3) Friday The 13th
The slasher genre had existed before Halloween, with films like Black Christmas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But it wasn’t until John Carpenter’s classic that the slasher genre broke through in full force.
It seemed that no holiday was safe from the trend, and slashers were being greenlit and produced at unbelievable speeds to try and recreate another success like Halloween. Many of them failed, but one film in particular caught the eyes of audiences with its brutal violence and sleazy nudity – Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th.
After the movie became a mind-blowing financial success, everyone seemed even more interested in producing slasher fare. Even Halloween 2 seemed effected by Friday the 13th’s impact, replacing its predecessor’s reliance on suspense with gratuitous violence and gore.
It was Friday the 13th Part 2, however, that introduced masked maniac Jason Voorhees into the picture. Since then his name and appearance have become iconic and even synonymous with the horror genre. The Halloween franchise especially started to use Jason’s bulky, fierce qualities with Michael Myers, who originally appeared like any other average joe.
For whatever reason, Halloween and Friday the 13th seem to just be stuck in a cycle of copying one another. It might’ve been more fit for Jason to face off with Michael rather than Freddy Krueger in that aspect, now that they seem to have made each other who they are today.
Let’s just hope that Friday the 13th continues to copy Halloween and that after the release of 2018’s Halloween sequel, we can finally get a new film for Jason. After all, it would be the 13th outing in the series.