Victor Miller, Screenwriter of ‘Friday the 13th’, Dies at 86
According to CinemaDrame News Agency, Victor Miller, the screenwriter of the classic and enduring horror masterpiece Friday the 13th, passed away on Monday in Alameda, California. He was 86 years old.
The news of Miller’s passing was confirmed to the media by his son, Ian.
Released in 1980, Friday the 13th is widely recognized as one of the foundational and influential works in horror cinema history. The film popularized the summer camp setting and themes of youth adventure—elements that remain staples of the slasher genre to this day. In a recent interview with the film’s fan site, Miller noted that the initial inspiration for the project was an effort to follow in the successful footsteps of John Carpenter’s Halloween, which had premiered two years earlier.
Recalling that time, Miller said: “Originally, the idea was to cash in on Halloween. The title wasn’t hit upon until at least one script draft was written. The summer camp setting was generated by my sense that we needed a place where kids were isolated from any adult help, the same premise as Halloween. The idea that Jason had died before the start of the film was stolen from Halloween—that there was an old evil, like Michael Myers killing his babysitter sister. The rest of it was built on the specifics of the location and the idea that the counselors were being picked off one by one by the ultimate conservative mom.”
Friday the 13th went on to spawn one of the most recognizable and enduring franchises in horror, though Miller did not participate in its sequels. Beyond this film, he was active in television, writing for soap operas such as All My Children, One Life to Live, Another World, Guiding Light, and General Hospital. His work on All My Children earned three Daytime Emmy Awards for the drama’s writing team.
Miller was born in 1940 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is survived by his wife, Tina Thurston Miller, and his two sons, Ian and Josh.
