SHOCK catches up with Ari Lehman, FRIDAY THE 13th’s “First Jason”.
Say the name Jason Voorhees to any horror fan and they’ll automatically conjure the image of a large, hulking, machete-wielding, hockey mask-wearing killer.
Chances are that same fan will mention the name Kane Hodder, the man who wore the mask for four of the FRIDAY THE 13th films. And while Hodder and the other men who slashed their way through the franchise deserve recognition for bringing one of the most prolific killers in film history to the screen, the fact remains the launching pad for one of cinema’s longest-running body counts began with a 14-year-old who was more than willing to play a mildly-retarded boy who drowned in Crystal Lake.
“Fortunately, as a little boy, I lived in West Port, Connecticut and Sean Cunningham had his production company based there and some of my friends were in his first production after Last House on The Left,” recalls Ari Lehman.
Lehman went to a casting call for Cunningham’s MANNYS ORPHANS and scored an 80-line role in the late 1970s film about a ragtag soccer team. The film didn’t prove to be a hit but Lehman left an impression and the next year, as Cunningham and his crew were prepping a horror film, they reached out to him with a simple question.
“Here it is the next summer and the phone rings and it’s Sean,” Lehman tells SHOCK. “He said he had another idea for a movie and they wanted me to come down to the office. Famously, he said ‘Can you swim?’ and I said I could and he told me to come down. Really, that’s the whole process of how I got in.”
Lehman says he had no reservations about stepping back in front of the camera for Cunningham and was even more excited when he was handed the script for the film. The excitement didn’t come due to the material, per se, but by what he would be doing.
“The story is kind of funny because they handed me the wrong script. Sean wasn’t there and I was handed Kevin Bacon’s script. It said ‘the counsellor goes to make out with his girlfriend in the cabin’ and I was like, ‘Whoaaaa’ and sitting there very mischievously happy,” he recalls.
The matter was quickly corrected and Lehman soon understood his screen time would be much less than Bacon’s character and he had no lines. It was a blow to the young actor’s ego to think he failed to score a speaking part and his face would be hidden beneath a disfigured mask but Lehman praises Cunningham in making him see the importance of the role.
Cunningham stressed he would “be the monster” and explained Jason’s history and the pivotal role he would play in the film.
With that knowledge, Lehman says, he took the role and ran with it.
“He kind of gave me a feeling for the situation, as much as he could,” he recalls. “I must admit, I sort of embellished on that in my own mind to kind of imagine this child who was like the kid at the back of the room who no one pays any attention to and he’s left out of all the fun and you feel sorry for that kid all through school.
“I was trying to represent that. That’s where I was, in my mind, when I was playing that character.”
While playing the monster appealed to Lehman, it was becoming the monster that proved to be a highlight for the teen. The film only required him to be on set for a few days but the preparation was a young man’s dream as he spent two weeks with special effects god Tom Savini as they tried to get Jason’s look perfect for the film.
Lehman recalls spending days in Savini’s shop, hanging out with him and learning some of the legend’s tricks.
“Working with Tom Savini and Taso Stavrakis was just an absolute blast. For me, as a kid, it was like opening the door into a whole other world and looking at creating professions and very enlightening,” he says. “But, then, just being in the studio was fantastic. There were severed limbs, decapitated heads, explosives… Tom and Taso were working on Knight Riders so they were all into motorcycle jousting and stuff like that.
“You can imagine being 14 and hanging out with Knight Riders, that’s pretty much what it was like. I was mind-blown the entire time.”
Lehman’s screen time in the film may be limited but he is, arguably, in one of the most important scenes of not just that film but of all the FRIDAY THE 13th films. As the film nears its end and Alice is afloat in a canoe on Crystal Lake both she and the audience are lulled in to a sense of comfort, believing the bloodshed is over. But that’s not the case as Jason explodes out from beneath the tranquil waters to pull her down in to the waters.
Crafting that scene is something Lehman recalls with clarity.
“The fun part was in the way they directed it because you’re not briefed. In your mind you think ‘I’ll just come out of the water and grab Adrienne King’ but there’s a process to make it look real,” he says. “That’s just a reflection on the genius of Sean, but Barry Abrams was the director of photography and he was great. “Sean tried to get it so you weren’t overdoing it. He said to me, ‘Ari, you’re the director on this scene so when you go down in the water that means action. I want you to look up and wait for your bubbles to clear and when they’re clear you just come up out of the water.’ We basically choreographed it and after two takes, there it was.
“It’s only there for like 1.7 seconds or something but that’s where, back in 1980, everyone threw their popcorn. That was an unforgettable shock for a lot of people and for me it was a lot of fun to do.”
Following the success of FRIDAY THE 13th, Lehman opted not to pursue a career in film but, rather, focussed on his love of music. Studying jazz piano at New York University, he eventually landed a gig as a touring keyboardist in reggae and African music bands taking him throughout North America, Europe and West Africa.
Unaware of the fan base his only major role had garnered him, it wasn’t until he settled in Chicago in the mid-2000s that Lehman received an email from a collector asking if an autographed photo of Lehman he had purchased was authentic.
“That kind of got me in being aware that there was this horror convention scene,” says Lehman. “So, it was a FANGORIA convention over in the Meadowlands and that was the first convention I ever did and, as a matter of fact, I hadn’t seen Tom Savini in years and years and there he was. That was the first time I’d met Betsy Palmer, at that convention. It was so wild because I met Kane Hodder too and he was so encouraging.”
Meeting fans and discussing his music with them led Lehman on a new venture. While fans were receptive of his music – which was predominantly reggae – Lehman recognized he could meld the world of Jason Voorhees into a musical act.
Thus, FIRST JASON was born.
“I figured I should kind of hit them where they live, come up with something that’s more along their lines.
Heck, I’d been into rock when I went to New York University and while I was there I was friends with Reagan Youth, a real progressive punk band, and their vibe is really political and anti-Fascist,” he says.
Lehman says he met with some of the punk bands in Chicago and drew influence from them as he crafted the band’s first album, Jason Is Watching, released in 2012.
The punk/rock sound is accentuated by Lehman’s own creation, the electric machete – a keyboard Lehman wears during shows that is shaped like a huge machete and features an LED-lit Jason mask.
“Thankfully, we were given a lot of leeway because of me being the first Jason from FRIDAY THE 13th and, because I have a certain kind of attitude toward it, almost like comedy without trying to take myself too seriously. I take the music seriously but we’re kind of like the Clown Prince on the punk scene and the metal scene,” he says, laughing.
While First Jason has just issued its second album – Heed My Warning – Lehman isn’t happy just assaulting fans’ ears as he’s also slashing their mouths with a line of hot sauce he launched in collaboration with the folks at Gemini Crow.
“Kane Hodder is a proponent of the charity called Scares That Care and I thought this would be a way to raise some money there, so we’re doing 13 per cent of our net profits going to Scares That Care and I didn’t imagine how fast it would pick up,” says Lehman. “I think the key is there’s this great label that’s a hockey mask with a handlebar moustache on it. The artwork is done by Brian Steward and I took my time to pick my sauce. It’s a ghost pepper sauce with a lot of flavour so it seduces your taste buds and then it sneaks up and slashes your tongue.”
