Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)

by Peter M. Bracke

  In late 1987, my agent at the time gave me a call and said, "John, how would you like to direct a Friday the 13th movie?" And my response was, "Why? Haven't they already made enough of them?" I didn't know that there was anything new to do with a Part VII. I thought it was a joke. I had an interview with Frank Mancuso Jr. and I think I almost lost the job. I said, "I'm not interested in making just another Friday the 13th movie. I want to do something over the top and ridiculous. I don't want to do it unless we can do something more extraordinary." Every Friday the 13th movie did something different and broke new ground, but after six of them, where do you go? And as it turns out, that is why I got the job—I could bring something new to the table. And they kind of let me get my way with a lot of it. So I agreed to do it.

  DARYL HANEY:

  I used to go over to Hometown and it was a really loose atmosphere. They'd have videos lying around of movies by people they were considering to direct. Barbara put in this movie, Troll, and she said, "What do you think of this?" I watched the first few minutes of it and I thought it was horrible. Every frame was just off. She said, "Well, I have a feeling this is who we're going to get." She really wanted John. And a large part of the reason for bringing him on, I believe, was that they felt he would get a good rate on special effects because he had his own SFX house.

  Then John came in and we barely exchanged two words with each other. My impression of him was six feet of walking mediocrity. I really didn't like him very much. I thought he had a stick up his ass. Who the hell was he? And he would give me notes that I thought were really bizarre. Like, "Some kids are sleeping in the van and some are in the house. Why? Please explain this." And my attitude was like, "Not everybody's going to be able to sleep in the house. The van is perfectly comfortable. What's the big deal?" My guess is that the structure was basically my own, but they changed a lot of my lines. I don't know how much of the screenplay even is me anymore, except the names were kept the same and a lot of the methods of death were identical.

  JOHN CARL BUECHLER:

  I wasn't the screenwriter—you've got to look at the poster to tell you who it was. He actually came up with the Carrie premise, and wrote several drafts. But I wasn't incredibly pleased with it. It was the same stupid people doing the same stupid things. I wanted a much bigger movie. Finally, we all took stabs at it, because it was getting close to shooting. Over-the-top fantasy is where my roots are. I like horror films, and I like supernatural, but I'm not crazy about slashers. I got excited because I thought with Part VII we could bring the series to the next level, where it's more good versus evil—it's a real monster, as opposed to a guy in a closet waiting to jump out with a knife. I also got excited about doing what is essentially the last couple of reels—that's where I think the movie works its strongest. And about the Tina storyline. It was all a little bit of a departure for the Friday films. I wouldn't say it's more adult, just more comic book, more—how shall I say it—high-concept.

  The film that would become Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood would be prepped, cast, shot, edited and scored in the span of just over five months—a breakneck pace even by the standards of low-budget, quickly made genre movies, much less a well-known franchise film to be distributed by a major studio. Once again, a diverse group of actors were invited to come in to read, this time for a film entitled "Birthday Bash." But few were fooled by the false title, especially as the script's description of "Ethan, the hockey-masked killer" meant this could only be another Friday the 13th.

  The "new blood" that was eventually assembled would boast a mix of talented newcomers as well as more seasoned television and film professionals recognizable to many a genre fan. And among them, the introduction of yet another new Jason. With six previous films and one television show to its credit, Friday the 13th was already—and undeniably—a full-fledged franchise. But unlike the Nightmare on Elm Street series, one ingredient the Friday films lacked was a recognizable face behind their hockey-masked wearing villain. Someone who, like the great movie monsters of yesteryear, could claim the role of Jason Voorhees as his own—not just for genre fans, but for the press and the public at large. If Jason never quite needed a genre actor as distinguished as a Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing or Donald Pleasence to wield his machete, then certainly, as Robert Englund proved in his career-making role of Freddy Krueger, a little old-fashioned PR never hurt a movie maniac. Enter Kane Hodder.

  Another group of naïve campers, another group of potential victims. Clockwise from top left: Craig Thomas and Diana Alameida as sparring lovers Ben and Kate; Elizabeth Kaitan (left) and Susan Jennifer Sullivan as the scheming Melissa; Elizabeth Kaitan as Robin, Larry Cox as Russell, Heidi Kozak as Sandra, and Diana Barrows as Maddie; and Kevin Blair and Lar Park Lincoln as lead couple Nick and Tina.

  BILL BUTLER, "Michael":

  I moved to L.A. when I was 17 years old. I was living in my car. I had no talent agent and no contacts. But I met John Carl Buechler through my friend John Vulich. I said to Buechler, "John, I'll sweep the floor, anything. I just want to learn about moviemaking." So he taught me how to paint and make molds, and one day he asked me if I had ever thought about being an actor. I said, "Truth be told, that is what I want to do." So he hooked me up with Charlie Band and I ended up doing a lot of films for Empire Pictures, traveling back and forth between Italy and the U.S.

  One day I was in Buechler's shop when I heard he was doing Part VII, and I flipped out. I was a huge fan of the franchise. I begged John to let me audition. And when you go up for a Friday the 13th movie, they don't give you many lines. It's you in an office with eight people eating ham sandwiches, and they're like, "He's coming after you! He's stalking you! He's killing you!" And you do it over and over again. So maybe I just look good with an axe in my face, but I ended up getting the part.

  DIANA BARROWS, "Maddy":

  My career started one day in a park in New York City. My mom was wheeling me in my baby cart and a man got out of his car, walked up to her, said "you've got a cute kid, gimme call!" and extended her his business card. The man turned out to be a producer of TV commercials, and within the month I was shooting my first diaper ad. Eventually my mom put me in various music, singing and dancing classes. Soon, the virus was so much part of my system that I was rounding up members of the family and friends from around town to shoot my own mock TV shows.

  When I went in the first few times to read for Maddy, as written she was kind of geeky, a nerd who wasn't so attractive. And she stayed that way throughout the whole film. Then I get this call from my agent that they've changed the script so that halfway through the film she would be transformed and become pretty. And they tell my agent that while I was this incredible, terrific actress, they had a doubt about my being sexy.

  I was in New York so the deal was that I'd have to fly back real quick. And even with my jet lag, I got dolled up for the audition. It wasn't that hard because the first few times I went out of my way to look really gross with potato sack clothing and greasy hair. So I put on this super micro-miniskirt and these ultra-high heels. It was just like the movie— "Touch up, my ass!" I went in, did my audition and the feedback was, "Amazing legs." And the rest is history.

  DIANE ALAMEIDA, "Kate":

  Part VII was my first movie. Only knowing it was a Friday the 13th after the fact, it made the audition very different. In the beginning I thought it was just a scary movie, some slasher movie called "Birthday Bash." So I did the audition and didn't think that much about it. It wasn't until afterward, when I had gone back to Rhode Island where I'm from, that I got a call saying you got hired for a Friday the 13th. That really put some meat on it for me. All of a sudden it becomes a much bigger deal, once you find out it is a Friday the 13th.

  HEIDI KOZAK, "Sandra":

  I've been acting since I was five years old. I mainly did theatre for years and years, and I went to the drama department at Santa Monica High. We had a lot of really talented people—Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez, and Robert Downey, Jr
., who was my boyfriend, we did Oklahoma! together. Then I went to USC's School of Theatre. They paid for my entire education, my room and board, and I could work, too. I would be doing Shakespeare at night and auditioning during the day and going to classes. It was a great time, a really great life. But I found out very quickly that you cannot make a living in theatre. So I quickly said, "Okay—I'll just do whatever comes my way and see what happens." I did commercials, and I did a lot of guest star roles on TV shows like "Growing Pains," "Silver Spoons," "Matlock" and a new "Twilight Zone". Then my first movie was Cold Steel, one of Sharon Stone's first movies.

  When I went in to read for "Birthday Bash," I think I knew it was Friday the 13th. I remember reading for John Carl Buechler and we did screen tests. It came down to me and another girl, and they brought me back a few times. I didn't know who the other girl was, but I remember somebody telling me that whoever it was in charge had some really bad reaction to her and was like, "I really want Heidi to do it."

  ELIZABETH KAITAN, "Robin":

  I grew up in Hungary, and all I could think of when I was a kid was making movies in Hollywood, which is pretty amazing as there are so few movies shown there. And I grew up watching Jason, so being able to be in a Friday the 13th movie—it was amazing, like a blast from my childhood. I also loved John Carl Buechler. He had second unit directed a film I'd done, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, and he was so great. So when I was originally called to come in and talk to him about being in Part VII, I was just really excited, not only because it was a Jason movie, but to be able to work with John.

  JEFF BENNETT, "Eddie":

  This was my first film. Before that it was all guest spots on TV and some commercials for Sprite and KFC. I was living in Los Angeles at the time with a house full of actors, all starving. All we had was a big avocado tree in the backyard, so I'd harvest the avocados and fix that with rice—we lived on that for months and months. I was so excited to get a job. I knew this was a Friday the 13th, but I just thought, "It's a major film—this is it!"

  SUSAN BLU, "Amanda Shepherd":

  I was doing a lot of voice-overs and cartoons, and then I bumped into Anthony Barnao, the casting director for Part VII, and he said, "Come on, I want you to read for this. We're having a terrible time finding the right person to play the mother." And I was really scared, because I had decided that I wasn't going to do on-camera anymore and I was going to stick to voice-overs and animation, then all of a sudden, out of the woodwork came this. But I always loved horror movies. I grew up on Dracula and Frankenstein and all the classics. And I thought that you're not an actor until you've done a Friday the 13th movie. So I though this would be a very cool movie to do.

  Camp Crystal Lake cleavage.

  KERRY NOONAN, "Paula," Part VI:

  Oddly enough, I got an audition a year or two after I did Part VI for some other horror movie. I went in and realized, "Oh—this is Friday the 13th Part VII." They had changed it to "Ethan, the hockey-masked killer." I'm thinking, obviously, Jason. I was reading for the telekinetic girl. I knew the casting director really well, and the director was there. I said, "Um, I have to tell you I've done one of these." They're like, "One of what?" I said, "I was in Friday the 13th Part VI." And the director goes, "Oh, that's why you look familiar!" Needless to say, I didn't get the part.

  LAR PARK LINCOLN, "Tina":

  I had gotten into the business from years of having to do horrible modeling jobs. Modeling was all I could do traveling with a military family. I grew up mostly in Texas but my dad was Army, so we moved around a lot—seventeen schools at last count. Then I lived in L.A. for almost 15 years. I came out there with nothing, but it was a very lucky time period where the blonde, blue-eyed girl was popular on every TV series and horror film. So I worked a lot.

  When I was auditioning, it wasn't called Friday the 13th. My late husband would read all my scripts to help me out, and he's going, "This is Friday the 13th!" I go, "Oh, please!" And he begged and begged and begged and begged, and finally I went in on it. So it was like a big tribute to him for me to do it.

  JOHN CARL BUECHLER:

  I think Lar Park Lincoln is one of the most beautiful and talented actors in the world. She blew everyone away with her reading. There was no question in my mind that this was the girl that had to play Tina. So I recorded all of the readings and played them back for Frank Mancuso, Jr. He rejected her four times. I kept having her come back in with different hairstyles and tops, and had her read it slightly different. Finally, when the hairstyle was right and the top was right, Frank said, "That's the girl! Why didn't you show me her in the first place?" So I got the girl that I wanted.

  KEVIN SPIRTAS, "Nick":

  Acting was like a second door that got opened for me. My birth name is Kevin Blair Spirtas. I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a kid, I performed a lot and sang a lot. When I was 18, around 1981, I went to New York, where I got A Chorus Line, and then I toured with that show across the country, which brought me out to Los Angeles. Once I realized there was such a grand opportunity in TV and film, that was it. My first movie was Hills Have Eyes II, directed by Wes Craven, and I also did Subspecies II and Subspecies III, and was on a TV show called "Rituals." And I remember seeing the very first Friday the 13th when I was in high school, and loving it. So when I got cast as Nick in Part VII, I was thrilled.

  Kane Hodder and I had worked on Hills Have Eyes Part II—he had done some of the fire stunts. And about a week or so before I had auditioned for Friday Part VII, I had seen Kane over at the set of the soap opera Santa Barbara because I was up for a callback and I guess he was doing some stunts on that show. He said, "Kevin, guess what! I just got the role of Jason in the new Friday the 13th movie. You should go out on that, I'm sure there's a part for you." Then I get called in for a movie called "Birthday Bash" and I met the director, John Carl Buechler. And Lar Park Lincoln was outside and we talked for a while on the steps. Then she went in and read and left, and I went back, I read and then I left. I really did not think anything of it. Then when I got home that night my agent called me and said, "They want you for the lead in the new Friday the 13th movie." I went, "What Friday the 13th movie?" He goes, "Well that's the thing you just went in on."

  JOHN CARL BUECHLER:

  When you do a sequel, you must keep in mind all that has come before but also build something new. Jason is a roadmap. My intention with Part VII from day one was to redesign the look of Jason, specifically to reflect all the damage that had been done to him in the previous movies. I got tired of seeing a guy in a gray costume with gloves and a hockey mask and there was nothing wrong with him. So I made a lot wrong with him. You see his rib cage hanging out, and when we pop off his mask you see a hole in the side of his face, full of scars—eye whacked out, motorblade to the face—all those things are reflected in the makeup. Part VII is a natural progression of what he should have looked like at that time.

  I recall I sculpted the Jason face on Thanksgiving—I just went into the garage while the family was in kitchen eating. I wanted it to be a pretty powerful makeup effect. I wanted it to be something where people said, "Wow." Because God knows they weren't going to let me do everything else I wanted to do. I would say the majority of Friday the 13ths were pretty lame because they weren't really allowed to do the same makeup effects that Tom Savini got away with. And Tom did a brilliant job with the first one, but nobody since him has been allowed to do that. It becomes a point where you go ahead, you build it, you shoot it, and then you can't use it. That's a shame.

  I was also absolutely aware and appreciative of the Friday the 13th timeline, something that may not have been the case in the other films. Jason was dead for 10 years before our movie began. And that was when Tina was supposed to be a little girl. So how many years have advanced since? Let's say she was 10 years old and now she's 16. That's the way I balanced it.

  Veteran stuntman Kane Hodder would make his debut as Jason Voorhees in The New Blood. "The very, very first shot I ever
did as Jason was for the dream death of Michael, played by Bill Butler," says Hodder. "It was one of Tina's visions, and a really fast shot. I'm standing in the kitchen, holding up Bill, who's impaled on a tent stake. And in that moment, it felt really natural. I felt like I was born to play this character."

  KANE HODDER, "Jason Voorhees":

  When I was in high school I visited L.A. once and went to Universal Studios. I saw a stunt show there and was just so intrigued by it. And I had always done crazy stuff as a kid. I thought, "Oh, man, that's a great way to make a living." So I went back to high school, but decided to come back between semesters during the summer and see about going to stunt school. And once I got in, I never looked back.

  I didn't know anybody in the stunt business, which makes it a hundred times more difficult—I didn't realize how ridiculously hard it would be to break in. I knocked around for eight years doing other stuff and the odd stunt job here or there. I eventually got my SAG card, and my first professional gig was in 1977, on an old TV show called "Emergency." Then came House, which was the first movie I ever got a stunt coordinator credit on—I did that for Sean Cunningham and Steve Miner. So it's ironic that I would start working for them in 1985, and by 1988, I would become Jason.

  I had done a movie called Prison that was directed by Renny Harlin, and John was the makeup effects supervisor on it. I was the stunt coordinator. I'm also the guy who comes up out of the ground strapped into the electric chair. And this character is supposed to have been dead for 25 years, which meant three full hours of prosthetics.