Steven Williams was a perfect example of that. He was just so smart and funny. All that Creighton Duke stuff>, Steven and I talked about it on the set, and then he just said, "What if I played him as if he is of ambiguous sexuality?" And I was like, "Dude, that's great!" And because of that, the whole jail cell exchange between Steve and John LeMay actually became my favorite scene in the movie. Because it's eight pages of gobbledygook, just so much exposition it's insane. But the audience doesn't even realize it because of the way Steven and John played it. John, when he looks down at Steven touching his hair like that, it's hilarious. We were able to get laughs, but there was also this nervous thing happening to the audience because they are so unsure of where it is going.
JOHN D. LEMAY:
We had our moments on the set where we'd fight about whether we were doing something that was sacrificing logic for the sake of the storyline. For the most part, Adam had an eye on what translated as being real. A big part of my job was trusting Adam to save me from all the moments where the audience ends up saying, "Why is he going into that house again when he already knows Jason is there?"
What was also interesting about doing a horror movie back then is that it was pre-Scream. Everybody had a great sense of humor about it, but as crazy as the circumstances in the movie are, I don't think we ever thought about pointing it out explicitly, or indicating directly that this is ridiculous. It wasn't acceptable at that point in time to call attention to the conventions of the genre the way you can today. I also think Adam was just kind of into weird for weird's sake. And why not, in a franchise that's already over-the-top weird anyway?
KARI KEEGAN:
I have a great acting teacher who says there's no such thing as bad dialogue, there are only bad actors. And there's no such thing as a small role, just a small actor. But the truth is, dialogue can get really sketchy if you as an actor think you're a writer and start commenting on it. Dean was always on the set, and always great about explaining why that line was that way if you were having a problem. He could not have been nicer or more gracious with his time, and in his patience on the many occasions where I needed help understanding why he wrote what he wrote. Then it made sense. One of the things I learned on Jason Goes to Hell was that my job as an actor is to take these words and bring them to life, not to rewrite the script how I think it should sound. Part of the job of being an actor is problem solving, and making the words real and making them believable.
RICHARD GANT:
I liked Dean's writing, I liked his approach. I found it refreshing. In our business, you tend to know that these younger people will probably end up running the industry one day, so hopefully you make a good impression on them. Although, I have to say, that scene where I tie that cop up, I don't know... did Jason need a clean face before he killed someone?
ADAM MARCUS:
The scene where Andy Block, who played the cop who attacks Erin Gray, is chained up by Jason and shaved>—people lost their lunch at that scene more than any of the gore effects. It was so creepy and so not what they had seen in other Jason movies, that the reaction was like, "What the hell did we just see?" I loved that. I was so turned on by scaring the audience in ways other than just cutting people up.
Gallery: Diner massacre.
DEAN LOREY:
One of the things we decided to do was come up with the most archetypal opening we possibly could, so that the audience would believe that this was no different than any other Friday the 13th movie. So the girl is alone in the cabin in the woods, then we have these jump scares, and she goes running naked out through the woods. It was just about every Friday cliché we could pack into the opening sequence. Then, when you least expect it, POW! —we blow Jason into a million pieces. That was our way of making the audience think, "Gee, maybe I'd better pay a little closer attention to this film than I normally would with a Friday movie."
ADAM MARCUS:
The opening of the movie is not unlike what Scream did a couple of years later. In the first 10 minutes of that movie, they killed off the best-known actress in the film. That was total genius. In Jason Goes to Hell, we blew up the best-known character in our film seven minutes into it>—Jason himself. Like Scream, we started the movie off leaving people going, "I have no idea what the fuck is going to happen next!"
GREG NICOTERO, Makeup Effects Supervisor:
Adam had to fight. He really did. He went up against everybody. I remember him and Sean Cunningham having disagreements about what the vision for the film should be. And I admired Adam for standing up for what he wanted. I'll tell you, for a guy who had never directed a film, it's very easy to be swayed by numerous voices. This person will have an opinion, that person will have an opinion. And after a while when you get inundated like that it sometimes can weaken your resolve. But Adam stayed true to what he believed in the entire time. And that's really hard to do.
ADAM MARCUS:
I remember one of the big disagreements Sean and I had was over the hockey mask. Before I was even hired to do the movie, Sean said, "You can do whatever you want, but just get that damn hockey mask off of him!"
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
That is not true. How could you do it without a hockey mask? What was Adam thinking? I didn't have any feeling about the hockey mask whatsoever. I thought the hockey mask in Part 3, when it first appeared, was just a way to try and keep Jason generic. He's the bogeyman. He's not supposed to be a person. On that level, it was good. Although I did think, "Don't they have any imagination?" Because it was never explained, it was just there. It was just a device. But I never had any antipathy toward it.
ADAM MARCUS:
Sean's a liar and you can print that! He literally said to me to get the damn hockey mask out. Because the hockey mask was not Sean's idea-he had a disdain for it. He might have changed his feelings for it since, but he sure didn't like the hockey mask then. So we got it out of most of the movie. And Sean did love the idea of the body hopping and all that stuff.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
I bought into the fact that Adam was a self-appointed expert of the genre, and that he was the representative of the audience for whom it was being made. It wasn't being made for me, it was being made for him. So we had to do those things that pleased him. When you've made a commitment as a producer to your director, you have to let him direct. But I was involved much more than I wanted to be. In structural and financial ways, I would guide him. And Adam was very gracious. On some level, I was kind of his hero. Plus, he had all these shots that he thought were going to be really cool, so you want to support that.
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
At first I thought Sean was one of those cheesy Hollywood producer guys. But then I saw how fun he was and that he understood what he was producing here. I left with tons of respect for him. He has a great sense of humor about all this. And he's very smart, and very savvy. If anything, making Jason Goes to Hell solidified my idea of having a good time while I work. You need to. This should never be a grueling job. You should be happy to wake up and go to work in the morning.
ADAM MARCUS:
I made mistakes at the time that were stupid first-timer mistakes. But I had Sean. And I gotta tell you that even though he and I had many a row, he's a great teacher. And the one thing about Sean is that with him, there is no bullshit. Even when he would be nasty, he was straight with you. Sean is also one of those guys who likes to get everybody in a room together, all yelling and disagreeing with each other. There were times when Sean, myself, Dean and Noel would all be arguing on the set, but some of the most brilliant stuff came out of those moments. I think that communal element was really positive and really good for creativity. Honestly, despite any fights, I don't think any of us wanted to leave that set.
Adam Marcus and Dean Lorey's attempts to defy all expectations of what a Friday the 13th film could be were not limited to the film's situations, characters and dialogue. They felt it was time to change Jason, too. Although Jason Goes to Hell would mark the third
time actor and stuntman Kane Hodder inhabited the titular role, Hodder's reservations about the lack of screen time devoted to the series' iconic main character would later be echoed by legions of fans who wanted to know why a movie called Jason Goes to Hell was, for all intents and purposes, Jason-less. Glimpsed occasionally as a ghostly specter throughout the majority of the film, only to return in the final reel for a fisticuffs battle-to-the-finish, the Jason Voorhees of The Final Friday made his presence known in an entirely new way.
Taking a cue from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Hidden, the "body swapping" concept of Jason Goes to Hell required a host of attendant special effects far more fantastical than had ever been seen in the Friday series. If slug-like worms jumping from one character's mouth to another, melting heads and swirling dust devils from hell left many diehard fans scratching their heads, Adam Marcus and his special effects collaborators at K.N.B. were loving it. This was definitely not the Friday the 13th your big brother grew up with.
Jason Goes to Hell features more makeup effects and complicated creature designs than any other Friday the 13th before or after. "Our entire effects budget was like a couple hundred thousand," remembers K.N.B. Effects' Greg Nicotero. "Jason Goes to Hell was one of those projects where we were more involved than just hired guns. But we're always up for that because for us it's whatever's going to make the movie as good as it can possibly be."
GREG NICTOERO:
We started K.N.B. Effects in 1988. We hit at just the right time, I think. If we would have tried to start the company any later, we would have missed that whole wave of horror movies in that period. We started almost at the pinnacle. I first met Howard when we both worked on Day of the Dead with Tom Savini. When, after about four weeks of shooting, it became apparent on that project that we were understaffed in the makeup department, Howard was flown in from L.A. to help do some extra makeup. That's where we became friends. So it's not ironic that back in 1984, in a period that was so influential, that I would meet someone and create a relationship with has lasted now over 20 years.
HOWARD BERGER:
We had worked with Sean Cunningham before on DeepStar Six and The Horror Show. Then Sean called and said, "We're doing The Final Friday." And we signed on just like that. The very first script we got I really liked a lot, but it was really hardcore. I remember it started off with Jason as a little kid with his mother and they were having sex. And I kept reading it and going, "This is really intense, but I like it because it's different." Then of course things changed and many of those elements went away. But it was still chock full of stuff>—that's why it was a pleasure to work with Adam, because he had such great ideas. Between Adam and Bob Kurtzman, who was really heavily involved, many new elements were added. We were allowed a lot of improvisation, and that really speaks to Adam's passion and enthusiasm for the film. Remember that little creature that bursts out of the Kipp Marcus character's neck? It was originally just going to be this little thing running around. Then, it became this big monster. Or that little creature that shows up at the end? I don't recall that ever being in the script. That's an example of how we were really allowed to go for it. We just kept throwing a lot of stuff in and Adam was really open to it.
GREG NICOTERO:
After the slasher wave hit in the early 1980s, there was a backlash. You still had your Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween sequels, but by the end of the decade it was slowing down. That was actually a hard storm for our company to weather, but we were able to do high-profile films like Dances with Wolves and Misery to prove that we could do more than gore stuff. But one of the things that our company has always prided ourselves on is that we're the only one that's worked on every single '80s slasher character. We did a couple Leatherface movies, an Evil Dead, a couple of Halloweens, and a bunch of Nightmare on Elm Streets. And even at that young age we were at the time, it was fun to think that we had a hand in the sagas that people would be watching for years to come. People flip out over that stuff, because those movies influenced so many people. So now we could go, "Okay, we've done a Jason, too." There was never an attitude of, "Oh, this is just a Friday the 13th movie, and part nine at that."
I really liked the supernatural element of Jason Goes to Hell, which was never really touched upon in any of the other films—certainly, the evil that drove Jason was never personified as a creature that could jump from person to person. I thought that it was a good device to keep the series going, because we'd seen Jason doing the same thing over and over again for so long. And all of the supernatural creature stuff was above and beyond the stereotypical Friday the 13th movie. It's another one of the reasons we were attracted to the film, because it allowed us to come up with some pretty cool effects.
HOWARD BERGER:
Carl Fullerton's Jason is one of my favorites, as well as John Carl Buechler's in Part VII—having the spine exposed and all that was terrific. So we wanted to incorporate that into our design as well, and kind of make it look like Jason's skin had grown over the mask, almost as if it had been fused into one piece. It was as if you could no longer take his mask off.
GREG NICOTERO:
Many people respond very positively to the Carl Fullerton Jason makeup from the second movie. It's really a cool look, and I always felt Carl made Jason look sympathetic but scary at the same time. He was truly frightening—you would believe that that guy would live in the forest.
We wanted to recognize what had come before but also make this Jason our own, so that's why we went with that misshapen head and a kind of bubbly texture to him. Plus, we sculpted the makeup as a full-body foam latex suit underneath the costume, because we really wanted the flexibility of being able to expose as much skin on Jason as we could, given the fact that we weren't going to see him through the entire movie. You really only see him at the beginning and then you see him at the end, and that's it.
KANE HODDER:
Landing Jason Goes to Hell was fairly easy. I had been stunt coordinator for Sean since around 1985, and I also played Jason in two prior movies and had coordinated all the stunts for a number of years. I think they thought, "Why change?" And Adam Marcus was someone that was a fan of what I had done with the character.
But from the beginning I was like, "Goddamn, there's not nearly as much Jason as I would like to see." Just as a fan. Although, when he does finally comes back at the end, it was a great, welcoming moment for the audience. But in all honesty, I still don't think that was worth having so little of Jason in the movie.
ADAM MARCUS:
Kane was always our guy. I love Kane, and he loves that character. I know that he was a little disappointed that we didn't have more of him in Jason Goes to Hell. But I'll say this>—when Jason shows up at the end of the film and bursts through the floor boards, the audience cheered. I think I gave Jason his best send-out right at the beginning, then his best entrance, and his best send-out yet again. There's not a lot of Friday the 13th movies you can say that about.
GREG NICOTERO:
The funniest thing was the mood music Kane had when he was getting made up as Jason. He would have this little boom box, and he would just be like, "Hey, man, this is the music I need when I go onstage and do appearances and stuff." And it was Metallica's "Enter Sandman." I think Jason Goes to Hell was Kane right at the height of the whole Jason thing.
Left: Longtime character actor and television star Steve Williams stars in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday as bounty hunter Creighton Duke. "I read the script, and it was a bounty hunter, and to me, this guy was a stone-cold cowboy," remembers Williams. "I said, 'If I can dress like a cowboy, I will do this role.'"
JOHN D. LEMAY:
Kane was a method actor, and just as scary off the set as on. But, deep down inside, he's just a sweetheart of a guy.
JULIE MICHAELS:
The whole opening of the movie, up until the military guys come in and destroy Jason, it's just me and Kane. Can I tell you how much of a method actor Kane is? There was one scene where
he was supposed to be chasing me out of the house, and even though he wasn't in the shot, he was still working it. He decided to motivate me a little bit and stand behind the door and not tell me he was there. And I'm already freaked out. And I was butt-naked. I had to be talked into this part by Adam Marcus to begin with, so they roll action and Kane jumps out from behind the door. I literally jumped out of my skin, out of pure fear. When Kane is hacking at me, he's using a real machete. I just thought, "I'd better hit my mark, or he's gonna take my head clear off."
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
There was a lot going on personally for me at that time, because the L.A. riots had just happened and I was doing a lot of goodwill work down in South Central. So one day I had a bunch of kids from South Central come up and visit the set. They had a blast. And, of course, they totally wanted to meet Jason. Then when they met Kane, they cowered! Then he showed them some of his burn scars, like, "Check it out, I'm burnt from here to here!" He was terrific with them.
STEVEN WILLIAMS:
Kane and I had done a couple films together before Friday, and some celebrity stuff. And I remember the first time I went on a celebrity thing—I think it was some celebrity golfing weekend. And once the kids found out who he was, it was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Here's a man with no face, that's behind that mask, but all these kids know who he was. He was so popular. And he's just a great guy. Easy-going, laid-back, and cool.
HOWARD BERGER:
People think that these monsters are just guys in suits, and that anybody could do it. But Robert Englund as Freddy, or Kane as Jason—they bring a definite style to the character that no one else ever could.
I noticed that Kane didn't really fraternize with the other actors. He wasn't yukking it up. But to his credit, sometimes that can affect everyone else, because I've been on sets where the guy in the suit is being all goofy with everyone, and then when it comes time to shoot nobody buys into it—it becomes just a big rubber monster. But Kane always kept that essence. And Kane's a big guy. Even when he's not in the suit and he's staring you down, you get a little freaked out. He's very passionate and emotional. As well he should be.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 70