45 years in the making: the first family of horror movies descends upon WV ahead of Friday the 13th

By Matthew Young, RealWV

I know that Friday the 13th is still about a week-and-a-half away, but this story has been more than three years in the making – and a lifetime in development – and I can’t wait another minute to share it. 

Let me set the scene for you…

As best I can recall, my fascination with scary movies started when I was around eight-years-old. I would sneak out of bed at night, and peek around the corner at the television while my dad watched reruns of The Twilight Zone, or some old Hammer Horror film. I would stand there in my Superman pajamas and my Batman underoos until my mother’s whisper snapped me from my trance.

“You better get back to bed before your father catches you up,” she would say in that stern-but-kind voice that only she could pull off, while knowing full well I’d soon be crawling into their bed because the monster from the TV was now outside my window. 

Fast forward a few years to Mrs. Hauser’s fourth grade class at Lee Road Elementary, where I bore witness to a heated conversation between Nick Sillings and Sean McManus about why Freddy Krueger was way better than Jason Voorhees. I didn’t know who Jason was yet, but I didn’t like that Sean, Nick, and Freddy were picking on him. But when Halloween came around, the new costumes on sale at Fay’s Drugs gave me my first look at the hockey mask which would become the center of my adolescent universe. 

Then one random Tuesday night in February of 1988, my father casually helped me form some of the most cherished memories that I have from my childhood. The first thing that he did was tell me that I didn’t have to go to school the next day because we were taking a family vacation to Disney World. That was pretty cool and all, but what happened next took the cake. With my mother’s admittedly-reluctant blessing, my dad let me sit next to him on the couch so we could watch Friday the 13th, Part 2 together.

So there you go – a lifetime in development, and I finally get to tell this story.

But just like so many good stories are, this one is all about a mother and her son.

A Long Night at Camp Blood

They say to never meet your heroes because you’ll just be disappointed. But what happens when your heroes are the villains of the story? Well, in May of 2022, I got to find out, and let me just say that it’s a little embarrassing. 

You may not be aware of this, but stunt man, effects artist, jousting aficionado, and all-around legendary Hollywood bad ass Taso Stavrakis lives off the Old Midland Trail in an unincorporated part of Greenbrier County. (His neighbor is a world-renowned classical pianist, but that’s a whole different story).  And if you don’t know that about Taso, you probably also don’t know that he was one of the creative minds that brought the Friday the 13th franchise to life some 45-years ago. 

Nowadays, Taso spends his time growing the offerings of the West Virginia Renaissance Festival, the every-June event which Taso created with Dawn Kieninger. But three years ago – on the 42nd anniversary of the original Friday the 13th’s theatrical release, as a matter of fact – I got to spend a few hours talking to Taso about his experience working on the movie. 

“We had no idea it was gonna be a big cult favorite,” Taso told me that day. “It was just a low budget movie.”

Taso, along with his college buddy Tom Savini had previously worked on Dawn of the Dead before getting the call from Friday the 13th Director Sean Cunningham. 

“We had no idea it was gonna be the big deal that it was,” Taso recalled. 

A big deal, indeed. After being made for a paltry $550,000, the film shocked audiences around the world on its way to earning nearly $60 million at the box office. And no shock was bigger than the Kevin Bacon death-scene created by Taso and Savini.

“Stabbing Kevin Bacon in the throat was pretty fun,” Taso said with a laugh. “It was fun until I almost choked on the blood.”

For the scene in question, Bacon’s head and shoulders were coming up through a hole in the bed his character was to have been lying on. A latex body was positioned to complete the illusion. A spear would then be stabbed up through the latex body, and Taso – concealed beneath the bed – would operate a “blood pump” to pull off the effect.

At least, that’s how it was supposed to happen… 

“My lap was getting wet,” Taso told me. “I looked down, and the tube had come off of the pump. So all of the blood, instead of shooting out his neck, was spilling out in my lap under the bed.”

“I knew we could only do it once because Tom had already punched a hole in the latex with the arrow – Tom was working the arrow,” Taso continued. “Then he let go to work the pump – this old brass fire extinguisher, I think it was. He pushed it so hard that it shot the tube right off the end. So I just grabbed the tube, stuck it in my mouth and blew as hard as I could. And that’s what gave it the arterial-spray – the realistic look.”

But Taso’s work on the film wasn’t solely behind, or even below, the camera. He was the very first killer shown on-screen in the franchise, as he shared the role of Mrs. Voorhees with the late Betsy Palmer – playing the part in every scene where Palmer’s face is not shown. 

“When the head gets chopped off, that’s me,” Taso shared, referring to the film’s climax. “We stuck the head on my shoulders and I ducked down under the sweater, and you can see my hairy knuckles. Sean Cunningham said ‘Reach up like you’re looking for your head.’ And I thought, ‘That doesn’t make sense, but I’ll do it.’ – oh, we had so much fun!”

Betsy Palmer may be remembered as the face and the heart of Mrs. Voorhees, but Taso Stavrakis will go down in the annals of cinematic history as her decapitated head and hairy knuckles.

Although Taso turned down the opportunity to play the role of Jason in the sequel, he would go on to work on films such as Day of the Dead, Creepshow 2, The Mask of Zorro, as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He also played recurring character “Stavros” on the daytime soap opera, As the World Turns – a role for which Taso earned endless acclaim from my  own mother. 

As for Tom Savini, I’m not really sure whatever happened to him. After he turned down working on Friday the 13th Part 2, I don’t think his career ever really went anywhere. I’ll have to ask Taso the next time I see him. 

Oh, so for the embarrassing part…

What I didn’t tell you is that getting to speak with Taso back on the 42nd anniversary of the film’s release only worked out that way because I was so nervous during our very first conversation a few days earlier, that I had to stop the interview five minutes in. After I collected myself and remembered where I had left my professionalism, we rescheduled for May 9. 

Over the years I’ve spoken to presidents, governors, rock stars, and bestselling authors. Never once was I such a big fan that I fell apart the way I did that first time talking to Taso. And to this day, he’s one of only two guys who I’ve interviewed that I wanted to take a picture with. 

Who’s the other guy, you ask?

The Boy in the Lake

Let me begin this next part by saying no, I didn’t get nervous and crumble this time. I stayed professional, and I was the manliest man who ever manned, okay?

Now that that’s settled, we can get back to the story.

For a few hours this past Saturday, West Virginia was the quiet host of something very cool, and mostly unnoticed. The original actors who portrayed both Mrs. Voorhees and Jason Voorhees – mother and son –  were both in the Mountain State at the same time. And while they may not have been in the same room, or even the same town together, the significance – if felt by no one else – was surely felt by me.

Taso, of course, was down in Greenbrier County getting ready to open the gates of the Renaissance Festival this weekend. But in Charleston, at A Walk in Time – one of the coolest little collectible shops this side of Crystal Lake – was the first Jason himself!

Just 14-years-old at the time, Ari Lehman – whose name rhymes with demon – delivered the ultimate jump scare at the end of Friday the 13th, and in the process gave the world its first taste of what was to come over the next 45 years. Ari is a bonafide icon, and inarguably one of the most recognized names in the history of horror movies. 

And I got to hang out with him. 

“We never would have imagined that there’d be such a legacy where Jason has become part of American folklore – part of mythology worldwide,” Ari told me, in between signing autographs and taking pictures with smiling fans. “It’s a character that people recognize, especially the hockey mask.”

If you ever have the chance to speak with Ari, it will take you all of five seconds to realize the passion he has not just for the Jason character, but for the Friday the 13th franchise as a whole. Hands down one of the coolest interviews I’ve ever done, Ari is approachable and easy to talk to, and the love and appreciation he has for the fans radiates like the sun reflecting off lake water. 

“The way that people’s imagination is just catalyzed by Jason – everybody has a different perspective of Jason,” Ari explained. “People come up and they tell me different takes on what they think. There’s that relationship between Jason and his mama, whereas other characters, they’re just so evil.”

“Jason has mama, and Michael (Myers) has mama-issues, where he’s [going after] his own family,” Ari continued. “I think people relate to Jason in a certain way. So when they show up at the table (for a meet and greet), they’re really expressing how they feel about that character, and I feel very privileged to be the person that they’re relating that to.”

“I never take it for granted, or take it too seriously, or imagine that I am Jason – I have a healthy distance from it,” Ari added. “But I think that being playful about it, and certainly being grateful for it, is the best approach.”

As the legend goes, Ari’s casting as Jason came after Sean Cunningham’s wife refused to allow their own son to play the part. Familiar with Cunningham from working together on the 1978 family-comedy film, Manny’s Orphans, Ari first got the call to depict a drowning Jason during a flashback scene. And much like the man who would become his on-screen mother, Ari had no idea the film would become such a massive and lasting success.

“Sean Cunningham did not even set out initially to make Friday the 13th,” Ari shared. “He wanted to make a rom-com about a bunch of kids who play soccer. Paramount Pictures turned down that film, but gave him (Cunningham) the opportunity to do a horror film.”

“Having seen the success of Halloween, Sean just made up Friday the 13th,” Ari noted, before touching on Jason’s unplanned evolution during the first film. “Jason Voorhees, was gonna be – for all cinematic-history – a drowning child at the onset. The movie was about mama.”

The original version of the film did not include the now-famous final jump scare. But as that version did not do well with test audiences, Ari explained, Paramount Pictures was unsatisfied. 

“The little boy drowns, she (Mrs. Voorhees) has this heartfelt flashback about the poor drowning child, and then she gets her head chopped off,” Ari continued. “People were upset. They needed some other kind of closure, so Paramount passed.”

The film’s initial production, Ari added, wrapped in August of 1979. For the next two month’s the future of Friday the 13th remained uncertain. By October, however, that Savini guy had developed the final lake-sequence in the hopes of making the movie more acceptable to both Paramount, and audiences, and Ari was called back to the make-up chair. 

“The make-up took about four-and-a-half hours every time,” Ari said, talking not only to me now, but also to the fans gathered to hear him tell the story. “That’s not CGI mud, that’s mud.”

When a fan asked him about the October water temperature, Ari told him, “It wasn’t very cold.”

“I know people always want it to seem like I suffered so much, but not really,” Ari added. “I think it was probably harder for Alice (portrayed by Adrienne King) because she was sitting in the boat, and she didn’t know what was coming.”

“In the first take, Cunningham wanted to scare poor Adrienne,” Ari continued. “Sean comes over to me and he says, ‘Ari, the cameras are rolling. Just go out in the water. You wouldn’t be able to hear me say ‘action’ anyway because you’re under water, so just look up, and wait for the bubbles to clear – that’s action. You’re the director on this scene.’”

“That’s the perfect thing to say to a little kid,” Ari laughed. “So I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I gotta get this right. I’m the director!’”

“I thought about how I should come out of the water, like should I be playful like we’re at a pool party?” Ari continued, still laughing. “But then I thought, ‘I’m sorry, she (he didn’t say she) killed my mama!’ You know, you need motivation.”

“Poor Alice, she grabs my arm and she fell out of the boat,” Ari added. “Then she points at me and goes, ‘You jumped the gun, he didn’t say action!’”

Even though Ari did share with me his fondness for “Mama” Taso – as well as his desire to hopefully make a stop at the West Virginia Renaissance Festival in the not-too-distant future – there was an obvious soft spot in his heart for Betsy Palmer. 

“You know, Mama Voorhees had the same birthday as my own mother –  November 1” Ari told another fan while signing an autograph. “Betsy Palmer was one of the most amazing people you’d ever want to meet – she was so wonderful.”

“She dated and lived with James Dean for two months,” Ari added, delighting the fan even further. “And when he (Dean) was gonna go to Hollywood, she said, ‘no, don’t go.’ And of course then he crashed his car. Shoulda’ listened to mama.”

Getting to hang out with Ari, and watching him interact with everyone in that shop was just so very cool. He played some of his band’s music for me, and showed me some artwork from their new album. (First Jason is his band’s name, by the way. Check them out if you’re a fan of metal). 

But by far the coolest part was having my son there with me. For a really great hour, Saturday afternoon felt a whole lot like a random Tuesday in 1988. And even though my kid might not have that connection just yet, my dad’s kid definitely does. 

So Taso and Ari, thanks fellas. I’m happy that I got to meet my heroes, and I’m even happier that they’re the villains in my story.