Jason Voorhees

Jason Voorhees is the creation of Sean S. Cunningham, Victor Miller, Ron Kurz and Tom Savini. He first appeared in Friday the 13th as the young son of killer Pamela Voorhees providing the motivation for her murder spree as he was bullied and drowned at Camp Crystal lake while the counsellors who should have been watching out for him were getting drunk and partying. He was never intended to be the killer himself.

In Friday the 13th 2 Jason becomes the killer although he doesn't pick up his trade mark hockey mask until part 3 in the series. He is similar to Michael Myers in that he stalks around slowly, he doesn't speak and he likes to murder teens and then display the bodies. However Jason has a more obvious motivation for his actions, apart from his own bullying and apparent death in the first film he is also out for revenge for the murder of his mother. The discrepancy between Jason's bullying and death as a child and the hulking brute he has later become is never really explained.

Jason has been played by a variety of actors and often stuntmen, but Kane Hodder is perhaps the man most associated with the character as he played Jason in four of the films. Voorhees has changed over the years becoming an increasingly hideous monster and growing into a supernaturally strong immortal killing machine. The sequels came up with increasingly ridiculous ways to revive Jason although the best is undoubtedly in part 6 when Tommy digs up his corpse to make sure he is dead and sticks a metal fence post in him, lightning strikes the post and Jason is revived.

Perhaps because Jason started out as the victim he has always been a slightly more sympathetic character than his rivals Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. This idea was developed in Freddy vs Jason where Jason is definitely seen as the lesser of two evils. However Jason has accumulated a much higher body count throughout the Friday the 13th series than either of his rivals did in their own films.

Jason has been referenced in a variety of television programmes and movies including South Park and The Simpsons. In 1992 he was awarded the MTV Lifetime Achievement Award and he has spawned a ton of merchandising and literature. There´s little doubt he has become an American pop culture icon.

The franchise stretched on for too long with a total of 10 films before the crossover Freddy vs Jason. A remake of the original Friday the 13th is currently in production.

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