JULIE MICHAELS:
I love that Kane came out from behind the mask and did a cameo in the movie. And he called himself "Pussy." I loved that.
KANE HODDER:
I am a pussycat>—until the cameras roll. And when there's a violent scene, everybody shits their pants because I look like I'm out of control. The character isn't too far away from my real personality, so it doesn't take long to slip right in there and start tearing people up. And I do have somewhat of a temper—I've had many physical altercations in my life, so when I put that mask on, anger is not a very hard emotion for me to bring up. It's nice to go to work and get all that aggression out, and then go home feeling very... calm.
Since each Friday movie I did had a different makeup group designing the look of Jason, they varied tremendously in application of makeup. The shortest was Jason Goes to Hell—about 45 minutes to get into the entire thing. It was a once-piece latex full body suit from head to toe, and the head pulled over and the face was open. But I thought it was going to be a lot more comfortable than it was, because the design was made so that the hockey mask was embedded into the flesh, which means I could rarely take the hockey mask off. That made it really difficult doing physical stuff because of not being able to catch my breath very well. You're breathing your own exhaled air. That was tough. – 45 minutes to get into the entire thing.
STEVEN CULP:
I know Kane was really concerned that I carry on the character, that I be "Jason-like." Kane's a character. No. He's a stuntman. He's a "teamster." They're kind of rough rolling guys. I just thought he was quite funny.
KANE HODDER:
I tried with several of the cast to create some sort of continuity between what I would do in my performance and what they would do when Jason was inside of them. And I didn't really get any positive response at all, particularly from Steven Culp, who said, "My Jason wouldn't do that." I said, "You know, you're not really playing a character>—you're playing yourself with Jason inside you." My opinion is that you should do something that Jason does, not something you come up with in your fucking mind because of "your character." When you have Jason inside you, make it seem real and do something that's recognizable. I did talk to Adam Marcus, too, but I don't think he really cared about it, either. I really couldn't get through to anybody. I was just looking at it from a fan's point of view.
Actor Kane Hodder would serve double duty as Jason Goes to Hell's stunt coordinator. Top right: Hodder puts John D. LeMay's stunt double through his paces.
RICHARD GANT:
I never looked at playing Jason in me as if it was camp, although there was always a tongue-in-cheek quality to these types of films. But I think Kane liked the approach I took, that I wanted to respect the continuity. And I think I was the only one there trying to do that.
Although, I really wish I could have sold that moment better, the eating of Jason's heart. I look at actors like Vincent Price, who are masters at pulling something like that off. Part of it is simply the pronunciation of the words. I didn't like how I did the examining of the burnt corpse, of the pieces and talking about them. It may have worked for Adam at the time, but I thought I needed to other emotional choices than the ones I made. But, then, what in the hell was my motivation? In my mind, I had a very specific thing that I wanted to convey. Sometimes you can use humor for horror, and it works, but it's a very fine line. That was the very first scene I did on the film, so that might have contributed. The second time maybe I could have put different slant on it that made it work.
HOWARD BERGER:
There is some absolutely disgusting stuff in Jason Goes to Hell. But the thing that got me really sick was in the opening, when Richard Gant ate Jason's heart. It was only gelatin, and we filled it with grape jelly, but still. I was ready to hurl after every take we did. We gave as much attention to Jason Goes to Hell as we would to a Quentin Tarantino film. Because the movie is so fantastical, we really wanted everything to be as realistic as possible to help sell it. Not like cut to a terrible fake and splatter it with blood or whatever. We really went full throttle to make everything as perfect as could be.
Adam Marcus was over at our shop almost every day of pre-production. We've never had a director do that before, and it was great. We would sketch out a piece and Adam would say he thought it looked great. Then we'd start sculpting and he'd say it looked even better. Then we'd finish a piece and he would say that it was better than he had ever imagined. He really gave us a lot of help. I think he must be the happiest director in Hollywood.
ADAM MARCUS:
There is a pair of famous Los Angeles radio DJs, Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps, or Mark & Brian as they are known as. They have a big popular radio show in the mornings. And at the time, Friday the 13th was one of Brian's favorite things. One day, he went on the air to ask for a part in the next movie for his birthday. I actually heard this live in my car. I called up and said, "If you're really committed, I will write a part for you today. I'll even give you a hideously gory death." So Brian got his birthday wish—they had one great scene, they got slaughtered, and they even held a live radio show from the K.N.B. effects shop when they were getting their life casts made.
HOWARD BERGER:
We also utilized a lot of mechanical stuff. The monsters were all cable controlled and radio operated. Even the black heart had a radio controlled beating pulse. The actor had to handle it while it was beating, so we couldn't sue cables or air bladders. We've done hearts before, and always had trouble with bladder's popping or where to hide the cables and tubes. With this one, we just flicked a switch. And though there are heads exploding and that kind of thing in the movie, I think it got done a little better than we were used to seeing in a Friday the 13th movie. For example, there's an actress who gets smashed in the face by Jason, and her whole face caves in. Normally, you would just cut to a static head for that effect, but we built a really detailed mechanical head that was a lot more effective.
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
Because my character was so annoying, fans seem to really like my death when I get all fucked up in the face. It gets a huge cheer in the audience, like "Thank God! This lady is driving me nuts!" Every once in a great while someone will come up to me and say, "Dude, I saw you in that Friday movie. You're great, man! When Jason fucking elbows you in the face—awesome!"
GREG NICTOERO:
Our entire effects budget was like a couple hundred thousand. It wasn't a lot, I remember that. But we had a good relationship with Sean, and we knew that we would work with him over and over again. We certainly built above and beyond the money that was given us, but it was an investment that we made into the movie because of our relationship with Sean. Jason Goes to Hell was one of those projects where we were more involved than just hired guns. There are some projects when you'll be brought in and they'll want you to take a bigger bite of the apple, so to speak. Whether that includes designing sequences or second unit directing or whatever, and more work is thrown on your plate. 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.
Cuts, bruises and scrapes are common on films as physically demanding as Friday the 13th, but one particularly nasty fall near the end of principal photography would cause already-simmering tensions to reach a boiling point—and an irreparable rift to form between Kari Keegan and Adam Marcus that even the film's premiere couldn't fix.
KARI KEEGAN:
There was a scene where I had to land against a tree log, and I severely injured my neck. I should have gone to the hospital, but Adam was like, "No, you're fine, you're fine." I said, "No, I am not fine, and I am not being a baby about this." So I went to my dressing room, and I called my boyfriend and he came and got me, and I went to the doctor and they said, "She has a sprained neck. She can't turn her head." It was literally two days before the end of shooting.
I happened to complain about it to my agent at the wrong time. When I called him, he was all, "What the fuc
k?!" I hate to say this about agents, but most of them are wannabes. They wanted to be actors, they didn't make it, and they became agents. If they can throw their power around, that's what they'll do. And mine was a real rabble-rouser who liked to flex a lot of testosterone, so this was fun for him. And he was like, "My actress is being taken advantage of and put in a compromising position and all I have to do is call the Screen Actors Guild!" And it sort of got blown out of proportion, and I kind of got swept into letting it be blown out of proportion.
ADAM MARCUS:
It wasn't really a stunt. It was the kind of thing that, as a director, you would ask any actor to do. I wasn't putting anybody in peril. We didn't make her stay one more second to work.
Kari was a young actress. I was a young director. I think everybody sort of overreacted to that moment. There was a lot of talking going on and I was definitely sucked into that. And I believe it was John LeMay who was sort of upset and insulted the most by what was happening with Kari, because he was a fellow actor. I respect that about John, and I said, "You're right. I get you, I hear you." So it was squashed at that point, but that's when Kari's representation got into it. That's when it got a little contentious.
The many faces of Jason Voorhees.
GREG NICOTERO:
Adam came to me and told me that Sean was going to direct the last couple of things on the movie. There were only two days left. I thought it was more like the studio wanted Sean to step in and finish, but there was something else on top of it as well. Kari felt pressured to do nudity, and she refused.
ADAM MARCUS:
It had been a very long road with Kari. There was this whole situation with the nudity that was, in my opinion, very underhanded. I didn't feel she had been straight with me upfront that she wasn't going to do any, that she didn't want to. Even after we started shooting it, if she had gotten cold feet and just had talked to me about it, it would have been a very different situation.
When she was in the shower, she was to cry over the death of her mother. I remember we did offer Kari a body double but she didn't want it, which I was very surprised at. And honestly, the reason behind it was that the character was a mother—so we didn't want the fact that she had a child to desexualize her. Moms on film rarely get to be sexy. Really, what we were going for was that scene in The Big Chill, where Glenn Close is sitting in the shower naked and crying. She was nude, but it's so dramatic and raw. That's the way I wanted to shoot it.
KARI KEEGAN:
The whole nudity thing got really funny, in an uncomfortable way, because Adam assured Sean Cunningham that he was going to get me to do a nude scene. I had spoken to my agent about it beforehand when he first sent me in. I said, "I don't do nudity." And these movies are pretty notorious for that. I remember there was a moment when I first booked the movie, when they hadn't cast the lead Steve character yet. So they asked me to come in and read with various actors. So I go in that day and there's everyone, Adam and Dean and Sean and the cameraman, and they're all very congratulatory and nice and wonderful too. And I said, "My mother is only concerned about three things for me doing this movie: Do I die, do I swear, and am I naked? I only do one." And they all looked at each other for a second and said, "You have a shower scene." I said, "Well, then I guess you're going to be recasting this. I don't do nudity." But they said, "No, no, don't worry about it."
When all is said and done, my parents have to see this. And you're going to be on film for the rest of your life. And I was young. This was not the only job in town. I had only lived in L.A. a few months, so I had this mentality of, "It must not be that hard." It got to the point where, when it came time to shoot the shower scene, I had a flesh-colored bathing suit bottom on and Dixie cup boobs. It was like the Madonna bra, because then there was no way they were going to be able to shoot anything. And Adam was just like, "O-kay." And no one was allowed on set except for me, Adam, the cameraman and my Dixie cups. Then there was a little snafu with the water—it was so hot. So the scene ended up being easy. I started crying because I was in real pain.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
I started to realize that we had problems and I had to smooth it over. I did end up directing two scenes. Kari just refused to be around Adam at that point. Then he called her names, and she called him an ass. Now, it's neither here nor there. But I grew to like Kari a lot. I got her through it somehow.
ADAM MARCUS:
Looking back, of course I would have handled it differently. I would have tried to maintain as much good will between Kari and myself as possible. I would have been stronger in some ways and more compassionate in others. I think it was mostly her representation. They were really just rude and insulting. We were all trying to work as a family and do something together, creatively. But the truth is that Kari's a very talented girl. I was happy to cast her, and I was happy to work with her. It's too bad things got a little bit screwed up.
KARI KEEGAN:
Sean ended up directing the last couple days of the movie because I walked off the set. Adam was very, very angry because it was like, "Who is this girl? This is my movie!" And I felt sort of helpless, because I got caught up in something. I wish I had a couple more years behind me and a little more confidence. But being young and a first-time actress, and this was my first job, I was incredibly insecure. I either thought Adam hated me or he was out to get me. I don't want to represent him in a bad way, either. Overall, I really liked Adam. It all started off really well. It was just a couple of really bad last days.
Eventually, at the premiere of the movie, Adam and I walked in together, and it all seemed okay. I've always felt bad about what happened. But the opportunity to patch things up never really presented itself. I still have a great respect for Adam, and he did a great job.
It has been said that a movie is really made in the editing room, a theory repeatedly put to the test by the makers of Jason Goes to Hell during its chaotic post-production schedule. Opinions differ as to the extent of what usable footage existed at the completion of principal photography, but there is no argument that Jason Goes to Hell underwent extensive recutting and reshooting on its road to theatrical release. Complicating matters even further, Sean Cunningham's unorthodox technical experiments on Jason Goes to Hell ultimately wreaked havoc with the film's running time, while an early test screening left some audience members wanting for more traditional Friday the 13th stalk and slash thrills, prompting the studio to order even more changes. And all of this was before the always-contentious showdown with the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board. The results were, predictably, bloody.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
When you make a movie and get into the cutting room, and you have a shot of somebody going out the door or whatever, actors never take cues fast enough. So it struck me that everything would benefit by going faster. I thought that if you shot a film at 22 frames per second instead of the standard 24 frames per second, you couldn't see the difference. The problem, though, was that your audio would be off if you then played back what you shot at normal speed. But what happened at the time of DeepStar Six, which is the first film I shot at 22 frames per second, is that it was after the advent of the harmonizer—a device that could alter the pitch of a soundtrack. So I was now able to speed up the physical action but the movie would still sound normal. And I was able to live my dream.
"Our biggest disappointment with the film was the big finale," says makeup effects supervisor Greg Nicotero. "We were so proud of what we had originally created. There was supposed to be all this stuff happening with these vines wrapping around Jason, and then we see these demons made out of earth start to come up. Then Jason is struggling, and he gets pulled into the ground. So we built a whole tabletop miniature of Jason being pulled into the ground by these swirling dirt demons. And this was before CGI had taken hold, so how we achieved the effect was really unique—a live-action combination of full-size creatures and animated miniatures. Then I remember going to dailies and sitting there with ev
eryone and there was some concern that maybe the visual effects of Jason being pulled into hell were just a bit too much for the studio to stomach. Or maybe they ran out of money. I don't know—I just remember being very disappointed that all that stuff never made the final cut."
ADAM MARCUS:
This idea is a freaking nightmare, okay? You have to change how you light everything, and all of the sound has to be dropped an octave, otherwise everyone would sound like chipmunks. Sean's concept behind acting is that no actor can do anything fast enough. You tell them to walk through a door and they have to emote on their way to the door. It is also supposed to make the action a little crisper. However, there is something about this idea that to me is just very cynical.
That's one of the reasons we had to go out and shoot more footage. Because think about it—the movie is now ten minutes shorter than it would have been. We had a 90-minute movie that became an 80-minute one.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM, Assistant Editor:
Moviemaking was the family business so I always knew I'd at least give it a go. After high school, my dad was directing DeepStar Six, and he said, "I'll give you a PA job." And it was great>—I was making more money than I ever had in my life, like $300 a week. But then I bought a motorcycle and crashed it, and broke my leg. So Sean sent me to the cutting room and I ended up an apprentice editor on Jason Goes to Hell.
There are three movies you make. There's the movie you write, the movie you shoot and the movie you cut. The movie you cut is the important one. It was Adam's first day at the rodeo, it was Dean's first day at the rodeo. A lot of beginner mistakes were made>—that you have to make--and that even the really big filmmakers make. Even Robert Rodriquez puts 10 minutes of deleted scenes on his DVDs. Of course, we had an hour of deleted scenes>
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 71