- Just the image of him and the sound of him.
- No.
- It's a kind of fear that goes beyond reasoning.
- I'm personally fascinated with that character
more than any other, because of my love
for it that I can't explain.
- Even if you hadn't seen all the movies,
everybody knows who Jason is.
- No one sat down and said,
"We're creating an icon."
It was really just kind of creating a character
that was partly sympathetic and partly scary.
- He thinks what he's doing is good,
he thinks what he's doing is for mama.
- Mother is talking to you.
- And he's going to complete what he's doing
and you are going to die.
And that's Jason.
- You know, most people will lie to you
when they come up and say you're their favorite,
but I think what they're looking at is the character itself.
- Hi.
- I've had families come in where the father, the son,
and the grandson were all dressed up
as different versions of Jason.
- And now that fan interaction has even spawned
a whole new generation.
- John Buechler was doing a panel and nobody knew who I was.
He introduced me as, "Hey, that's the new Jason."
As I was walking out of the auditorium,
I looked back and there was 50 people following me,
so that was the first indication
that things might be different.
- Shall we cut the ribbon?
- We're going to slash the ribbon.
- One, two, three.
- The production code ended in the '70s,
with that were more creative freedoms behind the camera.
And with those looser restrictions
came greater ability to scare audiences.
- Now in the traditional horror movie,
we often saw things from the victim's point of view,
but that's no longer, now we look through the killer's eyes.
- Michael!
- So Carpenter did "Halloween."
And then right after "Halloween", the one person who saw it,
who really, really needed to see it was Sean Cunningham.
- He grew up on the east coast film scene,
which was more do-it-yourself, documentary style.
He intentionally kind of avoided Hollywood.
He was never a horror guy and basically what happened is,
you know, by the end of the '70s, he just, you know,
he was struggling to pay the bills
and heard "Halloween" was a big hit.
We all saw the movie "Dawn of the Dead", that was a big hit
and he told Victor Miller, the screenwriter,
"Hey, go see 'Halloween' and basically copy it."
- "'Halloween''s making a lot of money, let's rip it off."
He basically just got funding for the movie just by saying,
"I'm going to make this movie called 'Friday the 13th',
it's going to be the scariest movie you've ever seen."
- "Friday the 13th".
- It was like probably the first American
horror movie that like promised some real deal,
splatter and gore on camera, right?
That was going to blow some minds.
- You're doomed. You're all doomed.
- I think Jason Voorhees is one of those examples
of a movie franchise where you have
a really amazing villain in the first one
and there's something amazing about a golf sweater
and big smile and that's Jason's mom.
- I'm Mrs. Voorhees, an old friend of the Christy's.
- The interesting part to me about Jason
is actually Pamela, she was avenging her son.
- Did know that a young boy drowned?
The year before those two others were killed.
The counselors weren't paying any attention,
they were making love while that young boy drowned.
His name was Jason.
- Voorhees is a victim of negligent
camp babysitters, basically.
- And what I love about Jason too,
is that he's got a mom who loves him.
- So much so that she'll murder people.
- Look what you did to him.
- I do think, and I will go here,
I think generationally through the '80s and '90s,
a lot of kids had a single mom who was badass.
- I did.
- Kicked ass when asses needed to be kicked.
And I think that's something when you watch it, you're like,
"Hey, I know this experience."
- Victor Miller spent most of his time figuring out,
"Okay, who is Mrs. Voorhees and what's her motive?"
And Jason was an afterthought.
In the script, there was no that he's misshapen
or physically handicapped,
so that was an invention later on.
So I don't think that that would have been the impetus
for Tom Savini to take the job in the first place.
I mean, honestly, I think he just liked creating effects.
- It was the first serial killer that I had to create.
I was going to be a choreographer, a dance choreographer.
The makeup kit was always
calling my name from the attic, you know?
And so that became my career.
So Sean was letting me experiment and come up with ideas,
they just wanted a weird looking kid
who obviously was handicapped, you know, somehow.
I just modeled him after a guy I saw in my neighborhood,
one ear was lower than the other and he had a messed up eye.
I had seen some of Dick Smith's "Little Big Man"
work with cowls and so I did a cowl on him,
which was the deformed hydrocephalic pinhead, you know,
and that made them weird enough, you know,
to be in the movie.
- And so he's kind of recognizably human,
but also distorted and terrifying.
And he had to be a little boy, so they cast Ari Lehman.
- Tom and Taso picked me up and they had to drive me
like all the way to Weston And you could see they were like,
"Oh no, we got to babysit this kid", you know.
- He was 13 at the time and he was our dope connection.
- And I had a little box full of weed and hash
and I just went, "Hey, do you guys party?"
- He's the guy that would bring us bags of marijuana at 13.
- And then I went bonk and I opened the thing
and they were like, "Whoa."
Then the fun ensued from that point on, no doubt.
- You let him drown, you never paid any attention.
- Originally that was going to be the only incarnation
of Jason Voorhees in cinematic history,
it was just going to be a boy who drowns.
Then Sean calls me again.
"Well, we want a different ending.
You get your revenge."
Bitch killed my mom, you know.
I was like, "Okay, fine. I'm coming."
- That scene, when we're all like tricked
into believing, like, it's the tranquil moment
where we can let our guard down.
It's really the first scare I can remember
that made me jump and scream.
And partially I was screaming because it was scary
and the other part of me was screaming
because she got what she deserved.
It was amazing.
- Movies and TV shows,
they play on this jump scare ever since.
- And I'm the only one who made it.
- Oh, he came up out that water like Jason.
- As I've often said to my buddy Kane Hodder, you know,
in that four seconds, I was able to do what he did
in four movies through one eye.
- It was a big, wide saturated release.
It was a success way beyond their wildest dreams
and Paramount was always a little embarrassed about it
because critics raked the movie over the coals.
- They call these things exploitation films,
these rotten ones, because they exploit one element
and make it sort of sick.
- It was looked at as basically one step above pornography.
I mean, for a lot of the people involved,
it actually harmed their careers for like, for example,
a lot of the actors would try to get work,
they're from east coast, theater actors,
they go for an audition for a play
and they'd have to take "Friday the 13th" off their resume,
'cause people were like,
"We're not going to hire you if you were in that."
There was this sort of resentment at Paramount,
like, you know, "We're busting our asses,
making these prestige movies and this piece of crap
'Friday the 13th' comes out and makes more money
opening weekend than our movie does."
- A sequel was made because the first one
made a lot of money.
You're watching them kind of stumble into a guy
that would become the grandfather
of the great horror slashers.
'Cause it's almost like we kind of helped create Jason,
you know, cause we wanted more
and they had to do something because Mrs. Voorhees
didn't have a head anymore.
- It was very much like, "Holy crap, this worked.
Okay, how quickly can we turn out a second?"
And then that becomes the way of life.
- "Friday the 13th Part II."
The body count continues.
- I turned down part two
because they had Jason running around and Jason,
I thought, was the kid that died in the first movie.
- What if there is some kind of boy beast
running around Camp Crystal Lake?
I mean, let's try to think beyond the legend,
put it in real terms.
I mean, what would he be like today?
Some kind of out of control psychopath?
- Jason has some element of sympathy that he gets from you.
You kind of feel sorry for him.
Jason had to see his mom get her head cut off.
I'm sure I would probably go out
and kill a bunch of sexy teens, too.
- I think we're both in agreement
that he's a little sweetheart.
- There is something about Jason,
he's got a strange sweetness about him.
And I think there's also a feeling of like,
"Well, if I met Jason he wouldn't kill me."
- You know, I mostly spent my time
watching things through bushes, heavily breathing.
So I know what it's like to be Jason.
- He just kind of lumbers around
and he kills lots of people
and that's pretty much it.
I mean, he didn't seem to have a lot of subtext
or a lot of interesting mythology behind him.
And I think there's a certain primal power to that,
that he is just this thing in the woods
that will kill you if you get in his turf.
- He's a very lonely troubled, strange guy,
you know, who lives in the woods.
- Jason!
- Sackhead Jason's my favorite Jason.
- The bag is featureless except for one eye.
It's telling a story, you're going,
"Is Jason, got some motor skill problems
and could only get one I cut out
or is he cutting one eye out on purpose
'cause the other one ain't working?"
- Jason's look is ever evolving.
We have kind of the Jason that we perceived
from the first one and then it gets completely
blown out of the water in the second one.
But then the one thing that continues to change
throughout the entire franchise is Jason's mask.
- He has to develop his own iconic stature
and so it's almost like kind of like
a make it up as you go along
type of character of Jason Voorhees,
where it's just like, "Okay, well maybe he can do this,
maybe he can do that."
And then eventually we end up with a hockey mask somehow.
- It was all an accident.
Steve Miner and Frank Mancuso Jr. have gone on record
saying that they didn't like the bag
and the biggest problem was they thought of the bag
and then "The Elephant Man" came out, you know,
shit, people were going to laugh at him.
So by part three that, "Okay, we got to get rid of the bag."
And literally it was just someone on the set,
some people that were hockey fans and had hockey masks,
so they were doing makeup tests
and one of the mask choices was a hockey mask
and Steve Miner said, "That looks great, let's do it."
That's part of the magic of Jason,
is that it happened organically,
it wasn't premeditated.
- We assumed there had to be a reason for that, you know,
it couldn't just be a simple thing of they didn't care.
When you're little, you assume everything has a grand plan.
- When I think about it, it was just like,
we start off with this mother.
- Kill her, mommy.
- But then we end up with him
as an adult with a hockey mask.
- Ah!
- Jason had to find that iconic aesthetic
that made him recognizable in a magazine,
on a poster, as a toy, and it was the hockey mask.
There's something to not seeing his face,
but also seeing the holes, you can almost see through him.
That's a classic horror trope,
is seeing a little bit of a scary thing, but not all of it.
- It is so iconically known worldwide.
If you take a picture of Mr. Tom Cruise
and you take it to India, you show it to them,
and they'll say, "Tom Cruise", snap, won't even hesitate.
You show him a picture of C.J.
However, if you turn the picture around to the hockey mask,
"Jason, 'Friday the 13th.'"
- How about the camp site where the guy in the hockey mask
kills all the campers?
- Careful, Lois, this is the part where the doomed girl
runs into the guy with the hockey mask.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, why so "Friday the 13th"?
- Want to play some hockey?
- It is funny that Jason wears a hockey mask
because it feels a little like
he's trying to prove something like,
'cause he couldn't swim, so maybe he's not athletic.
And it's like, "No, no. I'm really a goalie
on a hockey team."
- "The most important role on the team,
nothing gets through me."
- And if you ask any diehard "Friday the 13th" fan
which mask is from which franchise,
they can match it up in a snap.
It's just something that's ingrained in us.
Oh, that's the mask from part five, no that's part seven.
So it continued to change,
but that, in a way, became the special effects people
and the directors putting their own mark on each film.
And as we continue to see evolutions
in "Friday the 13th", that will continue.
- Being a theater nerd, we studied mask work
and mask work is really hard to do.
You know, I think that people are like,
"Oh, you put on a mask and just walk around."
No, the physicality has to be so specific.
- You can't be alive.
You.
- For me, part three Jason is my favorite.
Oh man, I saw the opening weekend in 3D.
Richard Brooker was a circus performer,
so the way he moved and used his hands
and that hulking thing was pretty scary.
I used to have nightmares.
- My favorite moment of the Jason movies
is the end of three.
Just because I love how surreal it gets.
He shouldn't exist and yet he does.
And something about that shot of him up in the window,
unmasked, there's a glee, a smile to his face
and it's one of the only moments
that I feel like we get a true personality,
like how he feels about what's happening.
- Now terror takes on a new dimension.
- Back in the 1980s, now that was a time
where everybody started doing 3D. You had "Parasite",
"Treasure of the Four Crowns", "Jaws 3D".
Then in 1984 Weird Al came out with "Nature Trail to Hell",
which is actually a parody of "Friday the 13th Part III".
- I loved the 3D movie when it came out
and I loved all the 3D gags.
- I have warned thee.
- All of the stuff that we would consider cheesy
and obvious now it just tickled me so much, you know.
- You're like, "There's a baseball coming at me
or a yo-yo coming at my face."
- Hey, I dropped your wallet, I'm sorry.
- He's like pointing a harpoon at her face.
- Hey, now cut that out right now, that's not funny.
- That's a good one.
- There's wild combination between 3D movies
and also "Friday the 13th" films.
They're both, in my opinion, event movies.
When you go to the theater to watch one of those,
it's a relationship as a group
where you're catching everyone's energy,
everyone's screaming at the same time.
What amplifies your feeling of excitement or fear.
- There is something about sitting there
and watching somebody that is unstoppable.
- It was so grotesque, it was almost inhuman.
- And keeps coming and it's scary on one hand,
but there's also some sort of release, you know.
And it's like a thrill ride.
- Anyone can kill with a weapon but when you kill someone
with something that is not a weapon, that's creative.
- Jason is basically the MacGyver of murder,
where whatever he would find lying around, he can use that.
- But then around like four, it switches,
like Jason's the hero, he's like everybody's rooting on.
So then you're like,
"Destroy that despicable piece of shit."
- Hi, girls, thanks for waiting.
- And then they start almost writing,
especially a lot of the supporting characters,
as just insufferable, despicable people.
So not only do you want to see Jason do his art,
you want to see him do it quick and messy
and all over these people.
- I think Jason works when it's cold
and brutal and simplified.
He gets the job done, he doesn't linger,
he doesn't enjoy it too much necessarily.
- I'm not necessarily watching Jason
to go on like this big, long emotional journey
the way I am with a lot of these other characters.
There's no specific character that I want
to see make it out alive.
- If they're telling you to no to sex, no to drugs,
but we will watch you have sex and then punish you
or we'll do coke in the bathroom
while we're telling you not to.
- The rules are like, don't do drugs, don't be a slut,
don't be a crude young ass
and don't let kids drown on your watch.
- Our next movie is "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter"
an immoral and reprehensible piece of trash
that sold more tickets on its opening weekend
than any other movie so far in 1984.
- They offered me part four
and it was called "The Final Chapter"
because they really believed
it was going to be the last one.
It's the Frankenstein syndrome.
I created Jason, now I'm going to kill him.
- That's where Jason was really, he became Jason.
He had the mask in three, he had the motive in two,
but it wasn't until four that he became the Jason
that we know and love today.
That's where he was the strong, silent type.
That's where he was almost animal-like,
that's where the kills got really
ratcheted up to disgusting levels.
- Jason, first and foremost, for me
is just watching these escalations.
It's watching these kills get crazier.
He fills that junk foodie popcorn hole in my heart.
- Jason is special to people because I think he represents
sort of the id of the audience.
When we're on line in the supermarket
or at the department of motor vehicles
and there's someone slowing up the process,
you feel like just taking out a machete
like Jason and just lopping their head off.
- I think Jason's simplicity as a character
is kind of what attracts a lot of fans to him.
What is appealing is his power, Jason is unstoppable,
you know, he cannot be reasoned with, you know,
he's just going to come in and do what he does.
- In a sense, Jason's getting bigger and bigger.
I think that we love to see this kind of behavior
and we like to watch it.
- When I think about the arrow through the throat
or Jason's face sliding down the machete.
Those really stick with me.
And Jason is, I guess, the avatar for all that.
- This film offers 90 minutes of teenagers being strangled,
stabbed, impaled, chopped up, and mutilated.
That's all this movie is, is just mindless bloody violence.
- Probably the biggest thing that critics hated
is that it was focusing on death and brutality
and these gross effects and people dying
and they didn't understand for kids it was fun,
it was like a magic trick.
- Jason Voorhees is dead, his body was cremated.
He's nothing but a handful of ash.
- In "Friday Five: A New Beginning",
Jason was Ash, he was dead, there was nothing left,
but the killings keep on going on.
So then that's when people start to question,
is Jason really dead?
- Part five is the mystery, is Jason back or not?
Of course they had the pseudo Jason in there,
which did not sit well with a lot of fans.
They wanted the real thing or nothing else.
They didn't want someone running around
pretending to be Jason.
- Frank Mancuso Jr. has been honest about it as like,
you know, they really meant Jason was going to be over.
I mean "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter" was it.
Jason's dead, we're done with this, he was over it.
And Paramount was like, "Ugh, it made so much money,
can you please do another one?"
So they came up with the imposter Jason.
- We found this on Roy.
I guess he used the Jason thing to cover up with.
- Guy in a hockey mask, that's going to work,
it's an imposter, who cares if it's not Jason?
I don't think they realized how big
Jason had become at that point.
- I really tried to make Jason a Little different
from the other ones purely because
we're bringing him back from the dead
and I had just had that little bit of Frankenstein in me.
He's got a goal and he's going for it
and anything in his way, it's going down.
- And my favorite scene is my first time
I got to put the wardrobe on.
You see the motor home behind it rocking.
He turns and looks at it and tilts his head a little bit
and starts walking towards it.
The one thing about the head tilt,
you have to understand, it's not huge.
It's just a curiosity, just enough.
That was the coolest day,
not knowing what it would become today.
- He's the junk food, Jason's junk food to me
and I love that and you know, junk food tastes great.
- Yeah, fuck you, Jason.
- Jason really comes online for me
as like a character at "Jason Lives."
It's when he's struck by a bolt of fucking lightning,
resurrected from the dead that I was just like,
"Yeah!"
I loved zombie Jason.
And the fact that he looks like a Fulci zombie,
you know, I mean, all of that is just, love it.
- Jason ran until he was a zombie, you know,
he ran until part six, where he stopped running
and kind of just started walking fast.
- With "Friday the 13th",
every one feels so vastly different from the prior one.
But at the same time, they all feel the same.
And none of them really seem to know where
the next one is going, it really feels like they're just
kind of flying by the seat of their pants going,
"Okay, wait, okay, we killed, how do we bring him back?"
- I went in and I really liked Frank
and we started talking and I said,
"Any chance I could put comedy in this?"
And he goes, "What do you mean?"
And I said, "I just want the kids to have a sense of humor.
I mean, this is the sixth one."
And he goes, "Just don't make fun of Jason."
I go, "I won't."
- That's why it was such a revitalization,
because it knew what it was
and it had fun with what it was.
- It puts part six on a special shelf.
I'm the only Jason that's fortunate enough
to have a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer,
Alice Cooper, do the music.
- Let me explain.
- We got Alice Cooper, you know, I'm a rock and roller,
so I, you know, the temp track was all these rock songs
coupled with Alice and then, you know,
suddenly Frank said to me,
"How would you like to have Alice actually write a song?"
I go, "Shit, that'd be great."
- Something to know about Tom McLoughlin is that
he is a musician and he has a punk band
and you can see him kind of take that punk metal edge
and apply it to "Friday the 13th Six"
because he inherently understood that the things
that the audience comes for, that essential DNA,
the camp, Jason, the counselors,
that doesn't necessarily need to change,
but by filtering it through that punk rock lens,
he gave it an edge.
- Woo, yeah!
- Everything lined up perfectly
and I just really love that movie.
I can still hear the soundtrack.
- Jake, listen to this. Woo.
- Alice Cooper and Jason Voorhees go together
like heavy metal and horror.
- The things he did were like totally expanding
"Friday the 13th" horizons.
- We got a lot of decent reviews because we had fun with it
and it was also a great thrill, especially for the studio,
who didn't think that was ever going to happen.
- They say he died as a boy, but he keeps coming back.
- John Buechler left a message
on my now wife's answering machine saying,
"Yeah, this is John, I have a message for Mr. Voorhees."
And I knew that at that time that I got it.
I was just out of my mind with excitement.
The thing that I try to explain to people
is just imagine that you're a fan of a character
and then suddenly you're in the position
that you're being told you may play this character.
- Part seven though, I like when he steps out of the water
and he's got that, those exposed bones in his back,
he's just like rotting away.
That's pretty cool.
- Yeah, I'm in on that.
Jason's whole face gets more and more grotesque
and almost like professional wrestlery
as it goes on. - Yes.
- Like into the Kane Hodder years,
where they're sensationalizing it
probably more than it needs to done.
- Once I did get the job before we started shooting,
watched all the movies again
and just to see what I liked that certain people did
and what I think they could have done better.
And then trying to think,
"What could I do that, in my opinion,
would make it look more interesting."
I put the makeup on for a test at John Buechler's shop.
I went in the mirror for half an hour,
that's where I came up with the breathing.
Even though he's not doing anything but breathing
and staring at you,
he looks like he could just explode at any moment.
- I saw that in the movie theater when I was a teenager
and the screaming and the cheer, you know,
that whole visceral experience, like,
"Get her, get her, oh my God", you know.
What's that going to do?
But it really deter him for a second
and seemed to really frustrate him,
'cause he couldn't get her out of the sleeping bag.
And then he said, "Oh, fuck it."
It was very, very satisfying.
There's so many that are very satisfying.
- Kane, you know, really took
a methody approach to the character.
He freaked out most of his co-stars
'cause he would remain in character
when the cameras weren't rolling.
He would do these great breathing exercises
to puff out his chest and really make him
this unstoppable Terminator of horror.
- I wish I could understand how I feel about that franchise.
Some people go to a house of worship,
some people go to the house of Jason.
And it's a weird thing because what he's doing
hasn't got much personality, you know,
the most personality we get is in the way he moves.
- Without having to say anything,
without having to make threats,
without having to make one-liners.
That is just scary on a core level.
- Yo, man, it's cool, man, it's cool.
- I never told this story.
When we were in Times Square,
I would never take the mask off
because I didn't want to destroy the illusion.
So in order to do that, I had to go down an alley,
had the mask off, I put it on a trashcan
and I was drinking something
and a guy came by and tried to grab it
and I grabbed him and I was like,
"You don't take my fucking mask."
- Somewhere out there, there's a guy
still trying to figure out how Jason
got from Manhattan back to Crystal Lake.
- So it was imposter Jason, and it was Jason as a zombie,
then it was telekinetic Tina against Jason
and then it was Jason goes on a boat to Manhattan.
- Seven is "The New Blood",
eight is "Jason Takes Manhattan",
nine is "Jason Goes to Hell".
- High speed, Otis. - Oh, what the hell is six?
- Yo, the new "Friday the 13th" movie.
"Friday the 13th Part 1,649."
- When it comes to, you know, sequels
and developing an actual franchise of horror,
that's the way that you can ensure
that you have an iconic villain.
Even if they are a little bit under drawn,
like Jason Voorhees,
they may still live in the consciousness
if you have them seen enough.
It's kind of like listening to a pop hit on the radio
and you're like, "I don't really care about this."
And then after four hours of a road trip
and you hear it so many times, you're like,
"Well, I'm its biggest fan."
- After it became more evident that Jason
was becoming part of pop culture,
but not at the expense of the terror,
which was good in my mind,
I got a call from the "Arsenio Hall Show."
- Please welcome Jason.
How are you?
- He interviewed me and I stayed in character
but I grab his hand and I pull him towards me
'cause I wanted to scare him
and he just about shit.
- Jason, ladies and gentleman.
- Arsenio Hall was an institution at the time,
so all of that started to blend in
with the pop figure that was Jason.
- The MTV Lifetime Achievement Award
honors the underappreciated careers
of people like this next performer,
a gentleman who has had a tremendous impact
on the cinematic art form, Mr. Jason Voorhees.
- They've been leaked into pop culture.
- A life-size replica of the notorious
horror film star sits at the bottom of Lake Pleasant.
- They are in other films
that have nothing to do with horror.
- Vicky, the kids have never seen "Friday the 13th",
part one or two.
- Oh, my God.
- He's kidding, he's a kidder.
- Hey Griswold.
Where do you think you're going to put a tree that big?
- Bend over and I'll show you.
- They are in music, there's lyrics in so many rap songs
that reference horror movies.
- You started seeing Jason in commercials
like in Radio Shack.
- Oh, it's, it's a key. Kind of looks like my house key.
- He's a real monster, unstoppable, you know,
you can shoot him, you can stab him,
you can do whatever, he's going to keep on coming.
- What if you take this killer who's been
in a kind of a time capsule for hundreds of years,
place him in a futuristic society that has different ideals.
You know, he kind of represents don't do drugs,
don't have sex, all that kind of stuff.
Like the best part is when he's on a holiday,
you know, and he's just like taking the girls
in the sleeping bag and just smashing them against the tree.
It just goes to show that Jason will never change.
- I, believe it or not, really liked
when Jason went to outer space.
I think that sort of cryogenic frozen kill
that they do where the person's shattered, that's genius.
- It's so quintessentially Jason
because we see the elements in play and to build they did,
it was so much like being on a roller coaster.
We know something's going to happen,
we're not sure where.
Having that scene build, we're like,
"Is this going where we think it's going?"
- Head, liquid nitrogen, on the table smash.
I loved that moment.
- That's classic Voorhees.
- He had to smash people's brains open in space.
It wasn't easy to do.
He had a kickass fricking mask.
- I thought it looked cool as hell.
My eyes looked so bizarre with the red lenses
and with that silver looking mask.
- It's a real fun, fast-paced little movie
that I think deserves better than what it's received.
- I'm not a huge fan of that one
because I think once you get him into space,
he does pretty much the same stuff
that he did down at Crystal Lake.
- It's like a sci-fi horror movie, kind of.
Try to buy, "Oh, he's like resurrected in space."
But by then I was kind of off the boat, you know.
It gets to the point where it gets to like,
"Okay, how many times are you going to die?
How many times are you going to come back to life?
How are we going to like justify it
after a while, you know?"
- Can it go beyond just a Jason movie for the hardcore fans?
Can they open it up to a more mainstream audience again?
"Freddy Versus Jason" did that
because it was like a hoot movie, right?
It was like, it was like wrestling.
- Why won't you die?
- I remember seeing the trailer for "Freddy Versus Jason"
in the theater and people were just cheering.
And even people, my friends who don't even
like those movies, were like, "Oh, that's hilarious."
Like, "I would go see that, 'cause it seems like fun."
But that's a one-off, you can't do that again.
- I love "Freddy Versus Jason."
It's just a fun film.
I love watching monsters fight monsters
and so as a fan, like yeah,
we definitely need a "Freddy Versus Jason".
I had a blast with it, seeing it in theaters
at the time period and it was just an absolute trip.
And it's one that I still love revisiting
because I think it's so much fun.
- Sold out crowd, midnight audience.
I was like, "This audience is hot,
they are ready to have fun."
- I love this. - And I went,
"Who wants Freddy to win? Yell real loud."
- They missed a huge opportunity
to not do like a wedding bride and groom,
sit on this side if you're for Jason and Freddy.
In fact, they should have called the movie
either "Freddy Versus Jason" or "Jason Versus Freddy",
depending on which ticket you buy,
like an ending to the original Clue.
- "Freddy Versus Jason" is pretty much
the greatest combination it could have possibly been.
When I saw it like opening night, I was just so stoked.
I was like, "This has everything."
Like they, I knew they paid attention
because they've got so much of the little details right.
And I was just like, "This is a perfect combo,
thank you, I love this movie forever."
- Putting them together,
it's like peanut butter and chocolate,
but in a horror movie.
You're like, "What? This is delicious in my horror brain."
- It was so satisfying when you finally
get to the insanity of "Freddy Versus Jason",
because these are two characters
that you've grown up watching
and comparing your favorite kills.
We are seeing Freddy, dream warriors,
the syringes that go for the gaping mouths, the vein puppet.
Jason, where he freezes someone and then he smashes them.
It knows what its fans wants.
It's delicious fan service,
it's just giving me more of what I need.
- It was a huge hit opening weekend.
I think it did more in its first weekend
than all but a couple of the films
had done in their entire runs.
Just the promise of seeing them together
was what really attracted a lot of people.
- That's a low point in my career.
I was, I had a meeting at New Line
and was given the script and told I was doing the movie.
So then when I was replaced,
that's far more difficult to handle.
I wished it was me, but you know, I still had to see it.
I love the franchise, I got to go see it,
I got to see Jason and Freddy battle.
- We can't just kill her, that's not evil enough.
- What do you mean? We cut out her eyeball.
- Yeah, that's super hardcore.
- I don't get it, they should be here by now.
- Ah, what are you going to do?
- I have my own action figure, that's absolutely outrageous.
- You know, I was thinking about
why I have so many Jason toys because it's ridiculous.
- With you in this costume,
it'll be easy to keep an eye on you
'cause nobody wants to be Jason on Halloween.
- Yes they do,
it's like the most popular costume of all time.
- Look, man, I'm there with you buying them,
but it does make you reflect on it a little bit
when you're like, "Well,
the messaging of these movies is something different."
- Every great band makes one album too many.
You could say that about every horror franchise,
there's always one sequel too many
and that's when you realize, "Okay, we've gone too far."
- I was not overly thrilled with the remake.
I think it's very professionally done.
You have the origin story,
you have elements of two, is the wild man
living in the woods, you have the hockey mask from three,
you have some stuff from "Final Chapter" in there.
- In a sense it is taking you like the first three films
and making something new out of it.
But the character was different
where they made him a survivalist.
Where, what would it be like if someone
were living in the wilderness by themselves?
Each of these kills was almost like these kids
were the ones who just right now
killed his mother so many years ago.
Adding that deeper drive of emotion and purpose,
we understand the passion behind the kills.
- I think one of the things that makes the remake work
is Derek Mears, he's another guy who loves the character.
You know, this was not a job for him,
he really loved getting into Jason's boots, as it were,
and really tearing it up as in the role.
I think the fans would embrace seeing Derek back
in that part if they did another film.
- Action.
- The "Friday the 13th" video game comes out
and they bring back Kane Hodder to be Jason again,
which is exciting because we haven't seen
Kane's Jason kill for 11 years.
- You look at that video game that was done by Gun Media,
where they're literally taking that whole environment
and making it into a competitive realm.
It's been totally elevated to a new level.
- The "Friday the 13th" video game,
one player gets to be Jason, it's random,
the other eight are counselors.
If you die early and I often do,
you can quit and go find a new match
or you can sit and watch everybody else.
I have never quit, I will watch
because I am getting this little 15, 20 minute Jason movie
with a legit Jason.
- I like to play as a counselor,
see if I can kill that son of a bitch.
And I have yet to do it.
- I'm getting the chase,
I'm getting Jason bursting through a door.
- No!
- And I'm getting a new kill
and I haven't gotten a new kill in 11 years now, you know.
- The current state of the "Friday the 13th" franchise,
it's in legal limbo.
Writers, after 35 years, can go
and claim rights to their screenplay,
so that's exactly what happened.
Victor Miller decided to try to reclaim his rights
for writing the first "Friday the 13th",
including the rights to the Jason character.
Sean Cunningham filed a preemptive lawsuit,
the judge has looked at it, it's gone back to appeal,
so right now, no one knows what's going to happen.
But depending on how it's decided,
that could have huge ramifications,
not only for the series, but I believe for horror franchises
in general and franchise characters.
- There are so many legal problems circling right now,
it's a shame that no one can really move forward with it
because it's something that fans are clamoring for.
There was a stretch a couple of years ago where every
horror writer in Hollywood pitched on "Friday the 13th."
- I was very fortunate to develop a "Friday the 13th" movie
for about a year and a half
with a handful of really talented writers.
Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing wrote a really great script
and then Nick Antosca came in
and did a killer draft on top of that.
It took us back to the summer,
it was very much a campfire tale.
Somebody tells a story about Jason
and they go across the lake to the old Camp Crystal Lake
and they insult Jason's mother, you know,
over what would be her grave,
kind of kidding around, kids being kids
and Jason comes to collect his due.
Yeah, it would have been rad.
- It's become so popular now that the fans
are just waiting for the next segment.
It's been 10 years.
I hope we get moving a little bit.
- I love that the fans of horror,
if we can't deliver the films for it, to hell with it,
they're going to make it themselves.
And that is what has happened with "Friday the 13th."
- You had this whole kind of cottage industry of young
"Friday the 13th" fans who are making their own films,
kind of a new era of fan fiction.
- Come to mommy.
- Some of these movies have like a 100, $200,000 budgets.
It's insane.
- You wouldn't run back to these characters
if you didn't fall in love with them somehow.
And something about them, from their design to their excess,
to the fact that they keep changing with the times,
has kept us going back for 30 years.
- We thought we'd make two or three,
maybe five for nerds that go to conventions.
Boy, 1500 COVID-19 masks later.
They're flying off the shelf,
so it was originally Jason's idea
to do the half hockey mask.
He had to rent a studio,
he's hired 10 people, ex-students some of them,
or people who have lost their jobs
because there's no commercial shooting or movies going on,
he's given all them jobs.
It just took off, it took off like crazy
and we had no idea it was going to do that.
- It is Friday the 13th in Blairstown, New Jersey.
- Pretty good job of looking scared.
- Just a short five, 10 years ago,
there was a lot of resistance on the part of Blairstown
to associating themselves with "Friday the 13th".
Now horror is mainstream.
Jason is seen almost like kind of like
an American mythological character there now.
You know, I just think I really picked
the best movie to be in for a minute,
like 40 years ago.
- Blairstown always kind of kept it under the sheets
because it wasn't an embarrassment,
it just wasn't something they wanted
to promote or be proud of.
And I think over the years,
going back to the decades of success of the franchise,
they've started to embrace it.
- Happy Friday the 13th.
- Someone showed me a picture of me at a convention,
holding an infant for the photo.
And then they say, "That's me."
And they're now 28 years old.
Things like that are just incredible
and it's all because of "Friday the 13th."
- The fans just worship this stuff.
I think it's because they just love being scared.
You cannot predict what's going to be a hit
and if somebody comes to you and tells you that
you realize they're full of shit.
There's something that people connect with, you know.
- One of the big attractions to the Jason character
is the fact that there's a reality to it.
It's mind boggling to be quite honest,
because here we did this three decades ago of myself,
you go back to Ari, you know, almost four decades
and you start thinking about
the people that have come along and you have met.
I think the nice thing about it is none of us expected this.
- Jason goes from face to bag to a hockey mask
and then to melty face and then to worm.
- I mean, it was the '80s, Madonna was reinventing herself,
Jason can, too.
With each one, he had a new look.
I definitely like more the, hey, Jason could actually
be living in the woods out here, I don't know.
Maybe he'd attack me with a bag on his head, a little hole.
- Yeah, I think human Jason is akin
to Daniel Craig James Bond,
where zombie Jason's more of the Pierce Brosnan era.
They both have their value.
- Well and that makes sense because in first class
I both saw once, walking through, Pierce Brosnan
and then right over to the side part seven Jason.
- How great would that be to get into first class
and then a full zombie Jason comes in and sits down?
Because he's so popular that he would fly first class.
If he's doing a movie, he's got an agent,
probably the same agent that reps Michael and Freddy.
- And Pierce. - And Pierce.