Since slashing his way into horror movie lover’s hearts in 1980’s Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees has killed somewhere between 163 and 20,000 people in his 12 big-screen adventures.
It’s a journey that has seen the hockey mask-wearing machete enthusiast mow down van after van full of horny drunk teenagers, cross blades with Freddy Krueger and travel to New York City, outer space and hell itself. Here are the best, scariest or funniest stories behind all 12 Friday the 13th movies.
Friday the 13th (1980)
Released on May 9, 1980, the first Friday the 13th was an unabashed attempt to duplicate the holiday-themed horror success of 1978’s Halloween. The movie was a giant success, earning nearly $60 million against a budget of less than $600,000, but film critics hated it. Gene Siskel, in particular, actively tried to sabotage the film’s success by openly breaking the generally accepted rules of newspaper reviews in rather amazing ways:
Read More: How Gene Siskel Tried to Sabotage the Original ‘Friday the 13th’
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Naturally, the big box office success of Friday the 13th guaranteed a sequel would be made as quickly as possible, with Part 2 arriving less than a year later. You may remember that Jason Voorhees wasn’t the killer in the first movie, and he almost wasn’t in the second either. Sean S. Cunningham, the producer and director of the first movie, planned to tell a completely different story with different characters the second time around. But the studio stepped in:
Read More: How Jason Almost Wasn’t the Villain in ‘Friday the 13th Part 2’
Friday the 13th Part 3 (1981)
Although Part 2 only made about one-third of what its predecessor did, that was still about 20 times what it cost to make, so sure enough the 3-D sequel Part 3 arrived the following year. Even with the arrival of Jason’s iconic hockey mask (he wore a burlap sack in Part 2), the formula was starting to wear thin. Changing shooting locales to an artificial, studio-set lake and prioritizing the 3-D effects over actual performances also took their toll:
Read More: How Jason Took a Big Wrong Turn With ‘Friday the 13th Part 3’
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Jason Voorhees was well-established as an all-time movie bad guy by the time the fourth (and supposedly last, ha!) entry in the Friday the 13th series arrived in 1984. But the actor behind the hockey mask proved to be a noble hero when one of his co-stars was allegedly put in a dangerous situation by the filmmakers:
Read More: How Jason Saved the Girl in ‘Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter’
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
Although the Friday the 13th movies remained highly profitable, some of the actors hired for 1985’s A New Beginning said they were surprised – and even disappointed – to learn the movie they had successfully auditioned for was not entitled Repetition, but instead was the fifth movie in the horror franchise:
Read More: How Actors Were Tricked Into Starring in a ‘Friday the 13th’ Movie
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Fans didn’t react particularly well to the twist of a “fake” Jason being responsible for all the murders in A New Beginning, so 1986’s Jason Lives not only brought the main man back in a glorious “lightning meets grave” sequence, it continued to hit all the right notes and delivered a classic monster movie that very well might be the best in the series:
Read More: Why ‘Friday the 13th Part VI’ is the Best Jason Movie Ever
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
The seventh Friday the 13th movie – in just eight years! – attempted to spice up the formula by giving one of Jason’s typically helpless victims the power to fight back. Enter Tina, a young woman with initially unrealized telekinetic powers quite similar to Stephen King’s Carrie:
Read More: When Jason Met Carrie in ‘Friday the 13th Part VII’
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
OK, here’s where things really go off the rails. For the first of what would be three ill-fated trips away from his normal Crystal Lake killing grounds, Jason boards a cruise ship for New York City. Alas, budget constrictions murdered director Rob Hedden’s grandiose plans before filming ever began, and Jason only spends about one-third of the movie in the Big Apple. “It’s not ‘Jason Takes Manhattan,’ it’s ‘Jason Takes a Cruise Ship,” he later admitted:
Read More: How ‘Friday the 13th’ Wasted Jason’s Trip to New York City
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
When is a Jason movie not a Jason movie? When the main attraction is blown to bits seven minutes in, and doesn’t re-emerge until five minutes before the credits roll. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday instead finds the evil spirit of Jason jumping from one civilian body to the next, in one of the most disjointed and unsatisfying entries in the series. But the final scene does offer a hint at a legendary horror crossover:
Read More: Why ‘Jason Goes to Hell’ Was ‘A Disaster’
Jason X (2001)
After trips to hell and New York City, where else is a mass-murderer to go? Into outer space and the distant future, if Jason X is to be believed. Our villain gets an extremely corny-looking cybernetic upgrade in a movie so great the studio let it sit on the shelf for two years before releasing it:
Read More: How Jason Got Stranded in Space
Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)
16 years after the idea was first attempted, and after 18 script drafts were written at a reported cost of $6 million, Jason went up against A Nightmare on Elm Street star Freddy Krueger in one of the most anticipated horror movie crossovers in recent history. Luckily, it was worth both the time and the money:
Read More: Why ‘Freddy Vs. Jason’ Was Worth a 16-Year Wait
Friday the 13th (2009)
Nearly thirty years after his debut, Jason’s story got its first ever reboot. 2009’s Friday the 13th works a bit like a re-recorded greatest hits album, played on fast forward. The movie condenses elements from the first three series in the franchise, for example showing Jason move from innocent child to burlap sack-wearing killer to hockey mask-wearing icon in one fell swoop. Also, he’s a lot smarter, faster and seemingly even more sadistic now:
Read More: ‘Friday the 13th’ Reboot Makes Both Jason and His Story Faster
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Counting down a century’s worth of monsters, demons and things that go bump in the night.
Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci
