Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter killed off Jason Voorhees as a human, but a deleted alternate ending scene saw him return for another scare. During the 1980s, the heyday of the Friday the 13th franchise and the golden age of slasher films, the MPAA ratings board loved to play hardball with the genre. Kills would be deemed too gory, sex would be deemed too graphic, and scares would be deemed too disturbing. Thus, lots and lots of filmed material got deleted.
This is very true for Friday the 13th, which had to heavily edit each and every entry released during that decade. Rarer, though, were scenes deleted from Jason’s adventures that weren’t due to edicts from the MPAA, but because the filmmakers involved changed their minds. Friday the 13th movies aren’t really known for their complex stories, but some thought is indeed put into how they play out. After all, the franchise was an absolute cash cow for Paramount at one point.
It just so happens that among the various deleted scenes from 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter - which of course ended up being only the fourth film of twelve made to date - is an alternate ending that drastically changes the conclusion of the story. It also firmly establishes the fate of a forgotten character.
Friday The 13th’s Final Chapter Brought Jason Back In A Deleted Scene
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter’s deleted alternate ending is set between young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) hacking Jason to death with his own machete, and Tommy’s older sister Trish being visited by her brother in the hospital. In the scene, Trish and Tommy wake up on the couch the next morning, but Jason’s body is missing. The police arrive next door, and Trish sends Tommy to get them. She then notices water dripping from the ceiling. In the upstairs bathroom, Trish finds a terrible sight, her own mother drowned by Jason in the bathtub. This answers a question left unresolved in the final film, which sees Trish and Tommy’s mom just kind of scream at something and disappear, presumably then being killed off-screen by Jason.
Trish is understandably upset, but things get worse when her mother’s eyes turn white, and Jason appears over her with a machete. He strikes, but she wakes up in the hospital, as it was all a dream sequence, reminiscent of how the first Friday the 13th ended. Interestingly, Friday the 13th Part 3 originally ended with its own shocking dream sequence, in which Jason decapitates heroine Chris, who then wakes up screaming in the back of a police car. That was changed to a dream sequence involving Mrs. Voorhees, which made no sense, as Chris didn’t know who she was.
More: All The Friday the 13th Movies Ranked, Worst To Best
