Thirteen Facts (13 facts on each F13)
Thirteen Facts
About Jason Goes To Hell - The Final Friday:
1. In early 1992, Fangoria magazine ran a short blurb mentioning that the three-years-dormant Friday the 13th franchise would at last be finished off with a New Line Cinema-distributed ninth installment that would present a supernatural explanation for Jason Voorhees and would hit screens on Friday, 13 November 1992.
2. The original script by Jay Huguely featured Jason's brother Elias as the killer and included backstory about Pamela Voorhees' involvement in the occult. It was decided, however, that Jason needed to be the focus of the film, and Dean Lorey was brought in to re-configure the storyline. Hence, the brother was jettisoned, and the first name Elias was assigned to Jason's father.
3. Those same script re-writes delayed the movie considerably. When shooting began in late July 1992, a press release announced the new release date as 13 August 1993. Although the makers briefly toyed with the idea of bumping up the release to Spring 1993, re-shoots prohibited that from happening, and for a time the release date was even pushed to 3 September 1993. Finally, the studio realized the salience of releasing the film on a calendar Friday the 13th, jiving with the fact that it was thirteen years after the original movie debuted and that its creator, Sean S. Cunningham was producing this one. So Jason finally went to Hell on Friday, 13 August 1993.
4. The camping scene with the ill-fated Luke, Deborah and Alexis, was not part of the original script. When test audiences in early 1993 complained about the lack of sex and teenaged characters, the scene was subsequently written and filmed during a new shoot. Now the film was complete, with an explicit sex scene taking place on the old Crystal Lake campgrounds, as well as the goriest murder sequence ever filmed for a Friday the 13th picture (the tent-stake halving of Deborah).
5. Headlining star John D. LeMay had coincidentally starred in Paramount's Friday the 13th television show as protagonist Ryan Dallion.
6. For the final edit, the character David (Jonathan Penner) and his murder were completely cut from the film. In bootleg prints, the character is dispatched by Deputy Josh (Andrew Bloch), who has been possessed by the Jason entity and who bashes David's head against a faucet.
7. The reason for Creighton Duke's (Steven Williams) incarceration at the Crystal Lake police station is rather vague. But in a deleted scene that explains his arrest, Duke is brought in, having been found standing over the empty morgue cabinet that had held Diana's (Erin Gray) body. What was he doing there? "Trying to steal the body, obviously," Duke explains irritably, "but you fucked up and let someone get to it before I could....if it's where I think it is, you're in a world of shit."
8. The shot of the possessed coroner (Richard Gant) passing in front of a mirrored surface that revealed Jason's form was accomplished through no post-production special effect. The camera was positioned at a specific angle so that when Gant passed by, the costumed Kane Hodder's movements from off-camera were reflected in the surface. Reportedly, it was done in one take.
9. As the film was always intended to be a finale to the series, one of the alternate titles considered was Friday the 13th: The Ninth Life Of Jason Voorhees. Another was Friday the 13th: Jason Goes To Hell until the makers decided to drop the Friday the 13th monicker altogether.
10. A soundtrack album for the movie was released on the Edel label, although it is currently out of print and was not easy to find while it was in print.
11. Jason Goes To Hell was the second-highest-grossing film during its opening weekend, right behind Rising Sun with Sean Connery.
12. Throughout Fangoria magazine's pre-release coverage of the film, the filmmakers repeatedly denied that Freddy Krueger would make an appearance in it, although they added that the long-rumored Freddy Vs. Jason movie would almost certainly happen. Cinefantastique magazine, however, did run a pre-release spoiler about Freddy's hand grabbing Jason's hockey mask at the conclusion of the film. Aggravatin'….
13. With a sum of $15,572,267 at the box-office, Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday was the highest-grossing domestic horror film released in 1993.
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