Jason Voorhees is a silent, hulking mass of murderous rage. He wears a burlap sack over his head and wields an equally fearful machete in each hand. He first appeared in the Friday the 13th film series as the main antagonist. He is named after World War Two hero Colonel Jason of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and was reportedly based on real life serial killer Ed Gein, who wore a burlap sack over his head and carried machete-like tools.

Jason’s trademark machete is no doubt the inspiration for many horror movies, but it was designed for use in an original idea. The machete that you see floating around from time to time didn’t appear until the third film in the series (Friday the 13th Part III). The original design was created by Concept Artist Bob Keen using a knife, some razor blades and a lot of imagination. It was placed into production at two separate times: once as part of a dream sequence involving Kane Hodder as Jason, and then as part of an alternate ending filmed at the request director Steve Miner.

Jason Voorhees is a Hollywood icon. But he is little more than a bad-tempered slasher who wears a burlap sack over his head and wields an equally fearful machete in each hand.

The character did not appear until the third installment of the Friday the 13th series, Jason Takes Manhattan, in 1980. He is probably best known for his party trick: when he slices through anyone with his machete, their head briefly appears out of the neckline of his burlap sack.

Jason’s costume looks more like a military uniform than a Halloween costume. It’s not so crazy to imagine him in a suit. And when you wear a suit, it’s pretty hard to get killed by someone who isn’t you – or, at least, just barely harder than getting killed by the man upstairs.

The thing is, having Jason try to kill the counselors of Camp Crystal Lake is a terrible idea so long as he can only get close enough to them with his machete. It’s like thinking that it would be a good idea to have your teenaged kids go out and buy automatic weapons. The gun would eventually be used for protection against burglars: but you wouldn’t do that, because it is unlikely that the gun could kill anyone who wasn’t trying to kill you first (or at least trying to steal from you).

So Jason needs some kind of protective armor first. A costume of course! And if he’s going for real heavy firepower, why not make him hulking and burly? I’m sure there’s some kind of custom-made suit that allows you to carry around a machine gun without going into anaphylactic shock. And if people were scared of Jason before they knew it was him in the sack they’d

Jason’s costume is a really interesting case. The original masks weren’t much more than a plastic bag filled with sawdust, but the film series changed all that. By the next movie, Jason had his iconic hockey mask and machete. That’s when the costume changed from kind of silly to serious and threatening.

The hockey mask wasn’t always there. In the first movie, Jason’s face was actually visible; he had no mask at all – just a pointed hat made out of straw. For some reason, this was cut from the movie, presumably because it seemed like yet another way for Jason to be faceless: face hidden behind a hat.

I don’t think that was it exactly; I think the real reason was that it wasn’t scary enough. The first time we see him coming after camp counselor Alice (Adrienne King), he’s wearing the hat, but his face is still there, we can see his eyes and mouth and everything. And she starts screaming and running away, which would have been enough to scare anyone; but then she turns around and he’s gone and she starts chasing after him again! We really don’t care if he has any face at all or if his face is even there; what matters is that he’s

Jason’s face is only briefly shown, and not in the film itself. In the opening credits he is presented as a shadowy figure who slashes his way through a group of teenagers. This seems to imply that Jason’s face has been burned off or otherwise destroyed by an explosion.

In fact, however, the mask Jason wears in the films can be seen very clearly in photographs taken during production of Friday The 13th Part 2. It is made of burlap and is positioned relatively high on his head (something that fans have speculated about for years.)