Friday The 13th: How Jason's Hockey Mask Changes In Each Movie
Friday the 13th’s slasher villain Jason Voorhees is best known for his iconic hockey mask, which has changed a lot through the years – here’s how. Back in 1980, and following the steps of John Carpenter’s Halloween, a new slasher movie was released, titled Friday the 13th, directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller. The movie marked the beginning of one of the most extensive and popular franchises in the horror genre, covering not only film but also novels, video games, and comic books.
Friday the 13th tells the story of Jason Voorhees, a kid born with hydrocephalus and mental disabilities and who was thus kept isolated from the world by his mother, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). When Pamela took him to Camp Crystal Lake with him, as she worked there as a cook, Jason drowned as no counselors were around, and thus the place had been haunted for years. When a new group of counselors arrives, they are brutally killed one by one, but the legend of Jason and the identity of the real killer soon take a turn, with Pamela revealed as the real villain.
Jason returned in Friday the 13th Part 2 now as a grown-up and ready to avenge his mother’s death and more, and he continued to be the antagonist of the franchise. Contrary to popular belief, Jason didn’t get his hockey mask right away, and it wasn’t until the third movie, appropriately titled Friday the 13th Part III that he started wearing it. Since then, the mask has gone through subtle but important changes and even went through a full makeover in Jason X with the “Cyber-Jason” or “Uber Jason” mask. Here’s how Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask has changed in each movie from the Friday the 13th franchise.
Although the hockey mask arrived until the next movie, Jason didn’t go out to kill with his face uncovered. Instead, he simply took a burlap bag, a piece of rope to keep it in place and cut out only one eyehole. Although this gave him a look similar to a scarecrow, it served its purpose of keeping his face covered while allowing him to move around and, most importantly, it didn’t block his view, and there’s something unsettling about it having only one eyehole.
During the first part of Friday the 13th Part III, Jason wore the same bag from the previous movie, but he later got his hands on the hockey mask he’s now known for. When the prankster of the group, Shelly (Larry Zerner), returned to the barn after pulling a joke on Vera (Catherine Parks) and she told him off, he was attacked by Jason off-screen, and the slasher took Shelly’s hockey mask and speargun, making them his own. The mask was white but dirty and worn, and had three red triangles – one above and between the eyes, and the others below each eye. As for the reason why the mask is a hockey one, it’s all thanks to 3D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff, who was a hockey fan and had some hockey gear on set, and after a lighting test with a Detroit Red Wings mask, director Steve Miner loved it and so a mask for Richard Brooker (who played Jason in this movie) was made.
At the end of Friday the 13th Part III, Jason is hit in the head with an axe, leaving a mark on the mask that was visible in the following movie, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Other changes to the mask are mostly due to Jason wearing it over and over again, and so the triangle above the eyes is now half worn off, and the blood shed due to the aforementioned head injury left a big stain on the mask.
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning saw a Jason imposter who couldn’t even get the mask right. This mask was rounder rather than oval, and instead of the red triangles, it had two blue ones below the eyes and pointing downward, and didn’t look as if it had been worn much, but it was dirty. The real Jason did appear but only in hallucinations, and even he got a slightly different mask, missing most of the scuff marks from the previous movie and with the axe mark magically clean and then with the bloodstain again, this time dripping down to the chin, as if it was fresh.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is the movie that marked a turning point in the franchise as it began to lean more on comedy than full-on horror, and to justify Jason’s return, he was made into a zombie. The mask also went through some changes, with it being dirty rather than scuffed, the axe mark being cleaner (both in terms of the bloodstain being gone and the cut itself), and the triangles below the eyes disappearing, instead having just the brow one.
The mask Jason wore in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was a lot dirtier and worn off than the previous one, with the axe mark going back to the pattern and length it had before and keeping only one red triangle (again, the one above and between the eyes). Due to an encounter with a motorboat, the left lower side of the mask was destroyed, revealing part of Jason’s disfigured face.
For Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, the famous slasher got another mask, similar to that of the third movie but with some slight changes. This one had a yellowish tint and the nose had some marks showing how much he had been wearing it, and it got all its triangles back, though the ones below the eyes were thinner and pointing outward. The axe mark was still there and had no blood around it.
The design of Jason’s mask in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday went back to the one in New Blood, but with some very important changes. The mask was very damaged and it got only one red triangle (again, the one above the eyes), the left lower part was gone, it had bullet holes, the axe mark was still there, and most importantly, it was smaller as to give the illusion of it melding into Jason’s face. It was a more menacing look for Jason, which represented how long he had been out there, killing people, and how much he had gone through.
Jason X took viewers many, many years into the future, which required a big upgrade to the mask. First, he wore the traditional hockey mask but with a different design, with a diamond shape, a different shape of nose, the red triangle above the eyes, and the axe mark, and in a way, it looked more polished than the previous ones (in terms of design, of course, as it was still very dirty). Jason later turned into “Uber Jason” (also known as “Cyber-Jason”) and with that transformation came a completely different mask: a metallic one with a design more similar to modern-day hockey masks but with a lot of personality as it was given a frown and a more monstrous look.
In order to meet A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Jason was given a mask that went back to the classic shape and style, with the three red triangles as they originally were placed and with a brown tint, as if to show how much time had passed since he started wearing the mask. It went through some changes during the movie, as Krueger left scratch marks across Jason’s mask with his famous glove.
For the 2009 reboot, Jason wore a burlap bag again (though tied differently), and the hockey mask, which was pretty much like the classic one. It had an oval shape and kept the three red triangles, placed just like in Part III. Of course, the axe mark was not included and the mask was complete, and given a dirtier, more scuffed look that could easily fall into a “grunge” category. While some fans of the franchise were hoping for this new version of Friday the 13th to give Jason a different mask, the crew behind the movie decided to keep it simple and more classic, after all the changes the mask had gone through for years.
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