—our assembly was over two hours. There was a lot of stuff that just didn't work out, for whatever reason, whether the effects were shitty or the actor didn't get this or that. So you just start lopping off stuff. The original cut had storylines you wouldn't believe. The sheriff and Erin Gray's character, they were engaged and about to go on their honeymoon. Now that's gone. And Kari Keegan's character and Steven Culp were never a couple in the first cut. That was all creative editing on David Handman's part.
DAVID HANDMAN:
I was a student at USC and I gravitated toward editing. I also realized that if I wasn't going to make it as a director someday, I'd better have a skill to fall back on. And by the time I left USC I had fallen in love with editing. I first met Sean on DeepStar Six. I was hired to replace somebody and called in to recut the film after about an hour of material had already been completed so Sean didn't know me from Adam. But one of Sean's strengths is that he can size somebody up in five minutes. He just knows how to put people together. If it were up to Sean, his house would be a little campus where everybody could just make low-budget movies. Plus, he likes to save money, so he wants to find people who are on the rise.
Both the good and the bad in Jason Goes to Hell came down to whether we had a decent script or not. We went ahead with production on a script that just wasn't ready>—it feels like it's been Frankenstein'd together, and it was. Talk about a creative challenge. You're sitting there looking at a 70-minute movie and you have to figure out how to fix it, and you're told that there is only three days a week that they can shoot. That's an enormous challenge for an editor. I'd say The Final Friday suffered low-budget-itis. It was shot originally in about 28 days. And because we were cutting on film while they were shooting, everyone was so busy getting ready for the next day of production that they're really not interested in seeing what happened yesterday. And in Adam's case, he wasn't very experienced, so the thought was he might have gotten confused. So, wisely or unwisely, we avoided running much of any dailies until it was all cut. But then it was too late to do anything about it.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
It was a disaster. I didn't think about replacing Adam until we were in the cutting room, at which point he had done everything he could do, and it became up to me, the editors and Dean Lorey to try and turn this "thing" into a movie. We cut the film down and we were able to salvage 45 or 50 minutes out of this 105-minute cut, and it was still the longest cut I'd ever seen. It felt like it ran for four days. So we went back and we shot more footage and inserted it. We took it from something that was unreleasable to something that was okay.
DAVID HANDMAN:
We ended up with really long dialogue scenes, but then they would spend a whole day shooting a fight scene and I'd only have two minutes worth of screen time come in. That's another reason why the first cut was so short. The script that Lewis Abernathy originally wrote started out with a pretty action-packed teaser that set things up. Now, the rest of it is pretty much gone. We just gutted the thing. We kept all the action, got rid of all the scenes that were poorly written and dreadfully acted, and wound up with a movie that was basically about people with things in their throats. It was just one vignette to another, depending on who was carrying Jason.
The scene that stands out is when Jessica comes back with the baby, and she and her sister are talking in her living room talking about everything that's happened. Originally, all that information was given in an eight-minute scene with the two of them. It was endless. The way we solved that was now you get it all in a shot that lasted about 30 seconds, a phone call between Jessica and her mother. The same thing with the finger-breaking scene in the jail between the Steven and Creighton Duke characters. At the end of that scene now, you might notice that there's a big mismatch on the way Steven Williams looks because it's a re-shoot. All the rules are given in this one scene, the "It takes a Voorhees to kill a Voorhees" and "You have to find the baby, blah blah blah" stuff. Before, instead of being clear in one concise paragraph, the rules were scattered throughout the entire movie. That's one thing about horror movies, especially this one—the rules are so complicated that you have to get them clear and upfront and all at once.
One of the scenes that actually benefitted the most from being cut down was the diner massacre. It was shot largely in slow motion, and when we put it all together as scripted it was an eight minute scene. In slow motion. In tightening it, it became much more effective, and the more I tightened it, the better it got. We would just hit the key moments, like that nice slow motion jump that Allison Smith makes over the counter, and just got the scene to go from moment to moment. That was fun.
Storyboard gallery: final battle.
DEAN LOREY:
Initially, we had gone back just to shoot some expositional scenes for the reshoots, but then we received comments from test audiences. We said, "OK, if you really miss that stalker stuff, we'll do something about it." So we shot a new intro for John LeMay where he picks up the campers who go to Crystal Lake and get slaughtered.
ADAM MARCUS:
After the first test screening, the audience wanted more of the traditional Friday the 13th campground sex and slash stuff. And so did New Line. I was very against that, and so was Dean. Because the only problem I have had with the mythology of the Friday the 13th films is this thing that anyone who does drugs or has sex should die. That's a very Puritanical vision. In the first movie it made sense because Mom is punishing these kids for having had sex while her son dies. But Jason doesn't know that. So I just thought, "When did the Christian Right suddenly get a say in my production?"
But we were given our marching orders. And what we shot is something I'm willing to live with, because we tried to twist the conventions back around in a more positive way. I wanted to get as many guys naked as women. I think women go to see these movies just as much as men. You gotta share the wealth, so to speak. And maybe it is easier to be afraid for a woman in jeopardy than a man in jeopardy. But if you do put a man in jeopardy, then everybody's scared. So we shot a lot of graphic nudity of both sexes in that scene. And, personally, I think the girl split up the middle is the best death in any Friday the 13th, and it wasn't even originally in the movie. Of course, most of it got cut out of the film, but rightly so, because it was gratuitous. But at least we tried to make it more balanced.
JOHN D. LEMAY:
In the reshoots at the camp, I actually only interact with the campers in the car before I drop them off. So, unfortunately, I didn't get to see what they shot later, with all the naked people. As is usually the case with me, I miss all the good stuff.
BARRY MOSS:
I went to set the day they were shooting that camp scene, and these young actors were just walking around the set totally naked. They had not the slightest feeling that there was anything to cover up. To them it just seemed very natural and they didn't have a problem at all. It amused me, but it was just a strange atmosphere.
DAVID HANDMAN:
Frankly, I don't think I succeeded in editing that sequence. It still looks like a porno movie to me.
GREG NICOTERO:
I remember when they were shooting that whole lead-up to the murder of the two campers in the tent, the actors were both completely naked and grinding and rubbing on each other. And afterward, I said to Howard, "I feel like I need a cigarette."
That gag, the girl being split up the middle, was pretty violent. We had a whole fire extinguisher filled with blood. Right after the moment of impact, when the weapon is thrust through the fake chest of the girl, we did a quick count of "3, 2, 1!" Then we just let it rip. So as the body ripped upward, blood sprayed everywhere. It was really grotesque. The nice thing about Adam and Sean was that they didn't shy away from going for it. Sean knew what the roots of the series were, and it had gotten to the point with the later Friday the 13th movies where you felt they were losing a lot of steam because of the MPAA. But Jason Goes to Hell came at the point where everyone started to figure out that, wait a minute, we can shoot
the film as we want it, release the cut version theatrically, and then on laserdisc go full out. So I was happy with the fact that there weren't any punches pulled here. It was pretty violent.
DAVID HANDMAN:
The MPAA made us cut it down quite a bit for the domestic theatrical release. It was edited pretty dramatically. There were a couple of foreign territories, though, that saw the film in an uncut version. Then on VHS and Laserdisc at the time, there were both the R rated and unrated releases. Based purely on video sales, I'd say the audiences wanted to buy it uncut.
GREG NICTOERO:
I think, too, for us, a lot of it was that we really believed that what we were making was going to show up on the screen. Adam was always very adamant about saying, "Everything's going to be in the movie." Yoo don't spend a lot of extra time and effort to take that care and make sure everything looks great if you know it's just going to get cut out of the movie anyway. Not that you would chintz on other things. But especially when you're working on a low-budget, it was all a little disconcerting because ultimately it takes so much work to get this stuff on screen.
HOWARD BERGER:
We had first seen the movie in a rough cut that had everything in it, and we were ecstatic. But I smelled trouble when I saw the poster. That was the first red flag. I hated that poster because I thought it was a complete misrepresentation of the film we had made. Then we saw the theatrical version. I was so mad when I saw what the studio had done>—they butchered the movie. There weren't any punches pulled by Adam or Sean, and maybe it was too gratuitous. At least, finally, it came out uncut on laserdisc, and now DVD. It was like, "Okay, that's the movie we made."
"One of the reasons we were really attracted to Jason Goes to Hell was because of the supernatural creature element," says K.N.B. makeup effects supervisor Greg Nicotero. "It allowed us to come up with some pretty cool effects." Many of the film's fantastical effects came out of improvisations between the K.N.B. effects team and director Adam Marcus. "That really speaks to Adam's passion and enthusiasm for the film," says Howard Berger, who, along with Robert Kurtzman, shared supervisory duties with Nicotero. "Remember that little creature that bursts out of Kipp Marcus' neck? It was originally just going to be this little thing running around. Then, it just became this big monster. That's an example of how we were really allowed to go for it, and I think that shows onscreen."
GREG NICOTERO:
Our biggest disappointment with the film is the big finale. 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 dragged to Hell. So we built a whole tabletop miniature of Jason being pulled into the ground by these swirling dirt demons. And this was before CGI, 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 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 and didn't want to spend more to complete it in post-production. I don't know—I just remember being very disappointed that all that stuff never made the final cut. Because it was really unique.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM:
Those tree branches from hell were actually supposed to be "Earth hands." But when you have $3 million and CGI doesn't exist, that's as good as we could do...
ADAM MARCUS:
Honestly, we were just too low-budget of a movie to do that sequence right, and there was no CGI back then. So we cut more of it than we wanted to. But then it did sort of help give it the JAWS feeling. Like, show less, and let the audience imagine more. Still, I like what we ended up with. It's fun.
KARI KEEGAN:
You know what's really hard? Acting to something that isn't there. The whole climax of the movie, when that little alien thing is running around the room? We the actors didn't see anything. There wasn't anything there to react to. Plus I was running with a baby, sometimes a real one. They didn't always use a fake baby. And, of course, when you are acting with a baby, once you would scream they were done. You couldn't go near them again because they'd see you and panic. I also didn't have a child then so it was hard to know I wasn't endangering any child. Ultimately, we ended up with one "master baby," Stephanie. She was about eight months old. I would love to see what she looks like now. I bet she can't go to hockey games to this day, and she's not sure why...
RICHARD GANT:
My daughter, who was about seven or eight years old when I was making the movie, she came to the set one day. It was during the filming of the end battle. She was even standing there when Adam hollered, "Cut!" And I remember what really scared her was when that half-man, half-beast crawled into the room, slithering. Even though she saw all the preparation for it, it totally frightened her. And I think it's still with her.
JOHN D. LEMAY:
So many of the scenes, it was a childhood dream come true. I got to jump over handcuffs, shoot a gun, and kill Jason. What could be cooler than that? I loved the whole climax. I had a stuntman, but they let me do many of my own falls and things during the fight sequence that actually made it into the film. I was able to come in and sweat, scream and yell. It was physically taxing. I didn't get thrown into the jungle gym; that was somebody else. And for the most part, after two years on The Series doing a lot of fight scenes and stuff like that, I felt very comfortable for me to do as much as I could safely do. Ultimately, it was up to Kane to make sure made all this look real. He was very patient and supportive, and that translated into what I think are some of the best action scenes this series has seen.
KANE HODDER:
I just remember being told that Kari was complaining that I was being a little rough on her during that final scene, probably specifically the shot with her stabbing Jason in the heart and me throwing her on her back. Always before any filming begins on any movie, I tell the actors that I'm not going to hurt them, but it is going to be a little rough. Otherwise, when it is finally the screen it is going to look stupid. And then none of us are going to be happy. I did have fun working with Kari but I was a little disappointed when she complained, though I'm sure there were mitigating circumstances there.
KARI KEEGAN:
By that point in the shoot I felt like, "I could go and do Terminator movies now. Linda Hamilton doesn't have anything on me!" A lot of the stunt stuff was hard for me, because I wasn't a stunt person. There was a thing where I jumped down into a pit to get the knife, and that thing was like 10 feet high! And there was no cushion. I nearly killed myself. Finally, they're like, "Just hang there." And I'm like, "This is too high! I'm not jumping down!"
There's a scene at the end where I stab Jason and I'm holding on to him, and he's shaking me, and he throws me off. I got really beat up. At one point I had bruises all on the insides of my arms from holding onto Jason for dear life, because I couldn't get my arms around his girth. Kane is a big guy. He grabbed me a couple times, and I was like, "Ow, hello! The pain! Ow!" It was hard.
Kane never did go over the line. Never, never. He was the stunt coordinator. But Kane never talked to anybody with the mask on. Ever. He takes it very, very seriously. Kane is such a great guy, but he was scary, man! But I still don't think Kane is given enough credit soemtimes, to this day. It's really hard to perform with all that crap on and actually deliver a performance.
HARRY MANFREDINI, Composer:
After the original Friday the 13th, Sean did a movie called A Stranger Is Watching, and he tried to get the studio to agree to let me do the score. But at the time, he was still just a fledgling director and he didn't have any pull. But he tried. Then on The New Kids, he went to bat for me and I did do the original score. Eventually, though, the picture got bought out and they changed the score two more times. Turns out Lalo Schifrin did the final released version.
I hadn't
done a Friday movie since Part VI, but I was offered Jason Goes to Hell because Sean was in charge again. And for the first time in the series, I went all electronic with the score because I had the ability to do what I wanted for the budget that I was given to work with. If that were a live orchestra the cost would have been too high. The score for Jason Goes to Hell, out of all of my Fridays, was the most explosive and driving. The only thing I'm not pleased with is that it was the first of my Friday the 13th scores that was released on CD, but somehow after it was mixed and mastered it was all compressed and limited. The actual score had huge changes of dynamics that really were essential to the music. There was relevance to the themes that were new in this score. On the CD everything seems to be held within a limited range. The big sounds are held down, and the soft sections are raised too high. Otherwise, I was pleased with my actual score for the film.
From left: Domestic one-sheet; domestic video poster; United Kingdom video cover.
The box office fate that awaited the first Friday the 13th film of the 1990s was most uncertain. Not only had it been three years since the disappointing turnout for Jason Takes Manhattan—an eternity in the fickle world of horror sequels—but there were few in the genre press who weren't loudly questioning what relevance Jason Voorhees could still have to the teenage demographic of 1993. Further exacerbating the studio's concerns, the entirely new approach to the franchise's established conventions left many questioning whether even the most diehard fans would embrace, or be alienated by, such radical changes to the familiar formula.
When Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday opened on 1,355 screens on Friday, August 13, 1993, the response was tepid. The film pulled in a solid if unspectacular $7.6 million in its first three days, nabbing the second place spot right behind Warner Bros. high-profile Harrison Ford thriller, The Fugitive. But by its second weekend, Jason Goes to Hell lost 70 percent of its audience, and by the end of its run would earn a less-than-stellar $15.9 million. Yet, perhaps indicative of the depressed state of the horror genre in 1993, Jason Goes to Hell, despite being far from a blockbuster, was still the highest grossing horror film of the year.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 72