10 Things You Didn't Know About Jason Voorhees
He's a Gemini, is probably Dutch and won a Lifetime Achievement Award.
It began in the summer of 1979 when Sean Cunningham called a screenwriter friend and said: “Halloween is making a lot of money – why don’t we rip it off?”
A sometime porn director who’d produced Wes Craven’s The Last House On The Left, Cunningham’s last three films had all flopped at the box office. He needed a hit to stay afloat, and ripping off one of the most successful independent movies of the decade seemed like a good idea.
Instructing writer Victor Miller to model a story after Halloween, the pair came up with a movie whose title, opening sequence, basic premise and shock ending all owed a debt to John Carpenter’s film. The most original idea was the inclusion of a 10 year-old boy named Jason Voorhees who drowned in 1957, giving his mother sufficient motive for a killing spree.
Intended to be a plot point and nothing more, Jason mysteriously rose from the dead when Friday The 13th grossed over $100 million worldwide and Paramount Pictures, eager to compete with the Halloween franchise, demanded a sequel. Promoted to lead villain, Jason became so popular that when an imposter took his place in Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning, fans demanded the return of the “real” Jason.
The twelve (so far) Friday The 13th movies have grossed over a billion dollars worldwide, helped along by one of the most recognisable characters in popular culture, which prompts the question: Is there anything we don’t know about Jason Voorhees?
Read on….
10. Pay Attention To The Triangles On Jason's Mask
Having previously worn a flour sack (with one eyehole) in Part 2, Jason discovered his trademark hockey mask in Part 3, stealing it from practical joker Shelly (Larry Zerner). As any fool knows, the traditional Jason mask has three red triangles, plus an axe mark above the left eye where Jason was struck at the end of Part 3.
You can tell that Part 5’s killer is an imposter because his mask features two blue triangles (pointing downwards rather than upwards), lacks the axe mark plus any other noticeable signs of wear. Also, the actor who plays Imposter Jason, Tom Morga, is a mere 6ft 2in whereas Part 4’s Ted White stood 6ft 4in in his socks.
This is the only time that Jason has “shrunk” between movies. At 5ft 11in, Part 1’s Ari Lehman is the shortest actor in the role, eclipsed in Part 2 by 6ft 1in Warrington Gillette. CJ Graham (Part 6) and Kane Hodder (Parts 7-10) are both 6ft 3in whereas the two most recent performers, Ken Kirzinger and Derek Mears, stand 6ft 5in.