Victor Miller, who helped launch one of the most lucrative horror franchises in Hollywood history as the screenwriter behind “Friday the 13th,” died Monday at 86.
His son Ian Miller announced the death in an Instagram post. “He was almost always the smartest, funniest person in whatever room he was in,” Ian wrote, adding that “for those who are interested, we will hold a celebration of life in November — on Friday the 13th, of course.”
A slasher touchstone in the mold of John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th” became one of the highest-grossing films of 1980, kicking off a blood-splattered media franchise that grew to include a dozen movies and two TV shows.
Mr. Miller created its signature characters, including Pamela Voorhees, who kills off the teenage counselors at Camp Crystal Lake in the original film (directed by Sean S. Cunningham), and her son Jason Voorhees, who became the franchise’s machete-wielding villain while donning a hockey mask for the sequels.
Those films were made without the involvement of Mr. Miller, who soon moved from slashers to soap operas. He won three Daytime Emmy Awards as a writer on “All My Children,” and said he never watched the “Friday the 13th” sequels: He hated that Jason became the villain.
“I took motherhood and turned it on its head and I think that was great fun,” he said of his original screenplay. “Mrs. [Voorhees] was the mother I’d always wanted — a mother who would have killed for her kids.”
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