Spoilers ahead (They are such old movies, come on)

Friday the 13th and Halloween are both famous horror movie slashers. They both have a scary villain that keeps coming back (with even a reboot movie for both characters), and protagonists that seem to somehow always prevail. With tons of blood and a lot of screams these are debatable the greatest slasher movies. They are very similar as you can tell with many fans on both sides, debating which horror franchise titan is better. I will be showing what Friday the 13th and Halloween franchises do great terrible and everything in between.

FridayThe13th Overview

Jason Voorhees a stapled horror icon is the main villain in almost all the movies of the series. Jason watched his mother die in the first movie, in the following movies he attempts to murder everyone he sees, usually not wandering off of camp crystal lake. Jason has superhuman and supernatural like abilities, often coming back to life after being killed. A website called 1428elm has an article by Jeremy Dick that states, “After being ‘killed’ at the end of the prior movie, Jason Voorhees revives and goes back into hiding.” There are not many recurring characters in this movie series apart from Tommy Jarvis who appeared in three different movies, Alice Hardy (who made a very brief appearance in Friday the 13th part 2), and of course Jason Voorhees. Like Halloween there are a few movies in the series that many fans do not like, for example in Jason x where the movie goes into space in the future. RottenTomatoes says that it had an average rating of 3.6 out of 10. The last time we saw a Friday the 13th movie was the relatively recent reboot in 2009.

Halloween Overview

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Michael Myers is a name that many people can identify, one of the first slasher horror movie founders is the series Halloween. The first movie starts off with the main villain (Michael Myers) killing his sister and then being admitted into a psychiatric hospital. Many years pass and then Michael escapes setting all the movies in motion. Like Jason Michael Myers does not die easily, and if he does he does not stay dead for long. On the site bannana1015rocks.com tree riddle says that, “ Michael apparently survived being shot in both eyes and [being] burned to a crisp”. Unlike it’s horror counterpart It has many recurring characters including Michael Myers,  Dr. Loomis, Laurie Strode, and many others. Now that the basics of both movies have been explained I will compare the money made the items sold besides the movies and they’re movie tickets.

Comparison

Both movies did really great overall in terms of box office sales with no movies going below the production budget. The production budget of all the Halloween movies combined was 83,325,000 dollars and Friday the 13th’s being 78,650,000 dollars according to The-numbers.com. They also stated that domestically Halloween made 308,435,291 and worldwide 363,200,418 dollars, Friday the 13th made higher numbers with it being 382,746,073 dollars and worldwide it made a huge 466,198,282 dollars. Overall FridayThe13th made (I subtracted the production budget out of it) 770,294,355 million with Halloween making (again I subtracted the production budget out of it) 588,310,709.

Friday the 13th did way better in terms of money making, but what else is happening besides the movies in the franchises? From Friday the 13th there was a old spin off tv show, called FridayThe13th:the series, multiple video games, and merchandise. Halloween has several comics, and novels that have been released.  The main reason people see these types of movies are to get scared, and many scares in these movies come from the deaths and killer kills. On MoviePilot Jancy Richardson stated that the FridayThe13th franchise got, “222 [kills] (if you wanna remove all the deaths from the first movie, it’s still 211)”. Jancy Richardson also said earlier in the article that the Halloween franchise got only 157 kills.

Why FridayThe13th is Better

Friday the 13th may not have as many great scares,but I think that the frights do not define what makes the best horror movie. I believe it involves several things mostly the scares but it is mostly the story it tells and the quality of that story, because random scared and a bad story do not mix well. Halloween does not have a bad story by any means, but it kind of goes off the rails with Halloween 3 not even including Michael Myers. FridayThe13th  On the site trekkbs Aldo states that,” they did the best in evoking real atmosphere on a small budget.” Both movies cost low amounts of money to create considering the money they both made, but overall FridayThe13th cost less to make and gained more. Another great thing about this series is that Jason looks different in every movie and usually looks a lot different unlike Michael always sporting the same mask. Jason actually has a reason to be attacking the people he does, Michael just kills because he is a psychopath but Jason’s mother was killed by counselors and he drowned from the counselor’s years before.

The Impact from Fridaythe13th is bigger, than Halloween’s impact is today in several ways. Friday the 13th is a day that many people see as a scary day, usatoday had a story written by jolie lee about that day and she says that, “the Friday the 13th slasher-movie franchise, which started in 1980, further solidified this day’s notoriety,”. That is not the complete reason it is regarded as a unlucky day but that is a big reason for it.

Concluding Statements

Both of theses movies are great with Halloween being the first and one of the best slasher horror movies. But FridayThe13th is better, mostly because of the more consistent story it has and the talent it takes to make the amount of money it did with the budget it had.  Halloween may have better scares and a good overall story but not as great as FridayThe13th’s storytelling and the way it could subtly change things to make it a great franchise.

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