Friday the 13th Part 3’s original ending featured a truly shocking kill by Jason Voorhees, but here’s why it ultimately ended up being changed. By and large, slasher films end with the final girl - or in some rare cases, final guy - finding a way to defeat the killer, although usually at the cost of losing a bunch of their loved ones along the way. However, as much as horror thrives on franchises, most popular slashers don’t stay dead or gone for very long, as there’s more money to be made with another sequel.
Yet, fans are willing to accept the reality that most slasher villains aren’t going to stay dead, even if they always lose. After all, it’s cathartic to watch the put upon protagonist manage to overcome what seems like an unbeatable killer, especially in the case of supernatural slashers. Whether that victory holds is ultimately irrelevant, as horror fans flock to see the return of their favorite masked madman.
This pattern holds true for Jason, who is unquestionably beaten at the end of nearly every Friday the 13th film, even if he only stays down until the opening credits on the next installment roll. It turns out though that Friday the 13th Part 3’s original ending would’ve sent Jason out with a bang, allowing him to actually kill the final girl - sort of.
Friday the 13th Part 3’s Original Ending Gave Jason One Last Kill
It’s been legend among horror fans for decades that the original ending of Friday the 13th Part 3 - the only film in the franchise to be shot in 3D - saw Jason decapitate final girl Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell) with a machete. In the last few years, production stills from that fabled sequence finally emerged, and one can be seen above. In the original ending, after Chris axes Jason in the head and heads out into Crystal Lake in a canoe, she wakes up to hear what sounds like her boyfriend Rick calling to her from the house at Higgins Haven. When she gets there, an unmasked Jason emerges, then chops her head off.
Supposedly, producers decided not to go with this ending because they felt having Jason kill Chris was too depressing of a way to go out. That’s even despite the fact that Jason decapitating Chris was merely meant to be a dream sequence, and would’ve led into the reveal that Chris was actually in the back of a police car screaming like a crazy person. The fact that it’s a dream also becomes obvious fairly quickly, as this unmasked Jason has no axe wound in his head, foreshadowing the reveal. However, there was a secondary reason this ending was changed, and that’s due to unhappiness with how Jason’s unmasked face looked. This led to Jason’s face being entirely redesigned for the film, as can be seen when his mask comes off in the final cut of Friday the 13th Part 3. Considering the face above kind of makes Jason look like Sloth from The Goonies, this was probably a good move.
More: Friday the 13th Part 3’s Ending Is A Giant Plot Hole
