The only ‘Friday the 13th’ movie that doesn’t mention Jason Voorhees by name
In Wes Craven’s classic teen slasher Scream, screenwriter Kevin Williamson opened the movie with Ghostface playing a sadistic horror movie trivia game with Drew Barrymore’s ill-fated Casey Becker. He asks her some softball questions before hitting her with, “Name the killer in Friday the 13th.” Casey immediately yells, “Jason!” to which the killer says, “That’s the wrong answer.”
Casey, scared for her life and with tears streaming down her face, screams, “It was Jason! I’ve seen that movie 20 goddamn times!” However, this is when the killer pulls the rug out from under her, revealing it was a trick question. You see, Jason’s mother, Mrs Voorhees, was the person who killed Kevin Bacon and his pals in 1980’s Friday the 13th, in honour of her deceased son. Jason himself didn’t actually pick up a knife until the sequel, and didn’t even get his iconic hockey mask until the third entry in the franchise.
What am I saying here, beyond reminding everyone that it wasn’t cool for Casey to get her insides pulled out and hung from a tree on a technicality? Well, I’m illustrating that, of all the major horror franchises, Friday the 13th has always been the one that most seemed to make things up as it went along. Or, at the very least, the creators behind the series didn’t hide that they were flying by the seat of their pants as well as the people behind Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Case in point: the franchise killed off its ‘final girl’ in the sequel’s opening scene, and in that movie, Jason wore a burlap sack over his head. It took until Friday the 13th Part III in 1982 for Jason’s hockey mask to make an appearance, and even then, it came about by accident. For Part III, director Steve Miner wanted to do away with the burlap sack that audiences laughed at in Part II, but he had no idea what he wanted to replace it with. He knew the new mask had to play well with 3D effects, though, because Paramount had decided Part III would be the studio’s first 3D film in 26 years.
So, Miner set about doing a make-up test for a new mask, and on the day, they still didn’t have any ideas. To his delight, 3D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff kept hockey gear at the studio, so Miner simply used his Detroit Red Wings goaltender mask to conceal Jason’s gruesome visage. To everyone’s surprise, Miner loved how the hockey mask looked on camera and tasked the props team with creating a new version with red markings and bigger holes. Thus, Jason’s mask was born.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the haphazard nature of the movie’s creation, Friday the 13th Part III also stands out in the franchise for one bizarre reason: it’s the only movie that doesn’t feature anyone saying the name ‘Jason.’
Now, admittedly, Part III takes place only a day after Part II, and there is only one character in the film from the Camp Crystal Lake area who may have heard the urban legend of Jason’s death and his mother’s murderous revenge. Unfortunately for this guy, he gets dispatched by Jason without even seeing the hulking maniac coming, so he doesn’t even get the chance to utter a shocked guess as to the identity of his attacker.
So, from a storytelling perspective, it perhaps makes sense why Jason’s name isn’t invoked in Part III. However, from another, more sensible perspective, it’s weird as hell as an entire movie can pass by without its villain being named. Keep in mind, in ’82, the home video market was nowhere near what it became, which meant few people going to see Part III would have been able to catch up on I and II beforehand.
Would they have necessarily remembered Jason’s name? Perhaps. What about oddballs who paid to see III without seeing the first two? They’d be completely lost! Even from a franchising perspective, if you’ve stumbled upon the iconic final form of your character, wouldn’t it make sense to give the guy a name? Ah, Friday the 13th. Never change.
