The Friday the 13th franchise is noted for having its fair share of scantily-clad victims, many of whom are either dispatched during or shortly after sex. Whilst several installments in the series have also boasted nudity, others have proven to be relatively restrained. Tom McLoughlin’s Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives was an attempt by Paramount Pictures to produce something more commercial after the explicit approach of the previous sequel, 1985′s A New Beginning. The cast had consisted of several young rising stars who would become staples of the genre throughout the 1980s, such as Thom Mathews (Return of the Living Dead) and Jennifer Cooke (V). Darcy DeMoss was born on August 19th 1963 in Los Angeles and spent her childhood living in the Hollywood Hills. Having grown up around the film industry, DeMoss landed her first role in a television commercial at the age of fifteen and, after leaving Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys, was hired for the titillating home video Aerobicise: The Beginning Workout in 1982.

Her first film role came two years later with an uncredited appearance in Brian De Palma’s acclaimed thriller Body Double, which would also star Melanie Griffith and Craig Wasson (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), although her break would come with Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives in 1986. Appearing during the infamous RV sequence alongside John Travolta’s nephew, Tom Fridley, DeMoss would be best remembered for the moment when Jason Voorhees slams her face through the wall of the van. During her sex scene with Fridley, writer-director Tom McLoughlin approached DeMoss and requested that she appeared topless. Despite having no reservations about nudity, the suggestion came as something of a surprise and so DeMoss refused. McLoughlin, however, had felt uncomfortable about suggesting such a thing but had tried to appease his producers, who felt that the core audience of the franchise had come to expect it. Incidentally, DeMoss had previously auditioned for A New Beginning but had allegedly backed out of the project when the director, Danny Steinmann, had requested that she show her breasts during her interview.

Her next role saw her appearing alongside A New Beginning‘s Tiffany Helm in the enjoyable women-in-prison flick Reform School Girls, which was directed by Tom (Hell Night) DeSimone and distributed by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. Intended as a satire on the genre, Reform School Girls starred B-movie favourite Sybil Danning as the tough warden of a women’s prison. The following year, DeMoss returned to the horror genre with the slasher comedy Return to Horror High (no relation to Larry N. Stouffer’s 1974 movie Horror High), which would also feature a pre-fame George Clooney who, at the time, was best friends with Jason Lives‘ Mathews. Perhaps her most successful project during the late 1980s was Can’t Buy Me Love, a romantic comedy in which Patrick Dempsey starred as a high school nerd who obsesses over cheerleader Amanda Peterson. With hair metal dominating the music scene, DeMoss appeared in the promo video Girlschool for glam band Britny Fox, which saw a class of young girls being lectured by their strict teacher, only for the walls of the room to come tumbling down to reveal the group performing on stage. The video was noted for all of the young actresses (which also included model Kim Anderson) wearing blouses and short skirts and dancing wildly in their class in front of the band.

As well as her genre appearances, DeMoss began to build her résumé on the small screen with the sitcom Full House and the harrowing made-for-TV movie I Know My First Name is Steven, which told the true story of Steven Stayner, who was abducted at the age of seven and held captive and sexually abused until eventually escaping at the age of fourteen. Tragically, Stayner would die in a motorcycle accident ten years later, shortly after the film based on his life was screened on television. Other minor roles during this era would include For Keeps? (which also featured Renée Estevez from Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers), the thriller Living to Die (alongside director Wings Hauser) and the sex comedy Vice Academy 3. Throughout the 1990s, DeMoss would appear in several softcore projects, ranging from Eden, produced for Playboy, Erotic Confessions and Deadly Illusions, whilst her work in the horror genre would continue with a TV remake of Corman’s 1959 classic A Bucket of Blood. More recently, DeMoss has become known for her work with screen legend Tippi Hedren (mother of Melanie Griffith) on The Roar Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1983 which has offered support to exotic animals housed at the Shambala Preserve in Acton, California.

With all the technical challenges of a slasher film it is surprising that more are not directed by special effects artists. John Carl Buechler had been the first to helm a Friday the 13th movie, with 1988′s The New Blood which, whilst suffering from an uneven script and bland characters, boasted perhaps the most action-packed finale of the franchise. A decade later, another veteran of the effects industry would take the reins in an attempt to breathe new life into the series. Prior to entering the world of filmmaking, James Isaac had worked as a theatre producer and director in California and, in an effort to fund his latest production, found work at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic through the uncle of his business partner. The company at that time were working on the special effects for Return of the Jedi, the second sequel to Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars, and Isaac was brought onboard to assist in the creature workshop. The production, which would feature several future directors amongst the crew, including Joe (The Wolfman) Johnston and David (Fight Club) Fincher, was only intended as a stopgap for Isaac as he attempted to complete work on his play but he soon became obsessed with the mechanics of special effects.

Having supervised the creature shop on the picture, Chris Walas had formed his own company and brought Isaac onboard. Their first task came with creating the lovable-yet-mischievous creatures in Joe Dante’s 1984 hit Gremlins and soon Isaac became one of the key artists of Walas’ CWI, which would lead to his first collaboration with his close friend and mentor, David Cronenberg. The Fly, a reworking of a Vincent Price b-movie from 1958, would earn Walas an Academy Award for his work and would raise the bar for prosthetic effects. Through his various collaborations, Isaac had developed an interest in directing his own picture and would often question Cronenberg on the art of filmmaking. Soon after completing work on The Fly, Walas was hired to provide the creature effects on the horror comedy House II: The Second Story, which would lead Isaac to forming a friendship with the film’s producer, Sean S. Cunningham. House, released the previous year, had been an attempt by Cunningham to launch a new franchise after the success of Friday the 13th. Whilst working together once again on the low budget production DeepStar Six, Cunningham approached Isaac with the opportunity to make his directorial debut on a slasher-type picture called The Horror Show.

Having replaced the original director, David Blyth (who instead would work on the long-forgotten vampire flick Red Blooded American Girl), Isaac was brought onto the production one week into filmmaking and, working closely with the writer, would attempt to move the tone of the story closer to the earlier drafts. Despite feeling disappointed with the script, Isaac begrudgingly finished the picture and the movie was released as House III in 1989. Following its mediocre performance, Isaac continued to focus on his work with Walas and soon further success began to follow, including the family comedy Look Who’s Talking Too and Cronenberg’s disturbing noir drama Naked Lunch (based on the controversial novel by William S. Burroughs). Following several low key productions, including the Denzel Washington thriller Virtuosity and the straight-to-video horror Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (in which he would direct the second unit for Ethan Wiley, who had also been responsible for House II: The Second Story), Isaac and Cronenberg teamed up once again for eXistenZ, which would update many of the concepts that the filmmaker had previously explored in his surreal 1982 classic Videodrome. Filming took place in Toronto, where Isaac had been based throughout the 1990s, but once production came to an end he returned to California with a proposition for his old friend, Cunningham.

With Isaac desperate to try his hand at directing once again and Cunningham having obtained the right to the Friday the 13th franchise several years earlier, talks of a new sequel began, although Isaac, with his background in effects, was determined to avoid the low budget feel of the earlier films. This would be achieved with the help of Stephen Dupuis and Kelly Lepkowski, both of whom he had worked with several times before through Walas’ company and had also been on the crew of eXistenZ. Filming for Jason X saw Isaac once again return to Toronto, this time with an allocated budget of approximately $14m. Eager to provide support for his friend, Cronenberg agreed to make an appearance in the movie, having previously co-starred as a demented serial killer in Clive Barker’s 1990 monster movie Nightbreed. But when the studio decided to withhold the release of Jason X for two years, both fans and critics feared the worst and the film failed to make back its budget at the US box office. Not wanting to wait another decade before directing his next feature, Isaac soon commenced work on a werewolf picture called Skinwalkers.

At the time, Isaac was working at Gold Circle Films and had struggled to get the production off the ground and, when it seemed like the project was doomed, he turned to one of his friends for assistance. Dennis Berardi was the owner of Mr. X, a Canadian special effects company who had previously worked on Species III and the remake of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, and was brought onboard as Isaac’s producer. Another important addition to the crew was Stan Winston, arguably the most successful special effects artist in the industry, having gained considerable acclaim with such blockbusters as The Terminator, Predator and Jurassic Park. Forming his own company, Stan Winston Productions, in 1997, Winston had worked closely with Summit Entertainment to produce the creature feature Wrong Turn in 2024, which had become a modest success due to its graphic violence. With a budget of $18m, Isaac returned to shoot his third feature in Toronto, with a talented crew that would include artists from both Berardi and Winston’s studios. Despite being scheduled for a December 2024 release, Skinwalkers would be delayed by almost a year, suffering a similar fate to Jason X.

Following three disappointing experiences as a director, Isaac turned to a screenplay he had received prior to shooting Skinwalkers. A combination of monster movie and Russ Meyer-like sexploitation, Pig Hunt was written by Zack Anderson and Robert Mailer Anderson, the latter having written the novel Boonville, which had served as inspiration for their script. Opting for a reduced budget in order to retain creative control over the project, Pig Hunt was filmed on location in Boonville and San Francisco, California, from April to June 2024. The cast would feature an eclectic selection of performers, such as Travis Aaron Wade (War of the Worlds), Tina Huang (General Hospital) and Primus frontman Les Claypool, whilst the crew would include Academy Award-winning costume designer Aggie Guerard (Children of Men) and special effects workshop Kerner Optical. Pig Hunt made its debut on January 24th 2024 at the Anderson Valley Film Festival and was screened at several other events throughout the year. In their review of the movie the following October, the San Francisco Chronicle stated; “Director James Isaac has visual flair and imagination, and he seems either to be working with a decent budget or to be making a little go a long way. The movie looks good.”

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday opened like any other Friday the 13th movie. An attractive young woman arrives at the seemingly deserted Camp Crystal Lake and immediately strips off to take a shower. When the house is thrown into darkness she goes to investigate, whilst still wearing nothing but a towel. Stepping out onto the landing, Jason Voorhees suddenly jumps from out of the shadows and almost takes her head clean off with his machete. Running outside into the woods, the woman is chased by Jason but then suddenly the FBI appear with machine guns and a rocket and blow him to pieces. The woman, at first believed to be his next victim, is revealed to be an undercover agent and the trap was created in order to destroy Jason once and for all. In the role of Agent Marcus (named after the film’s director, Adam Marcus) was Julie Michaels, a rising actress and stuntwoman whose subsequent career would see her work alongside such stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pamela Anderson.

Michaels’ career would begin whilst studying NCAA Gymnastics at the University of Washington, when an injury would prompt her to seek an alternative way to fund her studies. Entering the Miss America Pageant, Michaels won two titles and would then audition for Follies on Broadway, which would soon be followed by Dreamgirls USA in Los Angeles. Attracting the attention of Hollywood producer Joel Silver, Michaels would land her first acting role as Denise in the 1989 action hit Road House, in which she would appear alongside heartthrob Patrick Swayze. Despite feeling awkward about kissing her co-star and the nudity required for the role, Michaels would receive support from his wife, Lisa Niemi, who would offer the newcomer much needed advice. Michaels would encounter tragedy during the shoot, however, when her boyfriend committed suicide, although she would prove her dedication to the role when, the following morning, she was performing a strip scene for the movie.

Despite her reservations about becoming an actress, Michaels was taught martial arts under the guidance of Sensei Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, a legendary kickboxer who has also appeared in movies alongside such action stars as Jean-Claude Van Damme and Jackie Chan. Michaels’ next significant – albeit minor – role came two years later with a memorable turn in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break (once again starring Swayze), in which she would share a fight scene with Keanu Reeves whilst naked. Although not a fan of the horror genre, Michaels was cast as Agent Marcus in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, in which she performed all of her stunts, including falling over a bannister onto the ground below. Kane Hodder, once again reprising the role of Jason, was known for his method approach to the role and would adopt the technique during the scene in which Michaels runs out of the cabin in an attempt to escape from Jason. Hodder, who was not supposed to be acting during this specific shot, was hiding behind the door (without the knowledge of either the crew or his co-star) and jumped out, scaring Michaels and prompting her to jump over the car instead of running around it. Marcus must have been impressed with the take as this was used in the final cut.

Having completed her work on Jason Goes to Hell, Michaels read for a role in another horror picture, Kevin Tenney’s low budget sequel Witchboard 2: The Devil’s Doorway. Having attended the auditions with blonde hair, the film’s casting director, Tedra Gabriel, refused to allow her to try out for the part as he said she was not suitable. Dyeing her hair and requesting that her agent re-submit her under an alias, Michaels eventually landed the role. Throughout her subsequent career Michaels would balance her acting chores with a variety of dangerous stunts, most notably when she appeared as a stand-in for Pamela Anderson on the 1996 movie Barb Wire. One sequence required her character to jump from a second-storey fire escape onto a track whilst being handcuffed to her co-star, but the stunt would backfire and Michaels would break her back. Although her acting career had failed to take off as she had hoped (despite appearances in Baywatch), Michaels was soon in demand as a stuntwoman and would work on such high profile projects as Batman & Robin, Titanic (an experience she considers a low point due to several of her colleagues being injured during the shoot) and The Scorpion King.

Following her accident on the set of Barb Wire, Michaels almost encountered further injuries whilst working on the 2024 comedy Rat Race, which nearly resulted in her getting her hair caught in a helicopter’s tail rotor. Following a comic turn in the horror Vampire Resurrection (also known as Song of the Vampire and released through Charles Band’s Full Moon), Michaels appeared in a variety of television shows, including She Spies, Desperate Housewives and House M.D.. Michaels would later find a new fan base when her likeness was used for the character Rayda in AC Comics’ Femforce, whilst in late 2024 there was also discussion that she would be cast in the role for a live action adaptation. Most recently, Michaels appeared in an episode of Lionsgate Television’s hit show Weeds and is set to co-star in the fantasy The Legends of Nethiah.

Whilst there have been countless discussions on the merits of the slasher’s ‘final girls,’ the victims themselves are often overlooked. The Friday the 13th series, more than any other, has boasted a cream of undiscovered talent that would later go on to enjoy varied degrees of success in Hollywood. Kevin Bacon, Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover would all gain acclaim for their subsequent roles, with their contributions to the Friday the 13th franchise often dismissed by interviewers and biographers. One actress whose association with the series was minimal but would later launch her Hollywood career was Kelly Hu, known to fans for her role as the shy class nerd Eva Watanabe in 1989′s Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Hu was born on February 13th 1968 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her parents were Herbert and Juanita Hu and Kelly Hu was of Chinese, English and Hawaiian descent. Her passion for performing began at a very young age, taking an interest in singing from the age of two and later making her stage debut at her pre-school’s Christmas pageant.

Hu was taught ballet at dance school, whilst also simultaneously being shown kung fu by her older brother. When Herbert and Juanita divorced, Hu was sent to live with her grandparents in Kahului, Maui, before returning to live with her mother two years later in Honolulu. Throughout high school Hu had taken a keen interest in drama and was able to travel to Indiana to attend the International Thespian Conference, whilst also visiting Hollywood and Broadway, which further fuelled her appetite for performing and, specifically, acting. Having been approached by a modelling agent, Hu was advised to enter a beauty pageant and, in 1985 at the age of sixteen, she was crowned Miss Teen USA. By this point, Hu had relocated to Los Angeles in an effort to pursue a professional acting career and landed her first major role in the popular soap opera Growing Pains. This lead to regular television appearances in such shows as Night Court and 21 Jump Street, the latter being an episode entitled The Dragon and the Angel which would co-star Steven Williams, later a fellow victim of Jason Voorhees with his turn in 1993′s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.

Following several TV shows, Hu was cast in Paramount’s Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, although her time on set would be restricted to Vancouver as her character would die before production reached New York. Whilst hardly launching her career, her involvement in Jason Takes Manhattan lead to further supporting roles in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and No Way Back, the latter starring a pre-fame Russell Crowe. Hu began to build up an impressive résumé on the small screen with Sunset Beach, co-starring Mexican actress Laura Harring, who had also taken part in Miss USA 1985. Another significant role came when Hu was casy by CBS as Grace Pei Pei Chen for two seasons of the action crime show Marshall Law, in which she would co-star alongside talk show host Arsenio Hall (who, ironically, had interviewed actor Kane Hodder in full Jason Voorhees make-up back in 1989 for his show in publicity for the release of Jason Takes Manhattan).

After over a decade of struggling, Hu’s big Hollywood break came in 2024 with a lead role in the hit movie The Scorpion King, Chuck Russell’s spinoff of The Mummy Returns that featured former wrestler The Rock reprising the title role. Following the action flick Cradle 2 the Grave with Jet Li, Hu gave a memorable turn as the sexy-yet-ruthless Lady Deathstrike in Bryan Singer’s highly anticipated sequel X-Men 2, which many critics would cite as being far superior to its predecessor (Rolling Stone would label Hu’s appearance as ‘dazzling’). For her performance, Hu would be nominated for Best Fight at the MTV Movie Awards for her sequence with star Hugh Jackman (in the lead role of Wolverine), although they would lose to Uma Thurman and Chiaki Kuriyama for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Hu later returned to the world of television for recurring roles in CSI: NY, In Case of Emergency and Seth Green’s surreal animated pop culture satire Robot Chicken. More recently, Hu has appeared in The Spectacular Spider-Man, The Vampire Diaries and the computer game spinoff of Terminator Salvation.

The slasher movie has repeatedly been accused of misogyny over the years and no franchise has been such a regular target as Friday the 13th. Yet, whilst over a dozen movies several of the victims have been teenage girls in their underwear or killed mid-coitus by a sexless serial killer, it could also be argued that no other genre has celebrated feminism like the slasher. Despite the treatment of the more sexually promiscuous young women, each movie has boasted a headstrong heroine who has shown great strength and intelligence by defeating Jason with whatever resources are at hand. Dubbed the ‘final girl,’ the likes of Alice (from Friday the 13th), Ginny (from Part 2) and Tina (from The New Blood) showed the kind of independence and courage that critics have praised Alien‘s Ripley and The Terminator‘s Sarah Connor for. In keeping with this spirit, Jason X saw twenty-six year old Lexa Doig as Rowan, who awakens in the distant future to find that humanity has abandoned Earth and, far worse, Jason Voorhees is onboard her spaceship. Writer Todd Farmer would base the character loosely on Ripley, a concept that Doig would remain faithful to throughout production.

Alexandra Doig was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on June 8th 1973 to Gloria and David Doig, a Filipino mother and a father of Scottish/Irish descent. Doig first became interested in acting as a child, taking a keen interest in stage productions, whilst also participating in rhythmic gymnastics. Her passion for acting was fuelled after witnessing a production of Porgy and Bess, an opera that first made its debut in the 1930s and has been reproduced countless times over the decades to great acclaim. Doig became obsessed with the character of Porgy, a crippled street beggar in an ethnic region of South Carolina, and began to audition for various plays, landing roles in such productions as Romeo and Juliet. Doig’s screen debut came in 1991 as the co-presenter of Video & Arcade Top 10, a popular game show that revolved around video games. Her first significant acting role came three years later with a made-for TV adaptation of TekWar, a series of science fiction novels by Star Trek‘s William Shatner, who would also direct. The TV movie would later be followed by a series that would run for eighteen episodes, although Doig would appear in only two, reprising her role of Cowgirl.

Throughout the 1990s, Doig would appear in a variety of popular shows, ranging from F/X: The Series (based on the cult thriller F/X: Murder by Illusion) and the British drama CI5: The New Professionals, in which she would co-star alongside Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man, The Equalizer), based loosely on the 1970s hit show The Professionals. In late 1999, Doig auditioned for the role of Rowan in Jason X, the tenth installment of the long-running slasher franchise Friday the 13th, which would see its iconic antagonist, Jason Voorhees, sent into twenty-fifth century deep space. Filming took place in her hometown of Toronto and was budgeted at $14m, more than twice of any other of the movies in the series at that time (with Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan‘s $5m being the closest). Despite a team of talented special effects artists and the presence of acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg (Scanners) in a small cameo, New Line Cinema would shelve the movie for two years before allowing a limited release.

Six months after principal photography on Jason X had come to an end Doig suddenly became a household name with the hit science fiction show Andromeda, based on a concept by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the show would see Doig team up once again with Jason X co-star Lisa Ryder, as well as meeting her husband-to-be, fellow Canadian actor Michael Shanks, during the shooting of the episode Star-Crossed. A veteran of TV, Shanks played the role of Dr. Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, originally portrayed in the movie by James Spader, and would later appear in 24 and Stargate: Atlantis. The two would marry in August 2024 and would work together once again two years later when Doig landed a recurring role in Stargate SG-1. In 2024, Doig appeared in six episodes of the revival of cult science fiction show V (which had originally co-starred Jennifer Cooke from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) as Dr. Leah Pearlman.

One of the names most associated with the slasher genre is not a director or even an actor, but a make-up artist. Tom Savini became synonymous with gory splatter effects in the early 1980s after his groundbreaking work on the likes of Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 turned him into a star in his own right. Thomas Vincent Savini was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 3rd 1946. He discovered his love of cinema at a young age after viewing the 1957 Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces, starring screen legend James Cagney. Savini became intrigued with special effects and began to research Chaney, who would often design his own make-up for his movies. Considered by many to be a pioneer in early FX, Chaney would enjoy a prolific and successful career before starring in the silent masterpiece The Phantom of the Opera. Savini began to recreate his work with homemade make-up on his school friends, soon discovering other talented artists such as Jack Pierce and, more importantly, Dick Smith. Savini contacted Smith, an influential make-up designer, who agreed to share various tricks of the trade to the budding young artist.

While a sophomore in high school, Savini met a young wannabe director called George Romero, who came to visit in search of talent for his independent film Whine of the Fawn. Eventually, the project fell through and Savini went on to major in Journalism at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Some time later, Romero announced that he would be shooting a feature locally called Night of the Living Dead so Savini visited him with a portfolio and was offered his first break. During pre-production, the army began drafting for young troops to send out to Vietnam so Savini, in an effort to avoid combat, enlisted early as a photographer. After being sent to the Army Photo School in New York for three months of basic training, the young cadets found themselves at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, where they were given their orders. The realities of war had a profound effect on the young photographer, using his camera to try to distance himself from the violence he was witnessing. Still continuing to practice his passion, Savini experimented with special effects on many of his fellow soldiers, recreating the horror that he had seen on a daily basis.

After returning to America, Savini found himself in Cumberland, North Carolina, stationed at Fort Bragg where he taught film processing in a craft shop. Still dealing with the post-trauma of war, he landed his first professional FX gig on a movie. Dead of Night was a zombie story that had been designed as an allegory on the Vietnam conflict from Bob Clark, the director previously responsible for the camp flick Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. Filmed in Brooksville, Florida in the fall of 1972, the script was loosely based on W.W. Jacob’s 1902 short story The Monkey’s Paw and told of a couple who are informed that their son was killed in Vietnam, only for him to return soon after. But he begins to demonstrate strange behaviour, such as injecting blood in an attempt to stop himself from decomposing. The following year, Clark’s writer, Alan Ormsby (who had assisted Savini with the effects on Dead of Night), co-directed Deranged, a disturbing horror inspired by the life and crimes of Ed Gein.

Around this time, Savini applied his make-up talents to local theatres. After hearing about Romero’s next movie, Martin, he auditioned for the role of the vampire protagonist, losing out to John Amplas. Instead, the director agreed to hire him as a special effects artist, allowing Savini his first big break. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead had been an unexpected success several years earlier and the filmmaker was desperate for another hit. Budgeted at $800,000, principal photography took place in Braddock, Pennsylvania, from August to October 1976. Savin’s input went further than simple effects, also developing an interest in stuntwork, two talents which he would continue to balance throughout the first half of his career. Romero’s original cut for Martin was black-and-white and ran at two hours and forty-five minutes, before being ordered by the financiers to trim it down to a more commercial length and release it in colour. The movie was a minor success and Romero had enjoyed his collaboration with Savini so much that he immediately hired him for his next project.

The first Savini heard of a sequel to Night of the Living Dead was when he received telegram in North Carolina from the director that simply said, “Start thinking of ways to kill people.” Designing a follow up to his successful zombie movie had proved more problematic than Romero had expected. His co-writer, John Russo, had set about writing his own sequel as a novel, Return of the Living Dead, which was first published in 1977. Romero, meanwhile, attempted to develop his own continuation, eventually settling on a concept whilst visiting Monroeville Mall to see his friend, Mark Mason. Watching the blank expressions of the shoppers as they mindlessly wandered from store to store, the basic premise of what would become Dawn of the Dead was born. To help with financing, respected Italian filmmaker Dario Argento invited Romero to Rome to discuss his ideas for the movie, on the condition that he would hold the European rights. Romero returned to Pittsburgh with his script complete and began preparation for what was to be his most ambitious project to date. With a modest budget of $650,000, Romero set about gaining permission to film in Monroeville Mall, where the majority of the picture would be set.

Savini made a list of new and unique ways to dispatch the zombies, which included heads exploding from shotgun blasts or scalped from helicopter blades. With only eight assistants and over two hundred extras to make up as zombies, Savini was facing the largest undertaking of his career. Shooting began on November 13th 1977, with the production on hiatus for several weeks over Christmas as customers completed their festive shopping. Commencing again on January 3rd, principal photography finally wrapped the following month. Romero entered a battle with the MPAA in order to avoid an X-rating (which the censors usually reserved for pornographic material and would thus restrict its commercial appeal), due to Savini’s graphic special effects. After eventually being allowed to release it unrated, Dawn of the Dead was unleashed in America on April 20th 1979 by United Artists, eventually earning a staggering $55m. Savini’s work would soon bring him to the attention of other filmmakers, starting with a struggling producer by the name of Sean S. Cunningham.

A trio of Boston businessmen had financed a gritty and unpleasant rape-revenge film in 1972 called The Last House on the Left, which marked the directorial debut of Wes Craven. Produced by Cunningham, it went on to become an unexpected success but after a string of disappointing family movies he decided to return to the horror genre and, after watching how John Carpenter’s low budget thriller Halloween had become one of the most profitable flicks of the decade, he decided to attempt something similar. Knowing that he lacked the talents of Carpenter, he needed to find another angle, something which would get cinemagoers talking. After witnessing the excessive gore of Dawn of the Dead, Cunningham knew that someone like Savini would be able to turn a generic script into a blockbuster. With a special effects budget of $20,000, Savini made his way to Connecticut to discuss the project and what new, exciting ways characters could be dispatched on screen.

Filming for what would become Friday the 13th commenced on September 4th 1979 in and around Blairstown, New Jersey, with Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco doubling as the main location. Savini and his assistant, Taso Stavrakis, opted to spent the nights at the camp instead of in motels with the rest of the cast and crew, where they could prepare their work undisturbed. Stavrakis would stand in as the killer for the majority of the film while Savini would once again handle the stunts. Cunningham and Savini had agreed that the death scenes had to happen on screen with no cut-aways, including throat slashing and, most famously, a young Kevin Bacon receiving an arrow through the throat. This sequence was carefully orchestrated, with associate produce Steve Miner storyboarding the entire scene. The effect itself was achieved by the actor’s body being hidden under the bed with just his head on display and a fake body lying out in front of him. Savini provided a neck cast that he had used previously on Martin and attached a clear tube from which the blood would appear but, during the scene, there was a blockage, forcing Stavrakis to blow hard down the tube, causing the blood to spurt.

Savini’s work would once again be the talk of the town when Friday the 13th was finally released on the May 9th 1980. Paramount Pictures had acquired the picture and had spent over $1m on publicity, allowing the movie to have the kind of grand opening rarely given to a low budget horror at that time. The MPAA had passed the film through uncut but once the likes of Siskel and Ebert became aware of it they took great delight in dragging the movie’s name through the dirt, unintentionally giving it even more publicity. When Friday the 13th made an astonishing $39.7m at the box office, every studio and producer in Hollywood began trying to make their own clone, and suddenly Savini was hot property. Paramount immediately set about producing a sequel and initially offered Savini the chance to return, but the illogical story prompted him to decline. Instead, he opted for another summer camp slasher, The Burning, produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein (who would later become major players with Miramax and Dimension).

Despite being scripted before the release of Friday the 13th, The Burning was nevertheless compared to Cunningham’s movie, mainly due to its choice of setting. Filmed in Buffalo and North Tonawanda, New York, for $1.5m, Savini once again providing stomach-turning effects that would become the highlight of the picture. Perhaps the most notorious scene was the raft massacre, where a group of teenagers who are attempting to make their way back to camp for assistance are suddenly attacked by the movie’s villain, Cropsy, as they pass by an abandoned boat. Using a pair of garden sheers, fingers are chopped off and throats are stabbed, in by far the film’s most graphic and memorable sequence. It proved effective enough for The Burning to find its way onto the Director of Public Prosecutions’ ‘video nasty’ list in the UK, where it would remain banned for several years. Immediately after the movie wrapped, Savini was invited by filmmaker William Lustig, who had visited the set of The Burning, to join the crew of his latest production, a low budget serial killer flick starring Joe Spinell, who had appeared briefly in The Godfather. The film had been self-financed, with Spinell, Lustig and producer Andrew Garroni contributing between $6,000 and $30,000 each for the required $350,000 budget. Savini would be paid $5,000 for his work, which would include yet another obliterated head shot, though this time it would be his own.

Perhaps Savini’s most impressive work, and certainly the one which he is the proudest of, was in the underrated thriller The Prowler, released in the UK as Rosemary’s Killer. Directed by Joseph Zito, The Prowler saw a World War II vet returning home to find that his sweetheart had found a new man. Exacting his revenge, the town would cancel the high school graduation dance until thirty-five years later, which would prompt the killer to return. Filmed over six weeks on location in the charming town of Cape May, New Jersey, The Prowler was a stylish and tense thriller that stood out from its contemporaries due to the graphic and convincing murders, including more throat slittings and head explosions. Many filmmakers knew that hiring Savini would immediately lend their film some credibility, with one feature, Nightmare in a Damaged Brain, including his name in the credits though Savini would deny to this day that he worked on the feature. Directed by Italian filmmaker Romano Scavolini, who had drawn inspiration from a newspaper article on the MK-Ultra mind experiments of the 1960’s, Nightmare was an unpleasant and gruesome study of insanity, much in the same was as Maniac, and was guaranteed to attract controversy upon release.

For the next couple of years, Savini became hot property, working on an array of graphic and popular low budget slashers, including Eyes of a Stranger and Alone in the Dark. He would eventually re-team with Romero for the Stephen King anthology Creepshow, which would see him return to his hometown of Pittsburgh. With a budget of $8m, Romero’s horror show would feature such actors as Leslie Neilson (a once serious actor who, after starring in Airplane! in 1980, was revamped as a comedian), Cheers star Ted Danson and Dawn of the Dead’s Gaylen Ross. The following year, Savini would be approached about returning to the Friday the 13th series to assist in destroying the character that he had helped create. The franchise’s antagonist, Jason Voorhees, had since become a pop culture phenomenon and Paramount had finally decided to lay the series to rest. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter would see Savini once again collaborate with The Prowler’s Zito, whom he had created some of his best work with.

Shot on a budget of $1.8m, when Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter was released in April 1984 it made over $11m on its opening weekend, guaranteeing that the series would indeed continue. Savini would return back to Pittsburgh to work on Romero’s third zombie flick, Day of the Dead, which would see mankind overrun with the walking dead and forced to take refuge in an old missile silo. Originally planned as a more epic and action-packed sequel, the reduced funding resulted in the director having to rethink his screenplay. Principal photography took place in Fort Myers and Sanibel Island, Florida, and the Nike Missile Site in Finleyville, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1984. Savini had originally intended to portray the role of the villainous Captain Rhodes, having already acted in minor roles in Martin, Dawn of the Dead and Maniac, among others. But Romero felt that Savini would be unable to manage the special effects if he also acted so instead offered the role to Joseph Pilato, who had made a brief appearance in Dawn. Released the same year as Return of the Living Dead, a tongue-in-cheek zombie flick that had abandoned John Russo’s original story in favour of a more comedic approach, Day of the Dead was met with disappointment from Romero’s fan base, who found the movie too cynical and less ambitious than Dawn of the Dead, though it would later develop a cult following.

Having already worked alongside Jason Voorhees, Savini’s next project would see him team up with another modern day horror icon. The rights for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had been acquired by Warren Skaaren and Bill Parsley, two major players in the financing of the the first film, who had picked up the copyright in the late ’70s with the intention of Skaaren scripting a sequel of his own. Tobe Hooper’s career had been a hit-and-miss affair in the years since directing Massacre, with the abysmal Eaten Alive followed by the hugely successful Poltergeist. In 1984, he signed a three-picture deal with Cannon Films and began to make horrors that combined elements of science fiction. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 would mark Savini’s slasher swan song, following on with such varied projects as Creepshow 2, Romero’s Monkey Shines and the Dolph Lundgren action thriller Red Scorpion, helmed by Zito. Dawn of the Dead producer Dario Argento had expressed interest in adapting a story by Edgar Allen Poe and had suggested an anthology, with him directing The Black Cat and three other stories to be made by Romero, John Carpenter and Stephen King, respectively, to be released as Two Evil Eyes. Unfortunately, Carpenter was busy working on his science fiction satire They Live and King was also preoccupied, so Argento managed to raise a $9m budget for himself and Romero to shoot in Pittsburgh (Argento’s first feature to be made in America, aside from a sequence of 1980′s Inferno that was shot in New York).

Soon after, Romero began to toy with the idea of remaking his breakthrough movie Night of the Living Dead. The black-and-white classic had already been colorized by Hal Roach Studios in 1986 and the director began to update his original screenplay to accommodate for modern times. As Savini had missed out on the first version, he was finally given the chance to collaborate with Romero on the film, though this time he would be promoted to the director’s chair. The pre-production on Night of the Living Dead was a very frustrating experience for Savini, who would constantly see his ideas opposed by both Romero and the financiers, who believed that the amateur filmmaker would not be able to accomplish what he had suggested. Parts began to be removed before filming had even begun and the friendship between Savini and Romero began to strain. Savini would once again collaborate with Argento on 1992’s Trauma, starring his sixteen-year old daughter, Asia Argento, and several low-key projects during the early ’90s, before turning his attention to acting. His big break in front of the camera came with a supporting role in the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn. Appearing as Sex Machine, a biker in much the same vein as his Dawn of the Dead character, Blades, his role saw him become the victim of prosthetics – this time from KNB EFX (of which two of the founders had been Savini’s assistants on Day of the Dead).

This would lead to roles in Children of the Living Dead (which Savini has very little good to say about), Ted Bundy, Zack Synder’s 2024 remake of Dawn of the Dead and Romero’s Land of the Dead. Despite initially being lined up to provide the effects once again, Savini was replaced by KNB and his part in the film was cut after Universal, the distributor, decided that as he had appeared in the Dawn remake then he should not be in Land. Instead, he was given a two second cameo as a zombified Blades. Perhaps his most significant role since was as Deputy Tolo is Planet Terror, which saw him team up once again with Rodriguez, this time for his half of the much-anticipated double-bill Grindhouse. Other roles include Lost Boys: The Tribe, the critically mawled sequel to the cult 1987 bratpack horror, Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno, The Dead Matter and the retrospective documentary His Name Was Jason: Thirty Years of Friday the 13th. Not turning his back on effects completely, he has started a Tom Savini Special Make-up Effects Program, teaching budding artists the tricks of the trade.

If anyone has a reason to hate Harry Potter, it’s John Carl Buechler! Back in 1986, a low budget fantasy called Troll was released and enjoyed minor success at the box office. Its protagonist was a young man named Harry Potter Jr., portrayed with wide-eyed innocence by Noah Hathaway, previously known for his roles in Battlestar Galactica and The Neverending Story. Some eleven years later, British author J. K. Rowling became an overnight sensation with her novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which was adapted into a successful feature four years later by Chris Columbus (Home Alone) and would earn Rowling a fortune of an estimated £560m. Troll, meanwhile, had slipped into obscurity and reduced to the label of ‘cult.’ Over twenty years later, Buechler plans to take back his most famous creation with a big budget remake of Troll.

Buechler was first introduced to cinema at the age of three when he fell in love with King Kong. He began experimenting with special effects by sculpting clay and playing with latex, whilst reading various magazines about monsters and fantasy. It was here that he first discovered Rick Baker, who had begun as an assistant to make-up legend Dick Smith on The Exorcist before finding acclaim with his own work on the likes of It’s Alive and John Guillermin’s 1976 remake of King Kong. After corresponding with Baker, Buechler was invited for a short apprenticeship, where he learnt the basics of special effects within the film industry. His first work as a make-up artist was on Jason of Star Command in 1978, a Saturday morning show for CBS that ran for twenty-eight episodes. He then worked alongside rising artist Stan Winston on The Island and provided the make-up for a low budget movie called Mausoleum.

Soon afterwards, Buechler was invited by legendary producer Roger Corman to join his FX team at New World, creating the special effects for such cult favourites as Android, Sorceress, Forbidden World and Deathstalker, the latter of which he would also perform second unit directing chores on. After finally running New World’s make-up department, Buechler eventually parted ways with Corman and soon joined Empire, a low budget production run by producer Charles Band. It would be here that he would first develop his filmmaking skills and receive major acclaim for his work as a make-up artist. Aside from directing a segment of The Dungeonmaster in 1984, much of Buechler’s early work with the studio would involve creating the impressive make-up for a variety of cult classics, ranging from Re-animator and Ghoulies to From Beyond and Prison.

It was around this time that he started his own FX company, Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (later renamed Magical Media Industries Inc.), which would handle all of the effects for Empire. Having previously attempted to convince Corman to produce a script he had written entitled Troll, he decided to pitch his idea to Band. Whilst he was intrigued by the concept, Band felt that the story was too elaborate for the kind of budget that would be available, and so Buechler was forced to scale down his vision and instead set the action in an apartment block, with just brief glimpses of the magical world of the evil wizard Turok. The enclosed environment allowed Buechler to show an array of weird and wonderful creatures and demonstrate his company’s impressive talents. Incidentally, a few years later two Italian movies were produced that were released under the titles Troll 2 and Troll 3, neither being official sequels or relating in any way to Buechler’s movie.

Troll would make enough of an impression on Frank Mancuso Jr. at Paramount that he would offer him the director chores on the latest sequel of the long-running Friday the 13th franchise. Initially intended to have been Freddy vs. Jason (a crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street, that was eventually released in 2024), Paramount and Elm Street‘s owners New Line Cinema were unable to come to an agreement and so the story was instead adapted into a Jason vs. Carrie-like tale, in which a teenage girl with telekinetic powers accidentally resurrects Jason Voorhees from the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake and is forced to use her gift to defeat him. Knowing Buechler’s background as an effects artist, Mancuso Jr. was confident that the inexperienced director would be more than capable of handling elaborate set pieces and action sequences.

One decision that Buechler would make with the movie that would have a profound impact on the subsequent sequels was with the casting of Jason. Although C.J. Graham had been a popular choice after his work on Part VI, Buechler insisted on stuntman Kane Hodder, whom he had previously worked with on Renny Harlin’s Prison. Mancuso Jr. was unconvinced, claiming that he lacked the physical requirements for the role, and so Hodder performed a test screening in full make-up (which would include segments of flesh missing to reveal the spine beneath) and gained Mancuso Jr.’s immediate approval. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was released in 1988, and whilst it may have failed to impress the critics, the fans were more than happy with their new take on Jason, although the film would prove to be the least successful at that time (a trend that would continue until Freddy vs. Jason fifteen years later).

Over the next few years, Buechler and his company would provide the special effects for a whole host of successful movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Bride of Re-Animator, before returning to the director’s chair once again in 1991 with Ghoulies Go to College. Having been the one who had created the creatures for the original movie back in 1985, and its sequel two years later, Buechler would take the series in a more comedic direction, even allowing his antagonists to spout out one-liners (as had happened with the Gremlins sequel the previous year). The movie was originally scheduled to have been released theatrically but Vestron Pictures, the company responsible for its distribution, suffered a great loss and were unable to back the film.

In 1993, Buechler would collaborate for the first time in a decade with Corman, working on the fantasy Carnosaur. This would lead to several more projects together, including Piranha (a TV remake of the Joe Dante classic, also produced by Corman), Inhumanoid and Watchers Reborn, another directorial effort from Buechler. He would also continue to work alongside Band, whose defunct Empire had been replaced by his straight-to-video company Full Moon. Over the following years the two would work together on such projects as Evil Bong and The Gingerdead Man, which would produce the humorously titled sequel Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust. After completing work on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 2024, Buechler would finally get to produce his goriest work since The New Blood (which had sadly been neutered by the MPAA prior to release).

Adam Green was a thirty-year old horror fan who had written a script that was intended as an homage to the old school slasher films of the 1980s that he had grown up on. Hatchet would boast a selection of recognisable faces from within the horror genre, including Robert ‘Freddy Krueger’ Englund, Tony ‘Candyman’ Todd and Hodder, once again teaming up with the man who made him a horror icon as Jason. The special effects on display in Hatchet were extremely gruesome, specifically one scene in which a woman is brutally hacked in half by the antagonist, Victor Crowley (Hodder). The movie would unsurprisingly encounter issues with the MPAA, who wanted much of the violence removed, but the film eventually found its audience on DVD, courtesy of an unrated cut.

In 2024, Buechler announced his plans to remake Troll as a big budget fantasy adventure. The project was conceived with the help of producer Steve Waterman (Casper, Stuart Little) and was to star Hathaway as Turok, whilst a casting call was put out for young actors to audition for the role of Harry Potter Jr. (Buechler refused to change the name of his hero, despite the success of the Harry Potter franchise). Whilst all had been quiet on the project for some time, occasionally Buechler issues an update stating that production is set to commence, with the possibility of cameos from Anne Lockhart and Phil Fondacaro, both of whom appeared in the original. Finally, after over twenty years, Buechler will get the chance to bring his original vision to the screen. He had previously stated that he also intends to adapt a new version of Frankenstein, although the fate of this project is unclear.