Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!! Today is dedicated to another one of my favorite horror films, Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter! Although I absolutely love this bloody and brutal sequel, I’m very happy that it wasn’t really the end of my guy, Jason Voorhees. So, watch who you skinny dip around, beware of Dead F**ks, and enjoy these fun pictures and bits of trivia!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com and IMDb.com)

(WARNING! GRAPHIC SPECIAL EFFECTS!!)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• The strange dance that Jimmy performed at the party scene was completely improvised by Crispin Glover. It was based on the eccentric way he danced in clubs. On the set, they played Back In Black by AC/DC for the scene. Then they dubbed an edited version of Love Is A Lie by Lion for the final product.
• Being 58 at the time, Ted White was the oldest actor/stuntman to portray Jason Voorhees in the whole franchise.

• Nurse Morgan’s (Lisa Freeman) name tag reads “R. Morgan, RN.” This is an homage to Robbi Morgan who played Annie in the original Friday The 13th.
• Ted White didn’t want to diminish the other cast members’ fear of Jason, so he intentionally refused to talk to them or socialize with them during production.

• The film’s writer, Barney Cohen originally wrote a scene that involved Jason fondling Trish’s (Kimberly Beck) breasts. Luckily, the producers vetoed it. The film’s director, Joseph Zito also disliked the scene because he felt it made Jason too human and less menacing.
• In one scene, Rob (Erich Anderson) explains to Trish that Jason killed his sister Sandra. Sandra was indeed one of Jason’s victims in Friday The 13th: Part 2.

• After directing The Prowler, the producers wanted Joseph Zito to write AND direct this film. They offered him double the pay and he used the extra salary to hire Barney Cohen to kind of secretly write the script. For their process, Zito would take nightly one-hour calls with Phil Scuderi to discuss the story and script. Then the next day, Zito would meet Cohen in an apartment in New York to relay the notes and ideas Scuderi had offered. Then they would turn those into new script pages to be sent later that day to Scuderi in Boston, which would be discussed again over the phone that night.
• The workout video that Axel watches is called Aerobicise. It stars Darcy DeMoss, who went on to play Nikki in Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

• The moment where Jason’s hand moves in the morgue was done by Ted White AFTER Joseph Zito called cut. However, the camera was still rolling and it caught the moment and they decided to include it in the film.
• Joseph Zito was originally opposed to using clips from the previous installments at the beginning of film.

• It’s speculated that Tom Savini returned to do the makeup effects on this film so he could accurately age and properly kill the character he created from the first film.
• Ted White originally wanted to be uncredited as Jason Voorhees because he felt this film would hurt his career. Years later, he grew to accept his role and he even started appearing at horror conventions.

• Ted White and Tom Savini were initially very confrontational with each other. The two later became friends after White learned that Savini had experience with stunt work.
• Camilla More (Tina) originally read for the role of Samantha (Judie Aronson). She was very nervous about the role requiring full nudity and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it. The filmmakers stopped her in the middle of her reading after they saw on her resume that she had an identical twin sister, Carey (Terri). They told her that if her sister agreed to join the film, then they’d cast both of them. Then the sisters learned that these new characters would ALSO have full frontal nudity. Camilla was still hesitant, but Carey had no problem with doing it. Camilla admitted that if her sister wasn’t there, there was no way she would’ve been brave enough to strip naked and swim in front of a mostly male crew.

• During filming, Kimberly Beck experienced strange occurrences. There was a man who watched her while she ran in the park and she also got strange phone calls at all hours. Oddly enough, this all stopped when production was over.
• It is played for humor throughout the film that young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) is suddenly surrounded by horny teenagers renting a cabin he can see into from his own house. The reality is since the actors and actresses were going to actually be nude, they shielded Corey Feldman from a lot of it, using tricky editing when necessary. Feldman later admitted that in the scene where Samantha bent down to pet the Jarvis’ dog, he could see down Judie Aronson’s shirt.

• Barbara Howard (Sara) was willing to wear a bra and panties for one scene, but she put her foot down on appearing nude for the film. So, for her nude shower sex scene, the producers hired Robyn Wood to be her body double.
• Instead of making masks, Tommy was originally going to be an inventor. One of his projects would’ve been a device made from a microwave oven, which he would’ve used later to kill Jason. It’s speculated that they changed him to be a mask maker as an homage to Tom Savini.

• Rob was originally going to have high-tech equipment that he used to track Jason. However, the props they had looked too cheap, so they scrapped the whole idea.
• Amy Steel was the one who talked Peter Barton (Doug) into doing the film. Barton hated working on Hell Night prior, and he wanted no part of horror films again. Amy Steel convinced him, selling him on the notoriety of starring in the final Friday The 13th film.

• The skinny dipping scene was originally longer. After Tommy chased Gordon to the skinny dippers, Samantha was going to step out of the lake fully nude and playfully ask Tommy what he’s looking at, before Trish shows up and turns him away. The film’s producer, Frank Mancuso Jr. rightfully believed the scene was too much and they cut that part.
• Joseph Zito wanted Jason’s hockey mask to explode apart in the opening credits, but they didn’t have enough time to do it in post-production.

• Judie Aronson was nervous about being nude in the film, but she quickly accepted the offer to be in the film after 2 acting jobs fell through before. She was let go from one film because they didn’t want to catch flack for hiring a Non-Hispanic actress to play a Hispanic character and she refused to change her name to sound more Hispanic. The second film already replaced her after she turned them down the first time.
• Bonnie Hellman’s agents told her about the hitchhiker role in this film, saying that she would not want to do it since her character wouldn’t have any lines. She ended up taking the role anyway.

• The black and white film that Ted (Lawrence Monoson) watches while getting stoned is an actual film from 1928 called Betty’s Bath.
• The Final Chapter was actually going to be a prequel that was going to feature Pamela Voorhees in a custody battle with her ex-husband for their son, Jason. The first draft of the script was 160 pages long. However, producers felt it was too dark for the franchise.

• This is the second film in the franchise to include male nudity, not just female nudity.
• Kimberly Beck admitted that she doesn’t like the horror genre. She doesn’t consider this film a B-Movie, but rather a C-Movie.

• In the original draft of the script, the hitchhiker was named Blubbery Girl.
• While they play mother and daughter in the film, Kimberly Beck was only 14 years younger than Joan Freeman (Mrs. Jarvis).

• The Jarvis family sandwich hug was based on a group hug that Barney Cohen’s family did.
• This was Joan Freeman’s final film. She stuck with only TV appearances after this.

• The film’s cinematographer, João Fernandes originally intended on being credited under his pseudonym “Raoul Lomas.” He previously used his real name when he photographed and appeared in pornography early in his career. Producers of many mainstream projects refused to let him be credited under his real name because of this. When one of the producers of this film asked him why he wanted his check under “Lomas,” Fernandes explained the situation. They assured him that they didn’t care about his past and they were happy for him to use his real name.
• This sequel confirmed that Jason’s mother’s first name was Pamela. She was only known as Mrs. Voorhees in the previous installments.

• Gordon’s bark was the same one used for Pongo and Perdetta in the 1961 One Hundred And One Dalmatians film.
• As per series tradition, Jason Voorhees was played by a professional stuntman. In this film, he was played by Ted White, who previously did stunt work for Clark Gable and John Wayne.

• Ted White didn’t like Corey Feldman at all. He considered him “the meanest g*****n little kid” he ever met. When it came to filming the window crash, White got to act out his frustrations. White waited a couple of beats after he was supposed to crash through the window and grab Feldman. When nothing was happening, Feldman initially assumed the stunt went wrong. As soon as Feldman let his guard down, White crashed through and grabbed him, making Feldman’s screams of horror completely authentic.
• Corey Feldman stated that his bratty attitude on set was due to poor treatment by Joseph Zito. During the final scene where Tommy hits Jason repeatedly with the machete, Feldman was pretending that the sandbags he was striking were Zito.

• Because of the film’s low budget, several of the actors were forced to perform uncomfortable or dangerous stunts. After Peter Barton was actually slammed into the shower wall, Ted White insisted that Barton be allowed to use a crash pad for the scene. Judie Aronson was required to remain submerged in a lake in near freezing temperatures. Ted White threatened to quit because Joseph Zito wouldn’t allow Aronson to get out of the lake between takes. It was so cold that Aronson eventually broke down and cried and she got hypothermia. White and Zito’s combative relationship was one of the reasons White demanded not to have his name in the credits.
• Joseph Zito based Rob’s death scene on the murder of Kitty Genovese. The article that he read claimed that 38 neighbors heard her scream, “Oh, my God! He’s stabbing me! He’s killing me!” Zito worked that into Rob’s dialogue as Jason is killing him. Zito intended for the moment to be gut-wrenching, as Rob had been established as a capable opponent for Jason. During screenings of the film, Zito realized the moment made Rob look pathetic and weak, rather than making Jason look merciless. The scene often caused audiences to burst out in laughter.

• In the original script, Tommy was supposed to completely decapitate Jason. The filmmakers decided to change this just in case they would want to bring Jason back again.
• The poster for the film shows Jason’s mask with a knife stabbing its left eye socket. This is a spoiler as Jason was stabbed in his left eye in the film.

• Wanting to do a little method acting for this film, Lawrence Monoson decided that since his character is stoned when he dies, he would try smoking real weed for the scene. However, this plan backfired as he had a lot of difficulty concentrating on filming in his intoxicated state.
• Jason’s head sliding down the machete was accomplished using a hand puppet controlled by Tom Savini.

• This is the first film in the franchise where Jason doesn’t kill anyone with his machete.
• Corey Feldman wore a skullcap to create the illusion that Tommy shaved his head.