Jason Voorhees
Encyclopedia
Jason Voorhees is a fictional character
from the Friday the 13th series of slasher film
s. He first appeared in Friday the 13th (1980), as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees
, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller
, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S. Cunningham
, and Tom Savini
, Jason was not originally intended to carry the series as the main antagonist
. The character has subsequently been represented in various other media, including novels, comic books, and a cross-over film
with another iconic horror film character, Freddy Krueger
.
The character has primarily been an antagonist in the films, whether by stalking and killing the characters, or acting as a psychological threat to the lead character, as is the case in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
. Since Lehman's portrayal, the character has been represented by numerous actors and stuntmen
, sometimes by more than one at a time; this has caused some controversy as to who should receive credit for the portrayal. Kane Hodder
is the best known of the stuntmen to portray Jason Voorhees, having played the character in four consecutive films.
The character's physical appearance has gone through many transformations, with various special makeup effects artists making their mark on the character's design, including makeup artist Stan Winston
. Tom Savini's initial design has been the basis for many of the later incarnations. The trademark hockey goalie mask did not appear until Friday the 13th Part III. Since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
, filmmakers have given Jason superhuman strength
, regenerative powers
, and near invulnerability. He has been seen as a sympathetic character, whose motivation for killing has been cited as being driven by the immoral actions of his victims and his own rage over having drowned as a child. Jason Voorhees has been featured in various humor magazines, referenced in feature films, parodied in television shows, and was the inspiration for a horror punk
band. Several toy lines have been released based on various versions of the character from the Friday the 13th films. Jason Voorhees's hockey mask is a widely recognized image in popular culture
.
) in the original Friday the 13th film; he becomes the main antagonist of the series in its sequels. As well as the films, there have been books and comics that have either expanded the universe
of Jason, or been based on a minor aspect of him.
(Betsy Palmer
), and as a hallucination of the film's protagonist, Alice. Though the character is never truly seen, he propels the film's plot—Mrs. Voorhees, the cook at Camp Crystal Lake, seeks revenge for his death, which she blames on the camp counselors. Jason's second appearance was in the sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2
(1981). Revealed to be alive, an adult Jason exacts revenge on Alice for decapitating his mother in the original film. Jason (Steve Daskewisz) returns to Crystal Lake, living there as a hermit
and guarding it from all intruders. Five years later a group of teenagers arrive to set up a new camp, only to be murdered one by one by Jason, who wears a bag over his head to hide his face. Ginny (Amy Steel
), the lone survivor, finds a cabin in the woods with a shrine built around the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees, and surrounded by mutilated corpses. Ginny fights back and slams a machete through Jason's shoulder. Jason is left for dead as Ginny is taken away in an ambulance. In Friday the 13th Part III (1982), Jason (Richard Brooker
) escapes to a nearby lake resort, Higgins Haven, to rest from his wounds. At the same time, Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell
) returns to the property with some friends. An unmasked and reclusive Jason kills anyone who wanders into the barn where he is hiding. Taking a hockey mask from a victim to hide his face, he leaves the barn to kill the rest of the group. Chris fends off Jason by slamming an axe into his head, but the night's events drive her into hysteria as the police take her away.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
(1984) continues the story, with a presumed-dead Jason (Ted White
) found by the police and taken to the morgue. Jason awakens at the morgue and kills an attendant and a nurse, and makes his way back to Crystal Lake. A group of friends renting a house there fall victim to Jason's rampage. Jason then seeks out Trish (Kimberly Beck
) and Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman
) next door. While Trish distracts Jason, Tommy evidently kills him with his own machete. Jason's appearance in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
(1985) was short-lived. Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd
) was committed to a mental hospital after the events of The Final Chapter, and has grown up constantly afraid that Jason (Tom Morga) will return. Jason's body was supposedly cremated after Tommy killed him. Roy Burns (Dick Wieand) uses Jason's persona to become a copycat
killer at the halfway home to which Tommy was moved. Jason appears in the film only through Tommy's dreams and hallucinations. In Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
(1986), Tommy (Thom Mathews
), released from a mental institution, visits Jason's grave and learns that Jason's body was never actually cremated, but buried in a cemetery near Crystal Lake. While attempting to destroy his body, Tommy inadvertently resurrects Jason (C. J. Graham
) via a piece of cemetery fence that acts as a lightning rod
. Now possessing superhuman
abilities, Jason returns to Crystal Lake, now renamed Forest Green, and begins his killing spree anew. Tommy eventually lures Jason back to the lake where he supposedly drowned as a child and chains him to a boulder on the lake floor, leaving him for dead.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
(1988) begins an undisclosed amount of time after Jason Lives. Jason (Kane Hodder
) is freed from his chains by the telekinetic
Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln
), who was attempting to resurrect her father. Jason begins killing those who occupy Crystal Lake, and after a battle with Tina, is dragged back to the bottom of the lake by an apparition of Tina's father. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
(1989) sees Jason return from the grave, brought back to life via an underwater electrical cable. He follows a group of students on their senior class trip to Manhattan
, boarding the Lazarus to wreak havoc. Upon reaching Manhattan, Jason kills all the survivors but Rennie (Jensen Daggett
) and Sean (Scott Reeves
); he chases them into the sewers, where he is transformed into a child by toxic waste. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
(1993) marked the second time Jason was officially killed according to studio canon. Through an unexplained resurrection, he returns to Crystal Lake, where he is hunted by the FBI
. The FBI sets up a sting to kill Jason, which proves successful. Through mystical possession
, however, Jason survives by passing his demon
-infested heart from one being to the next. Though Jason does not physically appear throughout most of the film, it is learned he has a half-sister and a niece, and that he needs them to retrieve and reinhabit his body. After resurrecting it, Jason is stabbed by his niece Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan
) and dragged into Hell.
Jason X
(2002) marked Kane Hodder's last performance as Jason. The film starts off in 2010; Jason has returned after an unexplained resurrection. Captured by the U.S. government in 2008, Jason is being experimented upon in a research facility, where it has been determined that he has regenerative capabilities and that cryonic suspension
is the only possible solution to stop him, since numerous attempts to execute him have proved unsuccessful. Jason escapes, killing all but one of his captors, and slices through the cryo-chamber, spilling cryonics fluid into the room, freezing himself and the only other survivor, Rowan (Lexa Doig
). A team of students 455 years later discover Jason's body. On the team's spacecraft, Jason thaws from his cryonic suspension and begins killing the crew. Along the way, he is enhanced by a regenerative nanotechnology
process, which gives him an impenetrable metal body. Finally, he is ejected into space and falls to the planet Earth 2, burning in the atmosphere. Set before the events of Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason
(2003) is a crossover film in which Jason battles A Nightmare on Elm Street
's villain Freddy Krueger
(Robert Englund
), a supernatural killer who murders people in their dreams. Krueger has grown weak, as people in his home town of Springwood have suppressed their fear of him. Freddy, who is impersonating Jason's mother (Paula Shaw
), resurrects Jason (Ken Kirzinger
) from Hell and sends him to Springwood to cause panic and fear. Jason accomplishes this, but refuses to stop killing. A battle ensues in both the dream world and Crystal Lake. The identity of the winner is left ambiguous, as Jason surfaces from the lake holding Freddy's severed head, which winks and laughs.
In the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot
, young Jason (Caleb Guss) witnesses his mother's (Nana Visitor
) beheading as a child and follows in her footsteps, killing anyone who comes to Crystal Lake. The adult Jason (Derek Mears
) kidnaps Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti
), a girl who looks like his mother, and holds her prisoner in his underground tunnels. Months later, Whitney's brother Clay (Jared Padalecki
) comes to Crystal Lake and rescues her. Eventually, Whitney uses Jason's devotion to his mother against him, stabbing him with his own machete while he is distracted when she appears.
of Friday the 13th Part 3 by Michael Avallone
. Avallone chose to use an alternate ending, which was filmed for Part 3 but never used, as the ending for his 1982 adaptation. In the alternate film ending, Chris, who is in the canoe, hears Rick's voice and immediately rushes back to the house. When she opens the door, Jason is standing there with a machete, and he decapitates her. Jason next appears in print in the 1986 novelization of Jason Lives by Simon Hawke
, who also adapted the first three films in 1987 and 1988. Jason Lives specifically introduced Elias Voorhees, Jason's father, a character that was slated to appear in the film but was cut by the studio. In the novel, instead of being cremated, Elias has Jason buried after his death.
Jason made his comic book
debut in the 1993 adaptation of Jason Goes to Hell, written by Andy Mangels
. The three-issue series was a condensed version of the film, with a few added scenes that were never shot. Jason made his first appearance outside of the direct adaptations in Satan's Six No. 4, published in 1993, which is a continuation of the events of Jason Goes to Hell. In 1995, Nancy A. Collins
wrote a three-issue, non-canonical miniseries involving a crossover between Jason and Leatherface
. The story involves Jason stowing away aboard a train, after being released from Crystal Lake when the area is drained due to heavy toxic waste dumping. Jason meets Leatherface, who adopts him into his family after the two become friends. Eventually they turn on each other. In 1994 four young adult novels
were released under the title of Friday the 13th. They did not feature Jason explicitly, but revolve around people becoming possessed by Jason when they put on his mask.
In 2003 and 2005, Black Flame
published novelizations of Freddy vs. Jason and Jason X respectively. In 2005 they began publishing a new series of novels; one set was published under the Jason X title, while the second set utilized the Friday the 13th title. The Jason X series consisted of four sequels to the novelization of the film. Jason X: The Experiment was the first published. In this novel, Jason is being used by the government, who are trying to use his indestructibility to create their own army of "super soldiers". Planet of the Beast follows the efforts of Dr. Bardox and his crew as they try to clone the body of a comatose Jason, and shows their efforts to stay alive when Jason wakes from his coma. Death Moon revolves around Jason crash-landing at Moon Camp Americana. Jason is discovered below a prison site and unknowingly awakened in To The Third Power. Jason has a son in this book, conceived through a form of artificial insemination
.
On May 13, 2005, Avatar Press began releasing new Friday the 13th comics. The first, titled Friday the 13th, was written by Brian Pulido
and illustrated by Mike Wolfer and Greg Waller. The story takes place after the events of Freddy vs. Jason, where siblings Miles and Laura Upland have inherited Camp Crystal Lake. Knowing that Jason caused the recent destruction, Laura, unknown to her brother, sets out to kill Jason using a paramilitary
group, so that she and her brother can sell the property. A three-issue miniseries titled Friday the 13th: Bloodbath was released in September 2005. Written by Brian Pulido and illustrated by Mike Wolfer and Andrew Dalhouse, the story involves a group of teenagers who come from Camp Tomorrow, a camp that sits on Crystal Lake, for work and a "party-filled weekend". The teenagers discover they share common family backgrounds, and soon awaken Jason, who hunts them. Brian Pulido returned for a third time in October 2005 to write Jason X. Picking up after the events of the Jason X film, Über-Jason is now on Earth II where a biological engineer, Kristen, attempts to subdue Jason, in hopes that she can use his regenerative tissue to save her own life and the lives of those she loves. In February 2006 Avatar published Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X. Written and illustrated by Mike Wolfer, the story takes place after the events of the film Jason X. A salvage team discovers the spaceship Grendel and awakens a regenerated Jason Voorhees. The "original" Jason and Über-Jason are drawn to each other, resulting in a battle to the death. In June 2006 a one-shot comic entitled Friday the 13th: Fearbook was released, written by Mike Wolfer with art by Sebastian Fiumara. The comic has Jason being captured and experimented upon by the Trent Organization; Jason escapes and seeks out Violet, the survivor of Friday the 13th: Bloodbath, who is being contained by the Trent Organization in their Crystal Lake headquarters.
The Friday the 13th novella storyline was not connected to the Jason X series, and did not continue the stories set forth by the films, but furthered the character of Jason in its own way. Friday the 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopath has Jason resurrected by a religious cult. Jason is stuck in Hell, when recently executed serial killer Wayne Sanchez persuades Jason to help him return to Earth in Friday the 13th: Hell Lake. In Hate-Kill-Repeat, two religious serial killers attempt to find Jason at Crystal Lake, believing that the three of them share the same contempt for those that break the moral code. In The Jason Strain, Jason is on an island with a group of convicts placed there by television executives running a reality game show. The character of Pamela Voorhees returns from the grave in Carnival of Maniacs. Pamela is in search of Jason, who is now part of a traveling sideshow and about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
In December 2006 DC Comics
imprint
Wildstorm
began publishing new comic books about Jason Voorhees under the Friday the 13th moniker. The first set was a six-issue miniseries involving Jason's return to Camp Crystal Lake, which is being renovated by a group of teenagers in preparation for its reopening as a tourist attraction. The series depicts various paranormal phenomena occurring at Crystal Lake. Jason's actions in this storyline are driven by the vengeful spirits of a Native American tribe wiped out on the lake by fur traders sometime in the 19th century. On July 11 and August 15, 2007, Wildstorm published a two-part special entitled Friday the 13th: Pamela's Tale. The two-issue comic book covers Pamela Voorhees' journey to Camp Crystal Lake and the story of her pregnancy with Jason as she recounts it to hitchhiker Annie, a camp counselor who was killed in the original film. Wildstorm released another two-part special, entitled Friday the 13th: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, that was released on September 12 and October 10, 2007. The comic book provides new insight into the psychology of Jason Voorhees as he befriends a boy born with a skull deformity. Wildstorm has planned a six-issue series called Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash
, starring the two killers and Ash
from the Evil Dead series. In this story, Freddy uses the Necronomicon, which is in the Voorhees' basement, to escape from Jason's subconscious and "gain powers unlike anything he's had before". Freddy attempts to use Jason to retrieve the book, stating it will make him a real boy. Ash, who is working at the local S-Mart in Crystal Lake, learns of the book's existence and sets out to destroy it. Wildstorm released another two-issue miniseries on January 9 and February 13, 2008, titled Friday the 13th: Bad Land, written and illustrated by Ron Marz and Mike Huddleston respectively. The miniseries features Jason stalking a trio of teenaged hikers taking shelter from a blizzard in Camp Crystal Lake.
A sequel to Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, subtitled The Nightmare Warriors
, was released by Wildstorm in 2009. Jason escapes from the bottom of Crystal Lake to resume his hunt for Ash, but is captured by the U.S. government. Freddy helps him escape and appoints him the general of his Deadite army, using the Necronomicon to heal his accumulated injuries and decomposition; it removes his natural deformities in the process. At the climax of the story, Jason battles his nemesis Tommy Jarvis and his great-niece Stephanie Kimble; Stephanie impales him before Tommy decapitates him with a shard of glass. Jason's soul is then absorbed by Freddy, who uses it to increase his own power.
Initially created by Victor Miller, Jason's final design was a combined effort by Miller, Ron Kurz, and Tom Savini
. The name "Jason" is a combination of "Josh" and "Ian", Miller's two sons, and "Voorhees" was inspired by a girl that Miller knew at high school whose last name was Van Voorhees. Miller felt it was a "creepy-sounding name", which was perfect for his character. Miller initially wrote Jason as a normal-looking child, but the crew behind the film decided he needed to be deformed. Victor Miller explained Jason was not meant to be a creature from the "Black Lagoon"
in his script, and scripted Jason as a mentally disabled
young boy; it was Savini who made Jason deformed. Ron Kurz confirmed that Miller's version of Jason was that of a normal child, but claims that it was his idea to turn Jason into a "mongoloid creature", and have him "jump out of the lake at the end of the film". Miller later agreed the ending would not have been as good if he looked like "Betsy Palmer
at eight years old". Miller wrote a scene where Alice dreams she is attacked in a canoe by Jason, and then she wakes up in a hospital bed. Miller's intention was to get as close to Carries ending as possible. Savini believed having Jason pop out of the lake would be psychologically disturbing to the audience, and since Alice is supposed to be dreaming, the crew could get away with adding anything they wanted.
When it came time to cast the role of Jason, Ari Lehman, who had received a part in Sean Cunningham's Manny's Orphans, arrived to read for the character of Jack. Before he could get started, Cunningham walked in and offered him a different part: Jason. Without having read a single word, Cunningham just looked at Ari and said, "You're the right size, you've got it." In the original Friday the 13th, Ari Lehman is seen only in a brief flashback as the surprise ending. Subsequent actors who portrayed a young Jason include Timothy Burr Mirkovich in Jason Takes Manhattan and Spencer Stump in Freddy vs. Jason. The adult role of Jason Voorhees has been played by various actors, some not credited, others taking great pride in their parts. Due to the physical demands the adult character requires, and the lack of emotional depth depicted, many of the actors since have been stuntmen
. The most well-known among them is Kane Hodder, who is cited as the best to play the role.
Many ideas were suggested for the sequel to Friday the 13th, including making the title part of a serialized franchise, where each succeeding film would be its own story and not related to any previous film under the Friday the 13th moniker. It was Phil Scuderi, one of the producers for the original film, which suggested bringing Jason back for the sequel. The director Steve Miner felt it was the obvious direction to take the series, as he felt the audience wanted to know more about the child who attacked Alice in the lake. Miner decided to pretend as if Alice did not see the "real Jason" in her dream, and Jason had survived his drowning as a boy and had grown up. After killing Jason in The Final Chapter, it was the director Joseph Zito's intention to leave the door open for the studio to make more films with Tommy Jarvis as the main antagonist. Screenwriter Barney Cohen felt Jarvis would become a substitute for Jason, but the idea was never fully developed in A New Beginning. Director and co-screenwriter Danny Steinmann disliked the idea of Jason not being the killer, but decided to use Tommy's fear of Jason as the primary story. This idea was immediately abandoned in Jason Lives, when A New Beginning did not spark the "creative success" the studio was looking for. Executive producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. wanted to bring Jason back, and he did not care how it was achieved.In yet another alteration of the series' continuity, Tom McLoughlin chose to ignore the idea that Jason had survived his drowning, instead presenting him as always having been some sort of supernatural force. Since A New Beginning, no sequel has attempted to replace Jason as the main antagonist. Miller, who has not seen any of the sequels, took issue with all of them because they made Jason the villain. Miller believes the best part of his screenplay was that it was about a mother avenging the senseless death of her son. Miller stated, "Jason was dead from the very beginning; he was a victim, not a villain."
, Daskawisz declined.
Now wanting a "bigger and stronger-looking" Jason, one that was also "more athletic and powerful", Steve Miner
hired former British
trapeze
artist Richard Brooker
. After a simple conversation, Miner decided he was the right person for the job. Being new to the country, Brooker believed that "playing a psychopathic killer" was the best way into the movie business. Brooker became the first actor to wear Jason's now-signature hockey mask. According to Brooker, "It felt great with the mask on. It just felt like I really was Jason because I didn't have anything to wear before that." For The Final Chapter, Joseph Zito brought his own spin to the character, one that required a "real hardcore stuntman"; Ted White was hired to perform the role. White, who only took the job for the money, did "get into the Jason psychology" when he arrived on the set. White went so far as to not speak to any of the other actors for long stretches. As filming continued, White's experience was not pleasant, and in one instance, he went to battle for co-star Judie Aronson
, who played Samantha, when the director kept her naked in the lake for extended periods of time. Displeased with his experience from filming, White had his name removed from the credits. As with Friday the 13th Part 2, there was confusion over who performed the role in A New Beginning, partly due to the fact that Jason is not the literal antagonist in the film. When Ted White turned down the opportunity to return, Dick Wieand was cast. Wieand is credited as Roy Burns, the film's actual murderer, but it was stuntman Tom Morga who performed in the few flashes of Jason, as well as portraying Roy in almost all of the masked scenes. Wieand has been outspoken about his lack of enthusiasm over his role in the film. Feeling alienated during the shoot, Wieand spent most of his time in his trailer. By comparison, Morga enjoyed his time as Jason and made sure he "really got into the character".
A nightclub
manager in Glendale, C. J. Graham
, was interviewed for the role of Jason in Jason Lives, but was initially passed over because he had no experience as a stuntman. Dan Bradley
was hired, but Paramount executives felt Bradley did not have the right physique to play the role, and Graham was hired to replace him. Although Bradley was replaced early during filming, he can be seen in the paintball sequence of the film. Graham opted to perform most of his own stunts, including the scene where Jason catches on fire while battling Tommy in the lake. The rest of the cast spoke highly of Graham, remarking that he never complained during all the uncomfortable situations he was placed in. Graham had no intention of being an actor or a stuntman, but the idea of playing the "bad guy", and the opportunity to wear the prosthetics, intrigued him. Graham was not brought back to reprise the role, but has often been cited as speaking highly of his time in the part.
Kane Hodder took over the role in The New Blood, and played Jason in the next four films. He previously worked alongside director John Carl Buechler on a film called Prison. Based on his experience working with Hodder, Buechler petitioned Frank Mancuso Jr. to hire him, but Mancuso was apprehensive about Hodder's limited size. Knowing he planned to use full body prosthetics, Buechler scheduled a test screening, the first in Friday the 13th history for the character, and Mancuso immediately gave Hodder approval upon seeing him. It is Buechler's contention that Hodder gave Jason his first true personality, based on the emotions, specifically the rage, that Hodder would emit while acting the part. According to Hodder, he wanted to "get in touch with Jason's thirst for revenge" and try to better understand his motivation to kill. After viewing the previous films, Hodder decided that he would approach Jason as a more "quick and agile" individual than he had been portrayed in the previous sequels. John Carl Buechler felt that Kane had "natural affinity for the role"—so much that Kane's appearance, when wearing the mask, would often terrify the cast, the crew, and in one incident a lone stranger that he came across on his walk back to his trailer. Initially Frank Mancuso Jr. and Barbara Sachs planned to use a Canadian stuntperson for Jason Takes Manhattan. Hodder acted as his own voice, calling and requesting that he be allowed to reprise the role; the ultimate decision was left to director Rob Hedden, who intended to use Hodder, because he felt Hodder knew the lore of the series. With Sean Cunningham's return as producer for Jason Goes to Hell, Hodder felt his chances of reprising the role were even better: Hodder had worked as Cunningham's stunt coordinator for years. Regardless, Adam Marcus, the director for Jason Goes to Hell, always intended to hire Hodder for the role. Jason X would mark Hodder's last performance as Jason, to date. Todd Farmer, who wrote the screenplay for Jason X, knew Hodder would play Jason from the beginning. Jim Isaac was a fan of Hodder's work on the previous films, so hiring him was an easy decision.
New Line
believed Freddy vs. Jason needed a fresh start, and choose a new actor for Jason. Cunningham disagreed with their decision, believing Hodder was the best choice for the role. Hodder did receive the script for Freddy vs. Jason, and had a meeting with director Ronny Yu
and New Line executives, but Matthew Barry and Yu felt the role should be recast to fit Yu's image of Jason. According to Hodder, New Line failed to provide him with a reason for the recasting, but Yu has explained he wanted a slower, more deliberate Jason, and less of the aggressive movements that Hodder had used in the previous films. Yu and development executive Jeff Katz recognized the outcry among fans over the replacement of Hodder as Jason, but stood by their choice in recasting.
The role eventually went to Ken Kirzinger
, a Canadian stuntperson who worked on Jason Takes Manhattan. There are conflicting reports over the reason Kirzinger was cast. According to Yu, Kirzinger was hired because he was taller than Robert Englund, the actor who portrays Freddy Krueger. Kirzinger stands 6 in 5 in (1.96 m), compared to the 6 in 3 in (1.91 m) of Kane Hodder, and Yu wanted a much larger actor to tower over the 5 in 10 in (1.78 m) Englund. Kirzinger believes his experience on Part VIII helped him land the part, as Kirzinger doubled for Hodder on two scenes for the film, but also believes he was simply sized up and handed the job. Although he was hired by the creative crew, New Line did not officially cast Kirzinger until first seeing him on film. Kirzinger's first scene was Jason walking down Elm Street. New Line wanted a specific movement in Jason's walk; Kirzinger met their expectations and signed a contract with the studio. However, concerns that test audiences were confused by the film's original ending caused the studio to reshoot the final scene. Actor Douglas Tait
was brought in to film the new ending, as he was available for the reshoot and had been the production's second choice to portray the role of Jason during the original casting.
Stuntman Derek Mears
was hired to portray Jason Voorhees at the recommendation of makeup special effects supervisor Scott Stoddard. Mears's pleasant demeanor had the studio worried about his ability to portray such a menacing character on screen, but Mears assured them he would be able to perform the role. When Mears auditioned for the role he was asked why they should hire an actor over just another guy in a mask. As Mears explained, portraying Jason is similar to Greek mask work
, where the mask and the actor are two separate entities, and, based on the scene, there will be various combinations of mask and actor in the performance.
, whose design for Jason was inspired by someone Savini knew as a child whose eyes and ears did not line up straight. The original design called for Jason to have hair, but Savini and his crew opted to make him bald, so he would look like a "hydrocephalic
, mongoloid pinhead", with a dome-shaped head. Savini created a plaster mold of Ari Lehman's head and used that to create prosthetics for his face. Lehman personally placed mud—from the bottom of the lake—all over his body to make himself appear "really slimy."
For Part 2, Steve Miner asked Carl Fullerton, the make-up effects supervisor, to stick to Savini's original design, but Fullerton only had one day to design and sculpt a new head. Fullerton drew a rough sketch of what he believed Jason should look like, and had it approved by Miner. Fullerton added long hair to the character. Gillette had to spend hours in a chair as they applied rubber forms all over his face, and had to keep one eye closed while the "droopy eye" application was in place. Gillette's eye was closed for twelve hours at a time while he was filming the final scenes of the film. False teeth created by a local dentist were used to distort Gillette's face. Much of the basic concept of Fullerton's design was eliminated for Part 3. Miner wanted to use a combination of the designs from Tom Savini and Carl Fullerton, but as work progressed the design began to lean more and more toward Savini's concept. Stan Winston
was hired to create a design for Jason's head, but the eyes were level and Doug White, the make-up artist for Part 3, needed a droopy right eye. White did keep Winston's design for the back of the head, because the crew did not have the time to design an entirely new head for Jason. The process of creating Jason's look was hard work for White, who had to constantly make alterations to Richard Brooker's face, even up to the last day of filming.
The script for Part 3 called for Jason to wear a mask to cover his face, having worn a bag over his head in Part 2; what no one knew at the time was that the mask chosen would become a trademark for the character, and one instantly recognizable in popular culture in the years to come. During production, Steve Miner called for a lighting check. None of the effects crew wanted to apply any make-up for the light check, so they decided to just throw a mask on Brooker. The film's 3D effects supervisor, Martin Jay Sadoff, was a hockey fan, and had a bag of hockey gear with him on the set. He pulled out a Detroit Red Wings
goaltender mask for the test. Miner loved the mask, but it was too small. Using a substance called VacuForm, Doug White enlarged the mask and created a new mold to work with. After White finished the molds, Terry Ballard placed red triangles on the mask to give it a unique appearance. Holes were punched into the mask and the markings were altered, making it different from Sadoff's mask. There were two prosthetic face masks created for Richard Brooker to wear underneath the hockey mask. One mask was composed of approximately 11 different appliances and took about six hours to apply to Brooker's face; this mask was used for scenes where the hockey mask was removed. In the scenes where the hockey mask is over the face, a simple head mask was created. This one-piece mask would slip on over Brooker's head, exposing his face but not the rest of his head.
Tom Savini agreed to return to make-up duties for The Final Chapter because he felt he should be the one to bring Jason full circle in terms of his look from child to man. Savini used his design from the original Friday the 13th, with the same practice of application as before, but molded from Ted White's face. Since Jason is not the actual killer in A New Beginning, it was not necessary to do any major designing for Jason's look. Only a head mask to cover the top and back of the head, like the one Brooker wore while wearing the hockey mask, was needed for the film. Make-up artist Louis Lazzara, who cites A New Beginning as almost a direct sequel to The Final Chapter, did base his head-mask on Tom Savini's design for The Final Chapter.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood sought to make Jason more of a "classic monster along the lines of Frankenstein." From the beginning, Buechler tried to tie the previous films together by having Jason's appearance reflect that of the damage he received in the previous installments. Buechler wanted the motor boat damage from Jason Lives, and the axe and machete cuts Jason received in Part 3 and Part 4 to part of the design for The New Blood. Since Jason had been submerged under water in the previous entry, the effects team wanted Jason to appear "rotted", with bones and ribs showing, and for Jason's features to have a more defined feel to them. Howard Berger was inspired by Carl Fullerton's design in The New Blood, and wanted to incorporate the exposed flesh concept into his model for Jason Goes to Hell. Berger designed Jason's skin to overlap with the mask, to make it appear as if the skin and mask had fused and the mask could no longer be removed. Gregory Nicotero
and Berger sculpted a full-body, foam latex suit for Kane Hodder to wear under the costume. The idea was to reveal as much of Jason's skin as possible, because Nicotero and Berger knew the physical character would not be seen for most of the film.
Stephen Dupuis was given the task of redesigning Jason for the tenth Friday the 13th film. One concept brought into the film was Jason's regenerative abilities. Dupuis gave the character more hair and more of a natural flesh appearance to illustrate the constant regeneration the character goes through; Dupuis wanted a more "gothic" design for Jason, so he added chains and shackles, and made the hockey mask more angular. Jim Isaac and the rest of his crew wanted to create an entirely new Jason at some point in the film. The idea was for the teens to completely destroy Jason's body, allowing the futuristic technology to bring him back to life. What was referred to as Über-Jason was designed to have chunks of metal growing from his body, bonded by tendrils that grew into the metal, all pushing through a leather suit. The metal was created from VacuForm, the same material used to increase the size of the original hockey mask, and was attached by Velcro. The tendrils were made from silicone. All of the pieces were crafted onto one suit, including an entire head piece, which Hodder wore. The make-up effects team added zippers along the side of the suit, which allowed Hodder to enter and exit the suit within 15 minutes.
By the time Freddy vs. Jason entered production there had been ten previous Friday the 13th films. Make-up effects artist Terezakis wanted to put his own mark on Jason's look—he wanted Jason to be less rotted and decomposed and more defined, so that the audience would see a new Jason, but still recognized the face. Terezakis tried to keep continuity with the previous films, but recognized that had he followed them too literally, then "Jason would have been reduced to a pile of goo." Ronny Yu wanted everything surrounding the hockey mask to act as a frame, making the mask the focal point of each shot. To achieve this, Terezakis created a "pooled-blood look" for the character by painting the skin black, based on the idea the blood had pooled in the back of his head because he had been lying on his back for a long time. As with other make-up artists before him, Terezakis followed Savini's original skull design, and aged it appropriately.
For the 2009 version of Friday the 13th, effects artist Scott Stoddard took inspiration from Carl Fullerton's design in Friday the 13th Part 2 and Tom Savini's work in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Stoddard wanted to make sure that Jason appeared human and not like a monster. Stoddard's vision of Jason includes hair loss, skin rashes, and the traditional deformities in his face, but he attempted to craft Jason's look in a way that would allow for a more human side to be seen. Stoddard took inspiration from the third and fourth films when designing Jason's hockey mask. The make-up artist managed to acquire an original set piece, which he studied and later sculpted. Although he had a model of one of the original masks, Stoddard did not want to replicate it in its entirety. As Stoddard explains, "Because I didn't want to take something that already existed, there were things I thought were great, but there were things I wanted to change a bit. Make it custom, but keep all the fundamental designs. Especially the markings on the forehead and cheeks. Age them down a bit, break them up." In the end, Stoddard crafted six versions of the mask, each with varying degrees of wear.
young boy. Since Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees has been depicted as a non-verbal, indestructible, machete
-wielding mass murderer. Jason is primarily portrayed as being completely silent throughout the film series. Exceptions to this include flashbacks of Jason as a child, and a brief scene in Jason Takes Manhattan where the character cries out "Mommy, please don't let me drown!" in a child's voice before being submerged in toxic waste, and in Jason Goes To Hell where his spirit possesses other individuals. Online magazine Salon
's Andrew O'Hehir describes Jason as a "silent, expressionless ... blank slate." When discussing Jason psychologically, Sean S. Cunningham said, "... he doesn't have any personality. He's like a great white shark
. You can't really defeat him. All you can hope for is to survive." Since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Jason has been a "virtually indestructible" being. Tom McLoughlin, the film's director, felt it was silly that Jason had previously been just another guy in a mask, who would kill people left and right, but get "beaten up and knocked down by the heroine at the end." McLoughlin wanted Jason to be more of a "formidable, unstoppable monster." In resurrecting Jason from the dead, McLoughlin also gave him the weakness of being rendered helpless if trapped beneath the waters of Crystal Lake; inspired by vampire lore, McLoughlin decided that Jason had in fact drowned as a child, and that returning him to his original resting place would immobilize him. This weakness would be presented again in The New Blood, and the idea that Jason had drowned as a child was taken up by director Rob Hedden as a plot element in Jason Takes Manhattan.
Many have given suggestions as Jason's motivation for killing. Ken Kirzinger refers to Jason as a "psychotic mama's boy gone horribly awry ... Very resilient. You can't kill him, but he feels pain, just not like everyone else." Kirzinger goes on to say that Jason is a "psycho-savant", and believes his actions are based on pleasing his mother, and not anything personal. Andrew O'Hehir has stated, "Coursing hormones act, of course, as smelling salts to prudish Jason, that ever-vigilant enforcer of William Bennett
-style values." Todd Farmer, writer for Jason X, wrote the scene where Jason wakes from cryonic hibernation just as two of the teenagers are having sex. Farmer liked the idea that sex acts triggered Jason back to life. Whatever his motivations, Kane Hodder believes there is a limit to what he will do. According to Hodder, Jason might violently murder any person he comes across, but when Jason Takes Manhattan called for Hodder to kick the lead character's dog, Hodder refused, stating that, while Jason has no qualms against killing humans, he is not bad enough to hurt animals. Likewise, director Tom McLoughlin chose not to have Jason harm any of the children he encounters in Jason Lives, stating that Jason would not kill a child, out of a sympathy for the plight of children generated by his own death as a child.
In an early draft of Freddy vs. Jason, it was decided that one of the villains needed a redeemable factor. Ronald D. Moore
, co-writer of the first draft, explained that Jason was the easiest to make redeemable, because no one had previously ventured into the psychology surrounding the character. Moore saw the character as a "blank slate", and felt he was a character the audience could really root for. Another draft, penned by Mark Protosevich, followed Moore's idea of Jason having a redeemable quality. In the draft, Jason protects a pregnant teenager named Rachel Daniels. Protosevich explained, "It gets into this whole idea of there being two kinds of monsters. Freddy is a figure of actual pure evil and Jason is more like a figure of vengeance who punishes people he feels do not deserve to live. Ultimately, the two of them clash and Jason becomes an honorable monster." Writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who wrote the final draft of the film, disagreed about making Jason a hero, although they drew comparisons between the fact that Freddy was a victimizer and Jason was a victim. They stated, "We did not want to make Jason any less scary. He's still a brutal killer ... We never wanted to put them in a situation where Jason is a hero ... They're both villains to be equally feared." Brenna O'Brien, co-founder of Fridaythe13thfilms.com, saw the character as having sympathetic qualities. She stated, "[Jason] was a deformed child who almost drowned and then spent the rest of his childhood growing up alone in the woods. He saw his mother get murdered by a camp counselor in the first Friday the 13th, and so now he exacts his revenge on anyone who returns to Camp Crystal Lake. Teenage fans can identify with that sense of rejection and isolation, which you can't really get from other killers like Freddy Krueger
and Michael Myers
."
As Jason went through some characterization changes in the 2009 film, Derek Mears likens him more to a combination of John Rambo
, Tarzan
, and the Abominable Snowman from Looney Tunes
. To him, this Jason is similar to Rambo because he sets up the other characters to fall into his traps. Like Rambo, he is more calculated because he feels that he has been wronged and he is fighting back; he is meant to be more sympathetic in this film. Fuller and Form contend that they did not want to make Jason too sympathetic to the audience. As Brad Fuller explains, "We do not want him to be sympathetic. Jason is not a comedic character, he is not sympathetic. He's a killing machine. Plain and simple."
California State University
's Media Psychology Lab surveyed 1,166 people Americans aged from 16 to 91 on the psychological appeal of movie monsters. Many of the characteristics associated with Jason Voorhees were appealing to the participants. In the survey, Jason was considered to be an "unstoppable killing machine." Participants were impressed by the "cornucopic feats of slicing and dicing a seemingly endless number of adolescents and the occasional adult." Out of the ten monsters used in the survey—which included vampire
s, Freddy Krueger, Frankenstein's monster
, Michael Myers, Godzilla
, Chucky, Hannibal Lecter
, King Kong
, and the Alien—Jason scored the highest in all the categories involving killing variables. Further characteristics that appealed to the participants included Jason's "immortality, his apparent enjoyment of killing [and] his superhuman strength."
Jason Voorhees is one of the leading cultural icon
s of American popular culture
. In 1992 Jason was awarded the MTV
Lifetime Achievement Award. He was the first of only three completely fictional characters to be given the award; Godzilla
(1996) and Chewbacca
(1997) are the others. Jason was named No. 26 in Wizard
magazine's 100 greatest villains of all time. Universal Studios theme parks, in collaboration with New Line Cinema, used the character for their Halloween Horror Nights event.
The character has been produced and marketed as merchandise over the years. In 1988 Screamin' Toys produced a model kit where owners could build their own Jason statuette. The kit required the owner to cut and paint various parts in order to assemble the figure. Six years later, Screamin' Toys issued a new model kit for Jason Goes to Hell. Both kits are now out of production. McFarlane Toys
released two toy lines, one in 1998 and the other in 2002. The first was a figure of Jason from Jason Goes to Hell, and the other was of Über-Jason from Jason X. Since McFarlane's last toy line in 2002, there has been a steady production of action figures, dolls, and statuettes. These include tie-ins with the film Freddy vs. Jason (2003).
Jason has made an appearance in three video games. He first appeared in a 1985 Commodore 64
game. His next appearance was in 1989, when LJN
, an American game company known for its games based on popular movies in the 1980s and early 1990s, released Friday the 13th
on the Nintendo Entertainment System
. The premise involved the gamer, who picks one of six camp counselors as their player, trying to save the campers from Jason, while battling various enemies throughout the game. On October 13, 2006, a Friday the 13th game was released for mobile phone
s. The game puts the user in the persona of Jason as he battles the undead.
The character has been referenced, or made cameo appearances, in various entertainment mediums. Outside of literature sources based on the character, Jason has been featured in a variety of magazines and comic strips. Cracked magazine has released several issues featuring parodies of Jason, and he has been featured on two of their covers. Mad
magazine has featured the character in almost a dozen stories. He has appeared twice in the comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm
.
Inspired by his own experience, Ari Lehman founded a band called FIRSTJASON. Lehman's band is classified as horror punk
, and is influenced by the sounds of the Dead Kennedys
and The Misfits. The band's name pays homage to Lehman's portrayal of Jason Voorhees in the original Friday the 13th. One of the band's songs is entitled "Jason is Watching".
In 1986, coinciding with the release of Jason Lives, Alice Cooper
released "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
" from his album Constrictor
. The song was written to "signal Jason's big return" to the cinema, as he had been almost entirely absent in the previous film. Rapper
Eminem
has referenced Jason in several of his songs. The song "Criminal", from the album The Marshall Mathers LP
, mentions Jason specifically, while songs "Amityville" and "Off the Wall"—the latter featured fellow rapper Redman—contain Harry Manfredini's music "ki, ki, ki ... ma, ma, ma" from the film series. Eminem sometimes wears a hockey mask during concerts. Other rap artists
that have referenced Jason include Tupac Shakur
, Dr. Dre
, LL Cool J
, and Insane Clown Posse
. VH1
issued an advertisement for their Vogue Fashion Awards which was labeled "Friday the 20th", and featured Jason's mask created out of rhinestone
.
Jason has been referenced or parodied in films and television shows. In the film Scream
, directed by Freddy Krueger creator Wes Craven
, actress Drew Barrymore
's character is being stalked by a killer who calls her on her home phone. In order to survive, she must answer the man's trivia questions. One question is "name the killer in Friday the 13th." She incorrectly guesses Jason, who did not become the killer for the franchise until Part 2. Writer Kevin Williamson claimed his inspiration for this scene came when he asked this question in a bar while a group was playing a movie trivia quiz game. He received a free drink, because nobody got the answer right. In another Wes Craven film, Cursed, a wax sculpture of Jason, from Jason Goes to Hell, can be seen in a wax museum
.
The stop motion
animated television show Robot Chicken
features Jason in three of its comedy sketches. In episode seventeen, "Operation: Rich in Spirit", the mystery-solving teenagers from Scooby-Doo
arrive at Camp Crystal Lake to investigate the Jason Voorhees murders, and are killed off one by one. Velma
is the only survivor, and in typical Scooby-Doo fashion, she rips off Jason's mask to reveal his true identity: Old Man Phillips. In episode nineteen, "That Hurts Me", Jason reappears, this time as a housemate of "Horror Movie Big Brother
", alongside other famous slasher movie killers such as Michael Myers
, Freddy Krueger
, Leatherface
, Pinhead
, and Ghostface
. Three years later, in episode sixty-two, Jason is shown on the days before and after a typical Friday the 13th.
Jason is spoofed in the season five episode of Family Guy
entitled "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One". The so-called "Mr. Voorhees" explains to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa how happy he is to see local wildlife return following the cleanup and rejuvenation of Lake Quahog. He reappears later in the episode as the manager of the "Britches and Hose" clothing store. As opposed to his monstrous personality in the films, Jason is depicted here as polite and articulate, albeit still a psychopath; he murders random swimmers and threatens to kill his employee if she screws up. In an episode of The Simpsons
, Jason appears in a Halloween episode
sitting on the couch with Freddy Krueger waiting for the family to arrive. When Freddy ask where the family is, Jason responds, "Ehh, whaddya gonna do?" and turns the TV on. He also appears in The Simpsons episode "Stop, or My Dog Will Shoot!", alongside Pinhead, menacing Bart in a fantasy sequence. The South Park
episodes "Imaginationland Episode II" and "III
" feature Jason among an assortment of other villains and monsters as an inhabitant of the "bad side" of Imaginationland, a world populated by fictional characters. This version of Jason has an effeminate
voice and describes the removal of Strawberry Shortcake
's eyeball as "super hardcore". In April 2010 Sideshow Toys released a polystone statue of Jason, based on the version appearing in the 2009 remake.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
from the Friday the 13th series of slasher film
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
s. He first appeared in Friday the 13th (1980), as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees
Pamela Voorhees
Pamela Sue Voorhees is a fictional character in the Friday the 13th films, and the antagonist of the original Friday the 13th film. She is a former camp cook and the mother of Jason Voorhees, the main character of the series....
, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller
Victor Miller (writer)
Victor Miller or Victor B. Miller is an American writer for film and television. Perhaps his best known and most acknowledged work is his script for the first Friday the 13th film, the popularity of which spawned a long series of sequels, none of which has his involvement, though he remains...
, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S. Cunningham
Sean S. Cunningham
Sean Sexton Cunningham is an American film director, producer, and writer. He is best known for creating the Friday the 13th series of horror films, which introduced the fictional killer Jason Voorhees...
, and Tom Savini
Tom Savini
Thomas Vincent "Tom" Savini is an American actor, stuntman, director, award-winning special effects and makeup artist. He is known for his work on the Living Dead films directed by George A. Romero, as well as Creepshow, The Burning, Friday the 13th, The Prowler, and Maniac. He directed the 1990...
, Jason was not originally intended to carry the series as the main antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
. The character has subsequently been represented in various other media, including novels, comic books, and a cross-over film
Freddy vs. Jason
Freddy vs. Jason is a 2003 American slasher film directed by Ronny Yu. The film is a crossover between the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises...
with another iconic horror film character, Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
.
The character has primarily been an antagonist in the films, whether by stalking and killing the characters, or acting as a psychological threat to the lead character, as is the case in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is a 1985 slasher film. It was released on March 22, 1985. It is the fifth film in the Friday the 13th film series...
. Since Lehman's portrayal, the character has been represented by numerous actors and stuntmen
Stunt performer
A stuntman, or daredevil is someone who performs dangerous stunts, often as a career.These stunts are sometimes rigged so that they look dangerous while still having safety mechanisms, but often they are as dangerous as they appear to be...
, sometimes by more than one at a time; this has caused some controversy as to who should receive credit for the portrayal. Kane Hodder
Kane Hodder
Kane Warren Hodder is an American actor and stuntman. Standing , he is best known for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in four films from the Friday the 13th film series . He is also known for his role as Victor Crowley in Hatchet. -Career:Hodder is the only actor to portray Jason Voorhees more...
is the best known of the stuntmen to portray Jason Voorhees, having played the character in four consecutive films.
The character's physical appearance has gone through many transformations, with various special makeup effects artists making their mark on the character's design, including makeup artist Stan Winston
Stan Winston
Stanley Winston was an American visual effects supervisor, makeup artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, Iron Man, Edward Scissorhands, and Avatar...
. Tom Savini's initial design has been the basis for many of the later incarnations. The trademark hockey goalie mask did not appear until Friday the 13th Part III. Since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is a 1986 slasher film, the sixth film in the Friday the 13th film series. The film was written and directed by Tom McLoughlin...
, filmmakers have given Jason superhuman strength
Superhuman strength
Superhuman strength, also called superstrength, super-strength, or super strength, is an ability commonly employed in fiction. It is the ability for a character to be stronger than humanly possible...
, regenerative powers
Healing factor
A healing factor is a term used to describe the ability of some characters in fiction to recover from bodily injuries or disease at a superhuman rate...
, and near invulnerability. He has been seen as a sympathetic character, whose motivation for killing has been cited as being driven by the immoral actions of his victims and his own rage over having drowned as a child. Jason Voorhees has been featured in various humor magazines, referenced in feature films, parodied in television shows, and was the inspiration for a horror punk
Horror punk
Horror punk is a music genre that mixes Gothic and punk rock sounds with morbid imagery and lyrics, which are often influenced by horror films...
band. Several toy lines have been released based on various versions of the character from the Friday the 13th films. Jason Voorhees's hockey mask is a widely recognized image in popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
.
Appearances
Jason Voorhees first appears as a hallucination of the main character Alice (Adrienne KingAdrienne King
Adrienne King is an American actress, dancer and painter. She is mostly known for her starring role in the original Friday the 13th.-Life and career:...
) in the original Friday the 13th film; he becomes the main antagonist of the series in its sequels. As well as the films, there have been books and comics that have either expanded the universe
Expanded Universe
The term Expanded Universe is generally used to denote the 'extension' of a media franchise with other media...
of Jason, or been based on a minor aspect of him.
Films
Jason made his first cinematic appearance in the original Friday the 13th on May 9, 1980. Jason is not a killer in this film, but is seen in the memories of his mother, Mrs. VoorheesPamela Voorhees
Pamela Sue Voorhees is a fictional character in the Friday the 13th films, and the antagonist of the original Friday the 13th film. She is a former camp cook and the mother of Jason Voorhees, the main character of the series....
(Betsy Palmer
Betsy Palmer
Betsy Palmer is an American actress, best known as a regular panelist on the game show I've Got a Secret, and later for playing Pamela Voorhees in the notorious slasher film Friday the 13th.-Life and career:...
), and as a hallucination of the film's protagonist, Alice. Though the character is never truly seen, he propels the film's plot—Mrs. Voorhees, the cook at Camp Crystal Lake, seeks revenge for his death, which she blames on the camp counselors. Jason's second appearance was in the sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part II is a 1981 slasher film directed by Steve Miner, who also directed its sequel, Friday the 13th Part III and several other popular horror films. A sequel to Friday the 13th , it is the second film in the Friday the 13th film series. It was a moderate box-office hit, opening on...
(1981). Revealed to be alive, an adult Jason exacts revenge on Alice for decapitating his mother in the original film. Jason (Steve Daskewisz) returns to Crystal Lake, living there as a hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
and guarding it from all intruders. Five years later a group of teenagers arrive to set up a new camp, only to be murdered one by one by Jason, who wears a bag over his head to hide his face. Ginny (Amy Steel
Amy Steel
Amy Steel is an American film and television actress, also credited as Amy Steel Pulitzer.-Biography:She is perhaps best known for her role as Ginny Field in the 1981 horror film Friday the 13th Part 2. She was offered the chance to reprise the role for the third film in the long-running series,...
), the lone survivor, finds a cabin in the woods with a shrine built around the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees, and surrounded by mutilated corpses. Ginny fights back and slams a machete through Jason's shoulder. Jason is left for dead as Ginny is taken away in an ambulance. In Friday the 13th Part III (1982), Jason (Richard Brooker
Richard Brooker
Richard Brooker is an English stuntman, perhaps best known for his role in Friday the 13th Part III as Jason Voorhees.-Career:Brooker, a former trapeze artist from England, started his career in acting in a casting magazine, "Dramalogue"...
) escapes to a nearby lake resort, Higgins Haven, to rest from his wounds. At the same time, Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell
Dana Kimmell
Dana Kimmell is an American actress who has starred in movies and on television. She played Dawn Marshall on Texas and appeared on Days of our Lives as Diane Parker from 1983-1984.-Early Life:...
) returns to the property with some friends. An unmasked and reclusive Jason kills anyone who wanders into the barn where he is hiding. Taking a hockey mask from a victim to hide his face, he leaves the barn to kill the rest of the group. Chris fends off Jason by slamming an axe into his head, but the night's events drive her into hysteria as the police take her away.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is a 1984 slasher film. It is the fourth film in the Friday the 13th film series. Though it was billed as "The Final Chapter," there have been many further sequels in the franchise. The popularity and financial success of the film, which grossed over $32 million,...
(1984) continues the story, with a presumed-dead Jason (Ted White
Ted White (stuntman)
Ted White is an American stunt man/actor who doubled for John Wayne, Fess Parker, Clark Gable, Lee Marvin and Richard Boone, among others.-Sports career:The hulking White also played football for the University of Oklahoma....
) found by the police and taken to the morgue. Jason awakens at the morgue and kills an attendant and a nurse, and makes his way back to Crystal Lake. A group of friends renting a house there fall victim to Jason's rampage. Jason then seeks out Trish (Kimberly Beck
Kimberly Beck
Kimberly Beck is an American actress with over sixty television and film roles to her credit.-Biography:...
) and Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman
Corey Feldman
Corey Scott Feldman is an American film and television actor. He became known during the 1980s, with roles in the Hollywood films Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, The Goonies, Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, License to Drive, Dream a Little Dream, Gremlins and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...
) next door. While Trish distracts Jason, Tommy evidently kills him with his own machete. Jason's appearance in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is a 1985 slasher film. It was released on March 22, 1985. It is the fifth film in the Friday the 13th film series...
(1985) was short-lived. Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd
John Shepherd (actor)
John Shepherd is an American actor and producer who has starred in film and on television. He is best known for his role in the 1985 horror film Friday the 13th: A New Beginning as Tommy Jarvis and speaks in the commentary of the Deluxe Edition of the film in 2009.Other movies he starred in were...
) was committed to a mental hospital after the events of The Final Chapter, and has grown up constantly afraid that Jason (Tom Morga) will return. Jason's body was supposedly cremated after Tommy killed him. Roy Burns (Dick Wieand) uses Jason's persona to become a copycat
Copycat crimes
A copycat crime is a criminal act that is modelled or inspired by a previous crime that has been reported in the media or described in fiction.-Copycat effect:...
killer at the halfway home to which Tommy was moved. Jason appears in the film only through Tommy's dreams and hallucinations. In Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is a 1986 slasher film, the sixth film in the Friday the 13th film series. The film was written and directed by Tom McLoughlin...
(1986), Tommy (Thom Mathews
Thom Mathews
Thom Mathews in Los Angeles, California is an actor who is perhaps best known for his appearance in the horror films Return of the Living Dead and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.-Career:...
), released from a mental institution, visits Jason's grave and learns that Jason's body was never actually cremated, but buried in a cemetery near Crystal Lake. While attempting to destroy his body, Tommy inadvertently resurrects Jason (C. J. Graham
C. J. Graham
C. J. Graham is an actor who became one of many actors/stuntmen to play Jason Voorhees in the sixth film of the Friday the 13th film series.-Career:...
) via a piece of cemetery fence that acts as a lightning rod
Lightning rod
A lightning rod or lightning conductor is a metal rod or conductor mounted on top of a building and electrically connected to the ground through a wire, to protect the building in the event of lightning...
. Now possessing superhuman
Superhuman
Superhuman can mean an improved human, for example, by genetic modification, cybernetic implants, or as what humans might evolve into, in the near or distant future...
abilities, Jason returns to Crystal Lake, now renamed Forest Green, and begins his killing spree anew. Tommy eventually lures Jason back to the lake where he supposedly drowned as a child and chains him to a boulder on the lake floor, leaving him for dead.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the seventh installment in the original Friday the 13th series, released in 1988. It also marked the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role of Jason Voorhees.-Plot:...
(1988) begins an undisclosed amount of time after Jason Lives. Jason (Kane Hodder
Kane Hodder
Kane Warren Hodder is an American actor and stuntman. Standing , he is best known for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in four films from the Friday the 13th film series . He is also known for his role as Victor Crowley in Hatchet. -Career:Hodder is the only actor to portray Jason Voorhees more...
) is freed from his chains by the telekinetic
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln
Lar Park Lincoln
Lar Park Lincoln is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the 1987 film House II: The Second Story as Kate, and in the 1988 horror film Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood as Tina Shepard.-Biography:...
), who was attempting to resurrect her father. Jason begins killing those who occupy Crystal Lake, and after a battle with Tina, is dragged back to the bottom of the lake by an apparition of Tina's father. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is a slasher film released on July 28, 1989. It is the eighth film in the Friday the 13th film series, and deals with Jason Voorhees stalking a group of high school graduates on a ship en route to New York City, and was the last film in the series...
(1989) sees Jason return from the grave, brought back to life via an underwater electrical cable. He follows a group of students on their senior class trip to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, boarding the Lazarus to wreak havoc. Upon reaching Manhattan, Jason kills all the survivors but Rennie (Jensen Daggett
Jensen Daggett
Jensen Daggett is an American film and television actress. Standing 5' 6", she performed as a comedic and dramatic actress.-Biography:After studying theater at Agoura High School in in Agoura Hills, California, Daggett moved to Los Angeles after her 18th birthday to study at the Stella Adler...
) and Sean (Scott Reeves
Scott Reeves
Gregory Scott Reeves is an American actor and country music singer. He is known for his role as Ryan McNeil on The Young and the Restless and for his role as Dr...
); he chases them into the sewers, where he is transformed into a child by toxic waste. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is a 1993 slasher film, the ninth—and, as the title suggests, intended final—installment in the Friday the 13th film series and the first sequel to be distributed by New Line Cinema....
(1993) marked the second time Jason was officially killed according to studio canon. Through an unexplained resurrection, he returns to Crystal Lake, where he is hunted by the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
. The FBI sets up a sting to kill Jason, which proves successful. Through mystical possession
Demonic possession
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...
, however, Jason survives by passing his demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
-infested heart from one being to the next. Though Jason does not physically appear throughout most of the film, it is learned he has a half-sister and a niece, and that he needs them to retrieve and reinhabit his body. After resurrecting it, Jason is stabbed by his niece Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan
Kari Keegan
Kari Keegan is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her lead role in the horror movie Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday . She appeared in an uncredited part in Jerry Maguire and as the lead role in the independent film Mind Games . She has been married since 1998 to Craig...
) and dragged into Hell.
Jason X
Jason X
Jason X is a 2002 science fiction horror slasher film directed by James Isaac. It is the tenth in the Friday the 13th film series and stars Kane Hodder as the undead mass murderer Jason Voorhees, the film made $16,951,798 worldwide with a budget of $14 million...
(2002) marked Kane Hodder's last performance as Jason. The film starts off in 2010; Jason has returned after an unexplained resurrection. Captured by the U.S. government in 2008, Jason is being experimented upon in a research facility, where it has been determined that he has regenerative capabilities and that cryonic suspension
Cryopreservation
Cryopreservation is a process where cells or whole tissues are preserved by cooling to low sub-zero temperatures, such as 77 K or −196 °C . At these low temperatures, any biological activity, including the biochemical reactions that would lead to cell death, is effectively stopped...
is the only possible solution to stop him, since numerous attempts to execute him have proved unsuccessful. Jason escapes, killing all but one of his captors, and slices through the cryo-chamber, spilling cryonics fluid into the room, freezing himself and the only other survivor, Rowan (Lexa Doig
Lexa Doig
Alexandra L. "Lexa" Doig is a Canadian actress. She portrayed the role of Rommie in the science fiction TV series Andromeda, and had a recurring character on Stargate SG-1.-Career:...
). A team of students 455 years later discover Jason's body. On the team's spacecraft, Jason thaws from his cryonic suspension and begins killing the crew. Along the way, he is enhanced by a regenerative nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
process, which gives him an impenetrable metal body. Finally, he is ejected into space and falls to the planet Earth 2, burning in the atmosphere. Set before the events of Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason
Freddy vs. Jason
Freddy vs. Jason is a 2003 American slasher film directed by Ronny Yu. The film is a crossover between the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises...
(2003) is a crossover film in which Jason battles A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise)
A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American horror franchise that consists of nine slasher films, a television show, novels, and comic books. The franchise began with the film series created by Wes Craven. The franchise is based on the fictional character Freddy Krueger, introduced in A Nightmare on...
's villain Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
(Robert Englund
Robert Englund
Robert Barton Englund is an American actor, voice-actor and director, best known for playing the fictional serial killer Freddy Krueger, in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in...
), a supernatural killer who murders people in their dreams. Krueger has grown weak, as people in his home town of Springwood have suppressed their fear of him. Freddy, who is impersonating Jason's mother (Paula Shaw
Paula Shaw
Paula Shaw is an American actress. She has portrayed characters in numerous films and on television . She is perhaps most well known who for portraying the character of Mrs. Pamela Voorhees in the Freddy vs. Jason movie...
), resurrects Jason (Ken Kirzinger
Ken Kirzinger
Ken Kirzinger is a Canadian stuntman and actor best known for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason and of Pa in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End . He also played "Mason" Jason Voorhees character spoof in the horror film parody, Stan Helsing.-Role as Jason Voorhees:At he is one of the...
) from Hell and sends him to Springwood to cause panic and fear. Jason accomplishes this, but refuses to stop killing. A battle ensues in both the dream world and Crystal Lake. The identity of the winner is left ambiguous, as Jason surfaces from the lake holding Freddy's severed head, which winks and laughs.
In the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot
Friday the 13th (2009 film)
Friday the 13th is a 2009 American slasher film directed by Marcus Nispel and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. It is a reboot of the Friday the 13th film series, which began in 1980 and the twelfth Friday the 13th film in total...
, young Jason (Caleb Guss) witnesses his mother's (Nana Visitor
Nana Visitor
Nana Visitor , born Nana Tucker, is an American actress, best known for playing Kira Nerys in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Jean Ritter in the television series Wildfire.-Early life:...
) beheading as a child and follows in her footsteps, killing anyone who comes to Crystal Lake. The adult Jason (Derek Mears
Derek Mears
Derek Mears is an American actor and stuntman, best known for his role as Jason Voorhees in the reboot of Friday the 13th.-Early life:...
) kidnaps Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti
Amanda Righetti
Amanda Righetti is an American actress and film producer. She is best known for her roles in The Mentalist, Friday the 13th and The O.C. In 2008, Righetti was the winner of the Best Actress award at the New York International Independent Film Video Festival for the Short Film category.-Early...
), a girl who looks like his mother, and holds her prisoner in his underground tunnels. Months later, Whitney's brother Clay (Jared Padalecki
Jared Padalecki
Jared Tristan Padalecki is an American actor. He grew up in Texas and came to fame in the early 2000s after appearing on the television series Gilmore Girls as well as in several Hollywood films, including New York Minute and House of Wax...
) comes to Crystal Lake and rescues her. Eventually, Whitney uses Jason's devotion to his mother against him, stabbing him with his own machete while he is distracted when she appears.
Literature
Jason first appeared outside of film in the 1982 novelizationNovelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
of Friday the 13th Part 3 by Michael Avallone
Michael Avallone
Michael Avallone was a prolific American author of mystery and secret agent fiction, as well as many novels based upon various television series and films...
. Avallone chose to use an alternate ending, which was filmed for Part 3 but never used, as the ending for his 1982 adaptation. In the alternate film ending, Chris, who is in the canoe, hears Rick's voice and immediately rushes back to the house. When she opens the door, Jason is standing there with a machete, and he decapitates her. Jason next appears in print in the 1986 novelization of Jason Lives by Simon Hawke
Simon Hawke
Simon Hawke is an American author of mainly science fiction and fantasy novels. He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D...
, who also adapted the first three films in 1987 and 1988. Jason Lives specifically introduced Elias Voorhees, Jason's father, a character that was slated to appear in the film but was cut by the studio. In the novel, instead of being cremated, Elias has Jason buried after his death.
Jason made his comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
debut in the 1993 adaptation of Jason Goes to Hell, written by Andy Mangels
Andy Mangels
Andy Mangels is an American science fiction author who has written novels, comics, and magazine articles, and produced DVD collections, mostly focusing on media in popular culture...
. The three-issue series was a condensed version of the film, with a few added scenes that were never shot. Jason made his first appearance outside of the direct adaptations in Satan's Six No. 4, published in 1993, which is a continuation of the events of Jason Goes to Hell. In 1995, Nancy A. Collins
Nancy A. Collins
Nancy A. Collins is a United States horror fiction writer best known for her series of vampire novels featuring her character Sonja Blue. Collins has alsowritten for comic books, including the Swamp Thing series, Jason Vs...
wrote a three-issue, non-canonical miniseries involving a crossover between Jason and Leatherface
Leatherface
Leatherface is the main antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-film series and its spin-offs. He wears masks made of human skin and engages in murder and cannibalism alongside his inbred family. He is considered by many to be one of the first major slasher film villains alongside Michael...
. The story involves Jason stowing away aboard a train, after being released from Crystal Lake when the area is drained due to heavy toxic waste dumping. Jason meets Leatherface, who adopts him into his family after the two become friends. Eventually they turn on each other. In 1994 four young adult novels
Young adult literature
Young-adult fiction or young adult literature , also juvenile fiction, is fiction written for, published for, or marketed to adolescents and young adults, roughly ages 14 to 21. The Young Adult Library Services of the American Library Association defines a young adult as "someone between the...
were released under the title of Friday the 13th. They did not feature Jason explicitly, but revolve around people becoming possessed by Jason when they put on his mask.
In 2003 and 2005, Black Flame
Black Flame
Black Flame was an imprint of BL Publishing, the publishing arm of Games Workshop and a sister imprint to the Black Library and Solaris Books. Black Flame was devoted to publishing cult fiction in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror...
published novelizations of Freddy vs. Jason and Jason X respectively. In 2005 they began publishing a new series of novels; one set was published under the Jason X title, while the second set utilized the Friday the 13th title. The Jason X series consisted of four sequels to the novelization of the film. Jason X: The Experiment was the first published. In this novel, Jason is being used by the government, who are trying to use his indestructibility to create their own army of "super soldiers". Planet of the Beast follows the efforts of Dr. Bardox and his crew as they try to clone the body of a comatose Jason, and shows their efforts to stay alive when Jason wakes from his coma. Death Moon revolves around Jason crash-landing at Moon Camp Americana. Jason is discovered below a prison site and unknowingly awakened in To The Third Power. Jason has a son in this book, conceived through a form of artificial insemination
Artificial insemination
Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination...
.
On May 13, 2005, Avatar Press began releasing new Friday the 13th comics. The first, titled Friday the 13th, was written by Brian Pulido
Brian Pulido
Brian Pulido is a creator, writer and producer of comic books and films.-Early life:Growing up in Long Branch, New Jersey, Pulido first developed an interest in the horror genre after the release of Night of the Living Dead when he was a child.-Comic book career:Pulido has created, written or...
and illustrated by Mike Wolfer and Greg Waller. The story takes place after the events of Freddy vs. Jason, where siblings Miles and Laura Upland have inherited Camp Crystal Lake. Knowing that Jason caused the recent destruction, Laura, unknown to her brother, sets out to kill Jason using a paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
group, so that she and her brother can sell the property. A three-issue miniseries titled Friday the 13th: Bloodbath was released in September 2005. Written by Brian Pulido and illustrated by Mike Wolfer and Andrew Dalhouse, the story involves a group of teenagers who come from Camp Tomorrow, a camp that sits on Crystal Lake, for work and a "party-filled weekend". The teenagers discover they share common family backgrounds, and soon awaken Jason, who hunts them. Brian Pulido returned for a third time in October 2005 to write Jason X. Picking up after the events of the Jason X film, Über-Jason is now on Earth II where a biological engineer, Kristen, attempts to subdue Jason, in hopes that she can use his regenerative tissue to save her own life and the lives of those she loves. In February 2006 Avatar published Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X. Written and illustrated by Mike Wolfer, the story takes place after the events of the film Jason X. A salvage team discovers the spaceship Grendel and awakens a regenerated Jason Voorhees. The "original" Jason and Über-Jason are drawn to each other, resulting in a battle to the death. In June 2006 a one-shot comic entitled Friday the 13th: Fearbook was released, written by Mike Wolfer with art by Sebastian Fiumara. The comic has Jason being captured and experimented upon by the Trent Organization; Jason escapes and seeks out Violet, the survivor of Friday the 13th: Bloodbath, who is being contained by the Trent Organization in their Crystal Lake headquarters.
The Friday the 13th novella storyline was not connected to the Jason X series, and did not continue the stories set forth by the films, but furthered the character of Jason in its own way. Friday the 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopath has Jason resurrected by a religious cult. Jason is stuck in Hell, when recently executed serial killer Wayne Sanchez persuades Jason to help him return to Earth in Friday the 13th: Hell Lake. In Hate-Kill-Repeat, two religious serial killers attempt to find Jason at Crystal Lake, believing that the three of them share the same contempt for those that break the moral code. In The Jason Strain, Jason is on an island with a group of convicts placed there by television executives running a reality game show. The character of Pamela Voorhees returns from the grave in Carnival of Maniacs. Pamela is in search of Jason, who is now part of a traveling sideshow and about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
In December 2006 DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
Wildstorm
Wildstorm
WildStorm Productions, or simply WildStorm, published American comic books. Originally an independent company established by Jim Lee and further expanded upon in subsequent years by other creators, WildStorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1999...
began publishing new comic books about Jason Voorhees under the Friday the 13th moniker. The first set was a six-issue miniseries involving Jason's return to Camp Crystal Lake, which is being renovated by a group of teenagers in preparation for its reopening as a tourist attraction. The series depicts various paranormal phenomena occurring at Crystal Lake. Jason's actions in this storyline are driven by the vengeful spirits of a Native American tribe wiped out on the lake by fur traders sometime in the 19th century. On July 11 and August 15, 2007, Wildstorm published a two-part special entitled Friday the 13th: Pamela's Tale. The two-issue comic book covers Pamela Voorhees' journey to Camp Crystal Lake and the story of her pregnancy with Jason as she recounts it to hitchhiker Annie, a camp counselor who was killed in the original film. Wildstorm released another two-part special, entitled Friday the 13th: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, that was released on September 12 and October 10, 2007. The comic book provides new insight into the psychology of Jason Voorhees as he befriends a boy born with a skull deformity. Wildstorm has planned a six-issue series called Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash is a six-issue comic book limited series that was released in November 2007 and ran until March 2008. It was published by Wildstorm, Dynamite Entertainment, and DC Comics. Based on the original Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash film treatment by Jeff Katz, the story serves as a...
, starring the two killers and Ash
Ash Williams
Ashley J. "Ash" Williams is the protagonist in the Evil Dead horror film franchise, played by Bruce Campbell, and created by director Sam Raimi. Throughout the series, Ash has to face off against his loved ones inside an abandoned cabin as they are possessed by "deadites", the evil souls of the dead...
from the Evil Dead series. In this story, Freddy uses the Necronomicon, which is in the Voorhees' basement, to escape from Jason's subconscious and "gain powers unlike anything he's had before". Freddy attempts to use Jason to retrieve the book, stating it will make him a real boy. Ash, who is working at the local S-Mart in Crystal Lake, learns of the book's existence and sets out to destroy it. Wildstorm released another two-issue miniseries on January 9 and February 13, 2008, titled Friday the 13th: Bad Land, written and illustrated by Ron Marz and Mike Huddleston respectively. The miniseries features Jason stalking a trio of teenaged hikers taking shelter from a blizzard in Camp Crystal Lake.
A sequel to Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, subtitled The Nightmare Warriors
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors is a six-issue limited series comic book written by Jeff Katz and James Kuhoric, with art by Jason Craig. The series was published by Dynamite Entertainment and DC Comics, with imprint by Wildstorm, beginning in August 2009 and concluding in December...
, was released by Wildstorm in 2009. Jason escapes from the bottom of Crystal Lake to resume his hunt for Ash, but is captured by the U.S. government. Freddy helps him escape and appoints him the general of his Deadite army, using the Necronomicon to heal his accumulated injuries and decomposition; it removes his natural deformities in the process. At the climax of the story, Jason battles his nemesis Tommy Jarvis and his great-niece Stephanie Kimble; Stephanie impales him before Tommy decapitates him with a shard of glass. Jason's soul is then absorbed by Freddy, who uses it to increase his own power.
Creating a monster
Tom Savini
Thomas Vincent "Tom" Savini is an American actor, stuntman, director, award-winning special effects and makeup artist. He is known for his work on the Living Dead films directed by George A. Romero, as well as Creepshow, The Burning, Friday the 13th, The Prowler, and Maniac. He directed the 1990...
. The name "Jason" is a combination of "Josh" and "Ian", Miller's two sons, and "Voorhees" was inspired by a girl that Miller knew at high school whose last name was Van Voorhees. Miller felt it was a "creepy-sounding name", which was perfect for his character. Miller initially wrote Jason as a normal-looking child, but the crew behind the film decided he needed to be deformed. Victor Miller explained Jason was not meant to be a creature from the "Black Lagoon"
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes...
in his script, and scripted Jason as a mentally disabled
Developmental disability
Developmental disability is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe lifelong disabilities attributable to mental or physical impairments, manifested prior to age 18. It is not synonymous with "developmental delay" which is often a consequence of a temporary illness or trauma during...
young boy; it was Savini who made Jason deformed. Ron Kurz confirmed that Miller's version of Jason was that of a normal child, but claims that it was his idea to turn Jason into a "mongoloid creature", and have him "jump out of the lake at the end of the film". Miller later agreed the ending would not have been as good if he looked like "Betsy Palmer
Betsy Palmer
Betsy Palmer is an American actress, best known as a regular panelist on the game show I've Got a Secret, and later for playing Pamela Voorhees in the notorious slasher film Friday the 13th.-Life and career:...
at eight years old". Miller wrote a scene where Alice dreams she is attacked in a canoe by Jason, and then she wakes up in a hospital bed. Miller's intention was to get as close to Carries ending as possible. Savini believed having Jason pop out of the lake would be psychologically disturbing to the audience, and since Alice is supposed to be dreaming, the crew could get away with adding anything they wanted.
When it came time to cast the role of Jason, Ari Lehman, who had received a part in Sean Cunningham's Manny's Orphans, arrived to read for the character of Jack. Before he could get started, Cunningham walked in and offered him a different part: Jason. Without having read a single word, Cunningham just looked at Ari and said, "You're the right size, you've got it." In the original Friday the 13th, Ari Lehman is seen only in a brief flashback as the surprise ending. Subsequent actors who portrayed a young Jason include Timothy Burr Mirkovich in Jason Takes Manhattan and Spencer Stump in Freddy vs. Jason. The adult role of Jason Voorhees has been played by various actors, some not credited, others taking great pride in their parts. Due to the physical demands the adult character requires, and the lack of emotional depth depicted, many of the actors since have been stuntmen
Stunt double
A stunt double is a type of body double, specifically a skilled replacement used for dangerous film or video sequences, in movies and television , and for other sophisticated stunts...
. The most well-known among them is Kane Hodder, who is cited as the best to play the role.
Many ideas were suggested for the sequel to Friday the 13th, including making the title part of a serialized franchise, where each succeeding film would be its own story and not related to any previous film under the Friday the 13th moniker. It was Phil Scuderi, one of the producers for the original film, which suggested bringing Jason back for the sequel. The director Steve Miner felt it was the obvious direction to take the series, as he felt the audience wanted to know more about the child who attacked Alice in the lake. Miner decided to pretend as if Alice did not see the "real Jason" in her dream, and Jason had survived his drowning as a boy and had grown up. After killing Jason in The Final Chapter, it was the director Joseph Zito's intention to leave the door open for the studio to make more films with Tommy Jarvis as the main antagonist. Screenwriter Barney Cohen felt Jarvis would become a substitute for Jason, but the idea was never fully developed in A New Beginning. Director and co-screenwriter Danny Steinmann disliked the idea of Jason not being the killer, but decided to use Tommy's fear of Jason as the primary story. This idea was immediately abandoned in Jason Lives, when A New Beginning did not spark the "creative success" the studio was looking for. Executive producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. wanted to bring Jason back, and he did not care how it was achieved.In yet another alteration of the series' continuity, Tom McLoughlin chose to ignore the idea that Jason had survived his drowning, instead presenting him as always having been some sort of supernatural force. Since A New Beginning, no sequel has attempted to replace Jason as the main antagonist. Miller, who has not seen any of the sequels, took issue with all of them because they made Jason the villain. Miller believes the best part of his screenplay was that it was about a mother avenging the senseless death of her son. Miller stated, "Jason was dead from the very beginning; he was a victim, not a villain."
Men behind the mask
Jason Voorhees went from deceased child to full-grown man for Friday the 13th Part 2, and Warrington Gillette was hired to play the role. Gillette auditioned for the role of Paul; that role eventually went to John Furey. Under the belief that he had attended the Hollywood Stuntman's School, Gillette was offered the role of Jason Voorhees. Initially Gillette was unsure about the character, but the idea of starring in his first film grew on Gillette, and he also thought the role was amusing. It became apparent Gillette could not perform the necessary stunts, so the stunt coordinator Cliff Cudney brought in Steve Daskawisz. Daskawisz filmed all of the scenes except the opening sequence and the unmasking shot at the end; Gillette returned for the unmasking scenes. Gillette received credit for playing Jason, while Daskawisz was given credit as the stunt double. When Part 3 was released the following year, Daskawisz was credited as Jason for the reused footage from the climax of the film. Initially, Daskawisz was asked to return to the role for Part 3, but it would have required him to pay for his own transportation and housing during filming. Having secured a part on Guiding LightGuiding Light
Guiding Light is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running drama in television and radio history, running from 1937 until 2009...
, Daskawisz declined.
Now wanting a "bigger and stronger-looking" Jason, one that was also "more athletic and powerful", Steve Miner
Steve Miner
Stephen C. "Steve" Miner is an American film and television director who is also a film producer.Miner was born in Westport, Connecticut. Television programs Miner has directed include The Wonder Years, Jake 2.0, Felicity, Dawson's Creek , and Diagnosis: Murder...
hired former British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
trapeze
Trapeze
A trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes or metal straps from a support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances...
artist Richard Brooker
Richard Brooker
Richard Brooker is an English stuntman, perhaps best known for his role in Friday the 13th Part III as Jason Voorhees.-Career:Brooker, a former trapeze artist from England, started his career in acting in a casting magazine, "Dramalogue"...
. After a simple conversation, Miner decided he was the right person for the job. Being new to the country, Brooker believed that "playing a psychopathic killer" was the best way into the movie business. Brooker became the first actor to wear Jason's now-signature hockey mask. According to Brooker, "It felt great with the mask on. It just felt like I really was Jason because I didn't have anything to wear before that." For The Final Chapter, Joseph Zito brought his own spin to the character, one that required a "real hardcore stuntman"; Ted White was hired to perform the role. White, who only took the job for the money, did "get into the Jason psychology" when he arrived on the set. White went so far as to not speak to any of the other actors for long stretches. As filming continued, White's experience was not pleasant, and in one instance, he went to battle for co-star Judie Aronson
Judie Aronson
Judith M. Aronson is an American actress who has starred in many films and a television show. The television series in which she starred was the short-lived Pursuit of Happiness as Sara Duncan from 1987-1988....
, who played Samantha, when the director kept her naked in the lake for extended periods of time. Displeased with his experience from filming, White had his name removed from the credits. As with Friday the 13th Part 2, there was confusion over who performed the role in A New Beginning, partly due to the fact that Jason is not the literal antagonist in the film. When Ted White turned down the opportunity to return, Dick Wieand was cast. Wieand is credited as Roy Burns, the film's actual murderer, but it was stuntman Tom Morga who performed in the few flashes of Jason, as well as portraying Roy in almost all of the masked scenes. Wieand has been outspoken about his lack of enthusiasm over his role in the film. Feeling alienated during the shoot, Wieand spent most of his time in his trailer. By comparison, Morga enjoyed his time as Jason and made sure he "really got into the character".
A nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
manager in Glendale, C. J. Graham
C. J. Graham
C. J. Graham is an actor who became one of many actors/stuntmen to play Jason Voorhees in the sixth film of the Friday the 13th film series.-Career:...
, was interviewed for the role of Jason in Jason Lives, but was initially passed over because he had no experience as a stuntman. Dan Bradley
Dan Bradley
Dan Bradley is a stunt coordinator and second unit film director.He has worked on Independence Day, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, Superman Returns, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Where The Wild Things Are, and Quantum of Solace.In July...
was hired, but Paramount executives felt Bradley did not have the right physique to play the role, and Graham was hired to replace him. Although Bradley was replaced early during filming, he can be seen in the paintball sequence of the film. Graham opted to perform most of his own stunts, including the scene where Jason catches on fire while battling Tommy in the lake. The rest of the cast spoke highly of Graham, remarking that he never complained during all the uncomfortable situations he was placed in. Graham had no intention of being an actor or a stuntman, but the idea of playing the "bad guy", and the opportunity to wear the prosthetics, intrigued him. Graham was not brought back to reprise the role, but has often been cited as speaking highly of his time in the part.
Kane Hodder took over the role in The New Blood, and played Jason in the next four films. He previously worked alongside director John Carl Buechler on a film called Prison. Based on his experience working with Hodder, Buechler petitioned Frank Mancuso Jr. to hire him, but Mancuso was apprehensive about Hodder's limited size. Knowing he planned to use full body prosthetics, Buechler scheduled a test screening, the first in Friday the 13th history for the character, and Mancuso immediately gave Hodder approval upon seeing him. It is Buechler's contention that Hodder gave Jason his first true personality, based on the emotions, specifically the rage, that Hodder would emit while acting the part. According to Hodder, he wanted to "get in touch with Jason's thirst for revenge" and try to better understand his motivation to kill. After viewing the previous films, Hodder decided that he would approach Jason as a more "quick and agile" individual than he had been portrayed in the previous sequels. John Carl Buechler felt that Kane had "natural affinity for the role"—so much that Kane's appearance, when wearing the mask, would often terrify the cast, the crew, and in one incident a lone stranger that he came across on his walk back to his trailer. Initially Frank Mancuso Jr. and Barbara Sachs planned to use a Canadian stuntperson for Jason Takes Manhattan. Hodder acted as his own voice, calling and requesting that he be allowed to reprise the role; the ultimate decision was left to director Rob Hedden, who intended to use Hodder, because he felt Hodder knew the lore of the series. With Sean Cunningham's return as producer for Jason Goes to Hell, Hodder felt his chances of reprising the role were even better: Hodder had worked as Cunningham's stunt coordinator for years. Regardless, Adam Marcus, the director for Jason Goes to Hell, always intended to hire Hodder for the role. Jason X would mark Hodder's last performance as Jason, to date. Todd Farmer, who wrote the screenplay for Jason X, knew Hodder would play Jason from the beginning. Jim Isaac was a fan of Hodder's work on the previous films, so hiring him was an easy decision.
New Line
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
believed Freddy vs. Jason needed a fresh start, and choose a new actor for Jason. Cunningham disagreed with their decision, believing Hodder was the best choice for the role. Hodder did receive the script for Freddy vs. Jason, and had a meeting with director Ronny Yu
Ronny Yu
Ronny Yu Yan-Tai is a Hong Kong director, producer, and movie writer. Yu was born in Hong Kong and graduated from Ohio University. He has worked on both Hong Kong and American films.- Career :...
and New Line executives, but Matthew Barry and Yu felt the role should be recast to fit Yu's image of Jason. According to Hodder, New Line failed to provide him with a reason for the recasting, but Yu has explained he wanted a slower, more deliberate Jason, and less of the aggressive movements that Hodder had used in the previous films. Yu and development executive Jeff Katz recognized the outcry among fans over the replacement of Hodder as Jason, but stood by their choice in recasting.
The role eventually went to Ken Kirzinger
Ken Kirzinger
Ken Kirzinger is a Canadian stuntman and actor best known for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason and of Pa in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End . He also played "Mason" Jason Voorhees character spoof in the horror film parody, Stan Helsing.-Role as Jason Voorhees:At he is one of the...
, a Canadian stuntperson who worked on Jason Takes Manhattan. There are conflicting reports over the reason Kirzinger was cast. According to Yu, Kirzinger was hired because he was taller than Robert Englund, the actor who portrays Freddy Krueger. Kirzinger stands 6 in 5 in (1.96 m), compared to the 6 in 3 in (1.91 m) of Kane Hodder, and Yu wanted a much larger actor to tower over the 5 in 10 in (1.78 m) Englund. Kirzinger believes his experience on Part VIII helped him land the part, as Kirzinger doubled for Hodder on two scenes for the film, but also believes he was simply sized up and handed the job. Although he was hired by the creative crew, New Line did not officially cast Kirzinger until first seeing him on film. Kirzinger's first scene was Jason walking down Elm Street. New Line wanted a specific movement in Jason's walk; Kirzinger met their expectations and signed a contract with the studio. However, concerns that test audiences were confused by the film's original ending caused the studio to reshoot the final scene. Actor Douglas Tait
Douglas Tait
Douglas Tait is an American actor, stuntman and independent filmmaker. His first notable role was as "Jason Voorhees" in the climax of the 2003 horror film Freddy Vs. Jason...
was brought in to film the new ending, as he was available for the reshoot and had been the production's second choice to portray the role of Jason during the original casting.
Stuntman Derek Mears
Derek Mears
Derek Mears is an American actor and stuntman, best known for his role as Jason Voorhees in the reboot of Friday the 13th.-Early life:...
was hired to portray Jason Voorhees at the recommendation of makeup special effects supervisor Scott Stoddard. Mears's pleasant demeanor had the studio worried about his ability to portray such a menacing character on screen, but Mears assured them he would be able to perform the role. When Mears auditioned for the role he was asked why they should hire an actor over just another guy in a mask. As Mears explained, portraying Jason is similar to Greek mask work
Theatre of Ancient Greece
The theatre of Ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between c. 550 and c. 220 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was...
, where the mask and the actor are two separate entities, and, based on the scene, there will be various combinations of mask and actor in the performance.
Design
The physical design of Jason Voorhees has gone through changes, some subtle and some radical. For Friday the 13th, the task of coming up with Jason's appearance was the responsibility of Tom SaviniTom Savini
Thomas Vincent "Tom" Savini is an American actor, stuntman, director, award-winning special effects and makeup artist. He is known for his work on the Living Dead films directed by George A. Romero, as well as Creepshow, The Burning, Friday the 13th, The Prowler, and Maniac. He directed the 1990...
, whose design for Jason was inspired by someone Savini knew as a child whose eyes and ears did not line up straight. The original design called for Jason to have hair, but Savini and his crew opted to make him bald, so he would look like a "hydrocephalic
Hydrocephalus
Hydrocephalus , also known as "water in the brain," is a medical condition in which there is an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles, or cavities, of the brain. This may cause increased intracranial pressure inside the skull and progressive enlargement of the head,...
, mongoloid pinhead", with a dome-shaped head. Savini created a plaster mold of Ari Lehman's head and used that to create prosthetics for his face. Lehman personally placed mud—from the bottom of the lake—all over his body to make himself appear "really slimy."
For Part 2, Steve Miner asked Carl Fullerton, the make-up effects supervisor, to stick to Savini's original design, but Fullerton only had one day to design and sculpt a new head. Fullerton drew a rough sketch of what he believed Jason should look like, and had it approved by Miner. Fullerton added long hair to the character. Gillette had to spend hours in a chair as they applied rubber forms all over his face, and had to keep one eye closed while the "droopy eye" application was in place. Gillette's eye was closed for twelve hours at a time while he was filming the final scenes of the film. False teeth created by a local dentist were used to distort Gillette's face. Much of the basic concept of Fullerton's design was eliminated for Part 3. Miner wanted to use a combination of the designs from Tom Savini and Carl Fullerton, but as work progressed the design began to lean more and more toward Savini's concept. Stan Winston
Stan Winston
Stanley Winston was an American visual effects supervisor, makeup artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, Iron Man, Edward Scissorhands, and Avatar...
was hired to create a design for Jason's head, but the eyes were level and Doug White, the make-up artist for Part 3, needed a droopy right eye. White did keep Winston's design for the back of the head, because the crew did not have the time to design an entirely new head for Jason. The process of creating Jason's look was hard work for White, who had to constantly make alterations to Richard Brooker's face, even up to the last day of filming.
Detroit Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings are a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit, Michigan. They are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League , and are one of the Original Six teams of the NHL, along with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, New York...
goaltender mask for the test. Miner loved the mask, but it was too small. Using a substance called VacuForm, Doug White enlarged the mask and created a new mold to work with. After White finished the molds, Terry Ballard placed red triangles on the mask to give it a unique appearance. Holes were punched into the mask and the markings were altered, making it different from Sadoff's mask. There were two prosthetic face masks created for Richard Brooker to wear underneath the hockey mask. One mask was composed of approximately 11 different appliances and took about six hours to apply to Brooker's face; this mask was used for scenes where the hockey mask was removed. In the scenes where the hockey mask is over the face, a simple head mask was created. This one-piece mask would slip on over Brooker's head, exposing his face but not the rest of his head.
Tom Savini agreed to return to make-up duties for The Final Chapter because he felt he should be the one to bring Jason full circle in terms of his look from child to man. Savini used his design from the original Friday the 13th, with the same practice of application as before, but molded from Ted White's face. Since Jason is not the actual killer in A New Beginning, it was not necessary to do any major designing for Jason's look. Only a head mask to cover the top and back of the head, like the one Brooker wore while wearing the hockey mask, was needed for the film. Make-up artist Louis Lazzara, who cites A New Beginning as almost a direct sequel to The Final Chapter, did base his head-mask on Tom Savini's design for The Final Chapter.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood sought to make Jason more of a "classic monster along the lines of Frankenstein." From the beginning, Buechler tried to tie the previous films together by having Jason's appearance reflect that of the damage he received in the previous installments. Buechler wanted the motor boat damage from Jason Lives, and the axe and machete cuts Jason received in Part 3 and Part 4 to part of the design for The New Blood. Since Jason had been submerged under water in the previous entry, the effects team wanted Jason to appear "rotted", with bones and ribs showing, and for Jason's features to have a more defined feel to them. Howard Berger was inspired by Carl Fullerton's design in The New Blood, and wanted to incorporate the exposed flesh concept into his model for Jason Goes to Hell. Berger designed Jason's skin to overlap with the mask, to make it appear as if the skin and mask had fused and the mask could no longer be removed. Gregory Nicotero
Gregory Nicotero
Gregory Nicotero is an American special effects creator and actor. In 1988, along with Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger, he formed KNB Efx Group, a special effects studio which has gone on to work on over 400 film and television projects...
and Berger sculpted a full-body, foam latex suit for Kane Hodder to wear under the costume. The idea was to reveal as much of Jason's skin as possible, because Nicotero and Berger knew the physical character would not be seen for most of the film.
By the time Freddy vs. Jason entered production there had been ten previous Friday the 13th films. Make-up effects artist Terezakis wanted to put his own mark on Jason's look—he wanted Jason to be less rotted and decomposed and more defined, so that the audience would see a new Jason, but still recognized the face. Terezakis tried to keep continuity with the previous films, but recognized that had he followed them too literally, then "Jason would have been reduced to a pile of goo." Ronny Yu wanted everything surrounding the hockey mask to act as a frame, making the mask the focal point of each shot. To achieve this, Terezakis created a "pooled-blood look" for the character by painting the skin black, based on the idea the blood had pooled in the back of his head because he had been lying on his back for a long time. As with other make-up artists before him, Terezakis followed Savini's original skull design, and aged it appropriately.
For the 2009 version of Friday the 13th, effects artist Scott Stoddard took inspiration from Carl Fullerton's design in Friday the 13th Part 2 and Tom Savini's work in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Stoddard wanted to make sure that Jason appeared human and not like a monster. Stoddard's vision of Jason includes hair loss, skin rashes, and the traditional deformities in his face, but he attempted to craft Jason's look in a way that would allow for a more human side to be seen. Stoddard took inspiration from the third and fourth films when designing Jason's hockey mask. The make-up artist managed to acquire an original set piece, which he studied and later sculpted. Although he had a model of one of the original masks, Stoddard did not want to replicate it in its entirety. As Stoddard explains, "Because I didn't want to take something that already existed, there were things I thought were great, but there were things I wanted to change a bit. Make it custom, but keep all the fundamental designs. Especially the markings on the forehead and cheeks. Age them down a bit, break them up." In the end, Stoddard crafted six versions of the mask, each with varying degrees of wear.
Characteristics
In his original appearance, Jason was scripted as a mentally disabledDevelopmental disability
Developmental disability is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe lifelong disabilities attributable to mental or physical impairments, manifested prior to age 18. It is not synonymous with "developmental delay" which is often a consequence of a temporary illness or trauma during...
young boy. Since Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees has been depicted as a non-verbal, indestructible, machete
Machete
The machete is a large cleaver-like cutting tool. The blade is typically long and usually under thick. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly known...
-wielding mass murderer. Jason is primarily portrayed as being completely silent throughout the film series. Exceptions to this include flashbacks of Jason as a child, and a brief scene in Jason Takes Manhattan where the character cries out "Mommy, please don't let me drown!" in a child's voice before being submerged in toxic waste, and in Jason Goes To Hell where his spirit possesses other individuals. Online magazine Salon
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
's Andrew O'Hehir describes Jason as a "silent, expressionless ... blank slate." When discussing Jason psychologically, Sean S. Cunningham said, "... he doesn't have any personality. He's like a great white shark
Great white shark
The great white shark, scientific name Carcharodon carcharias, also known as the great white, white pointer, white shark, or white death, is a large lamniform shark found in coastal surface waters in all major oceans. It is known for its size, with the largest individuals known to have approached...
. You can't really defeat him. All you can hope for is to survive." Since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Jason has been a "virtually indestructible" being. Tom McLoughlin, the film's director, felt it was silly that Jason had previously been just another guy in a mask, who would kill people left and right, but get "beaten up and knocked down by the heroine at the end." McLoughlin wanted Jason to be more of a "formidable, unstoppable monster." In resurrecting Jason from the dead, McLoughlin also gave him the weakness of being rendered helpless if trapped beneath the waters of Crystal Lake; inspired by vampire lore, McLoughlin decided that Jason had in fact drowned as a child, and that returning him to his original resting place would immobilize him. This weakness would be presented again in The New Blood, and the idea that Jason had drowned as a child was taken up by director Rob Hedden as a plot element in Jason Takes Manhattan.
Many have given suggestions as Jason's motivation for killing. Ken Kirzinger refers to Jason as a "psychotic mama's boy gone horribly awry ... Very resilient. You can't kill him, but he feels pain, just not like everyone else." Kirzinger goes on to say that Jason is a "psycho-savant", and believes his actions are based on pleasing his mother, and not anything personal. Andrew O'Hehir has stated, "Coursing hormones act, of course, as smelling salts to prudish Jason, that ever-vigilant enforcer of William Bennett
William Bennett
William John "Bill" Bennett is an American conservative pundit, politician, and political theorist. He served as United States Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W...
-style values." Todd Farmer, writer for Jason X, wrote the scene where Jason wakes from cryonic hibernation just as two of the teenagers are having sex. Farmer liked the idea that sex acts triggered Jason back to life. Whatever his motivations, Kane Hodder believes there is a limit to what he will do. According to Hodder, Jason might violently murder any person he comes across, but when Jason Takes Manhattan called for Hodder to kick the lead character's dog, Hodder refused, stating that, while Jason has no qualms against killing humans, he is not bad enough to hurt animals. Likewise, director Tom McLoughlin chose not to have Jason harm any of the children he encounters in Jason Lives, stating that Jason would not kill a child, out of a sympathy for the plight of children generated by his own death as a child.
In an early draft of Freddy vs. Jason, it was decided that one of the villains needed a redeemable factor. Ronald D. Moore
Ronald D. Moore
Ronald Dowl Moore is an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his work on Star Trek and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, for which he won a Peabody Award for creative excellence in 2005 and an Emmy Award in 2008.-Early life and...
, co-writer of the first draft, explained that Jason was the easiest to make redeemable, because no one had previously ventured into the psychology surrounding the character. Moore saw the character as a "blank slate", and felt he was a character the audience could really root for. Another draft, penned by Mark Protosevich, followed Moore's idea of Jason having a redeemable quality. In the draft, Jason protects a pregnant teenager named Rachel Daniels. Protosevich explained, "It gets into this whole idea of there being two kinds of monsters. Freddy is a figure of actual pure evil and Jason is more like a figure of vengeance who punishes people he feels do not deserve to live. Ultimately, the two of them clash and Jason becomes an honorable monster." Writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who wrote the final draft of the film, disagreed about making Jason a hero, although they drew comparisons between the fact that Freddy was a victimizer and Jason was a victim. They stated, "We did not want to make Jason any less scary. He's still a brutal killer ... We never wanted to put them in a situation where Jason is a hero ... They're both villains to be equally feared." Brenna O'Brien, co-founder of Fridaythe13thfilms.com, saw the character as having sympathetic qualities. She stated, "[Jason] was a deformed child who almost drowned and then spent the rest of his childhood growing up alone in the woods. He saw his mother get murdered by a camp counselor in the first Friday the 13th, and so now he exacts his revenge on anyone who returns to Camp Crystal Lake. Teenage fans can identify with that sense of rejection and isolation, which you can't really get from other killers like Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
and Michael Myers
Michael Myers (Halloween)
Michael Myers is a fictional character from the Halloween series of slasher films. He first appears in John Carpenter's Halloween as a young boy who murders his older sister, then fifteen years later returns home to murder more teenagers...
."
As Jason went through some characterization changes in the 2009 film, Derek Mears likens him more to a combination of John Rambo
John Rambo
John Rambo is an iconic fictional character and the basis of the Rambo saga. He first appeared in the 1972 novel First Blood by David Morrell, but later became more famous in the film series, played by Sylvester Stallone...
, Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
, and the Abominable Snowman from Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
. To him, this Jason is similar to Rambo because he sets up the other characters to fall into his traps. Like Rambo, he is more calculated because he feels that he has been wronged and he is fighting back; he is meant to be more sympathetic in this film. Fuller and Form contend that they did not want to make Jason too sympathetic to the audience. As Brad Fuller explains, "We do not want him to be sympathetic. Jason is not a comedic character, he is not sympathetic. He's a killing machine. Plain and simple."
California State University
California State University
The California State University is a public university system in the state of California. It is one of three public higher education systems in the state, the other two being the University of California system and the California Community College system. It is incorporated as The Trustees of the...
's Media Psychology Lab surveyed 1,166 people Americans aged from 16 to 91 on the psychological appeal of movie monsters. Many of the characteristics associated with Jason Voorhees were appealing to the participants. In the survey, Jason was considered to be an "unstoppable killing machine." Participants were impressed by the "cornucopic feats of slicing and dicing a seemingly endless number of adolescents and the occasional adult." Out of the ten monsters used in the survey—which included vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
s, Freddy Krueger, Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
, Michael Myers, Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
, Chucky, Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer...
, King Kong
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films...
, and the Alien—Jason scored the highest in all the categories involving killing variables. Further characteristics that appealed to the participants included Jason's "immortality, his apparent enjoyment of killing [and] his superhuman strength."
In popular culture
Cultural icon
A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...
s of American popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
. In 1992 Jason was awarded the MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
Lifetime Achievement Award. He was the first of only three completely fictional characters to be given the award; Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
(1996) and Chewbacca
Chewbacca
Chewbacca, also known as Chewie, is a character in the Star Wars franchise, portrayed by Peter Mayhew. In the series' narrative chronology, he appears in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Episode IV: A New Hope, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi...
(1997) are the others. Jason was named No. 26 in Wizard
Wizard (magazine)
Wizard or Wizard: The Magazine of Comics, Entertainment and Pop Culture was a magazine about comic books, published monthly in the United States by Wizard Entertainment from July 1991 to January 2011...
magazine's 100 greatest villains of all time. Universal Studios theme parks, in collaboration with New Line Cinema, used the character for their Halloween Horror Nights event.
The character has been produced and marketed as merchandise over the years. In 1988 Screamin' Toys produced a model kit where owners could build their own Jason statuette. The kit required the owner to cut and paint various parts in order to assemble the figure. Six years later, Screamin' Toys issued a new model kit for Jason Goes to Hell. Both kits are now out of production. McFarlane Toys
McFarlane Toys
McFarlane Toys, a subsidiary of Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc., is a company started by Todd McFarlane that makes highly detailed models of characters from movies, comics, musicians, video games, and sport figures...
released two toy lines, one in 1998 and the other in 2002. The first was a figure of Jason from Jason Goes to Hell, and the other was of Über-Jason from Jason X. Since McFarlane's last toy line in 2002, there has been a steady production of action figures, dolls, and statuettes. These include tie-ins with the film Freddy vs. Jason (2003).
Jason has made an appearance in three video games. He first appeared in a 1985 Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
game. His next appearance was in 1989, when LJN
LJN
LJN was an American toy company and video game publisher. It created toy lines and video games based on movies, television shows, and celebrities. It was headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and later in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.-Founding:...
, an American game company known for its games based on popular movies in the 1980s and early 1990s, released Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th (NES game)
Friday the 13th is an action-adventure video game published by LJN for the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. It is an adaptation of the Friday the 13th franchise....
on the Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
. The premise involved the gamer, who picks one of six camp counselors as their player, trying to save the campers from Jason, while battling various enemies throughout the game. On October 13, 2006, a Friday the 13th game was released for mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s. The game puts the user in the persona of Jason as he battles the undead.
The character has been referenced, or made cameo appearances, in various entertainment mediums. Outside of literature sources based on the character, Jason has been featured in a variety of magazines and comic strips. Cracked magazine has released several issues featuring parodies of Jason, and he has been featured on two of their covers. Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
magazine has featured the character in almost a dozen stories. He has appeared twice in the comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm
Mother Goose and Grimm
Mother Goose and Grimm is an internationally syndicated comic strip by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Peters. It was first syndicated in 1984 and is distributed by King Features Syndicate to more than 800 newspapers...
.
Inspired by his own experience, Ari Lehman founded a band called FIRSTJASON. Lehman's band is classified as horror punk
Horror punk
Horror punk is a music genre that mixes Gothic and punk rock sounds with morbid imagery and lyrics, which are often influenced by horror films...
, and is influenced by the sounds of the Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys are an American punk rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1978. The band became part of the American hardcore punk movement of the early 1980s. They gained a large underground fanbase in the international punk music scene....
and The Misfits. The band's name pays homage to Lehman's portrayal of Jason Voorhees in the original Friday the 13th. One of the band's songs is entitled "Jason is Watching".
In 1986, coinciding with the release of Jason Lives, Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
released "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
"He's Back " is a song from American shock rock musician Alice Cooper's 1986 album Constrictor, and the theme song of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, a slasher film and sixth part of the Friday the 13th film series released in the same year...
" from his album Constrictor
Constrictor (album)
Constrictor is the 16th studio album by rock musician Alice Cooper released on September 22 1986. After retiring from the music industry after the release of DaDa, Cooper remained in seclusion for three years. He starred in Monster Dog, a horror film for which he wrote two songs. He also guest...
. The song was written to "signal Jason's big return" to the cinema, as he had been almost entirely absent in the previous film. Rapper
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
Eminem
Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III , better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition...
has referenced Jason in several of his songs. The song "Criminal", from the album The Marshall Mathers LP
The Marshall Mathers LP
The Marshall Mathers LP is the third studio album by American rapper Eminem. Released May 23, 2000, the album sold more than 1.76 million copies in its first week just in the US. In 2001, the album won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album and was nominated for Album of the Year...
, mentions Jason specifically, while songs "Amityville" and "Off the Wall"—the latter featured fellow rapper Redman—contain Harry Manfredini's music "ki, ki, ki ... ma, ma, ma" from the film series. Eminem sometimes wears a hockey mask during concerts. Other rap artists
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
that have referenced Jason include Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Amaru Shakur , known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2007, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world...
, Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre
Andre Romelle Young , primarily known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American record producer, rapper, record executive, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and a former co-owner and artist of Death Row Records...
, LL Cool J
LL Cool J
James Todd Smith , better known as LL Cool J , is an American rapper, entrepreneur, and actor...
, and Insane Clown Posse
Insane Clown Posse
Insane Clown Posse is an American hip hop duo from Detroit, Michigan. The group is composed of Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler, who perform under the respective personas of the "wicked clowns" Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope. Insane Clown Posse performs a style of hardcore hip hop known as horrorcore...
. VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
issued an advertisement for their Vogue Fashion Awards which was labeled "Friday the 20th", and featured Jason's mask created out of rhinestone
Rhinestone
A rhinestone or paste or diamante is a diamond simulant made from rock crystal, glass or acrylic.Originally, rhinestones were rock crystals gathered from the river Rhine. The availability was greatly increased around 1775 when the Alsatian jeweller Georg Friedrich Strass had the idea to imitate...
.
Jason has been referenced or parodied in films and television shows. In the film Scream
Scream (film)
Scream is a 1996 American slasher film written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven. The film stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Drew Barrymore, and David Arquette...
, directed by Freddy Krueger creator Wes Craven
Wes Craven
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...
, actress Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore
Drew Blyth Barrymore is an American actress, film director, screenwriter, producer and model. She is a member of the Barrymore family of American actors and granddaughter of John Barrymore. She first appeared in an advertisement when she was 11 months old. Barrymore made her film debut in Altered...
's character is being stalked by a killer who calls her on her home phone. In order to survive, she must answer the man's trivia questions. One question is "name the killer in Friday the 13th." She incorrectly guesses Jason, who did not become the killer for the franchise until Part 2. Writer Kevin Williamson claimed his inspiration for this scene came when he asked this question in a bar while a group was playing a movie trivia quiz game. He received a free drink, because nobody got the answer right. In another Wes Craven film, Cursed, a wax sculpture of Jason, from Jason Goes to Hell, can be seen in a wax museum
Wax museum
A wax museum or waxworks consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses....
.
The stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animated television show Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
features Jason in three of its comedy sketches. In episode seventeen, "Operation: Rich in Spirit", the mystery-solving teenagers from Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...
arrive at Camp Crystal Lake to investigate the Jason Voorhees murders, and are killed off one by one. Velma
Velma Dinkley
Velma Dace Dinkley is a fictional character in the American television animated series Scooby-Doo. She is prone to losing her glasses. She is usually seen wearing a baggy orange sweater, short pleated skirt , knee socks, and Mary Janes...
is the only survivor, and in typical Scooby-Doo fashion, she rips off Jason's mask to reveal his true identity: Old Man Phillips. In episode nineteen, "That Hurts Me", Jason reappears, this time as a housemate of "Horror Movie Big Brother
Big Brother (TV series)
Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash...
", alongside other famous slasher movie killers such as Michael Myers
Michael Myers (Halloween)
Michael Myers is a fictional character from the Halloween series of slasher films. He first appears in John Carpenter's Halloween as a young boy who murders his older sister, then fifteen years later returns home to murder more teenagers...
, Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
, Leatherface
Leatherface
Leatherface is the main antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-film series and its spin-offs. He wears masks made of human skin and engages in murder and cannibalism alongside his inbred family. He is considered by many to be one of the first major slasher film villains alongside Michael...
, Pinhead
Pinhead (Hellraiser)
Pinhead is a fictional character from the Hellraiser series. Created by Clive Barker and portrayed by Doug Bradley, Pinhead is a prominent figure in the series, mostly featured as the main antagonist....
, and Ghostface
Ghostface (Scream)
Ghostface is a fictional identity adopted by the main antagonists in the Scream series of slasher films. The character is voiced by Roger L. Jackson regardless of who is behind the mask...
. Three years later, in episode sixty-two, Jason is shown on the days before and after a typical Friday the 13th.
Jason is spoofed in the season five episode of Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
entitled "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One". The so-called "Mr. Voorhees" explains to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa how happy he is to see local wildlife return following the cleanup and rejuvenation of Lake Quahog. He reappears later in the episode as the manager of the "Britches and Hose" clothing store. As opposed to his monstrous personality in the films, Jason is depicted here as polite and articulate, albeit still a psychopath; he murders random swimmers and threatens to kill his employee if she screws up. In an episode of The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, Jason appears in a Halloween episode
Treehouse of Horror IX
"Treehouse of Horror IX" is the fourth episode of the tenth season of The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 25, 1998...
sitting on the couch with Freddy Krueger waiting for the family to arrive. When Freddy ask where the family is, Jason responds, "Ehh, whaddya gonna do?" and turns the TV on. He also appears in The Simpsons episode "Stop, or My Dog Will Shoot!", alongside Pinhead, menacing Bart in a fantasy sequence. The South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
episodes "Imaginationland Episode II" and "III
Imaginationland Episode III
"Imaginationland Episode III", or "Moistening of the Scrotum" , is episode 1112 of Comedy Central's animated TV series South Park. It originally aired on October 31, 2007. It is the concluding episode in a three-part story arc that won the 2008 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for One Hour or...
" feature Jason among an assortment of other villains and monsters as an inhabitant of the "bad side" of Imaginationland, a world populated by fictional characters. This version of Jason has an effeminate
Effeminacy
Effeminacy describes traits in a human male, that are more often associated with traditional feminine nature, behaviour, mannerisms, style or gender roles rather than masculine nature, behaviour, mannerisms, style or roles....
voice and describes the removal of Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberry Shortcake is a licensed character owned by American Greetings, originally used in greeting cards and expanded to include dolls, posters, and other products...
's eyeball as "super hardcore". In April 2010 Sideshow Toys released a polystone statue of Jason, based on the version appearing in the 2009 remake.
External links
- Jason Voorhees at the Horror Film WikiWikiaWikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
- Jason Voorhees at the Friday the 13th WikiWikiaWikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
- The Many Faces of Jason – a look at the various shots of Jason behind the mask