It is a franchise that has spawned an original film, nine sequels, a crossover, and a remake. This is not to mention the video games, toys, costumes and more. Friday the 13th has become more than a series of movies. It has become an institution — one that, like its main antagonist, shows no signs of stopping. While there has been a bit of a delay from the last film to the next one, thanks to rights issues and a bunch of egos, it won’t be too long before Jason Voorhees comes slashing his way back into cinemas. Given the success of the most recent Halloween film, we have a feeling that Jason will be back sooner than we think.
13) Smash Mouth (Jason X, 2001)
The first moment on our list is easily one of Jason’s best kills in the entire series. Shortly after being resurrected in the future, thanks to two space kids making sex with each other, Jason rises and proceeds to dip the space coroner’s head into a vat of cryogenic ice. After her head freezes, Jason smashes it on the counter in what was, arguably, the only good part about Jason X.
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12) “You have perfect nipple placement baby” (Friday the 13th, 2009)
Um yeah. There’s not much to say about this scene. It’s two kids making sex again, but the guy is the most annoying, douchiest character to ever step foot into a Friday movie. He also says really weird things like telling her partner her breasts are “so juicy dude.” Not content with that…compliment…he continues, telling the girl that she has “perfect nipple placement baby.” It’s the weirdest dirty talk we’ve ever heard, but it is hilarious and we have recited it in almost every single one of our own sexual encounters.
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11) Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (Friday the 13th, 1980)
Poor Kevin Bacon, he never even saw it coming. After kicking off his Sunday shoes, among other clothes, Bacon and his beau sleep together. While she goes to shower after, Bacon basks in his grease after a job well done. This proves to be a grave mistake, as an arrow protrudes from under the bed and proceeds to pierce Mr. Bacon’s throat. Dancing really was the devil after all.
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10) Deadhead (Friday the 13th, 1980)
During the climax of the original film, it is revealed that Pamela Voorhees has been the one killing all of the horny teenagers. Pamela is the mother of Jason and today is his birthday. Noting the poetic irony, our final girl, Alice, revs up, reaches way back and introduces an axe to the head of Mrs. Voorhees. Poor Pamela. She was just trying to be a good mom.
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9) “Tommy!!” (Friday the 13th Part 4, 1984)
Jason never really had a Laurie Strode or a Nancy Thompson or a Van Helsing. The closest thing Jason had to an arch-nemesis was Tommy Jarvis. The “Jarvis Trilogy,” began with Friday the 13th Part 4 and lasted through parts 5 and 6 as well. Corey Feldman played the ‘original’ Tommy Jarvis and he is the one most associated with the character. He is also the one that really took it to Jason. At the climax of Part 4, Tommy has had enough of Jason’s sh*t, so he decides to take matters, and Jason’s machete, into his own hands. He proceeds to hack the h*ck out of Jason — so much so that you eventually start to feel bad for the big guy. Finally, Tommy lands one final killing blow (at least, until the next sequel) and Jason’s head is impaled on the machete, as it slowly slides down in one of the greatest practical effects of the series. We’re led to believe that Tommy has “flipped a switch” and maybe, just maybe, will take up the mantle, and the hockey mask, of the Camp Crystal Lake Killer.
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8) Pick Your Brain (Friday the 13th Part 2, 1981)
Oh Alice, sweet Alice. You didn’t really think you could decapitate somebody’s mother and get away with it did you? She did, mostly because she didn’t know that Jason actually existed. This just further proves our point that a bunch of lives would’ve been saved if Jason just slid into somebody’s DM’s to let them know he was alive. No matter. Alice, the heroine of the first film, has come back to Camp Crystal Lake for some kind of closure from the horrors of the previous film. She gets it, in the form of an ice pick to the brain, after seeing Mrs. Voorhees’ severed head in her fridge. Jason gets his revenge and then, presumably, picks up his mom’s head and goes back home.
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7) A New Beginning (Friday the 13th Part 5, 1985)
We’ll just leave this here.
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6) “Your Turn” (Friday the 13th Part 8, 1989)
Somebody should have told Julius that one does not simply get into a fistfight with Jason Voorhees. Admittedly, in Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan, amateur boxer Julius puts up an admirable fight. If Jason wasn’t, ya know, an undead zombie killing machine, Julius might have stood a chance. Unfortunately, Jason is an undead zombie killing machine, so he only needed one hit to, quite literally, knock Julius’ block off. And by block we mean head. Jason punched Julius’ head off.
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5) “Jason Lives!” (Friday the 13th Part 6, 1986)
Listen. The characters in Friday the 13th movies do really dumb things sometimes. Whether it’s going skinny dipping at midnight, running upstairs instead of out of the door, or cutting off Mrs. Voorhees’ head, these characters are not meant to survive Natural Selection™. Still, when Tommy Jarvis and Horshack went to Jason’s grave to “make sure he’s dead,” only to actually resurrect him, it tops the list of dumb things people do in these movies. We do get a couple cool moments from this idiocy, however. We see Jason get resurrected via lightning bold through a steel rod. Then, we see his one good eye open, already fixating on his next kill. Then, we see him rise from the grave, Night of the Living Dead style. We also see him literally punch a dude’s heart out of his chest. So that’s cool. He then puts on his trademark hockey mask, which he just so happened to have buried with him. It’s one of the best openings to a Friday movie, but man; Tommy dumb.
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4) The One with the Sleeping Bag (Friday the 13th Part 7, 1988)
The 7th installment of the Friday the 13th franchise was…not awesome. But it did feature the legendary Kane Hodder in his first portrayal of Jason. Hodder has been synonymous with the name of Jason Voorhees for the past 30 years — more so than any other actor that has donned the hockey mask. Hodder truly made the part his own and while Part 7 was not the best sequel, it did feature one of the series’ best kills.
When Jason approached a post-coital young woman, she did the only thing she could at the time; she hid in her sleeping bag. While this approach may have worked for a generation of children that were afraid of the dark, it did not go as well for the young woman. Instead of becoming invisible, she became even more of a target. Now, what was supposed to be a warm and comfortable sleeping device became a death trap. Jason picked up the woman-filled sleeping bag and dragged it to a nearby tree. Then, in a swing that would make fill-in-the-blank-baseball-player proud (we don’t watch sports), Jason quickly smashed the unfortunate girl into said tree. It was short, succinct and perfect.
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3) The Hockey Mask (Friday the 13th Part 3, 1983)
There are certain moments in film history that are iconic. When Rocky calls for Adrian, when the Terminator first meets Sarah Connor (and then shoots her) and when Dorothy realizes that she’s not in Kansas anymore; they are all pivotal moments in movie history. Perhaps none of those moments are as important as the moment that Jason Voorhees first picked up his iconic hockey mask. After finally killing Shelley (for real, this time) Jason decides to rob the guy, too. He looks deep into Shelley’s bag of tricks and finds the item that he would forever be known by — the hockey mask. At the time, this was treated as business-as-usual. Jason had other teenagers to shoot harpoons at and didn’t take the time to properly appreciate the moment. In time, however, this would become the pivotal moment of Voorhees’ “career.” Thanks, Shelley.
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2) Escort to Hell (Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday, 1993)
Love it or hate it, Jason Goes to Hell featured a hell (heh) of an ending. After the body-swapping Jason fails to transfer his soul into the body of a baby Voorhees (because plot), he is finally defeated by his niece and her boyfriend. The portal of hell is opened and Jason is dragged down into the bowels of hell, leaving only his hockey mask behind. The audience is led to believe the final shot will be an artistic close-up of Jason’s best accessory. Reminiscent of the original Friday the 13th, there is a sense of peace to the end of this film. Jason is finally gone and, quite literally, buried. If this really was to be the “final Friday,” it was a poignant ending. But then.
We see the glove of Freddy Krueger burst through the ground, grabbing the hockey mask and taking it back into the depths with him. It was a shocking ending and it immediately salvaged what was, up to that point, a below-average Friday movie. Nobody ever thought that the last shot of a Friday the 13th film would feature Freddy Krueger, but it happened and it was awesome. It would be about 20 years before we finally got the epic mashup, but seeds were sewn in what was one of the greatest Friday the 13th moments of all time.
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1) “Jason Lives!…Again!…but Also for the First Time!” (Friday the 13th Part 1, 1980)
And so. It’s the end of the movie. Alice has vanquished Mother Voorhees and is waiting in a canoe for help to arrive. She has had a truly harrowing experience and deserves the serene quiet of the lake. As she is reflecting on the previous night’s trauma, Jason himself surfaces from the lake and drags Sweet Alice into the murky depths below. It was a shocking end to a shocking movie and it was only slightly muddled when we realized that scene was *probably* a dream sequence for Alice. We say probably because, as it turns out, Jason actually was alive at the time. He just didn’t tell anybody.
We hate to belabor a point but…
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