The Screenwriter Behind the Movie That Changed Slasher Horror Forever

"Halloween is making a lot of money. Let's rip it off."

Imagine the start of an iconic writing journey beginning this way. It did.

Screenwriter Victor Miller died Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, at the age of 86 in Alameda, California. He was the writer of the classic horror slasher Friday the 13th.

Released in 1980, the film helped cement so many horror tropes in our memory—the idyllic summer camp hiding a dark past, sex as punishable by death via a slasher, the secret, surprise killer… not to mention that iconic theme song.

How did he end up working on the film? Well, you might have some idea based on the quote above, which is what director Sean Cunningham said to Miller when they were both searching for a new project.

"He called me and said, 'Halloween is making a lot of money, let's rip it off,'" Miller told Uproxx. "It was clear from the experience with the two G-rated movies that America did not want as many G-rated movies as they wanted horror. Basically, I was just trying to survive, and so was Sean. We were facing what is best known as the condition of being penniless. And so I went and saw Halloween and figured out how to write a horror movie, and that was that. It's kind of mundane in its basic outlines."

Miller's story is all about the working writer who took a "rip-off" assignment, made $9,000, and ended up changing what horror looked like for a generation. Miller also wrote for TV, including All My Children, One Life to Live, Another World, Guiding Light, and General Hospital.

Miller's celebration of life is planned for November. On a Friday the 13th, of course.

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An Assignment That Rewrote the Genre

All writers probably come to a time where they're casting about for their next thing. We have to make money, after all, so we might look at what's popular. Miller, by his own admission, was looking for a paycheck and a template.

Sean Cunningham called him in 1979 after Halloween started making money. Miller had already written two family films for him (Here Come the Tigers, Manny's Orphans), so they wanted to work together again.

Miller told Fridaythe13thFilms.com:

“First came the concept that we emulate Halloween. The title didn’t come until the screenplay had already gone through at least one draft. The idea for the summer camp came from my instinct that we needed a location where young adults would be cut off from all adult help, the basic idea in Halloween. The idea that Jason had died before the film began also came from the concept in Halloween—that there is a prior evil—Michael Meyer’s murdering the babysitter, if I recall correctly. The rest of the story came as a result of the location and the idea that, one by one, the campers would be eliminated by the world’s most protective (and insane) mother, Mrs. Voorhees. The original draft was called Long Night at Camp Blood, until Sean came up with the title. I then went back and put in the reference to the full moon and Friday the 13th so there would be some connection.”

In Friday the 13th, young Jason is supposedly murdered by fellow campers as a child at Camp Crystal Lake. Years later, when the camp is being reopened for the summer and counselors arrive for the season, they start dropping off, one by one. They suspect Jason somehow has returned. In reality, it's his vengeful mother killing them. But in the end, Jason emerges from the lake for one final kill.

The movie earned $59 million on an estimated budget of $550,000 to $650,000, per The Wrap. And of course, it cemented its place in horror history as one of the most distinctive slashers of all time.

"Friday the 13th was an absolute mistake of nature," Miller told HorrorNews.Net. "An error in my fate. It was one of those things that you have to be very careful what you pray for. I had set out to be a famous writer, and I forgot to specify comedy, and unfortunately the fates took over. … I'm not a fan of horror really, but I figured out what the structure of it was. I think Carpenter and Hill did a wonderful job of putting together the basic tenets of a modern horror film."

Scared? Write It Anyway

As you can see, Miller didn't consider himself a horror guy. He came out of theater and playwriting, studying with Herbert Berghof, and co-founded The American Shakespeare Theatre's Center for Theatre Techniques in Education.

He didn't like the genre. He was afraid of it, actually.

"I think that's why my take on Friday the 13th worked because in spite of me, if I were cool and could handle horror, I wouldn't have known what was scary. So being a wuss, it put me into a better position to terrify people," he told HorrorNews.Net.

So how did he actually approach the genre and its conventions? He looked to classic literature in addition to Halloween as an inspiration.

He told Fridaythe13thFilms.com, "I just followed the Victorian idea of the horror genre, which was so perfectly embodied in Halloween. I hope they don't function as morality tales. I think of them as a hoot. I look at the idea the same way I look at The Brothers Grimm. What do you make of a mother and father who leave their kids in the woods because they can't afford them (Hansel and Gretel)? Or a lady who lives in the woods in a cake house and eats children? Jesus … are those morality tales?"

We probably wouldn't recommend writing in a genre you're not excited about, but if you do, this is an excellent road map. Write from your own gut reaction, not from what you think a "horror screenplay" should sound like. If it doesn't scare you, it won't scare anyone. And look at what has worked before, including other forms of fiction. You can't fake that knowledge.