Victor Miller, Friday the 13th screenwriter, dies at 86

Victor Miller, the screenwriter who created the original story for the 1980 horror film Friday the 13th, died on August 30, 2026, in Alameda, California. He was 86 years old. His death was confirmed by his son, Ian Miller, in a social media post on Tuesday, September 1. Miller's screenplay for Friday the 13th introduced audiences to Camp Crystal Lake and the tragic backstory of Jason Voorhees, whose drowning death precedes the film's events. The story centered on a group of young adults being stalked at the remote summer camp, with the killer revealed to be Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhees, driven by grief and revenge. This twist established a mythology that would fuel a long-running franchise, though Miller did not write the subsequent films that transformed Jason into the series' iconic, hockey-masked villain. In interviews, Miller acknowledged drawing inspiration from John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween, particularly its use of a confined setting and a relentless killer to create terror on a modest budget. He chose the summer camp location to isolate the young characters from adult help, a decision that helped define the slasher genre's landscape in the early 1980s.