was actually tormented in real life by a stalker in the years following the films release. This stalker tried to kick in her apartment door and would draw creepy images on Adrienne’s artwork. This freaked her out so much that she didn’t act for a period of nearly 30 years just to stay out of the limelight, and away from any future potential stalkers.
11. This is gonna mess you up because I know that whenever you think of Friday The 13th in your head you've got that "Chi, chi, chi, ha, ha, ha" sound, right? Well composer Harry Manfredini wants to burst your bubble. The man that scored the movie has said that contrary to popular belief, it is actually "Ki, ki, ki; ma, ma, ma". It is meant to resemble Jason's voice saying "Kill, kill, kill; mom, mom, mom" and was inspired by the scene in which Pamela Voorhees seems to be possessed by Jason and chants, "Get her, mommy! Kill her!" Manfredini created the effect by speaking the syllables "ki" and "ma" into a microphone running through a delay effect.
12. 16 years before the Freddy vs Jason film one of the proposed elements of 'Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors' would've seen a flashback to a still-living Krueger working as a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake, and molesting poor young Jason Voorhees.
13. The original Friday The 13th was such a huge success when released in May 1980. It was made for just $550,000 and took $39,754,601 at the box office. Ch-ching!
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