Deleted scenes have always fascinated me. Some of them are totally useless, while others would’ve made for interesting additions. We focus on the latter scenes in Deleted Screams.

Unlike the Nightmare on Elm Street remake that was released one year later, I was personally quite satisfied with director Marcus Nispel’s take on Friday the 13th. Nispel, along with writers Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason), managed to bring the franchise back to its simple hack ‘n slash roots, crafting a reboot that essentially remade the first few films.

Getting the Mrs. Voorhees stuff out of the way in the opening credits, Friday the 13th 2009 focused primarily on Jason cutting up horny young folks at Camp Crystal Lake; two different sets of them, just in case one wasn’t enough to satiate your blood lust. Sure, the deaths could’ve been a bit more creative, but Friday ’09 felt like a classic Friday film to me, and I had a blast with it.

Plus Jason looked super cool, and Derek Mears was so badass in the role.

Jason initially wears the Part 2 “sackhead” mask in the 2009 remake, but it doesn’t take long for him to acquire his trademark hockey mask. In the finished version of the film, he casually finds the mask lying on the ground after he kills Donnie, a pervy pot farmer who works on the grounds of Crystal Lake. Donnie is messing around and getting high when he hears a noise up in the attic. Going up there to investigate, Donnie comes across the mannequin that took his virginity; after their brief reunion, Jason pops up behind him, slashes his throat, and then finds the mask.

But there’s an alternate origin story for the mask found on the home video release.

In this alternate version of events, Donnie finds the hockey mask behind a stack of porno magazines and puts it on. As he’s making love to one of the girls in the mag, Jason comes downstairs, pulls out his machete, and brutally slices Donnie’s head off – hockey mask still on his head. Jason holds up the severed head and grabs the mask off it; at last, his face is complete.

There’s something I dig about the mask’s origin story in the final film, which sees Jason casually find it almost by accident, but the alternate sequence is undoubtedly way cooler. Seeing Jason hold up a severed head with his iconic hockey mask on it is a badass image, and it just seems like the perfect way for him to find his new disguise. Additionally, Donnie’s death is much cooler in the alternate scene than in the finished cut; in my world, decapitation always beats throat slit.

Another interesting thing to point out here is that the deleted scene would’ve excised Jason’s unmasking from the film. In the finished film, Donnie removes Jason’s sack mask before getting his throat slit, and we get a fairly good look at his gnarly face. In the alternate scene, however, we never see Jason’s face. If they went with this scene instead, the only time we would’ve seen Jason unmasked was at the very end, when we catch a brief glimpse of his face as he’s falling to the bottom of the lake; and I kind of prefer that, as some things are best left a bit mysterious.

Check out the alternate scene below and check back soon for more Deleted Screams.