Friday The 13th's First Axe Murder Was A Two-Dollar Trick You Could Do At Home

If one were to make a Mount Rushmore of classic horror films, there's a more than decent chance that 1980s' "Friday the 13th" would make the cut. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller, the legendary slasher spawned a franchise that is still popular to this day. We haven't had a movie in the series since 2009's "Friday the 13th" remake, but that's another story entirely. But while as important as the movie may be, it turns out that many of the now-legendary kills were done in very low-tech ways. Case in point, the axe to the face that led to the demise of Marcie Stanler was accomplished with a gag item that could be purchased at a magic shop.

In a 2015 oral history on the film published by Uproxx, the filmmakers were discussing the scene in which Jeannine Taylor's Marcie meets her demise when Pamela Voorhees puts an axe through her face. At the time we don't yet know that it's Jason's mom doing the killing, as that's kind of the movie's big twist (Jason only becoming the killer in subsequent entries). Speaking specifically of that kill, the director explained that they found a very low-rent way to accomplish things while maintaining maximum effect.

"One of the first murders is a girl in the bathroom. She gets her head split with an axe. But the axe gag itself was one of those things you buy for two dollars in a magic store. It sits on the top of your head with elastic or something like that, and because all we did was we brought the real axe down on a metal lamp. Then when you cut out of frame and when you cut back to the girl she put the knife across the top of your head and she went down out of frame. For all the world you think she got hit over the head and had her head split open with an axe and she didn't."

This is certainly not the only memorable kill from the film. "Friday the 13th" also brutally killed a young Kevin Bacon in one of his first major film roles. But the axe to Marcie's face always stood out as a particularly brutal moment. The fact that it was accomplished using such modest means is remarkable.

Miller also touched on the topic and explained that visual effects legend Tom Savini was in some way responsible for determining how they went about accomplishing the kill. As Miller explained, Savini presented the team with two options; use a real axe and a fake face, or use a fake axe and a real face. As silly as that sounds, the choice made a big difference.

"Tom had outlined the whole script and written notes and everything and he looked at me and Sean and said, 'Okay, I see on page 42' – or whatever it was – 'you got an axe in the face. So do you want a real axe in a fake face or a fake axe in a real face?' [Laughs]. I just fell over laughing. It wasn't my job to try to figure out any of that stuff but I just loved, here was a man who was being paid to take my stupid italics seriously and figure out a way to make it look like a woman had an axe in her face."

"Sean said real face, fake axe, and we went on," Miller concluded. The decision panned out and it contributed to making "Friday the 13th" a major success. It was just the first of many films that followed in the ensuing decades. More recently, A24 partnered with Peacock for a "Crystal Lake" TV series that might have starred Charlize Theron as Pamela Voorhees. It's now in limbo and horror fans are still waiting for the franchise to return. If nothing else, this anecdote demonstrates that a new show or movie wouldn't necessarily have to be expensive to be effective.