Taking to the stage at Frightfest was Kane Hodder, iconic stuntman-turned-slasher who made his name playing Jason Vorhees before picking up the Hatchet as Victor Crowley.
It’s been a big year for Hodder. Not only has the documentary To Hell And Back been wowing the crowds but he also managed to sneak in the festival’s biggest surprise – a brand new Victor Crowley movie, made under the radar!
Our reporter Kat Hughes was there for an in-depth interview, hosted by Alan Jones, that not only covered Crowley but also his thoughts on the industry and the accident which left him badly-burned after only his first job.
Here are some highlights…
On Victor Crowley:
There were so many problems that we faced… the entire floor of the airplane falling out on Day One, so they lost an entire day of shooting. The swamp being drained and not filled when they were supposed to come back and do some pick up shots. So there were a lot of problems that happened throughout shooting and it was already a tight schedule anyway, which on the one hand made it nice for me because I wasn’t in the make up so many days.
On Crowley v Jason Vorhees:
I do in a way prefer Victor Crowley because it’s current. So many fans know both characters but there’s a huge group of fans that don’t know me as Jason. Younger fans who’ve grown up with Victor Crowley don’t even know the Friday The 13th movies, which is pretty amazing to think about. It was that long ago – the last one I did was in 2000.
On the Friday The 13th revival:
I’m not against it. I would hope that if I don’t do it somehow the person who does do it is a one timer, because I’d like to go down in history as the person who’s played the character in more than one film… But I would still like them to do that. They should do one more movie because it’ll be the thirteenth one!
Alan Jones: They should get Adam Green (Victor Crowley director) to do it.
Kane Hodder: Yeah they should bring back Corey Feldman… some of the characters that didn’t die! (Laughter)
Photo Credit: Kat Hughes
On stunt work and his accident:
Stunt people are very often in the background. The stunt community knows very talented stunt people but so often actors take credit for things they did not do.
It never entered my mind to quit, maybe I’m stupid as shit… I thought for a while that I might not do fire stunts anymore, then that passed and I ended up specialising in fire stunts… I loved everything about it. It was so cool to have a physical challenge presented in the context of a film and then do it well and walk away proudly… performing it and making it look good on film.
A year and a half after I was able to get back to the business, even recovering and getting mobility back, your skin contracts… you can’t function, that’s what makes the injury so devastating. After the pain goes away that’s when the work starts. My first job back after my burn… I did an episode of Wonder Woman. It’s funny to watch that… it took place at a Comic Con! I wore a tight-fitting spandex thing that keeps constant pressure on the scars so they can’t build up.
On Friday The 13th – The Game:
I was just honoured that they wanted me to do it. I did all the motion capture for Jason. It’s a completely different industry. First of all, what you’re wearing… you don’t look scary at all! What helped, and I didn’t realise they had this capability, but as I was standing on the motion capture stage in the spandex suit with the sensors I could look at a monitor and see myself as Jason, fully animated. So even though I looked weird I could look at myself and do my moves and see what worked and what didn’t.
The thing that’s so different… is that you have at least eighty cameras shooting you from every possible angle. You have to be aware of that. So many things we did in the motion capture wouldn’t have worked on film and vice versa. On film we would have had to have done things at certain angles so the hits would look real. Actually we did some mo-cap last week… we did seventy-eight more kills!
On the gig he wished he’d gotten:
When I was doing Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, I got a call. The one call I had always dreamed of, to play Michael Myers in one of the Halloweens. Whatever one was being shot in 1989… I thought “Oh no I can’t do it!” If I had done that I would have officially played the four major characters. I would have done Michael, I’d done Jason, I’d stunt-doubled for Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, I did quite a few scenes. Then I was Freddy’s hand in Jason Goes To Hell!
