Top 10 Friday the 13th death faces

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Death faces, much like come faces, can be... well, a little bit embarassing. Especially if you happen to be a z list actor in a horror franchise. 

The Friday the 13th movies boast heady atmospherics, great camerawork and brutally inventive methods of offing numerous interchangable horny teenagers. What they do not boast is great acting.

The emotions characters' experience as they succumb to either Jason or his dear old mum (or the copycat killer in Part 5 we'd much rather forget) range from resignation, overdone shock and clear apathy.

Here are our favourite last hurrahs:

10) Tina (Deborah Voorhees)

Film: A New Beginning
Cause of death: Garden shears through the eyes. Yikes!
What's going down: Yes, her name really is Voorhees. Tina is enjoying some al fresco rumpy pumpy while simultaneously treating the viewer to some full frontal nudity (this is the movie where all the sex starts to feel a bit icky). Naturally, the Jason copycat is in the vicinity with murder on his mind and garden tools in his hand.
Emotions portrayed: Good old fashioned melodrama. It looks like Voorhees was auditioning for Psycho.
Life after Friday: Voorhees had a recurring role in Dallas and wrote, directed, edited, produced and starred in a film about Shakespeare that no one has heard of.





9) Chili (Rachel Howard)


Film: Part 3
Cause of death: Red hot poker through the stomach
What's going down: With most of the third batch of teens already sent to meet their maker, Chili is cornered downstairs in the cabin.
Emotions portrayed: To me, this is the face of someone who has particularly nasty brain freeze. It is not the face of someone who has just been impaled by a poker. Though Howard is clearly doing... something here, we're not quite sure it captures the gravity of the situation.
Life after Friday: Aside from 1988 sci-fi creature feature Deep Space six years after her fateful trip to Camp Crystal Lake, Howard never showed up in any further films.




8) Marcie (Jeannine Taylor)


Film: Part 1
Cause of death: Erm... axe to the head?
What's going down: Really, who can even remember by this point?
Emotion portrayed: Despite being one of the most delightfully grisly deaths in the franchise, Taylor's face reads disappointing exam results, or realising that Jason only gets ten seconds of screen time in the first Friday. Like many of the somnabulant teens who fail to put up much resistance to the Voorhees' butchery, Marcie appears to calmly accept her lot.
Life after Friday: An appearance in straight-to-TV movie The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (so getting the DVD!). The rest is silence.



7) Lana (Rebecca Wood)



Film: A New Beginning
Cause of death: Axe to the stomach.
What's going down: Lana and her shady boyfriend pull up at a gas station. After a quick loo break, Lana returns to find the boyf gone, but luckily she discovers a lot of unattended coke. It's sadly at this point that she finds the lifeless corpse of her beau and the menacing figure of Fake Jason standing over her. After a botched attempt to escape, she's quickly dispatched.
Emotions portrayed: Is it me, or does she kind of look like she's enjoying it? It seems death faces really can be confused with come faces...
Life after Friday: She landed a role in straight-to-video flick Barbarian Queen II: The Empress Strikes Back. If that's not artistic fulfillment, I don't know what it...

6) Mrs Voorhees (Betsy Palmer)


Film: Part 1
Cause of death: Beheading
What's going down: Undoubtedly the high point of Part 1, filmgoers got to see Mrs Voorhees die in gloriously jumpy slow motion.
Emotions portrayed: The serial killer's fabulously OTT departure –
 particularly Mrs Voorhees' hands clawing at where her head should be – is the icing on the cake for Part 1's unintentionally comedic climax.
Life after Friday: Palmer's career far outlasted her teen victims. After Friday, Plamer could mainly be seen on the small screen in shows like Murder, She Wrote and Penny Dreadful. Friends say her days of offing adolescents with a large assortment of sharp objects are over...


5) Stoney (Yani Gellman)


Film: Jason X
Cause of death: Macheti to the stomach
What's going down: Naturally, even in space students struggle to control their raging libidos. Stoney is another unfortunate post-coital kill once Jason defrosts and starts making his way through the Grendel's crew.
Emotions portrayed: Mild disappointment. If you cropped out the macheti, I'd guess that someone had told him that his t-shirt is a bit silly. Which it is.
Life after Friday: Though he has enjoyed a recurring role in Pretty Little Liars, Gellman is now more likely to be found in one-off parts in TV shows like Castle, CSI and iZombie.





4) Annie (Robbi Morgan)


Film: Part 1
Cause of death: Hunting knife to the throat
What's going down: Foolishly deciding to hitchike to a notorious murder camp, Annie is dispatched after a quick sprint through the woods.
Emotions portrayed: With the dubious honour of being the first person to be killed in the franchise proper (after Part 1's unnecessary pre-titles murders), Morgan sets the bar high for ludicrous understatement. She reacts to having her throat cut like someone spotting a large spider in their bedroom.
Life after Friday: A series of irregular post-Friday roles, mainly TV movies, make Morgan's memorable warning about the perils of hitchiking the highlight of her career to date.


3) Ethel (Carol Locatell)


Film: A New Beginning 
Cause of death: Cleaver through the window
What's going down: Ethel and her son Junior are two of the most irritating and problematic characters in the entire Friday the 13th saga. If you thought The Texas Chainsaw Massacre rammed in the hillbilly stereotypes, just watch A New Beginning! When they both finally meet their maker, it's definitely a relief. I wasn't sure I could take much longer.
Emotions portrayed: Eating a particularly spicy curry. This eye-popping end was made worse by poor Ethel's corpse falling face first into her stew.
Life after Friday: After her embarassing turn in A New Beginning, Locatell has partially redeemed herself with roles in NCIS, Scandal, Mad Men and Grey's Anatomy.



2) Dr Wimmer (David Cronenberg!?!)


Film: Jason X
Cause of death: Supremely accurate macheti throwing
What's going down: Cronenberg stars as a scientist determined to study Jason and find out why he's so bloody unkillable. With Jason loose and soldiers dropping like flies around him, Wimmer does a runner. Unfortunately, Jason already has around 150 kills under his belt by this point, so has gotten rather good at it.
Emotions portrayed: We can thank our lucky stars that Cronenberg followed a career in directing rather than acting.  
Life after Friday: After a role that was clearly the pinacle of Cronenberg's cinematic career, the director has been quite busy. Did you know that Cronenberg directed Freud and Jung biopic A Dangerous Method and the Robert-Pattison-starring Cosmopolis? Neither did we.

1) Harold (Steve Susskind)


Film: Part 3
Cause of death: Axe to the chest
What's going down: This memorable piece of overacting almost redeems the franchise's lacklustre third outing. Following the high drama of Part 2, we incongruously meet a middle aged couple bickering in a nearby town. Harold senses something is amiss while on the loo, so he gets up to investigate (without wiping, one of two occasions where characters demonstrate a lack of hygiene in this area). Following some not-very-good suspense, the axe hurtles towards Harold in one of the many cheap uses of 3D in the movie. 
Emotions portrayed: Just look at those eyes.
Life after Friday: Weirdly Susskind went on to enjoy success as a voice actor in children's films, with minor roles in Monsters Inc. and The Emperor's New Groove.


 Are you a fan of slasher films? Why not check out our essay on Ruin Me, a meta slasher that crams in Friday the 13th references like its nobody's business.

 Or for more irreverent takes on classic horror franchise, find out what happened when we attempted to play our very own Halloween drinking game.

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