In case you missed it, here's a couple of original masks from Friday the 13th Part 8 that were up for auction a while back. The top mask was owned by Canadian special effects artist Tony Lazarowich. The second one was owned for many years by producer Randolph "Randy" Cheveldave and was used as the stunt mask for several scenes, including Jason's electrocution and the moment he takes the mask off after being splashed with acid.
Every so often I make some minor modifications to my own masks that only I care about. So here it is! I recently trimmed a bit of the perimeter off my part 8 mask so that it's a little closer to the movie mask.
While my mask is accurate to what I remember when I saw it in person, I've been tempted to just sand it down and repaint the whole thing now that we have these astonishing Prop Store photos to use as reference. Your memory only goes so far. I didn't even realize, for example, that the straps are brown, rather than black until I saw the recent auction photos, or that the black weathering looks a little cloudier on the movie mask.
Tony Lazarowich, a British Columbia-based special effects artist, recently posted a reel on his Instagram page where he showcases a Part 8 Jason mask. Lazarowich says in the video that he studied under the effects chief from the film (presumably referring to Jamie Brown) and was given the honor of making the masks for the movie.
The mask is definitely interesting. The blank itself looks very accurate to those used in Jason Takes Manhattan, having the telltale horizontal crack on the back
that is seen in the Part 8 movie masks, a result of being recasted from a
flawed Part 6 blank that was pulled after the buck had cracked through the mouth area. The mask also has an interesting split in the side, something we also see in another Part 8 spare mask that was on eBay over a decade ago, that may have been caused by an FX artist accidentally cracking the notoriously brittle acrylic while going about his work.
The vents appear to be drilled the right size and have the characteristic crudeness you usually see in movie masks. The color doesn't appear accurate to the hero mask to my eye. The straps and strap connections don't look accurate and the weathering doesn't look nearly as detailed as the hero mask, although stunt and other spare or promotional masks were sometimes painted more crudely. The mask does have the correct nylon blackouts for the eyes but the hero mask blackouts were just hot-glued in-- this appears to be done differently. In any case, the mask itself seems likely to have come from production in my estimation.
Really cool piece and it's nice to see Tony has taken good care of it over the years. Thanks to Mario for bringing this to my attention.
Mario shows off a little mask detail with the part 6, part 8 and Freddy vs. Jason masks he's owned for quite a few years. You can also see this on the Propstore's Youtube channel.
From the upcoming Propstore auction of Mario's collection. You can see here how the mask was basically put together pretty clearly. Basecoat of silver on a clear blank, then a coat of yellow was sprayed with sort of incomplete coverage. Then weathering and scraping of the yellow coat was done to make it look damaged, followed by a misting of black spray paint to create a gritty effect. Then of course the red marks, straps, etc. Very rare you see this kind of detail of a screen-used mask. Click to enlarge.
Just bought this from Marcos Medina--its a rare resin casting that came directly off the front of the hero mask used in Friday the 13th Part 8. These castings came from Beyond Disgusting Studios, who got an old mold from an unnamed professional FX artist in Hollywood. At right is a clear vac blank produced by BDS by creating a buck from one of the direct castings. Amazingly no distortions or size increase happened in the vac pulls. As you can see, they're perfectly sized, although some modification had to be done to reduce the super-wide spread of the original mold and return it to the correct width.
Here's a recent shot of Mario with the movie mask that both of these came from.
This was posted to Facebook as a rare photo of Kane as Jason, but commenters have brought to my attention that this is actually a cosplayer-- you can find him on Instagram @MI.cosplay
