Friday the 13th: How Kevin Bacon’s Death Scene Was Shot

Friday the 13th was one of Kevin Bacon’s first movie roles, but his character didn’t make it to the end of the movie, and he was killed in a very graphic way – but how was that scene filmed? Back in 1980, right when the slasher subgenre was starting to dominate the realm of horror, Friday the 13th was released, directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller. Friday the 13th was a big box office success, and while critical reception was mixed, it made way for an extensive franchise formed by 12 movies (including a crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street and a remake) and various novels, video games, and more.

Friday the 13th took viewers to Camp Crystal Lake, where in 1957, a young boy named Jason Voorhees drowned, and the next year, two counselors were murdered. Back in 1980, the camp was about to reopen, so a new group of counselors arrived to get everything ready – what they weren’t counting on, was that the story of the boy who drowned still haunted the place, but the real killer was not who everyone expected. As the night progressed, the counselors began to disappear, with only one surviving the experience: Alice (Adrienne King), who learned that the one responsible for her friends’ deaths was Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), though she later encountered Jason’s decomposing (and not so dead) body.

Among the counselors accompanying Alice at Camp Crystal Lake was Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon), who arrived with his girlfriend Marcie Stanler (Jeannine Taylor). Jack was one of Pamela’s first victims from the new group of counselors in Friday the 13th, and was killed after he and Marcie had sex in one of the cabin’s bunk beds – and unbeknownst to them, the body of another counselor, Ned (Mark Nelson), was on the bed above theirs. When Marcie left to go to the bathroom, Jack stayed on the bed, but when a drop of blood from the bed above landed on his face, he got distracted, allowing Pamela, who had been hiding beneath the bed the entire time, to kill him by shoving an arrow through the mattress and through his throat.

This now iconic death scene in Friday the 13th was made possible thanks to practical effects and the legendary and creative mind of Tom Savini. First off, a body cast was made so that only Kevin Bacon’s head would stick up through the mattress while the rest of his body was safe underneath the bed. Then, Savini and his assistant Taso Stavrakis attached a blood bag to a tube so that when the arrow was pushed through the prosthetic neck, the blood could come out. The setup, however, took many hours in which Bacon had to stay in the same uncomfortable position so the scene could work as they only had one take to get it right, otherwise, they would have had to build another fake neck and more and that would have taken a lot of time and money. When shooting the scene, however, the hose for the blood pump disconnected, so Stavrakis took it and blew into it so the blood could come out, which is why Bacon points out (via EW) that the blood in that scene has “a weird kind of trajectory”.

The way Tom Savini managed to bring this scene to life in a very realistic and believable way earned him a place as one of the best and most acclaimed special effects and makeup artists in the industry, particularly in the horror genre. As for the impact that Friday the 13th and that specific scene had in Kevin Bacon’s career, in that same conversation with EW he shared that he’s “horrified” by the fact that, when it comes to autograph hounds, the frame from his death in that movie is “probably the number one” picture he’s asked to sign, but in the end, his brief time at Camp Crystal Lake definitely helped launch his career as well.

About The Author

Adrienne Tyler
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Adrienne Tyler is a features writer for Screen Rant. She is an Audiovisual Communication graduate who wanted to be a filmmaker, but life had other plans (and it turned out great). Prior to Screen Rant, she wrote for Pop Wrapped, 4 Your Excitement (4YE), and D20Crit, where she was also a regular guest at Netfreaks podcast. She was also a contributor for FanSided’s BamSmackPow and 1428 Elm. Adrienne is very into films and she enjoys a bit of everything: from superhero films to heartbreaking dramas, to low-budget horror films. Every time she manages to commit to a TV show without getting bored, an angel gets its wings.

When she’s not writing, you can find her trying to learn a new language, watching hockey (go Avs!), or wondering what life would have been like had Pushing Daisies, Firefly, and Limitless not been cancelled. Breakfast food is life and coffee is what makes the world go round.

Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once. It was great.

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