Kane Hodder’s hockey mask from Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday carries a punched-out eyehole and a chewed-up lower right edge, and the production put both there on purpose. The film opens with an FBI team luring Jason to Crystal Lake and taking him apart with a grenade launcher. That mask goes up at Heritage Auctions on December 2 with a starting bid of $40,000, and Hodder’s own annotated first-draft script is in the lot with it.
Heritage has it as lot 38578 in its Hollywood/Entertainment Signature Auction, which runs November 30 through December 3, with this lot crossing the floor on December 2 at 11:00 a.m. Central. The mask is hand-painted cast resin on leather straps, nine inches by seven by three, and Heritage grades it screen-matched rather than simply screen-worn: the lot includes printouts lining its damage up against specific frames of the film.
The Script Was Called ‘The Death of Jason’
The other half of the lot is Hodder’s own copy of the first draft, dated February 18, 1992 and running 90 photocopied pages. Its title page reads Friday the 13th Part 9: The Death of Jason, from a draft by Jay Huguely. The franchise had just moved from Paramount to New Line Cinema, which did not hold the rights to the Friday the 13th name, and the film reached theaters as Jason Goes to Hell on August 13, 1993.
Hodder worked on the backs of the final pages, marking where stunt performers took over Jason’s kills and the punishment he absorbs, along with performer names, shooting days and other production notes. His name is on the cover in graphite, his signature in silver paint pen.
Hodder Wore It Four Films Running
Hodder was the first actor to play Jason Voorhees more than once, and he did it four films in a row: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood in 1988, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989, Jason Goes to Hell in 1993 and Jason X in 2001. The character is in front of a new audience right now, with Peacock’s Crystal Lake drawing 1.3 billion minutes in its first 11 days.
The lot comes out of the collection of Mario Kirner, a Friday the 13th collector, author and historian, and carries a letter of authenticity from Beckett Authentication Services and a letter of verification from Grad Auth. Heritage is also including a copy of Friday the 13th Props Museum – The Book, where the mask appears on pages 62 and 63 and the script on pages 74 through 76. A buyer’s premium of 25 percent sits on top of whatever the hammer lands on.
There is a wrinkle to owning this particular mask. Jason spends most of Jason Goes to Hell wearing other people, hopping from a coroner to a police officer to other hosts, and only gets his own shape back near the end. The mask on the block belongs to the few minutes at either end of the film when he is actually himself.
