It's Got A Death Curse: Ranking All 181 'Friday The 13th' Kills (Part Two)

Welcome to the second (and final!) part of my complete ranking of all 181 kills from the Friday the 13th film series. If you're just joining us, I recommend heading over to part one for the details on how this list came together along with the ranking of kills 181 through 51. Today, we're going to dive into the top 50.

Let's keep this party going.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: SissyThe Gory Details: There's a common trend throughout the entire Friday the 13th series – someone insults or underestimates or belittles Jason Voorhees and they end up real dead, real quick. To be fair to Sissy, she didn't realize she was dribbling beer on an undead masked maniac, but she was. So that means she gets pulled out her window and gets her head completely twisted around in a moment that plays like ultra-violent Looney Tunes. To add insult to injury, her severed head pops up later provide a quick "boo."

The Film: Jason XThe Victim: KickerThe Gory Details: Another common trend throughout the entire Friday the 13th series is people not finishing the goddamn job when they have Jason the ropes. Space marine Kicker is probably the most guilty of this. He unloads his futuristic assault rifle on the guy and impales him on a crane, leaving him helpless and dangling. But rather than keep shooting or at least keeping his distance, Kicker gloats a little too close his kill...and gets chopped in half by Jason.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: Stan, Katie, and LarryThe Gory Details: Who cares that the actual effect is offscreen when it's this nutty? Stan, Katie, and Larry, wandering around the woods as part of a corporate paintball retreat, all lose their heads via one single swing of Jason's machete.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IIIThe Victim: VeraThe Gory Details: Many Friday the 13th films feature Jason getting his hands on a speargun. This kill, his first while wearing his soon-to-be-iconic hockey mask, is one of the best, shooting Vera right through the eye. Like all of Friday the 13th Part III's kills, this one is framed for 3D and it becomes charmingly hokey when watched at home.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: MartinThe Gory Details: Martin, the graveyard caretaker who breaks the fourth wall to accuse the audience of having a strange idea of entertainment and wryly wonders why anyone would dig up the supposedly dead Jason, looks straight at his bottle of booze and says it will be the death of him. Moments later, Jason smashes the bottle and stabs him with it. I love you, Martin.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final ChapterThe Victim: TinaThe Gory Details: The first time Jason throws a victim through a second story window is also the best. Tina doesn't just fall to her death – she lands on a car in slow-motion, one of the most bombastic early deaths in the series. There are bigger and more extravagant kills to come, but this one walks the perfect line between "low budget" and "slightly bigger budget" that defines so many of Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter's pleasures.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part V: A New BeginningThe Victim: Junior HubbardThe Gory Details: Shortly before his mama is killed while preparing supper (see part one of this list), Junior Hubbard is tearing around the yard on his dirtbike, unaware that he's about to get clotheslined by Faux-Jason's machete. We see many decapitations throughout this series and this one, staged more like a slapstick gag than anything else, really does stand out.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: PaulaThe Gory Details: We don't actually see Jason hack Paula into tiny pieces, but we do see her innards splatter all over the walls and windows. And we continue to see her little pieces of her throughout the film, as people keep stumbling into her cabin and gasping at the sight of a room that has been completely drenched in blood and guts. It's the most grisly post-murder scene in any Friday the 13th entry and the movie knows it.

The Film: Jason XThe Victim: CondorThe Gory Details: Why is there a giant cartoon drill lying around the cargo hold the spaceship? Probably so Jason can pluck space marine Condor from a catwalk and impale him on it. And that's perfectly fine. What earns it a spot in the top 40 though is how Condor's lifeless corpse continues to spin around the corkscrew, slowing rotating as it journeys downward.

The Film: Freddy vs. JasonThe Victims: Shack and six unnamed raversThe Gory Details: First, Shack (a pudgy stoner who just watched his buddy die) drenches Jason in Everclear and lights him on fire. But a Jason on fire isn't a dead Jason – it's just a hulking zombie serial killer who is also on fire. After impaling Shack with his flaming machete, Jason proceeds to go nuts throughout the cornfield rave, cutting down six unnamed partygoers before the story moves on. And need I remind you that he does all of this while on fire? This is the best individual killing spree Jason ever embarks upon in twelve movies.

The Film: Friday the 13th (2009)The Victim: ChelseaThe Gory Details: The best Friday the 13th kills are aware of the audience and understand our expectations. They toy with us, zig when we expect them to zag, and bring in the machete when we least suspect it. This is the greatest virtue of the 2009 remake, which uses our knowledge of past films in the series against us. First, Chelsea is struck by an out-of-control-motorboat (her boyfriend is literally dead at the wheel). Then she takes shelter under a nearby dock and we, the audience, await Jason's attack from the water. Instead, his machete crashes through the dock and impales her right in the head. If you're not screaming, you're giggling at how well they pulled it off.

The Film: Freddy vs. JasonThe Victim: Deputy StubbsThe Gory Details: In part one of this list, I wrote about how every control panel in the Friday the 13th universe is dangerously unstable. Freddy vs. Jason continues this trend. When Jason embeds his machete in a control panel in the psychiatric hospital he's rampaging through, electricity shoots through his body. So what is an undead serial killer to do? Why, grab the nearby police officer and hold on to him until he's electrocuted to death, of course.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes ManhattanThe Victim: WayneThe Gory Details: But no unstable Friday the 13th control panels have anything on the unstable control panel located in the cruise ship engine room in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. When nerdy videographer Wayne is thrown against it, the whole thing promptly explodes into sparks, catches fire, and electrocutes him to death. The resulting inferno sinks the entire ship, killing an untold number of other people. Just...don't stand next to control panels in these movies.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IIIThe Victim: ChuckThe Gory Details: The franchise's first unstable control panel is still my favorite, possibly because it's so simple and doesn't feel the need to go truly over-the-top with the aftermath. Then again, it's probably because I enjoy the visual pun of Chuck, the series' first true stoner character, getting smoked by fuse box. Get it? Smoked. Smoked. Because he smokes the marijuana, you see.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IIIThe Victim: RickThe Gory Details: In part one of this list, I ended up grouping together most of the series' head crushings, mainly because they're all iterations on the same concept. Rick's head crush stands out from the pack because it dares to take things a step further. Not only does Jason crush his head with his bare hands, he crushes his head so hard that his eye literally pops out of his skull and flies at the camera in a hilarious 3D effect that is nothing short of delightful in 2D. This would be in the top 10 if Rick's head didn't look so miserably fake.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: HawesThe Gory Details: After sitting out the fifth movie altogether, Jason rises from the grave in part six, his rotting corpse reanimated by a lightning strike. So what's the first thing a newly resurrected serial killer going to do? Why, punch straight through the chest of the nearest person and rip out his heart, of course! Welcome back, Jason.

The Film: Friday the 13thThe Victim: AnnieThe Gory Details: We first meet Annie as she's hitchhiking to Camp Crystal Lake, where she will work as a cook at the new re-opened summer camp. She shrugs off the warnings from the locals, who tell her that the camp is cursed. Sure, people died there years ago, but it's safe now. And then she hitches a ride in the wrong car and the unseen driver pursues her into the woods, stalks her, and cuts her throat. We'll learn eventually that the mysterious killer is Pamela Voorhees, the mother of Jason himself. But while most of Jason's kills are framed to be "fun," Annie's death at the hands of Mrs. Voorhees is uncomfortable and unpleasant, made all of the more effective by Tom Savini's wholly convincing make-up and Annie's good-natured innocence.

The Film: Friday the 13th (2009)The Victim: ChewieThe Gory Details: While we're on the subject of innocent characters meeting brutal ends, meet Chewie, the most inherently likable character in the 2009 remake and very possibly the most genuinely likable supporting character in the entire series. After accidentally breaking a chair, Chewie ventures to the tool shed so he can find the proper supplies to fix it (awww), only to find himself overpowered by Jason and stabbed through the throat with a screwdriver. As we've seen time and time again in these movies, trying to do the nice, brave, noble, or proper thing is the best way to get yourself killed.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: CortThe Gory Details: Here's how you know Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is a little bit more expensive than its predecessors: they can afford a full-on car crash. Specifically, Jason stabs Cort in the side of a head with a knife while he's driving an RV (and blasting Alice Cooper), causing the vehicle to overturn and slide across the ground and burst into flames. The image of an unharmed Jason standing atop the flaming RV is sublime.

The Film: Friday the 13thThe Victim: BillThe Gory Details: This is the highest ranked death we don't actually get to see. The last time we see Bill alive, he's off to get the generator up and running after the camp loses power. Because this is a horror movie, he doesn't return and Alice heads out to find him. And find him she does: he's pinned to the back of door with a series of arrows, the victim of Pamela Voorhees' target practice. It's an effective jolt and a sudden reminder that Alice, the first "Final Girl" of the franchise, is now completely alone.

The Film: Friday the 13th (2009)The Victim: NolanThe Gory Details: The death of Nolan in the 2009 remake is a clear tribute to the series' obsession with archery and speargun-related kills and it tops almost all of them. We've seen Jason the marksman in other movies, but we've never seen him fire an arrow right into the forehead of a guy recklessly piloting a speedboat across the lake. It sums up everything that's refreshing about the remake's take on Jason Voorhees: he's not just a brute, but a brute who also happens to be a highly skilled hunter and survivalist.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final ChapterThe Victim: PaulThe Gory Details: Of course, Jason is also quite good at utilizing long-range weapons in close quarters, as seen when he dispatches Paul with a speargun...by shoving said speargun into his groin and pulling the trigger. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part 2The Victim: AliceThe Gory Details: The first Friday the 13th film ends with Alice beheading Pamela Voorhees and emerging as the only survivor of the massacre at Camp Crystal Lake. The second movie picks up a few months later, with Alice back in the suburbs, trying to deal with the trauma of what occurred. And while the woman who killed her friends is dead, the son of Mrs. Voorhees, who very much survived his supposed drowning as a child, is very much alive and very much seeking vengeance. Alice's actual death (an icepick to the head) isn't the goriest or the most shocking or the best staged kill in the series, but it is Jason Voorhees' first onscreen kill and a suggestion that this sequel won't play by any rules and that no one is safe. Of course, the series will quickly abandon this and retreat to formula, but it's a tremendous what-if.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IIIThe Victim: ShellyThe Gory Details: A certain segment of young horror fans probably saw a little bit of themselves in Shelly, the overweight nerd with a bad haircut and a penchant for making women turn up their noses in disgust. Like them, he loves experimenting with make-up and dressing up like monsters. He likes scaring people, even when his antics can sour an entire room. Unfortunately, Shelly's cries wolf one too many times and when his throat is actually cut, no one believes that he's actually dying, leaving him to bleed out alone. Oh, and it's Shelly's hockey mask that Jason borrows, so blame this guy for completing that iconic look.

The Film: Friday the 13th (2009)The Victim: Officer BrackeThe Gory Details: The 2009 remake of Friday the 13th benefits from a larger budget and filmmakers who honestly seem to care about what they're making, which means that even some of the simple kills are allowed to sing. Take the death of Officer Bracke, who arrives to save the day and ends up getting stabbed through the head with a fireplace poker. It's a standard beat for this series – help is here and ohwaitthehelpisdead. However, the death of Bracke is directed with genuine panache, with a gliding camera causing us to just barely miss his actual death and see the fireplace poker burst through the front door. It's one of the most stylish and cleverly filmed death scenes in the entire series.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New BloodThe Victim: JudyThe Gory Details: This kill is highly regarded by horror fans and for good reason – it's a pretty damn good one, emphasizing Jason's knack for getting the job done quickly and efficiently. After Judy takes shelter in her sleeping bag (probably the worst possible way to avoid a maniac with a machete), our favorite hockey masked zombie murderer picks up the whole thing like a sack of potatoes and proceeds to bash it against a nearby tree, killing the ill-fated woman inside instantly.

The Film: Freddy vs. JasonThe Victim: TreyThe Gory Details: Trey dies minutes after his introduction, but he's such a miserable jerk that you can't help but cheer on his brutal death. And brutal is the right word here. After Jason repeatedly plunges his machete into Trey's back, he folds the bed in half, literally breaking his victim in two. While it is bloody, the whole scene is presented with tongue firmly in cheek – Trey never lets go of his beer.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part 2The Victim: Jeff and SandraThe Gory Details: Every other Friday the 13th couple killed in the act being intimate has to live up to this one. While similar kills have reveled in gratuitous nudity and excessive gore, the death of Jeff and Sandra (simultaneously impaled through their bed with a spear) hurts all the more because these two really do seem to be into each other, with the camera capturing their dopey, pleasurable smiles in the moments before they perish. Friday the 13th Part 2 is one of the harsher films in the series, often sidestepping the thrill of a crazy kill in favor of a more subtle sting.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part 2The Victim: Crazy RaphThe Gory Details: Crazy Ralph, first introduced in the original Friday the 13th as the town wacko obsessed with warming outsiders about "Camp Blood," meets his grisly end in the second film. If you can watch the video embed above, I'd recommend doing so right now. Upon first glance, it just looks like Ralph is strange with barbed wire and it's pretty good. But watch it again. And again. Note where the barbed wire comes from. Note the position of Jason's hands. Note how literally impossible it is for Jason to be killing anyone in the way he is seemingly killing Crazy Ralph. In later films, Jason will essentially teleport all over the place for the sake of lazy convenience, but Friday the 13th Part 2's occasional surreality, mystifying and unsettling and oh-so-very Italian in its influences, is a different thing altogether.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: BurtThe Gory Details: He may only be onscreen for a matter of seconds before he gets completely decimated by Jason Voorhees, but Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives makes sure that we instantly hate Burt enough to cheer on his ridiculous death. As he rants about how women should stay in the kitchen, he stumbles right into our masked killer, who flings him against a nearby tree, crushing his face and leaving a bloody stain across a smiley face a hiker has carved into the bark. Of course, the final punchline is the reveal that Jason flung him so hard that his arm tore out of its socket, leaving the undead killer holding holding a severed limb. Everything that's great about this entry, from its slapstick gore to its self-aware sense of self-parody, is on display here.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IIIThe Victim: Debbie (and her unborn child)The Gory Details: Friday the 13th Part III has a lot of nerve to repeatedly mention that Debbie is pregnant before killing her. That's just awful. However, her eventual demise is a love letter to everyone watching: she gets impaled from behind while lounging in hammock...while reading an issue of Fangoria with a story about make-up artist Tom Savini (who worked on the first and fourth films in the series). I see what you did there, movie.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final ChapterThe Victim: JimmyThe Gory Details: Every so often, you get to see an actor killed by Jason Voorhees before he breaks out and makes a name for himself. In this case, it's Crispin Glover, one year before he's play George McFly in Back to the Future. His Jimmy is one of the more interesting victims strewn across these movies, a shy, offbeat, and deeply insecure fellow who spends most of the movie pining for his ex. Eventually, Jimmy does get laid and he decides to celebrate with a bottle of wine. He can't find the corkscrew though, because Jason has it and he uses it to pin Jimmy's hand to the counter. The poor guy doesn't even have time to scream before Jason chops his face in half with a machete. The whole thing is over in a matter of seconds, but man, what a jam-packed matter of seconds.

The Film: Friday the 13th (2009)The Victim: TrentThe Gory Details: A round of applause for Travis Van Winkle, an actor who did the impossible: he somehow managed to play the greatest douchebag of the entire Friday the 13th franchise (and there's some serious competition!). When Trent's not yelling at his friends for touching his stuff or being an insensitive prick to strangers looking for their missing siblings, he's getting totally annihilated by Jason Voorhees, who stabs him with a machete, lifts him up off the ground, and impales him on the back of a truck whose driver getting the hell out of Dodge. It's a mean kill (cruel, even!), but Trent is such a miserable guy that his extended demise can't help but feel a little cathartic.

The Film: Friday the 13thThe Victim: MarcieThe Gory Details: A lot of axes get swung into a lot of faces in these movies. Somehow, they all still chase the axe swung into Marcie's face in the original movie, which still feels shocking today.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IIIThe Victim: AndyThe Gory Details: Oh, look at you, Andy. Look at you do your little handstand. Look at you do your little handstand walk down the hallway. Yeah, we see you. And that was your plan all along, right? To be seen? Did you expect us to applaud? Well, screw you! Do you know who's not impressed by your little handstand routine? Jason fuckin' Voorhees, that's who. He'll just swing his machete right into your exposed crotch and cut your in half and stick your remains in the rafters. Let this be a lesson to all of you people who think you look cool when you show off your athletic clown prowess.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason LivesThe Victim: Sheriff GarrisThe Gory Details: Here's the horrible truth about Sheriff Garris: he does everything he possibly can and still gets killed. Sure, it takes him a little while to accept that Jason is back (and you also wouldn't believe that a hillbilly mass murderer had risen from the grave), but he gets with the program. He empties a shotgun into Jason. He empties his service revolver into him. He heads Jason away from children and other nearby innocents. He engages Jason in physical combat, knocking him to the ground to save his daughter and smashing him over the head with a big rock. And Jason, completely unfazed by all of this, calmly (and literally) breaks him in half. Oof.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part 2The Victim: VickieThe Gory Details: The death of Vickie is one of the most unusual kills in the entire series. Not because of the implements at work (she's stabbed to death with a knife), but because of how it's framed. Shot entirely from Jason's perspective, with the camera racking focus from the knife in his outstretched hand to the terrified girl before him, the scene lingers on Vickie's screams of fear and panic, eschewing gore in favor of engulfing us in her dread. It's a stylish scene (pure giallo, even), but it's also unpleasant and upsetting and totally at odds with what the rest of the series will become. And for that reason, it really does stand out.

The Film: Friday the 13thThe Victim: JackThe Gory Details: This kill is really famous because it features a young Kevin Bacon getting stabbed through the neck with an arrow. It's also really famous because it's a remarkable make-up effect that still looks eerily real today. While many films quickly cut away from gore gags before audiences can get a closer look and realize how fake it looks, the camera lingers here and it only becomes more lifelike, more disturbing, with each passing second.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final ChapterThe Victim: Coroner AxelThe Gory Details: He's been mentioned a number of times throughout this list, but Tom Savini really is the hero of the Friday the 13th series. His make-up effects in the first film set a standard the the sequels frequently failed to match and his return in Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter set another standard the the other sequels frequently failed to match. The first kill in this film might as well be Savini walking on screen and literally dropping a mic: Jason rises from the mortuary slab, cuts the perverted coroner's throat with a hacksaw, and then twists his entire head around. The execution (pun intended) is nothing short of sublime.

The Film: Jason XThe Victim: AdrienneThe Gory Details: Guys. Guys. I have almost nothing to say here except "This one is sooo good!" Jason, having woken up from being cryogenically frozen for 450 years, doesn't skip a beat and proceeds to murder the very first person he sees. That person happens to be Adrienne, who is standing next to a very handy tub of liquid nitrogen. After a quick dip, her face is frozen and ready to be smashed against the countertop, where it explodes into bloody fragments of ice.

The Film: Friday the 13th Part 2The Victim: MarkThe Gory Details: Everything about this kill is perfect. Minutes after he declares that he will walk again someday, wheelchair-bound Mark investigates a weird noise on the porch and receives a swift machete to the face, sending his lifeless body rolling out into the rain and down a flight of stairs and into a freeze frame. First of all, the remarkable bad taste of the whole thing has to be seen to be believed. And then we can chew on the the fact that the whole scene doesn't make any sense, because Jason attacks from an impossible angle that Mark should have seen coming (another example of Friday the 13th Part 2's jarring and amusing rejection of reality). And then we can dwell on how it ends in a freeze frame, something that must have felt like a great idea for a brief window in 1981 but feels like an alien choice now. Yes, all of these things are good. Welcome to the top of the list, Mark.