On May 9th, 1980, Paramount unleashed a holiday slasher that would forever change the slasher game in the 80s’- Friday The 13th. Certainly, Friday wasn’t the first slasher film in the game, but with their continuous sequels that came year after year until the 90s’, horror icons like Michael Myers and Leatherface soon followed suit with sequels of their own to cash in on that horror-slasher mania that overtook the decade. And we couldn’t get enough of it. In 1980, Pamela Voorhees would soon join the slasher roster with her special baby boy Jason to become the face of the franchise a year later and Paramount studios made sure to plant her famous face all over the place for this heavily promoted little film. However, according to Fridaythe13thFranchise.com, one promotional still sent out in media kits was in fact, a deleted scene that never made it into the final cut of the movie.
It’s not uncommon that promos from films harbored some images that we never actually got to see in the final movie. The one that comes to mind most directly is the original trailer for Rocky IV; where we see quite a few scenes that never actually made it into the theatrical cut, but were later added to the director’s cut released last year. The image seen below of Pamela Voorhees (Palmer) with her face smashed up against a plastic sheet, was an image sent as part of a Paramount media kit sent to theater chains and media outlets and not something anyone saw in the final version. So, for the longest time, everyone just assumed it was a deleted scene; however, in the infamous doc Crystal Lake Memories, unit photographer Richard Feury sets the record straight:
The Friday The 13th cast and crew were taking a lunch break in a dining hall at Boy Scout Camp, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in between shoots, and the open-aired part of the hall was covered with plastic sheets to contain the heat inside, as Fall weather had arrived. Feury instinctively asked Betsy Palmer to lean into one of the plastic sheets and scream. Well, she did as you can see above and one of the most famous images promoting the film came to be that we never actually got to see on film.
A pretty neat little bit of Friday trivia for those who never knew and even better for those who never have seen this image prior to now. You’re welcome for the new screensaver.
