The Origin of the Mrs. Voorhees Head Used in "Voorhees"

At this point pretty much all the backers of the fan film Voorhees have seen the film, released this past Halloween night, so I think with nearly 400,000 views tallied up its a good time to reveal a little "easter egg" of sorts that connects this film to its big-budget predecessors.

Some fans seem to have noticed the head used in Voorhees bore a strong resemblance to the head used in Friday the 13th Part 2. That's because its the same head.

Well, almost. The head used in Voorhees was actually a 3D print of the original head used in Friday the 13th Part 2 back in 1981.

As regular readers of this blog already know, I bought the original head straight off of Lloyd Albin, who owned the camp that they filmed Part 2 at back in 1980. The head had been left in a net suspended from a tree branch after the cast and crew's wrap party, and Lloyd found it and kept it for 35 years. I bought the head off him in 2015 and had it restored by Tom Spina, owning it for about two years before selling it to another collector in November 2017. You can read the full story here.

Before I sold it, I had it 3D scanned and had an SLS print made. A silicone mold was made from that and resin copies produced. The copy we used in Voorhees was my urethane prototype, and the only copy I painted using the screen-used original head as a direct reference.

I'm very proud of the final result. Check out the photo below. On the left is the head used in Voorhees. On the right is the original screen-used head from Friday the 13th Part 2. The copy is propped up with a barbell because I didn't have a finished stand yet. You can see the old strips of wig tape on the back of the original head used to hold the wig in place.

I had the head on set in Centerville, Virginia for two nights in November 2018 and a third night of re-shoots in July 2019. We filmed Blaine discovering the shrine, getting stabbed by Elena, crawling to his gun and his original death in November, and his re-shot death the following July. Cody basically let me have free reign to set up the shrine so it was almost entirely put together with old junk that we found in the stable (an easier place to shoot than the crumbling house the scene actually takes place in). Producer Chris Plaushin bought the candles, sweater and the sheets used to hide the shrine from the camera during the approach and I destroyed everything and ran it through the mud to make it as disgusting as possible.

Initially I had suggested getting a dim overhead light on the head to get it lit like the original film, but the raw candle light was so compelling we ended up going with that. I took a few photos on set you can see below. The first set here was taken with my Sony mirrorless on the second night; below that the more reddish photos were cell phone shots taken the first night. When it was all set up the first night I had a whopping 17 candles lit but the glare was so intense on-camera we had to remove a few.

For the eight months between shoots, most of the set was left in the stable--the candles, the sweater, the shrine (an old wooden door laid across an oil drum), everything but the head itself, so when we returned in July we just re-lit the same candles and started rolling. Between the three nights I think we were out there almost twenty hours (about 6 PM to 2 AM each night if I remember right). The abandoned farm where we were shooting was unbelievably spooky and we heard a pack of coyotes howling in the distance on the first night.

Usually, back in the '80s when Hollywood made a prop it was used for a day or two and thrown out. Having anything survive from that far back is a small miracle in itself. But I think its great that this old prop got a second life nearly forty years later in a new film. Especially since its the most iconic version of what is probably the most famous severed head in movie history.

The Voorhees head is still a part of my private collection. I am very proud to have been able to use the head to integrate this fan film into Friday the 13th history and working on the film for a few days and setting up this shot was an awesome experience I will always cherish.

An Analysis of the Coffin Dummy Replicas

Back in 1987, special effects artist Chris Swift, who did some makeup work on Friday the 13th part 6, molded a well-worn latex copy of the coffin dummy used in the film. 

In partnership with horror memorabilia collector David Lady, he sold a handful of copies to collectors. Photos of these copies are known to exist. They include, in no particular order:

Copy number 1. This belonged to a member of the Halloween Mask Association. The teeth on this copy are entirely unique, and probably acrylic inserts. Gorgeous copy. Photo from Marshall Bean.

Copy number 2. The Yakan Nabe copy (this belongs to a Japanese horror collector).

Copy number 3, which also has a distinct set of teeth.

Copy number 4, and by far the most well-known: The Billy Kirkus copy.

About a decade ago, we started to see second-generation copies of these pieces appear. A company called Dimensional Designs molded one of these copies and produced a limited run of 13 pieces for $600 in 2008-2009. They modified the teeth and added dirt and worm FX as well as a mask that appears to be a NECA remake repainted to look like a part 6. They also included a framed copy of the piece as it looked in the film. Nice touch!

In May 2011, Billy Kirkus partnered with the late Sam McCain of Horror Sanctum Studios to produce a limited run of 20 copies of his own coffin dummy for $500 a piece. You can see my copy at left, Billy's original at right. There is a considerable size difference with these copies and evidently cheap latex was used, but the piece is otherwise a faithful reproduction.

A few weeks ago, Billy molded his copy again and released a fiberglass resin version intended to give collectors a better version than the HSS. This new version is noticeably larger and the details are more crisp. The head is also a different shape, more closely resembling the original Chris Swift copies. Below is the new version (left) and the HSS coffin dummy (right).

Doing some photo analysis on the history of this piece, I noticed a few interesting things.

The Chris Swift 1st generation copies and the new Kirkus fiberglass version have a number of features in common, including a very oddly shaped head, depressed right temple (as you look at it), and some depressions just in front of the seam line that runs laterally across the cranium, and a left eye that is oddly close to the nose. The HSS coffin dummy that I own has a rounder head with more anatomical cranial dimensions and a left eye that appears to be in a more balanced position with respect to the rest of the face. The new copies also have a small bit of compression to the right side of the neck and the back of the neck is partially collapsed into the shoulders, an unfortunate but minor side effect of the weight of the silicone mold.

You can see many of the same "defects" in the Dimensional Designs version, which was molded from a sister copy of Billy's piece, as you can see in this video review from October 2009. The DD copies had an additional compression of the cranium on the upper right side behind the axe cut, and notably have the same "collapse" of the back of the neck present in Billy's new copies but oddly enough not in my HSS copy:

These peculiarities left me puzzled: which version is more accurate to the piece used in the film? You'd think it would be the earlier version. Maybe the HSS coffin dummy's rounder head and anatomically-correct eye placement is an accident caused by foam filling, especially since Billy's 1st gen copy more closely resembles the new ones he's released than the old HSS bust I have.

But if you compare photos carefully, it really looks like the HSS coffin dummy more closely resembles the actual dummy used in the film. The head is rounder and less lumpy and the eye placement is not so close to the nose.

 

It's probably hard to see from these photos, but if you have any of these in person, take a look, particularly at the way the cranium dips in a straight line right from the seam. Seems unlikely to have been a design decision. You can see the same effect in this video of another HSS coffin dummy, so apparently they don't all have the foamed-out cranium like mine:

However, Sam's prototype, seen in this video, looks like my HSS, with the very rounded cranium and even face:

I think the best explanation is that this above prototype HSS coffin dummy best represents how the movie piece was originally sculpted; the newer fiberglass copies are more size-accurate, but retain the "defects" of the Swift 1st gen copies. This is probably because when Chris Swift molded his original piece he didn't stuff it well, and there was some compression caused by the weight of the molding material. Picky collectors like myself have a choice to make--go with a version that may be more accurate to the film, or one that is more accurate to the earliest movie mold copies? I might actually keep both of my copies.

Voorhees is Live on Youtube: Watch it Here

This is easily my favorite Jason Voorhees fan film. Its brutal, gory, intense, well-shot, beautifully scored and all around impressive. Give it a watch on Youtube!

ALSO: Keep an eye on this blog for exclusive behind-the-scenes stories and photos from the set.