The divisive Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was notoriously trimmed of much of its gore to avoid an X-rating, but it also marked the first appearance of Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees. New costume test images have emerged, revealing a closer look at the slasher icon and an original design for another undead character.
The images come from Fridaythe13thfranchise.com, via campbloodarchives, acquired from the late John Carl Buechler, the director of The New Blood.
While the rare behind-the-scenes production photos offer a cool glimpse of the zombified slasher icon, the new images provide an even bigger rarity: a look at the original design concept for Mr. Shepard (John Otrin), the dead dad who temporarily resurrects to help final girl Tina Sheppard (Lar Park Lincoln) in her confrontation with Jason.
In the sequel, Tina’s telekinetic powers accidentally revives Jason from his watery grave, triggering a new wave of murders.
It wasn’t just the superpowered new heroine that made this sequel so polarizing, though, but how bloodless it was. As Zachary Paul noted in his retrospective, “the MPAA was already notorious for its hatred of the Friday the 13th franchise, so despite it being the exact kind of film they tended to be more lenient on, they essentially punished The New Blood for simply being a part of the series.“
That resulted in a lot of the film’s gory kills getting culled down to a mostly bloodless affair.
While some bits of excised footage from The New Blood have surfaced over the years, we’ve to date never seen all of the footage that was trimmed out of the movie in order to get it the “R” rating necessary for theatrical release back in the late 1980s.
These new images don’t restore the gore, but it is a cool look at what might’ve been.
