I always find it a little strange that Elm Street is regularly grouped in with Halloween and F13 almost by default. The fundamentally supernatural nature of it, and the personality of the killer, just make it too different to be compared to them on a 1:1 basis. I’d say that I love the originals of ANoES and Halloween equally, but for entirely different reasons. F13 is a couple of tiers below the others for me. While I feel like Halloween and ANoES are both brilliant original films, with uneven sequels some of which almost insult the legacy of their origins, the original F13 isn’t even my favorite of its own series; that honor goes to Friday the 13th Part 2 (though, really, I think the two movies make a wonderful complementary pair). The lasting appeal of F13 is in the success of its formula, its near-infinite repeatability with slight variations, and in the fact that the original doesn’t have nearly such a sterling (almost sacrosanct in the cases of Halloween and ANoES) reputation that the occasional really lousy sequel is seen as a legitimate offence by fans.