The Spotlight: Jason Voorhees

I have a big sleeve full of tattoos. Some of you already know this about me. I have it top to bottom with all my favorite “wise men” from film: Obi-Wan, Yoda and Gandalf, to Doc Brown, Mr. Miyagi, Mickey Goldmill, and Willy Wonka… and a few others. It’s all over the place. What you might NOT know… is that I have a secret tattoo, underneath my arm near my armpit. It’s not a movie wise man. It’s a BAD GUY.

I wanted to keep it a secret to the casual viewer of my sleeve. Call it the fact that I’m actually always rooting for the villain, or just my love for the darker, deeper characters in film. I’m a peaceful guy–don’t be confused–but when I have a hard week of work, sometime I want to watch some athletes slug it out in a UFC cage, other times, I want to watch Jason Voorhees go berserk in the woods of Crystal Lake Camp.

In any case, about the tattoo, I wanted to think of who was truly the most evil. I thought it over good and long, and at the end of the day, all the contenders with the darkest plans, the most evil dialogue, the most sinister gaze… but they all fell to the king.

The king of Crystal Lake. Jason Voorhees, friends, that’s right, the one, the ONLY. Here is a villain that truly defines evil. Drowned in a lake while the teenaged camp counselors were busy getting into some funny business (coughsexcough).

Jason drowned, a few years went by, and his Mom slaughtered eeeeeeverybody. Well you know, all but one, amiright? Jason arrives on the scene in Friday the 13th Part II. He is just like a man who lives in the woods in this film; it’s not until a little later in the story when he begins to go beyond the limitations of a typical human, one that lives and dies the way the rest of us do.

Jason gets more and more savage as the films go by. He just wants to kill everybody, doesn’t even matter who or why. He’s a legend, a legendary killer. Sex, drugs, gloom, and doom, that’s the Voorhees legacy.

We see him continuously go after camp counselors and teens in general. Sometimes adults get wrapped up in things, too.
 Doesn’t much matter, nobody is getting away or anything. He kills ’em all. How does he do it? Geeze, how doesn’t he?

Chainsaws, pipes, machetes, knives, barbed wire, broken glass shivs, hooks, hmmm—oh, FIRE, WATER, his bare hands, often, too! There is nothing stopping Jason. He transcends terror and ferocity, and all without ever opening his mouth. He has no fears and nothing can conquer him, not even death.

We see him shot, stabbed, burned, drowned, blown up, hanged, run over, electrocuted… did I say drowned? Drowned A LOT. Doesn’t matter. Oooh, frozen too, and forgotten. Doesn’t matter, though. Nothing takes, nothing can stop Jason Voorhees. He’s barely human, maybe superhuman is the right term. He’s beyond a Hannibal Lector or Bill the Butcher. Both Michael Myers and Leatherface feel pain. Even the shark from Jaws had a weakness. Not Jason. Nothing stops him. None of those methods. Not even Freddy Krueger could take him down. (Skip to 6:00 minutes for Jason’s ass kicking performance… or don’t, whatever).

Horror movies shock us, and scare us, they make us peek through our fingers to see if it’s over yet. In one way shape or form… I think they ALL want to be Jason Voorhees movies. You know that scene where a girl is calling out for her boyfriend at the lake house? “Tommy? is that you? I know it’s you, so just come out?” Right. That line is uttered in almost every one of the films, maybe Tommy, maybe Billy, maybe it doesn’t matter, ‘cause he’s dead, and she’s about to get it, too.

These movies didn’t invent the genre or anything (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did) but Friday the 13th is in my humble opinion, the finest of the slasher series. I like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw, I love Halloween, and so on… but Friday the 13th is atop my list and that’s just all there is too it. Jason Voorhees is the perfect killing machine. He’s scarier than Alien, tougher than Terminator, A better killer than Predator. If you dropped Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Chucky, and Pinhead into a pit, with Jason… at the end he’d be sitting on top of a pile of their bodies eating an ice cream sundae. No sweat.

Friday the 13th first arrived in 1980, that was a loooong time ago, and we are still celebrating his madness and killing spree with new media. The last film came out in 2009, but he showed up in Mortal Kombat in 2016, and got his own awesome video game in 2017 (not to throw shade at the creepy 1989 Nintendo console version with it’s simulated sundown followed by getting lost and slaughtered in the woods surrounding Camp Crystal Lake… did ANYONE ever beat that game??? -editor)

Jason Lives, what else is there to say?

Lots of horror movies have ripped things like this from Jason and his saga. How about the music suggesting the character on screen is about to get stabbed, then they quickly open a door, or a curtain or jump around a corner… and it’s nothing, the music subsides. They turn around and boom… THEN they get it. That’s all Jason. I could go on and on; I won’t, though. Jason is the epitome of evil. My personal favorites are Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Lives (he’s totally brutal in this one), and the 2009 re-imagining simply titled Friday the 13th. It’s not for the weak of stomach, either.

Author: Peter

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