The horrific accident at the core of ‘Friday the 13th’
Taking its initial inspiration from the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween, the Friday the 13th franchise has become one of the most significant horror film franchises in modern cinema. It all began with the original in 1980, directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller.
The film tells the story of a group of teenage camp counsellors who are plagued by an unknown serial killer when they try to re-open an abandoned summer camp with a mysterious and tragic history. Given the success of Carpenter’s Halloween, producers had been keen to capitalise on the new frenzy of horror interests in the cinema audiences of the 1980s.
One scene from the original film will always remain in the memories of horror fans across the world, in which an unfortunate victim is pinned against a wall by a series of precisely-fired arrows. However, the story behind it is far scarier than the killing scene itself.
Back in the day, accidents on movie sets occurred quite frequently, given the fact that health and safety protocols were not half what they are now. That early experimentation with horror also had a sense of trial and error, which naturally led to more accidents on set than one should wish for.
In the original Friday the 13th, the character Bill is arrowed to death by the psychotic Pamela Voorhees, the mother of the hockey-masked serial killer Jason whom we would all come to know and love. One of the arrows landed in Bill’s eye, making it a kill of particularly gruesomeness. In order to prepare for Bill’s death scene, Tom Savini, the film’s makeup artist, used a fake blood sample, which contained a wetting agent called PhotoFlo. However, the team didn’t know that the fake blood had PhotoFlo, leading to severe consequences.
The blood was applied to Bill actor Harry Crosby’s eyes and face, and the prosthetic arrow was implanted into the target eye. However, when the prosthetic was removed, Crosby was in terrible pain and couldn’t see a thing. Tragically, Crosby was left blinded for six months. Thankfully, in the end, Crosby’s eyesight returned, but Savini later admitted that it was one of the worst on-set moments of his career. Still, regardless of the momentary terrible accident caused by on-set negligence, the scene remains one of the most memorable in the Friday the 13th franchise and is beloved by horror fans even today.
