13 Things You Didn't Know About Friday The 13th
6. The Poor, Poor Snake Was Very Real
The scene with the snake in Alice Hardy’s cabin was not in the script - it came from an idea Tom Savini put forward after he found a snake in his own cabin during the shoot.
The idea was to set up a simple jump scare as a genuine potential threat to the protagonists that they could take care of on their own, proving to the audience that they weren’t easy victims like the teenagers in Halloween.
Of course, this was a low budget flick being shot way out in the sticks, and there was no way to design a decent enough prop snake, or to bring in a handler - so a real snake was trapped and placed in the scene by the untrained crew.
And yes - the snake’s death is just as real. Cunningham himself wielded the machete that cut the poor thing in half, horrifying Adrienne King and the other cast members, who hadn’t been told he was going to kill it in front of them.