On Friday, June 13th of 1958, two Camp Crystal Lake counselors, Claudette and Barry, slip
away from the campfire for an illicit rendezvous. They are discovered and murdered by an
unseen assailant.
Two decades later, the camp is preparing to reopen. The town loony, Crazy Ralph, warns
camp cook Annie that "Camp Blood" has a death curse, but Annie continues to hitch her way
to camp. Local truck driver Enos tells her the camp lore: the murders in '58, a boy
drowning in '57, the fires and bad water that thwarted attempts to reopen the camp.
Annie then catches a ride with the wrong person, who chases her through the woods and
slits her throat.
At Camp Crystal Lake, Steve Christy is eager for his counselors Marcie, Jack, Ned, Brenda,
Bill and Alice to begin their preparations to open the camp. After they get underway, Steve
leaves for an urgent errand in town. The counselors work for a while longer, then break
for some swimming. After a drowning scare, a snake in a cabin and visits from both
the law and Crazy Ralph, Ned goes to investigate a noise in one of the cabins, and doesn't
come out. . .
A storm begins, and Marcie and Jack seek shelter in the same cabin, where they make love in
a bunk bed. Meanwhile, Brenda, Bill and Alice amuse themselves with a rousing game of
strip Monopoly. When Marcie leaves for the restroom, Ned's body, hidden on the top bunk,
drips blood onto Jack's face. Jack is then stabbed through the neck with an arrow, and the
killer leaves for the camp restroom. Marcie goes to investigate a sound in the showers and the
killer splits her face open with a vicious axe swing.
The door blows open in the main cabin, interrupting Brenda, Bill and Alice's game. Brenda
leaves to close the windows in her cabin. In town, Steve finishes his meal in the local diner
and starts back for camp. From her cabin, Brenda hears a child crying in the woods and
braves the storm. As she slogs through the driving the rain, the archery range is suddenly
illuminated, with Brenda standing in front of the targets. . .
Alice thinks she hears a scream, and she and Bill go to investigate. On Brenda's pillow they
find a bloody axe. The phones are out and the truck won't start, so they decide to go back to
the main cabin to get out of the rain. In the meantime, Steve's Jeep has slid off the road. A
passing police car gives him a ride part of the way, and he walks the rest - only to encounter
the killer, who Steve recognizes before he is stabbed in the stomach.
Back at camp the power goes out, and Bill goes to check the generator while Alice takes a
nap. When she awakes she goes to look for Bill in the generator shed, but instead discovers
his body mounted on the door, riddled with arrows. She returns to the main cabin and seals
herself in, only to have Brenda's corpse thrown through the window. She flees, and runs into
Pamela Voorhees, an "old friend of the Christys."
Alice is left alone against Pamela, whose son Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake in 1957.
Now all the counselors of the camp must die, and it is one or the other in a match to the
death. . . who will survive the long night at Camp Blood?
