Ok so with the Friday the 13th game coming out next week I'd like to talk a little bit the worlds most recognizable slasher Jason Voorhees. I'll be looking at each of his movies designs as well as giving my own interpretation of his history. I should note that I will be skimming over some of the actual movie plots as a whole since this is more of a look at Jason's character, his designs and filling in some of the continuity gapes...were possible.
As most of you know Jason Voorhees is a seemingly immortal murderer who haunts the area around Crystal Lake. Jason was born on June 13, 1946 to Elias and Pamela Voorhees. At birth Jason was heavily deformed and mentally stunted, howver his mother clearly loved him deeply. Nothing official is know about Elias Vorhees, however most comic adaptions have depicted the man as being wicked and abusive to both Pamela and Jason. These adaptions also often dictate Elias meeting his end at the hands of Pamela for hurting Jason. What Jason was like as a child is not fully known. According to Pamela, Jason was a sweet and innocent boy and many of the movies and extra marital seem to support this idea. A few comics depict Jason as being very disturbed and show him killing animals however these acts seem very out of character because as an adult, Jason seems to have a very warped moral code and dose not kill animals unless forced or children under the age of 10. Interestingly enough some of comics and novels do suggest that Jason did have some form of healing factor, "He healed fast" as Pamela would put it.
In the summer of 1957, Pamela, unable to get a babysitter for Jason, resorted to bringing him to Camp Crystal Lake where she worked as a cook. Unfortunately Jason's deformities and mental state made him a very easy target for bullying by other children. While being bullied by the other campers, Jason attempted to escape from his tormentors, but the cruel children caught up to him on the dock and threw Jason into the lake where he drowned. The counselors were supposed to be watching the children, but instead were talking and having sex in the woods. Though Jason's body was never found, the camp closed as a result, but reopened the next summer. This event drove Pamela insane with sorrow and rage. As far as we know Pamela only ever returned to crystal lake three times after her sons "death". On the first two occasions in 1958 and 1962, Pamela's visits were short and secret, committing one double homicide, poisoning the camp water supply and setting some of the cabins on fire. One her third and final visit in 1979, Pamela when on a killing spree murdering most of the camp counselors until she was decapitated by the sole survive, Alice Hardy.
There a lot of speculations as to what happend to Jason during this time. Many thing that he resurrected as an undead revenant from the get go and other believe that he was resurrected by Pamela using the Necronomicon, the book of the dead from the Evil Dead franchise. However I do not superscribe to ether theory myself, or at least no in full, but we will cover this latter. My theory is that Jason did survive his drowning but not unharmed. That even would likely have caused a large amount of brain damage due to lack of oxygen. For a normal person they would have died or bin left with permanent brain damage but Jason, thanks to his healing factor survived. However it likely took some time for his brain to heal and so for a time he was either dormant and /or lived in the woods for a while like an animal with fractured memories of his passed. He would have kept away from other people because he feared them. When is brain did fully heal its possible that Jason chose to stay at crystal lake and wait for his mother to find him, she would have been the one to take him home after summer camp and Jason, being a good boy waited for her. As time passed he would learn to live of the land and build a ramshackle home for himself. However even then he kept away from others out of fear. In 1979 Jason would have been 33 years of age.
But everything changed when Jason finally found his mother and saw her death.
Original Jason
Jason original look was very different from his more well known one. The thing most notice right away is the fact that in place of his classic hocky mask, Jason is sporting a dirty, burlap sack with an eye hole cut out and held in place by a not of rope. This combined with his rather fetching blue overalls makes Jason looks very much like a stereotypical, killer hillbilly found in many, many slasher and horror films. This is not the only thing different about him, this Jason is a far more stealthy killer and displays some genuine fear when being attacked (lets be fair if someone was charging at you with a chainsaw, killer or not I think you'd be at least a bit worried) making his a far cry from the unstoppable juggernaut of legend. There are some hints of modern Jason under it all though. First and foremost, he's completely silent with his only real signs of emotion come from his body language. He's also almost supernaturally stealthy and pretty strong....although not super, knock your head off in one punch, strong. But the biggest similarity to his future self is his almost artistic ability to murder people with literally anything lying around. Machete, Pick Axe, Ice Pick, Barbed Wire, Knife or a Spear, Jason aint fussed as they all get the job done. Underneath the sack is probably the most realistic (and one of the more scary) interpretations of his face. What makes it work is that its not to over the top, it's very realistic and you can honestly believe there is some poor soul out their with a face like this. The Sack is in someways better then the hockey mask, while not as iconic (and clearly a ripoff of the Phantom Killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown) it hides much more of his faces and gives him a far more creepy look. Jason is defeated at the end of Part 2 by being sliced deep into his shoulder with his own Machete. However this is also when Jason first displays his healing factor on screen as he not only survived the wound but also fully recovers from it.