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.