Pamela Voorhees

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friday the 13th character
Pamela Sue Voorhees
Gender:	Female
Race	Caucasian
Birth/Death	1930 - 1979
Location	Camp Crystal Lake
Family	Jason Voorhees
Enemies	Everyone
Portrayed by:	Friday the 13th: Betsy Palmer Freddy vs. Jason Paula Shaw

Pamela Sue Voorhees is a fictional character, mother of the fictional slasher mass murderer Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films.

In the original Friday the 13th film, the character is simply named Mrs. Voorhees, her first name not being revealed until Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

The character was portrayed by Betsy Palmer in the first two films. During the character's brief appearance in Freddy vs. Jason, she was played by Paula Shaw. According to the actress herself at conventions, Betsy Palmer was asked to reprise her role as Pamela Voorhees for the Freddy vs. Jason film, but turned the part down when the salary offered proved to be very small.

[edit] Character history

Although many believe Jason was the killer in all the films, Pamela actually committed the murders in the first film. Before her demise, she had claimed the lives of nine camp counselors using brutal and creative forms of execution. Because of the nature of her killings, she is probably one of the most violent female mass murderers in film history.

Pamela Voorhees was born in 1930 (revealed in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). Her son's death worsened the symptoms of her schizophrenia, driving her over the edge to madness and murder.

At age 15 Pamela became pregnant with Jason by Elias Voorhees, and on June 13th, 1946, at age 16, she gave birth to a hydrocephalic boy she named Jason, as shown in Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday. Because of his deformity and her antisocial personality, Pamela never sent Jason to school and was the only one who knew him as seen in Friday the 13th Part 2.

Some time before Jason's death, Pamela got a job as a cook at Camp Crystal Lake. During her working hours, she would bring Jason to camp, presumably because she had no one to watch him while she worked. Jason tried to befriend the other children and engage in camp activities, but the children viewed him as a freak because of his deformity.

On a fateful day in 1957, Pamela was working as usual when the children's teasing got out of hand. They shoved and pushed Jason around repeatedly while calling him "freak show." They continued this abuse until they had pushed him in the lake. Jason tried to swim and stay afloat, but he couldn't swim and cried for help, as seen in Freddy vs. Jason. The two counselors who were supposed to be supervising the children, Barry and Claudette (last names unknown) were too preoccupied with having sex to respond to his cry for help. Jason appeared to have drowned — an event that would change Camp Crystal Lake's history forever.

After her son's "death", Pamela began hearing voices telling her to kill. In 1958, a year after Jason's death, Pamela brutally murdered Barry and Claudette. Camp Crystal Lake was closed after the murders and was given the nickname "Camp Blood" by local residents. When the owner tried to re-open the camp again in 1962, Pamela returned and poisoned the water and set several fires. The camp was shut down once again and did not reopen until 1979.

On June 13, 1979, the new owner of Camp Crystal Lake, Steve Christy, and seven young counselors returned to the deadly camp grounds to prepare it for reopening, even after several ominous warnings of a "death curse" by the local residents. Enraged, Pamela went on a savage killing spree, killing Christy and six of the camp counselors.

The survivor, Alice Hardy, discovered two of the murdered victims and later met Pamela. Pamela told Alice about Jason's death, during which she flew into a terrifying rage and attacked Alice and chased her around the camp, saying "Kill her, mommy," mimicking Jason's voice. During the final attack, Alice decapitated Pamela with a machete that Pamela attempted to kill her with.

Two months later, Jason (who had survived his supposed drowning and had been living in the woods as a hermit) carried out his own revenge by killing Alice. Jason had kept his mother's severed head, first to frighten the girl (by placing it in her refrigerator) and then took both her corpse and the head to his shack in the woods. In it, he built something of a shrine to his mother and subsequently placed some victims there. After he is hit in the shoulder with a machete and left for dead at the end of his first killing spree, he leaves his crudely made home and his mother.

Pamela Voorhees was initially laid to rest in a run down cemetery. When Jason was killed by Tommy Jarvis a few years later, it's presumed that she was relocated (now with her head) to Eternal Peace Cemetery along with her son in accordance with arrangements made by Elias Voorhees, the father of Pamela's son.

[edit] Life after death

Although Pamela does not share her son's unique immortality, she does reappear in later films. The character is seen again in the climax of Friday the 13th Part 2 in which Betsy Palmer reprises her role when Jason sees his mother talking to him while in reality it is one of Jason's potential victims trying to fool him. She is seen again in Friday the 13th Part 3 when lone survivor Chris Higgins has a nightmare that ends with Pamela's corpse (played by the Second Assistant Director, Marilyn Poucher), wearing her blue sweater with head attached, reaching up from the lake to pull her under. She is seen again in Freddy vs. Jason (played this time by Paula Shaw), seen in Hell commanding her son to kill the children of Elm Street; however, it turns out that it is actually Freddy Krueger masquerading as Pamela in order to manipulate Jason for his own needs.

Reportedly, the character was to make another appearance for Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday in a flashback sequence, but was dropped when Palmer turned it down.

She also made a brief cameo in the Friday the 13th video game for the NES. Her decapitated head is a very powerful mini-boss in a hidden cave. It floats around after lifting itself off a pedestal surrounded by candles, reminiscent of the second movie. Just as Jason has to be defeated three times to complete the game, Pamela can also be fought three times, and each defeat earns the player a unique item -- a powerful weapon (usually a machete or axe), then her sweater, and finally the pitchfork, which is the only weapon that can kill Jason for good.

[edit] External links

• Interview with Betsy Palmer on the podcast The Future And You (anecdotes about working on Friday the Thirteenth and the story of how she got her first acting job.)

The Friday the 13th Series

Films: Friday the 13th • Friday the 13th Part 2 • Friday the 13th Part 3 • Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter • Friday the 13th: A New Beginning • Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives • Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood • Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan • Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday • Jason X • Freddy vs. Jason Major characters: Jason Voorhees • Pamela Voorhees • Tommy Jarvis • Roy Burns Other topics: Comics • List of Deaths • Timeline • Video Game