﻿Hey everyone, I’m Andrew,
and on this super spooky special episode of Yellow Spandex,
we’re looking at the fearsome fashion icon from Friday the 13th.
This is
The Evolution of Jason Voorhees
Jason’s grisly glow up cemented him as a slasher icon,
but it took him a few movies to find his style.
Let’s start with his
Formative Fashion
Outside of the legendary final jump scare,
we don’t see much of Jason in the first ‘Friday,’
but the basic design by horror legend Tom Savini would inform Jason’s look for the rest of the series:
A bulbous, bald head,
and a facial deformity that makes his eye droop down towards his cheek.
Jason takes center stage in ‘Part 2,’
where he wore his best overalls and flannel for his big-time debut,
and covered up his head with a burlap sack that only had one hole for his good eye.
Damn. I can't see crap out of this thing!
Under the hood,
our first glimpse of adult Jason is more ‘rampaging redneck’ than ‘rage fueled revenant,’
with jacked up teeth, scraggly red hair, and a copious neckbeard.
When it came time for the third film,
Jason made three huge changes to his aesthetic that would last for the rest of the series:
He lost his wispy ginger locks,
stole a dark green work shirt and grey pants,
and acquired his iconic hockey mask courtesy of prankster Shelby Finkelstein.
Show me Shelby Finkelstein!
Stop foolin' around, man!!
There’s no in-story reasoning why Jason likes to dress up as a goalie,
and behind the scenes, the mask was just sort of a happy accident.
During a routine lighting test, the crew needed to cover up the Jason actor’s face,
and the 3D supervisor just happened to be a huge hockey fan.
And I must admit, in modesty, that I put the hockey mask on Jason.
He had an old Detroit Red Wings goalie mask handy,
but it was a little too small,
so they used a VacuForm mold to cast a bigger, badder replica,
and lo, a legend was born.
Who are you?!
In ‘Part 4,’ Jason’s outfit is more or less identical to ‘Part 3,’
only with a nasty crack in his mask courtesy of an axe to the face,
a detail that will remain constant throughout the series.
One thing that’s never really consistent, though, is how Jason looks when he inevitably gets unmasked.
Part 3’s Jason had a face only a mother could love,
but it’s nowhere near the monster we’d expect him to be,
so Tom Savini returned to update his original vision for a grown-up Jason in what was supposed to be his last appearance.
But that ain't how Hollywood works, baby
‘Part 4’ was billed as the ‘The Final Chapter,’
and it was the last time we’d see a living, breathing, human Jason in the original series.
But Mama Voorhees demanded more blood,
so for the back half of the ‘Friday’ franchise,
Jason was revived as an indestructible force hellbent on destruction,
during
The Zombie Years
But before we start raising the dead,
we should address the black sheep of the franchise:
'A New Beginning,’ and its Jason wannabe, Roy Burns.
I’ll give the producers credit for sticking to their guns with the whole ‘Final Chapter’ thing,
and I actually kind of like the jumpsuit and blue chevrons on his mask,
but Roy was a poor substitute for Crystal Lake’s favorite son.
When the real deal finally returned in ‘Jason Lives’
he’s still wearing the same clothes he stole in Part 3,
That's continuity baby! Callbacks!
just tattered and rotted after spending the last few years six feet under.
Jason upgrades his gear with a nifty utility belt to hold all of implements of murder,
like some kind of messed up Batman.
I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman!
And some yellow gloves to hold his sliced-in-half hand together.
Beneath the mask, Jason’s body is a writhing mess of worms and maggots,
that you never saw coming.
And while we don’t get a full view of his face,
when we see it in ‘The New Blood,’
Jason is revealed as a rotting, monstrous ghoul with decaying flesh and exposed bone.
Gosh darn, he's ugly! Time to start they dayyy!
This was fan-favorite Kane Hodder’s first appearance as Jason,
and he wore basically the same outfit as ‘Jason Lives,’
plus some gnarly chains used to sink him to the bottom of Crystal Lake.
Real heavy metal stuff.
But the real innovation of ‘The New Blood’ was how well it sold the beatings Jason has taken throughout the years.
On top of the trademark axe crack,
the lower part of his mask is still broken away after making out with a boat propeller in ‘Part 6,’
and you can actually see his spine and rib cage poking through his skin after years of death and destruction.
The continuity nods are appreciated,
but ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ pretty much throws it out the window.
For one thing, his outfit has magically repaired itself,
only now it’s inexplicably dripping wet wherever he goes.
Also, after his original mask was destroyed at the end of ‘New Blood,’
Jason finds a new one that conveniently has the exact same axe wound from 'Part 3.'
It’s a very cool look,
although the unmasking scene was a little underwhelming,
considering his face was being melted by toxic waste at the time.
You hate to see it.
Maybe that’s why he’s so jacked up at the beginning of ‘Jason Goes to Hell,’
just a big, bloated monstrosity that doesn’t even come close to looking like a human,
with his mask, or what’s left of it, permanently embedded in his face,
Of course, he doesn’t stay in this body for long.
After the FBI blows him away in the most brilliant sting since Goodfellas,
Buh bye, doodyhead!
See you in Attica, jerk!
Jason spends most of the movie as a wriggling little worm monster.
‘Jason Goes to Hell’ was subtitled ‘The Final Friday,’
but it’s hard to keep a good slasher down.
Plus, they couldn't get Chris Tucker and Ice Cube to sign off on it.
I know you don't smoke weed. I know this. But I'm gonna get you high today.
Because it's Friday, you ain't got no job, and you ain't got crap to do!
Still, this was the end of the “classic” era,
and Jason would never look quite so cool again.
We’ve entered
The Dork Age
Nearly a decade after the Final Friday,
Jason joined the ranks of Pinhead, the Leprechaun, Homer Simpson,
and other pop culture icons who’ve been blasted into space.
‘Jason X’ added a tan jacket, fingerless gloves and little tufts of hair to his earthbound attire,
along with a brand new mask that’s more angular than the smooth curves we’re used to.
I hate it.
Of course, the real makeover came courtesy of some nanomachines,
that upgraded the titular killer into a gleaming metal cyborg, as if he wasn't scary enough already.
What the hell is going on?
Jason freakin' Voorhees, that's what's going on!
Uber Jason was… Fine, I guess,
but he just doesn’t feel like Jason.
He looks like Lord Zedd crossed with a Doctor Who villain,
and even the concept art looks like something I’d see on DeviantArt in 2003.
Sadly, this was Kane Hodder’s final appearance under the mask.
For ‘Freddy vs. Jason,’
the producers allegedly wanted an actor who would tower over the diminutive master of dreams,
so they replaced Hodder with Ken Kirzinger,
who was a whopping two inches taller.
Invite only, cornpoke! You weren't--
Son of a gun...
Jason kept things casual for his big crossover,
with a bulky brown coat over a torn grey sweatshirt,
and the mask is back to the classic design, with one huge exception:
For the first time since Part 3, the axe crack has completely disappeared.
I wonder how many hours it took for them to achieve that?
Is this blatant disrespect for series canon the reason it was rebooted in 2009?
All I can say is “probably.”
Jason in the ‘Friday the 13th’ remake still isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer,
but this version shows off a lot more intelligence than his berzerker counterpart.
He can shoot arrows, build traps, and apparently sew,
since he’s wearing a stitched together coat that’s half military, half hunting jacket.
The mask was reportedly cast from the same mold used for 'Part 3,'
and underneath, the crew developed their most extensive makeup yet.
Jason’s face combines the hairy hillbilly look from 'Part 2,'
with Savini’s definitive look from ‘The Final Chapter,’
and incorporates a full upper body prosthesis that gives him a thick, veiny neck,
and a hump on his back for whatever reason.
Probably to put water or some snacks in.
The remake is sort of a ‘Jason’s Greatest Hits,’
showing his evolution from a bullied little kid,
to the classic burlap sack,
and finally the full-on hockey mask.
It’s a decent enough tribute,
but that’s nothing compared to the love poured into ‘Friday the 13th: The Game.’
The game itself might have been janky as heck,
but you can’t deny the developers diehard love for the series.
It had gruesomely detailed skins for nearly every iteration of the Crystal Lake Killer,
even the weird purple and green color scheme from the NES game,
which is my personal favorite,
and a hellacious new design dreamed up by Tom Savini.
Sadly, legal squabbles over the rights have put the future of the game,
and the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise as a whole in jeopardy.
Legal squabbles. The worst monster of them all.
But if we know anything about Jason Voorhees,
it’s that he’s damn hard to kill.