With a dozen movies and counting, Friday the 13th is one of the most popular and long-running horror franchises in cinematic history. As such, the series' sinister slasher Jason Voorhees has become one of the most famous and formidable horror movie villains of all time.
Of course, aside from a penchant for slaughtering licentious teenagers, Jason's true trademark is his trusty hockey mask. While the menacing mask has evolved from film to film throughout the decades, the general look has always remained the same. Here how they all stack up with one another.
11 The Copycat Mask - Friday The 13th V: A New Beginning (1985)
Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning is basically the infamous bastard child of the series. This is because Part V does not feature Jason at all, but a psychotic copycat killer pretending to be him.
As with most weak imitators, the mask worn by said copycat is a cheap knockoff that fails to deliver the same terror as the genuine article. The mask isn't even the proper color, as it is shaded with blue lines around the edges rather than the bloodlike red contours of the original. This may have been a subtle hint as to this Jason's real identity, but it's still a pale imitation nonetheless.
10 The Futuristic Mask - Jason X (2001)
Jason X imagines Jason extending his gory reign of terror to the cosmos in the distant future. At one point, while aboard a scientific research spaceship, Jason's mangled body falls into a medical station and gets full-body reconstructive surgery, with a metallic-mask makeover to boot.
Although it's refreshing to see Jason's face covered in something new, the clunky metallic mask sort of makes him appear like a blockheaded cartoon character. The mask also seems ill-fitted, with Jason's corpulent head protruding from the sides. So much for the future.
9 The Original Burlap Sack - Friday The 13th Part 2 (1981)
As alluded to above, Jason did not don his infamous hockey mask until the third film. This is because he was not the killer in the original film (that was his mom), and because he wore a one-eyed burlap sack in Friday the 13th Part 2.
While the mask is pretty terrifying in its own right, it loses points for stealing from the 1976 made-for-TV horror movie The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which also features a psycho killer adorning a burlap sack for a mask.
8 The Stretched & Tattered Mask - Jason Goes To Hell (1993)
In Jason Goes To Hell, Jason becomes a shapeshifting ghoul who can transport from one human body to another. As such, he rarely sports his trademark visage as a hulking maniac in a hockey mask. Until the very end, that is.
But when he actually reverts to original form, his iconic mask appears stretched out and badly tattered. Worse, the mask appears to be melted onto Jason's face, as his bloated scalp bulged from all sides in a way that only diminished his frightful appearance. The idea was for Jason's body to be rotting so bad that it was now bursting out of the costume's seams, but instead it just looked like his mask a size too small.
7 The Generic Mask - Friday The 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Not that there's anything particularly wrong with the mask Jason wears in Jason Takes Manhattan; it's just that there isn't anything particularly new or inspired about it either.
The generic hockey mask appears quite similar to the ones worn in the prior three or four franchise entries and is likely one of the reasons why Jason's appearance was so radically altered in the following film, Jason Goes to Hell. This is the textbook example of a generic slasher villain that a slasher parody would use to avoid getting sued by Jason's copyright owners.
6 The Cheesecloth Bag - Friday The 13th (2009)
Although technically a remake, the 2009 version of Friday the 13th plays like a greatest-hits album from the entire franchise. For example, before Jason finds a hockey mask to wear, he sports a variation of the burlap sack worn in Friday the 13th Part 2.
Yet somehow, this tight-swaddled mask appears more menacing than the baggier, one-eyed burlap sack from adult Jason's film debut. It almost has a dirty cheesecloth appearance with a sash tied across his right eye.
5 The Vintage Mask - Friday The 13th VI: Jason Lives (1986)
One of the more unheralded chapters in the Friday the 13th franchise is the sixth entry, Jason Lives. The film commences in a graveyard, where Jason is reanimated after stricken with a bolt of lightning. From the moment Jason rises from the grave, he's seen wearing his trusty hockey mask.
The assumption is that it's the same mask he wore in The Final Chapter before being killed by Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), who coincidentally is the one responsible for accidentally resurrecting Jason. The mask comes with a three-pronged strap, multiple breathing holes, and a blood red upside-down triangle pattern above the nose.
4 The Brain-Gouged Mask - Friday The 13th VII: The New Blood (1988)
While there isn't a ton to differentiate the mask Jason wears in The New Blood, the cracked façade exposing chunks of brain matter and rows of broken teeth makes Jason appear far more macabre than normal.
In what almost appears like a Harvey Dent/Two-Face homage, the lower-left portion of Jason's face and mouth area is completely exposed, revealing a rotten mouth from decades of dental neglect and decomposition. A giant gash in his head can also be seen in profile shots.
3 The Bloodstained Mask - Friday The 13th IV: The Final Chapter (1984)
The second film in the series in which Jason dons the horrifying hockey mask is Part IV: The Final Chapter, which takes the design of the previous film (more on that in a bit) and tweaks it to be more terrifying.
In The Final Chapter, the hockey mask still has the tri-strap and dual-bolts on the chin. However, it has curiously replaced the lower red contours with a nasty bloodstained wound atop Jason's head, which is where an axe landed in the previous movie. The gory gouge and the trickle of blood down leaking near his left eye make the evil man-child look even more hideous than he already is.
2 The Dirt & Blood Covered Mask - Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)
To convey the passage of time, Jason's signature hockey mask was given a dirty, dusty, aged, blood soaked makeover in the big-budget mash-up Freddy Vs. Jason, where longtime slasher icons A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th finally crossed paths.
The wear and tear of the newfangled mask are adorned with several scratches, faded red coloring, a busted right cheekbone, and two large facial scars on the left side. The result appears less like an anachronistic hockey mask ripped right out of the '80s and more of a primitive mask made in ancient cultures, which is a look befitting of Jason's current stature in pop culture.
1 The Original Mask - Friday The 13th 3D (1982)
Since he first wore it in Friday the 13th Part III (3D), Jason' inaugural hockey mask still ranks number one. Granted, it's been improved upon in subsequent sequels but without it, there simply would be no Friday the 13th to begin with. In fact, this list and many more like it wouldn't exist without it!
Jason first found the now-notorious hockey mask after murdering a nerdy character named Shelly (Larry Zerner). After killing Shelly in a barn, he steals the mask, slips it on, and proceeds on a three-decade rampage of abject carnage.
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