The poster measures 18 x 24 and is limited to only 200 prints.

The # 1/200 was presented to Corey Feldman, and the # 2/200 was given to the Final Chapter‘s “Jason”, Ted White.

It can be purchased through the link above.

Ted White’s introduction to the movie industry would be somewhat unconventional. Having played football for the University of Oklahoma in his youth, White served with the Marine Corps and, whilst stationed in San Diego in 1949, was asked to volunteer as an extra during a scene for a movie entitled Sands of Iwo Jima. The picture followed a squad of Marines during the Second World War as they prepared for combat against the Japanese army at Iwo Jima in 1945. This experience would mark the start of a friendship between White and the film’s star, John Wayne, who would be nominated for an Academy Award. White’s early credits would mostly consist of television shows, during which time he began to take an interest in stuntwork on the likes of Sheriff of Cochise and Maverick.

White would team up once again with Wayne on a series of westerns, in which he would either take small, uncredited roles or act as Wayne’s stunt double. These pictures would include Howard Hawks’ 1959 classic Rio Bravo, The Horse Soldiers, The Alamo (which Wayne would also direct) and Hitari!. During this era, White also served as a double for several other big stars, including Clark Gable (1961′s The Misfits, which co-starred screen beauty Marilyn Monroe) and Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou, Point Blank). Although he would gain more acclaim for his stuntwork, White continued to act in minor or supporting roles on a variety of shows; mostly crime dramas (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Kojak) and westerns (Wagon Train). He would serve as stunt coordinator on NBC’s popular show Daniel Boone; doubling for lead actor Fess Parker and occasionally making an appearance in various minor roles.

Although the 1970s would see White restricted to television, the following decade once again saw him working on numerous successful features, ranging from John Carpenter’s Escape from New York to Disney’s sci-fi thriller Tron. His experience with elaborate stunts would ultimately lead Paramount Pictures and filmmaker Joseph Zito to offer White the role of Jason Voorhees for their latest sequel, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. White was reluctant to have an association with such a movie and declined the offer but soon reconsidered when he was advised that it would take around six weeks for the effects team to design all the necessary components for the character, during which time he would be paid in full. It would be this part of the deal that would eventually convince White to accept the role.

When White signed on to the picture, the special effects were to be handled by Greg Cannom, who at that time was working with rock star Ozzy Osbourne on his music video for the track Bark at the Moon. The head for the character would be sculpted by James Kagel, who had performed similar duties for Stan Winston on Dead and Buried and The Entity, and had also worked with Rob Bottin on The Thing. But during pre-production, Cannom would quit the project and was replaced by Zito’s first choice, Tom Savini, who had worked on the first movie. Much like his predecessors, White would be subjected to an unpleasant application process in the make-up chair, taking approximately four hours to complete each morning before filming began.

Although White had little interest in a movie such as Friday the 13th, he soon found that once he had been transformed into Jason Voorhees it was easy to get into character. During the shoot he remained distant from his co-stars, in an effort to avoid becoming overly familiar with his victims and thus provoking genuine fear once the cameras began rolling. His performance would improve upon that of Richard Brooker (from Friday the 13th Part 3), taking various characteristics of the previous movie and improving on them. Jason would become far more aggressive and predatory in The Final Chapter than he had been in the earlier films, whilst Savini’s trademark gore allowed for machetes in the face and heads crushed against wall.

White would take issue with Zito during a sequence in which a young woman is impaled whilst lying naked in a raft. Actress Judie Aronson was forced to strip and stand in freezing cold water, whilst a fake body was attached to her back that would be stabbed from underneath by Jason’s machete. Aronson soon became too cold to perform due to the temperatures of shooting in the winter and White, disgusted at how Zito was treating his actors, threatened to quit the production if the young actress was not taken out of the water. This experience would be one of the key reasons that White would insist that his name be taken off the credits of the movie. Following The Final Chapter, White made a brief appearance as a deer hunter in Carpenter’s fantasy Starman, whilst other notable roles would include Magnum, P.I. , Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Hidden and an episode of the cult show The X Files. Despite distancing himself from Friday the 13th, over recent years White has attended numerous movie conventions to meet his fans and celebrate his part of the Jason Voorhees legacy.

When Paramount Pictures announced that they would be bringing their lucrative Friday the 13th franchise to an end with The Final Chapter, the filmmakers were under pressure to deliver a climax that would not disappoint the fans. Throughout the two previous films Jason had impaled two lovers during sex and, perhaps most bizarrely, had crushed a man’s head so hard that his eyeballs had literally burst out of the skull. So if director Joseph Zito was to provide a show-stopping moment that would lay the series to rest with style there was only one man he could call, Tom Savini. Replacing the studio’s first choice, Greg Cannom, Savini was eager to not only return to the franchise that he had started but collaborate once again with Zito, whom he had previously worked with on the 1981 slasher The Prowler. Together, Zito and Savini began to devise ways to elaborate on the kills as they were dictated in the screenplay, but when Savini reached the end of the script and discovered that Jason (Ted White) was to be killed with a machete he felt the death would be too generic and wanted something more exciting and unique. Savini would suggest an alternative to the executives; in which the film’s child hero, budding special effects artist and technical wizard Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), had taken apart his mother’s microwave and transformed it into a weapon, which he would demonstrate by melting one of his toy soldiers. During the climax, Tommy reveals his new gadget and turns the setting to high, melting the inside of Jason’s head and causing it to explode.

Despite its originality, the producers were nervous that it would divert too far from the standard slasher formula and instead requested a death that would be more suited to Friday the 13th. It would be whilst watching one of his artists, John Vulich, playing with a machete that Savini had used several years earlier on George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, that he would finally settle on suitably gruesome demise for Jason; he would be hit in the head with the machete, drop to his knees and then his face would slide down the blade as he fell to the floor. Initially, Savini had also considered slicing Jason’s head in half down the middle but this would not prove to be practical and so a slight modification was made in how the death blow would be given. During the sequence, Tommy’s older sister, Trish (Kimberly Beck), tries to fend off Jason and swings the machete, digging the blade deep between his fingers. Using a prosthetic hand, this effect was achieved by the blade already being inserted into the hand and then pulled out of the slit, with the footage then played back in reverse to create the illusion of contact. The ‘money shot,’ so to speak, would come when Tommy, fearful that Jason will kill his sister, picks up the machete from off the floor and swings it into the side of his face. This would prove to be the most ambitious moment in the movie and would require the assistance of Savini’s entire effects crew.

The death sequence would be achieved in several stages. The first would see Jason with the blade already attached to the side of his face, with both Feldman and stuntman White giving the appropriate reactions. As with the hand effect, this shot would then be run back in reverse, whilst White creates the impression that he has actually been hit by the blade. The most impressive aspect of the gag, however, would be the elaborate replica of Jason that was a recreation of White from the waist-up and featured extensive facial movements that were operated by a series of cables that ran out of the bottom of the dummy. To add an extra effect, one of Savini’s team placed his hand inside Jason’s prosthetic head with a tongue attached to his finger that he would move out through the mouth. The blade itself, which would slide down the side of his face, ran on a track that was placed in the head, whilst portions of the top of the skull would also move where it had been sliced open. There were several different takes shot of these sequences, which varied from bloodless to X-rated. Although much of it would be omitted for the theatrical release, there was copious amounts of blood throughout the filming of the scene, most of which was pumped from out of Jason’s head. Despite the fact that The Final Chapter would prove not to be Jason’s farewell, as the title had promised, it would have been a fitting end to the character, who would be resurrected as an indestructible zombie in the subsequent sequels.

If the Friday the 13th franchise is to be remembered for anything, other than the iconic hockey mask, then it will be the elaborate and graphic special effects, which were created by various different artists and workshops, from the legendary Tom Savini and Stan Winston to the likes of Martin Becker and Greg Nicotero. Twelve movies, hundreds of victims – it would be impossible to narrow their gory highlights down to just a few but here’s thirteen of Jason’s most memorable kills.

I couldn’t decide which one should claim the top spot so instead these are listed in chronological order. No doubt you’ll have your own favourites so tell us which you would have included.

Enjoy!

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) – Jack (Kevin Bacon)
Long before the awards and critical acclaim, Kevin Bacon’s claim to fame was his iconic death in the original Friday the 13th. Storyboarded by associate producer Steve Miner (who would later direct the first two sequels) and executed by special make-up effects artist Tom Savini, the sequence saw an arrow being driven through Bacon’s throat from underneath the bed. This relatively complex gag would be created by designing a cast of the actor’s torso, whilst his real body was hidden underneath the bed. With a neck cast attached to Bacon, a hand belonging to stills photographer Richard Feury (who would later be credited as second assistant director on Part 2) reached up from under the bed to pull Bacon’s head down whilst the arrow was pushed through the neck cast. But when the tube that ran the blood from a bag to the neck cast came loose Taso N. Stavrakis, Savini’s assistant, improvised and blew hard down the tube, causing the blood to spray out from the open wound. Although not a Jason kill, this is still a favourite amongst fans.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981) – Mark (Tom McBride)
To prove that Jason Voorhees was an equal rights serial killer, Part 2 saw him dispatch of the franchise’s sole wheelchair-bound victim. Having seemingly scored with pretty-yet-naïve Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor), Mark (Tom McBride) waits patiently before heading outside the house, where he is suddenly struck in the face by a machete and sent hurtling backwards down a set of steps. For this highly effective sequence, special make-up effects artist Carl Fullerton designed a mask for McBride to wear, which the balsa wood machete was then attached to. Pulling the blade away from the actor’s face, the footage was then played back in reverse to create the illusion that Mark had been hit in the face by the machete. McBride was then replaced by stuntman Tony Farentino (who would later work on the underrated slasher Alone in the Dark the following year), who was sent backwards down the stairs using a rig to avoid the wheelchair losing control.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 (1982) – Vera (Catherine Parks)
Having rebuffed the advances of shy practical joker Shelly (Larry Zerner), Vera (Catherine Parks) finds his wallet in the water and looks through the contents, before realising that a masked figure has appeared from behind the house. Believing it to be Shelly, who had previously scared her whilst wearing his hockey mask, Jason (Richard Brooker) raises a speargun towards her and fires a shot directly into her eye. Yet another gag played back in reverse, the sequence began with Parks reacting to the arrow being pressed against her eye, before the arrow was retracted via a wire and rod. Cutting away, the next shot saw Parks with an arrow attached to her eye as she fell backwards into the water, although this could only be shot once as the prosthetics that the make-up crew had created would fall to pieces when wet. This scene has an important place in the history of the franchise as it would be the first on-screen kill committed by Jason after obtaining his infamous mask.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 (1982) – Rick (Paul Kratka)
Accommodating for the 3-D effects that would be the selling point for Friday the 13th Part 3, director Steve Miner took every opportunity he could to have objects jumping or reaching out at the camera; from yo-yos and joints to spears and even eyeballs. The latter would be used for the death scene of Rick (Paul Kratka), the lumberjack boyfriend of heroine Chris (Dana Kimmell). Having returned to find the house deserted, Chris searches for her friends whilst Rick heads outside, only to be accosted by Jason. Grabbing his head from behind and crushing his skull, Rick’s eyeballs burst literally from their sockets under the pressure and leap out at the audience. Weeks before principal photography had begun, Kratka was brought to the FX workshop to have his upper torso and head cast in plaster to create a life-size dummy that would be used for the majority of the sequence. With a mark having been set between the two lenses that were used to capture the images in 3-D, the eyeballs were sent out of the fake skull using wires after several attempts using compressed air had failed to achieve the desired result.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984) – Axel (Bruce Mahler)
Despite having launched his career on the back of his work on the first Friday the 13th movie, Savini had declined the chance to return for the subsequent two sequels, instead choosing to work on other splatter flicks like The Burning and Creepshow. Yet when the possibility to end what he had helped create by killing off Jason once and for all for 1984′s The Final Chapter arose he found the offer too tempting. After two relatively tame sequels, Savini was determined to outdo his own work on the original by creating some of his most brutal set pieces since The Prowler in 1981 (which, coincidentally, was also directed by Joseph Zito). Aside from Jason’s own demise, the stand out death scene was awarded to Axel (Police Academy‘s Bruce Mahler), an obnoxious orderly whose failed seduction attempts with a nurse (Lisa Freeman) results in him watching aerobics on television. Jason (Ted White), having awoken from the slab after believing to have died from his wounds endured at the end of Part 3, sneaks up behind Axel and grabs him by his head, before taking a surgical hacksaw used for cutting through bone and slices deep into his throat. A dummy was created using a cast of Mahler and a saw, whose blade was filled with blood, was placed against the throat, which also allowed for the head to be violently turned as Jason sunk deep into his neck.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 5: A NEW BEGINNING (1985) – Joey (Dominick Brascia)
Sweet-yet-simple loner Joey (Dominick Brascia) is often dismissed by his fellow patients at the relatively laxed Pinehurst mental institution and, after an attempt at helping two of the girls with the laundry results in the clean clothes being covered in chocolate, tries to make friends with resident psychotic Victor (Mark Venturini, also known to splatter fans for his turn in Return of the Living Dead, released the same year). Angered by his persistence, Victor swings his axe down on Joey’s back and begins to hack him to pieces as the other patients watch in horror. Some time later, an ambulance arrives on the scene and one of the paramedics (Caskey Swaim) pulls back the sheet that is covering his corpse to reveal hacked-up body parts. Whilst the murder itself is shown off screen (with only a brief reaction shot from Brascia at the point of impact), it is the following scene when the state of the body is revealed that showed the gruesome handiwork of the special effects team. Not technically a Jason kill, but the murder would become the catalyst for the Jason copycat murders that followed.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 6: JASON LIVES (1986) – Sheriff Garris (David Kagan)
Sheriff Garris (David Kagan) would prove to be the archetypal authority figure of the slasher film. Much like A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Lt. Donald Thompson (John Saxon), who would also refuse to believe the fact that a seemingly dead killer was responsible for a recent series of grizzly murders, Garris’ ignorance and refusal to accept the warning from former mental patient Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews, Venturini’s Return of the Living Dead co-star) would eventually cost him his life. Having made his way with his deputies to Camp Forest Green – formerly Camp Crystal Lake, the scene of countless murders at the hands of Jason (C.J. Graham) – Garris soon finds himself alone and takes shelter in the bushes as he watches Jason from afar. But when his daughter, Megan (Jennifer Cooke), arrives at the camp with Tommy, Jason heads back out of the woods to kill them both, forcing the sheriff to finally face the truth and fight back, resulting in him being literally broken in two. Although heavily censored by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) prior to release, the sequence was achieved by fake legs being bent back over Kagan’s shoulders as Jason breaks his back. In an effort to avoid the same kind of problems with the censors that the previous movies had encountered, director Tom McLoughlin would shoot several versions of the scene, including one which would be relatively gruesome, although sadly this would not be used in the finished print.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 7: THE NEW BLOOD (1988) – Judy (Debora Kessler)
Unlike his contemporaries, namely A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘s Leatherface, Jason Voorhees has never taken much pleasure in torturing his victims, instead opting for the fastest way to dispatch them. Kane Hodder, who would be cast in the role at the insistence of director John Carl Buechler, would take the character of Jason to new heights by creating a unique body language that he would use through the subsequent three sequels. With Buechler also being a renowned special effects artist, many of the set pieces in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood would be extremely elaborate and graphic, this was until the MPAA ordered drastic cuts to many of the film’s highlights. One sequence would see one of the young vacationers, Judy (Debora Kessler), dragged across the ground by Jason in her sleeping bag and swung against a tree, killing her instantly. Originally, Jason was to have thrown her against the trunk several times but the MPAA ordered the filmmakers to reduce the number of hits, resulting in Jason simply swinging her against the tree once and then tossing her body aside. Ironically, this would make the sequence all the more effective.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 8: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN (1989) – Jules (V.C. Dupree)
Although ultimately defeated at the end of each movie, Jason rarely faced a character who was able to match him physically, with his victims often resorting to weapons, water or even telekinesis. In 1989′s Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, the latest graduating class embark on a cruise from Crystal Lake to New York City, which soon turns into a fight for survival as Jason (Kane Hodder) makes his way onboard and begins to dispatch each of the teens one-by-one. Although the majority of the deaths would be relatively blood-free (again, due to strict regulations from the MPAA), one that would stand out would be that of Julius (V.C. Dupree), undefeated high school boxing champion who, tired of running, faces off against Jason on top of a building in a rough neighbourhood of New York. With bloody knuckles and gasping for breath, Julius in unable to fight Jason any longer and challenges him to punch him back. In one swing, Jason sends Julius’ head from his shoulders, down the side of the building and into a dumpster in the street below. Showcasing his sick sense of humour, Jason later left Julius’ head on the dashboard of a police car as the other students attempt to escape.

JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY (1993) – Deborah (Michelle Clunie)
With Paramount having eventually sold the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise to rival studio New Line Cinema (the home of A Nightmare on Elm Street), the series received a makeover in 1993 with Adam Marcus’ Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Ostensibly a rip-off of Jack Sholder’s 1987 science fiction thriller The Hidden (also distributed by New Line), the movie boasted impressive special effects by the always reliable KNB EFX, although predictably these would be heavily censored for the theatrical print. Thankfully, Marcus’ original cut was later released on video and featured in all its glory the murders of horny young campers Deborah (Michelle Clunie) and Luke (Michael B. Silver). With their friend Alexis (Kathryn Atwood) having allowed them to keep the tent for the night whilst she sleeps outside, the couple had begun to make out before moving onto sex, whilst a coroner (Richard Gant) from a hospital who has been possessed by the spirit of Jason appears at the tent, thrusting his weapon through the material and into Deborah’s stomach, before violently thrusting it upwards, tearing her torso in two.

JASON X (2001) – Adrienne (Kristi Angus)
With the regular setting of Camp Crystal Lake having grown stale over several installments, filmmakers had been forced to try new locations in which Jason could continue his bloodbath. New York had failed to impress the fans and so the makers of Jason X, in a last attempt to rejuvenate the formula, sent their antagonist into twenty-fifth century deep space. This new science fiction location would allow for an array of possibilities; some of which would be exploited, whilst others were sadly neglected. The film’s best death would go to scientist Adrienne (Kristi Angus), who is given the responsibility of performing an autopsy on the recently thawed out Jason (Kane Hodder), whose body was found in an abandoned space station. Whilst distracted, Adrienne is unaware that Jason has awoken behind her and grabs her by her hair, forcing her face-first into a sink filled with liquid nitrogen, causing her head to immediately freeze. Removing her and looking at his handiwork, Jason would smash her head against the work surface, shattering her face, before tossing her corpse aside.

FREDDY VS. JASON (2003) – Trey (Jesse Hutch)
Freddy vs. Jason had been fifteen years in the making, pitching the villains from the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises against each other in a fight to the death. Having gone through numerous writers and directors, the task of bringing the concept to the big screen fell to Ronny Yu, who had previously given the Child’s Play series a postmodern makeover with 1998′s Bride of Chucky. The story that was eventually selected saw both antagonists trapped in the bowels of Hell, with Freddy desperate to escape so he can continue his killing spree at his old stomping ground, Elm Street. Allowing Jason (Ken Kirzinger) to escape Hell, he lures him to Elm Street in an effort to evoke enough fear in the town’s teenagers so that he will be able to break free from his restraints and control the dream world once again. Jason makes his way to the former home of Lt. Donald Thompson and his daughter, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), a house which Freddy is strangely drawn to time and time again. Finding a group of teens partying without the supervision of parents, Jason appears over the bed of obnoxious jock Trey (Jesse Hutch) and begins to butcher him with his machete to the point that the bed breaks in half, crushing Trey’s lifeless body.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009) – Nolan (Ryan Hansen)
Having made a suitable impression on the executives at New Line with their script for Freddy vs. Jason, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift were given the task of resurrecting the Friday the 13th franchise for Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes (previously responsible for the all-style-no-substance remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hitcher). Taking elements from the first four movies, arguably favourites among fans, the reboot saw Jason (Derek Mears) reinvented as a hunter, who kidnaps a young woman (Amanda Righetti) who resembles his dead mother, prompting the girl’s brother (Jared Padalecki) to head out to Crystal Lake in search of her. Whilst the characterisation would be lacking, even for a slasher film, and the acting would be subpar (with the exception of Mears and Danielle Panabaker, the film’s only truly sympathetic character), some of the murders would be gruesome enough to delight fans of the series. The most memorable of which was the death of Nolan (Ryan Hansen) who, whilst out on the lake with his girlfriend (Willa Ford), is suddenly shot in the head by an arrow.

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.

Director: Joseph Zito
Writers: Barry Cohen, Bruce Hidemi Sakow
Starring: Kimberly Beck, Peter Barton, Corey Feldman, E. Erich Anderson, Crispin Glover, Alan Hayes, Barbara Howard
Producer: Frank Mancuso Jr.
Music: Harry Manfredini
Special Makeup Effects: Tom Savini

Although Friday the 13th Part 3 had proved to be yet another box office success for Paramount Pictures, the slasher boom had already begun to show signs of slowing down, with 1983 producing far fewer efforts than the previous year. With the exception of The House on Sorority Row and Sleepaway Camp, it seemed that interest in the so-called slice-and-dice or ‘dead teenager’ flicks had waned, prompting the studio to make the decision that the Friday the 13th franchise should finally come to an end. With director Steve Miner declining the chance to return for a third movie, the producers were forced to search elsewhere for a filmmaker who could give Jason Voorhees a suitable swan song. Joseph Zito had initially studied psychology and economics at New York’s City College, where his interest turned to producing short films with money borrowed from close friends. Taking a production reel to the Cannes Film Festival in France, Zito made the acquaintance of a man called Carl Kaminsky, who upon returning to the United States introduced him to two of his clients. The first meeting would lead to Zito’s breakthrough movie, the stylish 1981 slasher The Prowler, which would become notorious due to the extremely graphic special effects from Friday the 13th‘s Tom Savini.

Another of the clients that Zito had spoken to was Phil Scuderi, who had been involved with the Friday the 13th franchise since the very beginning. Zito was promised that if Friday the 13th Part 3 was a hit then he would be hired to direct the next sequel. True to his word, once the box office takings were tallied and it became obvious that another installment was in demand Zito was offered the movie. Determined to not only remain faithful to the fans but also add a new element that would keep the formula fresh, Zito watched all three of the previous films and began developing a story with the assistance of Bruce Hidemi Sakow, an alumni of NYU who had worked on a script with Zito entitled Quarantine. Zito had proposed several elements that were considered suicide for a low budget feature: to set the story at night, in the rain and to feature a young child as the protagonist. With the story slowly taking shape, Zito then contacted a young screenwriter called Barney Cohen, a former copywriter who would work extensively on the script with Zito in a small apartment in New York. With Zito having initially been hired as both a director and writer, only to bring Cohen on board to develop the script, Zito was forced to pay his collaborator out of his own salary.

With Zito having been informed by the studio that this was to be the last Friday the 13th he decided that the whole story should revolve around the death of Jason, even opening with his corpse after being killed off at the end of the third film. Despite this, he instructed Cohen that his focus when writing was not the graphic murders but the development of the characters, which would be the complete opposite to the priorities of the writers of Part 3. This being Jason’s final showdown, however, Zito knew that the gore had to be plentiful, particularly after the relatively blood-free second installment and the 3-D gimmick of the third. Zito was determined to bring back Savini to kill Jason once and for all, having played a significant role in the birth of the character, only to decline the chance to return for the previous sequels. But Paramount had already hired renowned special effects artist Greg Cannom, who had first begun as an assistant to Rick Baker on such classics as The Howling and Michael Jackson’s acclaim music video Thriller.

With Cannom eventually out of the picture, Savini – who at that time had been working on a haunted house in North Carolina after a string of popular gore movies such as Creepshow and Alone in the Dark – made his way down to the set and began to design the various gags that would be required for what was intended as Jason’s last bloodbath. Assisting Savini in the proceeds was an army of up-and-coming artists that included Kevin Yagher and John Vulich, the latter of which would continue to work with Savini on Day of the Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. With the story’s protagonist, a young boy called Tommy Jarvis, being a make-up and special effects enthusiast, the character’s bedroom would be filled with various masks and props taken from the workshop of Savini and his collaborators. Amongst the various graphic set pieces that the crew would create for what would become Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter were the throat-slitting and head-twisting of an arrogant orderly, the face-crushing of a horny young teen and Jason’s own demise, which would result from Tommy driving a machete into his face, causing his head to slowly slide down the blade.

Unlike Part 3, the group of young actors that would make up the cast of The Final Chapter would include several rising stars who would later enjoy various degrees of success. The role of Tommy would go to twelve-year old Corey Feldman, who would ultimately become one of the biggest teen stars of the 1980s with roles in Gremlins, The Goonies, Stand by Me and The Lost Boys. The Final Chapter‘s ‘final girl’ and older sister of Tommy, Trish Jarvis, would be played by Kimberly Beck, who was fifteen years older than her co-star. The Californian native had relocated with her mother and stepfather, Tommy Leonetti, to Australia when she was eleven, where she would enjoy a minor hit with the duet Let’s Take a Walk, before moving back to America four years later. Having been picked up by Universal, Beck would enjoy a two-year stint on a soap opera called Capitol and, having recently split from her husband, was desperate for work and reluctantly auditioned for the lead in The Final Chapter.

Peter Barton had already enjoyed being a teen sensation and had been featured on countless magazine covers. Having lost interest in his newfound celebrity status, Barton considered retiring from the industry when he reluctantly accepted a part in Tom DeSimone’s gothic slasher Hell Night, which was released in 1981 to modest success. Prior to auditioning for The Final Chapter, Barton had landed the title role in the TV series The Powers of Matthew Star and was convinced by co-star Amy Steel (who had portrayed the heroine in Friday the 13th Part 2) to audition for The Final Chapter. Another young star who was less than enthusiastic about appearing in the movie was Barbara Howard, who had recently moved from Chicago to Los Angeles and had read for a role in The Final Chapter at the insistence of her agent. Arguably the most important piece of casting was that of Jason, who had become something of an iconic symbol after the innovation of the hockey mask in Part 3. The role eventually went to veteran stuntman Ted White, whose impressive résumé had seen him work as a stunt double for screen legends John Wayne, Clark Gable and Rock Hudson.

Principal photography on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter commenced around Halloween 1983, with the majority of the filming taking place in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. Intending on continuing the story from the final moments of Part 3, Zito returned to the location where Miner had shot the third movie to film a sequence in which Jason’s body and the corpses of his victims are taken away by ambulances to the local hospital. This scene would be achieved by a steadicam operator being lowered down on a crane and then walking slowly through the action to the site of the massacre in one shot without cutting away. Awakening later in the morgue of the hospital, Jason returns to the lake where he finds a summer house full of teenagers that he begins to slaughter one-by-one. Adopting the method acting approach, White would remain in Jason make-up and away from his co-stars throughout the duration of filming in order to draw an authentic reaction from the young cast.

Unlike the second sequel, The Final Chapter would feature a fair amount of nudity, most notably from nineteen-year old Judie Aronson, who would be murdered by Jason whilst skinny-dipping. Having protested against Zito about appearing full frontal, Aronson had reluctantly agreed to go topless on screen, although the unpleasant sequence would see the young actress standing in freezing cold water wearing only a wet suit from the waist down to create the illusion that she was nude. Disgusted with the conditions which Zito was forcing his young cast to work under, White became frustrated with his director and protested against Aronson having to act naked in cold waters for long periods of time. Despite his young age, White would praise Feldman’s performance in the movie, although he would later admit that he found the child very annoying during filming. Feldman would later reprise the role of Tommy for the opening sequence of the inevitable sequel Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, released the following year.

Post-production on The Final Chapter would be completed in record time due to an impending release date, with Zito cutting the movie whilst producer Frank Mancuso Jr. created a montage made up of footage from the previous films for the opening sequence (much to the disapproval of the director). Resident composer Harry Manfredini would once again return to the series, although the majority of the score consisted of material taken from the first three Friday movies. Released by Paramount Pictures on April 13th 1984, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter matched the success of its predecessor, earning over $11m on its opening weekend and eventually taking a US total of almost $33m. Although fairing better than Part 3, The Final Chapter would do little to convince critics that the slasher film had not past its prime, although Paramount soon began to regret killing off their franchise so successfully.

Further reading -
- CRYSTAL LAKE’S BLOODY LEGACY pt.1 – Friday the 13th (1980)
- CRYSTAL LAKE’S BLOODY LEGACY pt.2 – Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
- CRYSTAL LAKE’S BLOODY LEGACY pt.3 – Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)

Pictured below are the two axes in the discussion. Mario from the Friday the 13th Props Museum was nice enough to share pictures of these axes for fans to see. The axe on the left of the main pic is made of rubber and was used to swing at Susan Jennifer Sullivan (Melissa) by Kane Hodder in The New Blood. The axe on the right of the main pic was used in two different instances, to our knowledge. The first film it is believed to be the axe that is attached to Jason’s head in Friday the 13th Part 3 after Chris embeds it in his head and mask. The second film it is used in is The Final Chapter towards the beginning when the cops are placing the axe in the evidence bag.

We have examined these axes and a very strong case can be made that both of these axes were created from the same mold! There are very distinguishing marks on the pieces that Mario and I have seen that are not displayed in the photo above that make a compelling case. As of right now, it can be said that the same axe that killed Jason, killed Melissa!

We are in the process of verfying this information with members of the production crew, but what an unintended and spectacular find to see that the two axes from the very same mold were used throughout multiple Friday the 13th films!

 Sometimes, however, the discovery of a body just does not make any sense. This can be from a logistical standpoint of where a body is placed to how a body can be triggered to fall or appear at just the right moment when a final character is passing by. Such a moment happens in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. After Rob is attacked in the basement of the party house, Trish runs up the stairs of the basement and tries to run out the front door. Her attempt is thwarted by the discovery of party twin Tina’s dead body at the foot of the doorway outside.

The question is this, how did Jason move Tina’s body to the doorway outside of the house, when Trish and Rob walked through the doorway to enter the house minutes before and Jason was in the basement turning the power off to the house and waiting for Rob to come downstairs?

The images that we showed at the time were mind blowing as it was indeed like looking at Jason from the movie. James’ work prompted me to do so something I very rarely do, and that is purchase a bust depicting Jason from the films. I am not disappointed in the least with the work and wanted to show what James has created. Kudos to him for putting his life into this project!