When Friday the 13th was coming out on DVD overseas, Warner called me to do a documentary on it—I did the Jason X DVD and a lot of other horror titles. I thought it was an honor and I didn't want to fuck it up. I think most producers feel the same way when approached to work on something they love and that has influenced them.
I can connect it to when I was a 14-year-old obsessed with these movies. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do when I got home was go to my room and watch horror movies. I had pen pals who were also rejects, for lack of a better word. The fact that you can be a reject and kind of revel in it is very significant for kids.
I wouldn't have been able to say this then, but I can say it now: I think seeing these well-developed, healthy teenagers having sex and then being punished for it by an outsider who was not accepted by them—there's something very powerful about that image. Especially to someone who himself feels like they are on the fringes or feels rejected. Personally, it really enabled me to gain some strength in being an outsider. And that outsider status then prepared me for a gay outsider status as well—it was the first step in realizing that I wasn't like everyone else. Because these films' female heroines could function within the popular-girl hetero world, but they're not going to ever really be a part of it, they're always going to be outsiders. They're tomboyish. And with Jason, there was always a sense that he was just really jealous of them, too. There was a rage there. It runs deep. That's just high-falootin' bullshit, but that's what I think now.
TONY TIMPONE, Former Editor-in-Chief, Fangoria Magazine:
I'm always amazed by the appeal of slasher films. They're very simplistic and very basic. You don't have the deepest characters or the most intricate plotting or motivation or anything, but the fans seem to be the most loyal out of any in the horror genre. They want Freddy. They want Jason. They want Leatherface. It's amazing. They just satisfy some sort of primal bloodlust in these young people. They have a hard day at work, then go home and pop in a DVD of a Friday the 13th film and get out a lot of their aggressions and hostilities.
Personally, I don't have a real fondness for slasher films, but as the editor of Fangoria they are my bread and butter. I have to give the fans what they want. We have been covering Friday the 13th from the beginning and we are always trying to find new angles to publicize and promote the movies. Because our readers really love these movies, they grew up with them, have always supported them and enjoy reading about them. It's never wasted space.
CYRUS VORIS, Screenwriter, Freddy vs. Jason:
It's not about the initial movie anymore, or the franchise. It's about the iconographic characters. I think Freddy vs. Jason was such a hit with young teens because it answered that question you always had since you were a kid: who's stronger? It's like King Kong vs. Godzilla. And it's purely a 12-year-old mentality that wants to see that kind of stuff.
ROBERT ENGLUND, "Freddy Krueger," Freddy vs. Jason:
My fear now is that New Line is going to option Child's Play. It's going to be "Freddy vs. Chucky," and that little sucker is going to be kicking me in the shins.
DAVID J. SCHOW, Screenwriter, Freddy vs. Jason:
I think the "Vs." movie is the last refuge of the horror franchise. After the self-referential comedy, it's the team-ups. And I think the immediate response to the success of Freddy vs. Jason is a rematch.
Look at what happened to the Universal monster movies in the 1940s. First thing they did after putting Frankenstein and the Wolf Man together was to say, "Well, if two were good, then five will be even better!" And here's where it will go: Freddy and Jason will team up for a rematch. Then we'll see a movie with more than the two of them—Michael Myers or somebody. Then they'll make it a "Vs." comedy. And it will be delirious. It will be Freddy and Michael and Jason and Chucky, along with Chris Rock and Jackie Chan—there's no extreme to which they won't push a property if they can get some more mileage out of it. Finally, they'll just go back and remake the first movie and start all over again
MARK VERHEIDEN, Screenwriter, Freddy vs. Jason:
It's funny, fans can treat these characters like untouchable icons that have some sort of mythic value we need to protect. And it's like, I'm sorry—these are 1980s horror movie characters, and we should have as much fun with them as possible. I was never quite sure why people would put down the concept of the "Vs." movie, whether it be Freddy vs. Jason or Alien vs. Predator, as being an inherently uncool idea. It all really just goes back to the comic book, and comic books are always somebody versus somebody. And that's just a really fun concept, so why have a problem with it?
ETHAN REIFF, Screenwriter, Freddy vs. Jason:
Going "back to basics" is fiction. You can't go back home again. You have to accept the reality with these franchises that we're now operating in a different context. James Bond can't fight Al Qaeda the way he fought Dr. No. And you can't say, "I'm gonna terrify people with this poor kid at a camp." You're just not going to be able to do that anymore if you're making a sequel to Friday the 13th.
So I say to just go and embrace the fantastic. Go with the fact that this is now a big professional wrestling match and try to pump it up for all that it's worth. There's probably more legitimate creative potential to that approach than to have the arrogance to put blinders on and think you can go back to the primordial soup origins of these franchises.
LARRY B. WILLIAMS, Co-Creator, Friday the 13th: The Series:
I created Friday the 13th: The Series knowing that if you make evil all-powerful, then you yourself are creating a negative psychology. You are saying, "There's no reason to fight evil, guys. You might as well give up. No matter how many times you kill it, it will always come back." But I think I would have trouble selling The Series, or any horror script today, because now we're only concerned about how many special effects you can squeeze into a movie, and that's not my game.
Sure, Freddy vs. Jason was a big hit, but would it have been an even bigger one had the audience been delivered something different? I believe that, as filmmakers, we are turning up the gore and the action and eliminating the myth. But it's only through myth and character that we create true fear. If you think about it, if you want to build genuine fear, you have to work with a myth that people understand. People have to feel what's at stake. If the villain involved cannot be defeated, and if the people can't be saved, there's no reason to watch because everybody's going to die anyway. But if you create a mythology and characters that you care about, you can create a film that's truly resonant.
RONALD D. MOORE, Screenwriter, Freddy vs. Jason:
I believe a big part of what keeps people coming back to these franchises is their memory of the first one. You go and have this experience that you love, with an imaginary world, or a group of characters, and you want to explore it again. You want to see another adventure. Whether it's Jason or Freddy or Star Trek or Star Wars, it's that desire to recapture that initial feeling that propels people back into theaters again and again.
If you're a filmmaker, you're lucky if your sequel is The Empire Strikes Back. In my opinion, Empire is what makes the entire Star Wars phenomena what it is. If Empire had sucked, it would have just petered out. But Empire raised the stakes. And successful franchises can deliver enough new bursts of creativity and adrenaline to keep it going. ALIENS did that, too—it brought you back to what you loved about the first one, and expanded the world. But, at a certain point, you run out of ideas. And it is only then that the Friday the 13th series, and Jason, will truly die.
MARK SWIFT, Co-Screenwriter, Freddy vs. Jason:
I think my greatest satisfaction with Freddy vs. Jason is that Damian and I rescued it from development hell. I don't know if it ever would have been made otherwise. It was really at the point where it was on death's door. So I take the most amount of pride in the fact we at least got it out there, in some form.
It's just funny to be sitting and talking about this film today. Between then and now there were a hundred meetings, and Damian and I had t
o struggle. We fought every fight. In the end, it got to the point where we went our separate ways from the project. But I don't want to go through the rest of my life saying, "Well, in the screenplay we did this or that!" At some point, you have to let that stuff go. The screenplay we wrote is different than the movie. I think our script is good in its own right, and so is the movie. I'm just truly and honestly happy that so many fans enjoyed the movie they had been waiting so long for.
If I learned anything from Friday the 13th, it is that you have to fight for what you believe in. Making a movie is not a sprint, it's a marathon. And if you are going to see it through to the end, you have to go through it all: the changes, the disappointments and the frustrations, as well as the exuberance and the glee.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM, Creator:
Friday the 13th was originally dismissed by the critics as being exploitative and not worthy of attention. It was only after the picture started doing a whole bunch of business that people gave it a second look. Then the Friday the 13th look-alikes showed up. And then they would be criticized, like, "Well, it didn't really have the style or panache or understanding that the original Friday the 13th had." From the same guy who panned my film originally! Not that Friday the 13th got any better, but I think that your point of view on the film changes according to box office. I only got credit for it years afterward.
The only downside of Friday the 13th over the years has been that, although it allowed me, theoretically, to do a whole bunch of different things, it tied me to its reputation. When people meet me, generally their reaction is, "Oh, you don't look like the kind of a guy that would make horror films. You seem like a normal person!" I hope I'm a normal person. I think that I am not obsessed with darkness. I am not obsessed with fear. As I've gotten older, my attitude toward the genre has changed. When you're dealing with horror films, I think by and large you're dealing with the phenomenon of untimely death. And when you get to be my age, you don't worry about untimely death anymore, you worry about timely death. Your concerns are very different.
I have never once regretted being involved with Friday the 13th. I was blindly lucky, and it opened so many doors. It supported me and my family, and on some level it still does. It made it possible for me to sit here and talk about it. Back in 1979, I didn't know if I'd be alive 30 years later to talk about anything, much less Friday the 13th. So I'm shocked. I'm just absolutely shocked.
Will there ever be an end to Jason? I really don't think so. Even as the current audience changes and grows older, there's always a new generation to come, and they will always have to deal with this fairy tale. You just take this fairy tale and put a slightly different spin on it. I think Jason will be with us for quite a long time.
Appendix: Screenplay Excerpts
The following are select screenplay excerpts from many of the Friday the 13th films. All images are reprints of original screenplay pages, and appear courtesy of their respective copyright holders.
Friday the 13th Screenplay Treatment
Completed in early summer 1979, Victor Miller's original 19-page screenplay treatment for Friday the 13th is remarkably faithful to the final released version of the film. Among the notable differences: an extended prologue sequence, a pair of adult law enforcement characters omitted from the final script, and a truncated climax sans the film's now-famous surprise "chair jumper."
Friday the 13th Part 3 Alternate Ending
Although Part 3's alternate ending, now thought lost, remains unreleased in visual form, it can be read in Michael Avallone's official 1982 novelization of the film. Avallone's novelization is adapted from uncredited screenwriter Petru Popescu's original screenplay, an excerpt from which is presented here. Read the complete ending as originally scripted, which also features what would have been a more graphic—and apparently much more definitive—demise for Jason.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter Alternate Ending
Read the final pages of Barney Cohen's original final draft screenplay of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, including the original scripted "dream sequence" ending that was later excised from the finished film.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives Alternate Ending
"At the end of Part VI, I wanted to introduce Jason's father, mainly because nobody had gone down that road before in the previous movies," says Tom McLoughlin of his original scripted ending for Jason Lives. "To me, that would have made for one eerie epilogue—that there was somebody else out there that was the father of this unstoppable being. But Frank Mancuso, Jr. and the studio did not want to go to that next level. Which I can understand, because once you put that out there, does that mean you would have to focus on Jason's father in the next film instead of Jason himself?" Although McLoughlin' ending was never filmed, it was adapted by Simon Hawke for the 1986 novelization of the film. McLoughlin's original scripted version can be read here.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood Original Opening
Dated September 29, 1987, Daryl Haney's first draft of Friday the 13th Part VII, originally subtitled "Jason's Destroyer," differs significantly from the film that would eventually become The New Blood. Built upon additional creative ideas demanded by associate producer Barbara Sachs, as shown by these first few pages, "Jason's Destroyer" featured additional characters, a new location for the main action (a condo development being built upon Crystal Lake) and extensive dialogue changes.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood Alternate Ending
Read the concluding pages of Daryl Haney's final draft script of The New Blood, which features the film's original coda. Rough footage of this version of the ending can be found on Paramount Home Entertainment's Deluxe Edition DVD release of the film.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Opening Sequence (Early Draft)
Mutating wildly over numerous drafts and utilizing multiple writers (some uncredited), the initial scripts for Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday were originally subtitled "The Ninth Life of Jason Voorhees." Above, read the original opening sequence of one of Dean Lorey's initial drafts. Though sharing some characters and situations with the finished film, the sequence evolved considerably from script to screen.
Freddy vs. Jason Opening Sequence
"Full moon. Dark trees. A misty lake." Read the opening pages of Mark Swift and Damian Shannon's screenplay "polish"—the last rewrite a script usually receives before production gets underway—for Freddy vs. Jason.
Appendix: Storyboard Galleries
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
"I wanted all the kills to be humanly impossible to do," says Tom McLoughlin of Part VI's body count. "I don't want to say the film was 'bloodless,' but they were sort of stretching reality." Although much of these sequences were heavily edited to guarantee an R rating from the MPAA ratings board, some of the excised footage can be seen on Paramount Home Entertainment's various special edition DVD releases of the film. McLoughlin also meticulously conceptualized each kill scene in advance, utilizing the talents of storyboard artist Bill Forsche. Storyboards for six select sequences are presented below.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives Original Ending
Tom McLoughlin's original ending was recreated in storyboard form, with illustrations by Crash Cunningham and narrated by Jason Lives actor Bob Larkin, for Paramount Home Video's Deluxe Edition DVD release of the film.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan Opening Kill
Above right Rob Hedden's original storyboards for the opening sequence of Jason Takes Manhattan. Like many of the murder sequences in Part VIII, the MPAA ratings board would require extensive cuts before it would award the film an R rating.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday End Battle
Appendix: Document Archive
This appendix contains Friday the 13th odds and ends—various production reports, trade advertisements and related documents. All materials are reprinted courtesy of their respective copyright holders.
Friday the 13th Original
Trade Ad
The trade ad that launched Friday the 13th. Appearing in the July 4, 1979 issue of International Variety, the ad, while placed by Sean Cunningham primarily to generate investment capital, also served a second, more covert purpose. "I talked with Steve Miner about it," remembers Cunningham, "we didn't know if we could legally use the title 'Friday the 13th,' or not. So that is in part why we took out that big ad, because then if somebody was gonna sue us, they'd let us know. And as it turned out, we had no problems with the title at all."
Friday the 13th Original Television Premiere Advertisement
Friday the 13th would make its domestic television premiere on October 29, 1982. Despite over 28 seconds of deletions, the film's notorious reputation kept the major networks at bay, and the film instead debuted on regional and syndicated markets across the United States.
Gene Siskel's Original Print Review of Friday the 13th
Appearing in the May 10, 1980 edition of the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel's review of Friday the 13th was resoundingly negative. But unprecedented even for the more virulent reactions against the film, Siskel took the extra step of not only revealing the movie's villain in the first paragraphs of his review, but also published the address for Paramount Pictures and encouraged readers to write the studio and star Betsy Palmer to publicly express their disgust at their involvement in the picture. The review is reprinted above in full.
Friday the 13th Part 2 Select Camera Reports
These original camera reports from the final days of production on Part 2 reveal a never-before-revealed alternate ending. Unlike the climax now seen in the finished film, where Jason crashes through a window at Ginny, in this alternate take, he instead lunges at her from behind a dresser. This version remains unreleased.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 93