Friday the 13th has come round again, and as fans of the horror franchise named for the superstitious day pop in a DVD or queue one of the films on a streaming service, many might be curious to know that Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter featured a brutally disturbing scene that was based on a real murder. Screen Rant recently shared the history of the scene, which featured E. Erich Anderson’s character Rob Dier being murdered by Jason Voorhees in a basement. Surprisingly, the scene lacks the level of gore for which the franchise has come to be known for, but it was still deeply cruel and haunting, nonetheless.
It turns out, according to director Joseph Zito in the Crystal Lake Memories book, Rob’s death was based on a crime he read about in a newspaper. Zito shared that he’d read about the tragic story, in which a man was being stabbed to death while yelling, “please stop hurting me, please stop killing me.” This had a significant impact on Zito, as the idea of the victim speaking to their attacker was profoundly unsettling for him. This led him to create a scene where one of Jason’s victims would speak during their death, resulting in Rob dying while yelling, “He’s killing me!”
It is finally FRIDAY THE 13TH. @marc_pyskaty favorite franchise. What is your favorite movie in this crazy series? @marc_pyskaty is FRIDAY THE 13TH THE FINAL CHAPTER. pic.twitter.com/BzFFUobr0t
— cinescare (@cinescarehorror) August 13, 2021
The first Friday the 13th film was released in 1980. It went on to spawn nine sequels, as well as a mash-up film with Jason’s fellow horror film icon Freddy Kruger — 2003s Freddy vs. Jason — and a critically panned reboot in 2009. Since then, the franchise has had trouble getting back off the ground. A number of planned follow-up reboots failed to make it past the scripting stage, and a subsequent copyright lawsuit brought the series to a screeching halt.
Back in 2018, it was reported that Lebron James was going to be joining the Friday the 13th franchise as a producer of a planned reboot for the series. According to a Bloody Disgusting report at the time, James and his production company SpringHill Entertainment were said to be working with Vertigo Entertainment on a new launch for the iconic horror movie. There has been no new information regarding the future of the franchise since, but in 2020 We Got This Covered reported that a new Friday the 13th movie was “in the works.”