To celebrate this special day I’ve brought you an explanation marathon; the entire Friday the 13th movie franchise. Enjoy!

Friday the 13th Explained

Friday the 13th is awesome. If you are a fan of the horror Slasher genre, you have HAD to have seen these, it’s a must. In fact I would go as far as to say that any horror fan worth his/her salt has seen this series making Jason Voorhees a household name. The big unstoppable killer with a machete and a hockey mask killing campers is the first thing you think of when you hear the name, BUT in the original movie Jason’s mother was the killer. It wasn’t until part 2 that we see Jason as the antagonist, and it wasn’t until Friday part 3 (in 3D) that he gets his hockey mask. If there was a face for the entire slasher genre, it would be a dead heat between Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise.

Jason Voorhees: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

Jason Voorhees was a disfigured boy also known as a mongoloid that drowned while at a summer camp called Camp Crystal Lake. The kids made fun of him and he fell into the lake, and nobody saved him. The camp counselors were too busy making out to notice the boy was downing. After his death, camp counselors were turning up dead and basically it was Jason’s mother seeking revenge on them for their negligence. There is only one problem with Jason, he won’t stay dead… Jason has a few powers that can rival most any super hero. he can find ANYONE smoking pot or having sex within 5 square miles of his current location, the man is a damn detective. He can be shot, lit on fire, blown up, impaled, or frozen and the man will still come after you.

Friday the 13th in a nutshell

1. Friday the 13th (1980): A woman loses her head and kills camp counselors that she believes neglected her drowned son …then loses her head
2. Friday the 13th pt 2 (1981): Jason’s first appearance as the bed sheet masked killer. One girl survives and wakes up in an ambulance.
3. Friday the 13th pt 3 in terrible 3D!!! (1982): Jason gets his hockey mask and kills more campers. One girl lives & ends up a little crazy.
4. Friday the 13th pt 4 The Final Chapter (1984): Jason’s killing spree is cut short…. by a young Corey Feldman with a machete.
5. Friday the 13th pt 5 A New Beginning (1985): A FAKE Jason kills to avenge the death of his son & the now older boy from pt 4 goes nuts too.
6. Friday the 13th pt 6 Jason Lives (1986): The older boy from pt 4 accidentally brings Jason back to life but chains him to bottom of the lake
7. Friday the 13th pt 7 The New Blood (1988): A girl with mind powers accidentally releases Jason, & later summons her dead dad to put him back
8. Friday the 13th pt 8 Jason Takes Manhattan (1989): The yet again released Jason takes a killer cruise to Manhattan only to be flushed away.
9. Jason Goes to Hell: The final friday (1993): Jason’s heart possesses people. A magic dagger breaks his heart & he gets dragged to hell.
10. Jason X (2001): Jason gets frozen in a cryo chamber and is found in 2455. He becomes a cyborg and falls through space and ends up on Earth2
11. Freddy VS Jason aka A Nightmare on Friday the13th (2003): Freddy Krueger and Jason fight, Jason wins but Freddy gets the style points.
12. Friday the 13th (2009): The series gets rebooted and is a mix of Friday the 13th pt 2 and 3 basically. An no Jason doesn’t die.

Fun Facts

• The Body count in the original film was 10.
• Sean S. Cunningham has been quoted as saying that the type of actors that he sought for the film were “good-looking kids who you might see in a Pepsi commercial.”
• Betsy Palmer said that if it were not for the fact that she was in desperate need of a new car, she would never have taken the part of Pamela Voorhees. In fact, after she read the script she called the film “a piece of shit”.
• One critic was so angry at Betsy Palmer’s role in the movie (which had angered many of her fans), that he published her address in his magazine, and encouraged people to write her and protest her. He published the wrong address.
• The movie was filmed at Camp Nobebosco in New Jersey. The camp is still in operation to date, and they have a wall of Friday the 13th paraphernalia to honor the fact that the movie was set there.
• Tom Savini was one of the first crew members on board for the film because the producers idolized his special makeup effects in Dawn of the Dead (1978).
• The filmmakers never intended to make this the launching pad for the series that followed. According to Victor Miller, Jason was only meant as a plot device and not intended to continue on his mother’s grisly work.
• Composer Harry Manfredini has said that contrary to popular belief, the famous “chi chi chi, ha ha ha” in the film’s score is actually “ki ki ki, ma ma ma”. It is meant to resemble Jason’s voice saying “kill kill kill, mom mom mom” in Mrs. Voorhees’ mind. It was inspired by the scene in which Mrs. Voorhees seems to be possessed by Jason and chants “Get her mommy….kill her!” Manfredini created the effect by speaking the syllables “Ki” and “Ma” into a microphone running through a delay effect.
• While most of the cast and crew stayed at local hotels during the filming, some of the loyal cast and crew members, including Tom Savini, and Taso N. Stavrakis, stayed at the actual camp site. They had Savini’s Betamax VCR and only a couple of movies (Barbarella (1968) and Marathon Man (1976)) on videotape to keep themselves entertained, so each night they would watch one of these movies. To this day, Savini says he can recite those movies by heart.
• Victor Miller had originally given Jason the name of Josh. After deciding that it sounded too nice, he changed it to Jason after a school bully.
• The working title for the original movie was “Long Night at Camp Blood”.
• The first Jason scene in Friday the 13th Part 2 is a shot of Jason’s legs walking across the street toward Alice’s house. This is the only time in the series Jason was played by a woman. Jason’s legs belonged to Ellen Lutter, the film’s costume designer.
• Not including the scenes from Part 2, Friday part 3  is the only Friday the 13th film in which none of the characters actually say the name Jason.
• In the original script for part 3, Jason wore an Umpire’s mask.
• The cool masks and stuff we see Corey Feldman’s character had made in Friday part 4 was in reality just some random stuff that Tom Savini made he kept in his garage.
• The original posters for ‘Friday the 13th part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan’ featured Jason ripping through an “I Love NY” poster. In the first poster, Jason is holding a bloody knife which was cleaned in a second poster for fear that the blood was too graphic. However, both posters were dropped following a complaint from the New York Tourism Committee.