The movie was filmed at Camp No-Be-BoSco in Blairstown, New Jersey. It is a Boy Scout Camp that is still in operation, and it has a wall of Friday the 13th (1980) memorabilia to honor that the movie was set there.
Betsy Palmer said that if it were not for the fact that she was in desperate need of a new car, she would never have accepted the role of Pamela Voorhees. In fact, after she read the script, she called the movie "a piece of shit." Over the years, however, Palmer did warm up to the film, as it made her more famous than infamous, and made appearances at conventions and in documentaries to discuss it.
The film earned $39,754,601 at the domestic box office on a budget of $550,000. Its worldwide gross was $59,754,601.
Tom Savini was one of the first crew members on board for the film because the producers idolized his special make-up effects in Zombie : Le Crépuscule des morts-vivants (1978).
While most of the cast and crew stayed at local hotels during filming, some of the most dedicated, including Tom Savini and Taso N. Stavrakis, stayed at the actual camp site. They had Savini's Betamax VCR and only a couple of movies, such as Barbarella (1968) and Marathon Man (1976), on videotape to keep themselves entertained so each night they would watch one. To this day Savini says he can recite those movies by heart.