Unlucky in Love: ‘Friday the 13th’ Couple Deaths Ranked
Last year, we published a piece on all the double impalements featured throughout the Friday the 13th franchise. While Jason Voorhees certainly loves a good BOGO death, he’s just as keen on striking down romance anywhere he goes. Murder thrives in Camp Crystal Lake, but love dies. Here, in the spirit of the season, we’ll be looking at the cutest couples in each Friday the 13th entry. These couples, unfortunately, met their end at the hands of Jason Voorhees (or his mother). Most all of these happen after sex, as good an indication as any that while intimacy is fine, intimacy at Camp Crystal lake is a big no-no. In Randy Meeks’ wise words, you can never have sex.
Jack and Marcie in Friday the 13th
One of Friday the 13th’s most notable performers (other than Bing Crosby’s kid) is Kevin Bacon’s Jack. When I went to a drive-in screening of the first two films, the MC spent no less than five minutes excitedly telling audiences that Kevin Bacon was in the shlocky slasher movie they were about to watch. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last long. After Jack and Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) do the dirty—unknowingly under their dead friend Ned, no less—Marcie leaves to wash up while Jack stays in bed. Tom Savini works his wonder as an arrow pierces Jack’s throat below the mattress. Back in the bathroom stalls, Marcie gets an axe to the face. Among the original crop of performers, Jack and Marcie were among the least irritating. It’s a shame they so quickly met their doom.
Jeff and Sandra in Friday the 13th Part 2
Jeff (Bill Randolph) and Sandra (Marta Kober) just wanted to bump uglies. Their entire purpose for being at Camp Crystal Lake appeared to be fornication, once getting caught (and mildly punished) for sneaking away to the old campgrounds to screw around. When some of the cast leaves for the evening for a nice, rural bar crawl, the horniest among them stay behind, either by choice or punishment. Jeff and Sandra, unapologetic in who they are, decide to take advantage of the quasi-privacy for some campfire kindling of their own upstairs. Unfortunately, potato sack Jason Voorhees is prowling the grounds. When he stumbles into their bedroom, Sandra can barely get a word out before Jason impales both her and Jeff, mid-coitus, on the bed. Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor) and Mark (Tom McBride) don’t feature here because Vickie wore some weird brown underwear anticipating time alone with Mark.
Andy and Debbie in Friday the 13th Part III
Debbie (Tracie Savage) reads Fangoria. That’s sick. She’s reading about “25 Years After Godzilla” when Jason Voorhees, hidden below the hammock where she and Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) just got to know each other really well, thrusts a knife through her chest. Moments before, affable Andy, simply trying to make a beer run while walking on his hands, is graphically (depending on the cut you see) sliced in half as Jason brings his machete of abstinent justice down on his private. Debbie and Andy didn’t deserve this. Not one bit.
Doug and Sara in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Poor Sara (Barbara Howard). While Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter does a lot right, perhaps its sneakiest trick is positioning Sara as the ostensible, virginal final girl, only to off her right before the climax. While Sara arrives with her friends a meek, quiet thing, she soon succumbs (for some reason) to Doug’s (Peter Barton’s) advances, and the two eventually get it on in the shower. Sara leaves to blow dry her hair while Doug loudly invites her back (no, Sara, you’ve dried your hair). Thinking Sara is right outside the sliding glass door, Doug makes some ill-advised jokes before Jason graphically crushes his head against the wall. When Sara discovers the carnage, she flees downstairs in a towel, only to be hit by an errant axe flying through the front door. Doug kind of sucks, but Sara deserved better. She was simply trying to find herself.
Eddie and Tina in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
After The Final Chapter, the franchise is in full-borne colon territory for every subsequent entry, and while Friday the 13th: A New Beginning doesn’t have an actual Jason Voorhees, it does have Roy Burns (Dick Wieand), an aggrieved paramedic more than happy to carry on the Voorhees lineage for a beat. Eddie (John Robert Dixon) and Tina (Debi Sue Voorhees) are a lot like Part 2’s Jeff and Sandra. They just want to get laid. After they sneak away for maybe the quickest quickie of all time, Eddie leaves Tina behind as he heads to the creek to wash off. Tina’s eyes are gouged out with garden shears. When Eddie returns, Fake Jason wraps a leather strap around his head, twisting it taut with a forest stick. They’re creative, gruesome deaths for the Pinehurst Halfway House’s cutest danged couple.
Darren and Lizbeth in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
While I debated putting Cort (Tom Fridley) and Nikki (Darcy DeMoss) here, I couldn’t in good conscience recognize Cort in any capacity. While their death sequence is undoubtedly the coolest in the franchise, giving Jason Voorhees a distinctly cinematic moment as he stands atop a burning RV, Cort is too crude—too much of a cad—to warrant entry here.
Instead, the unenviable honor goes to Darren (Tony Goldwyn, yes, that Tony Goldwyn) and Lizbeth (Nancy McLoughlin). They’re the couple that best conceptualizes Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives’ meta riff on the franchise. As they make their way to camp in the itty-bittiest car known to man, they come across Jason Voorhees in the woods. Darren pulls out a gun, hoping to scare Jason away, to which Lizbeth rightfully points out that Darren isn’t Dirty Harry. Darren tries anyway, getting impaled with a fence post. Lizbeth tries to flee, though she too is quickly dispatched by way of fencing. It’s a tragic end to the franchise’s only self-aware couple.
Ben and Kate in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
I hate almost everyone in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. That includes psychic protagonist Tina Shepard (Lar Park Lincoln). Every performer respectively does solid work, though there’s nothing about them that really resonates with me. For this entry, I’m there with Jason. Mostly. Ben (Craig Thomas) and Kate (Diane Almeida) aren’t anything special, though they’re the least irritating of the bunch. After escaping to a nearby van for some post-birthday party shenanigans, Ben’s head is crushed as he steps outside. Kate sticks her head out a window to call for him, only for Jason to graphically drive a party horn into her eye socket. They were here for a good time, not a long time.
Jim and Suzi in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Jason takes Manhattan. Or, well, he takes a vessel en route to Manhattan, and then he mostly takes Vancouver. It’s a missed opportunity. Director Rob Hedden remarked to GQ in 2018 “Everything about New York was going to be completely exploited and milked. There was going to be a tremendous scene on the Brooklyn Bridge. A boxing match in Madison Square Garden. Jason would go through department stores. He’d go through Times Square. He’d go into a Broadway play, even crawl onto the top of the Statue of Liberty and dive off.”
While audiences never got that, they at least got more Jason Voorhees courtesy of high school sweethearts Jim (Todd Caldecott) and Suzi (Tiffany Paulsen). Aboard a houseboat for some at-seas intimacy, their anchor strikes an underwater cable. The resultant electricity proves enough to revive Jason Voorhees, still chained below after the events of the previous film. Jason boards the vessel, impaling Jim with a speargun and Suzi with said spear as they endeavor to flee. They were irresponsible, sure, but what teenagers aren’t?
Shelby and Joey in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday might have been butchered to death by the MPA, though it remains one of the series’ strongest entries, the body-swapping spirit of Jason Voorhees and all. With a distinct personality and plenty of unusual quirks, Jason Goes to Hell is dripping with personality. Both Shelby (the late Leslie Jordan) and Joey (Rusty Schwimmer), the proprietors of a local diner with no time for nonsense. When Jason Voorhees arrives in the form of a possessed Campbell, Shelby and Joey put up a good fight. Unfortunately, Shelby is drowned in the diner’s deep fryer, and Joey’s face caves in from a single elbow strike. They were just trying to make a living, and for the short time they had, they were killing it.
Stoney and Kinsa in Jason X
Like The New Blood, no one in Jason X really stands out to me. I know it’s a cult favorite, though admittedly, it’s the franchise entry that comes closest to simply boring me. It’s not bad by any means. For a major studio property, it’s a bold swing. Yet, it doesn’t register with me the way it does with some other franchise fans. Because I don’t want to talk about man and robot love, I have to give the cutest dead couple award to Stoney (Yani Gellman) and Kinsa (Melody Johnson). Stoney is impaled with a machete, and luckily, Kinsa manages to flee. For a moment anyway. Later in the film, she tries to abandon ship via escape pod. She forgets to detach the fuel line and is quickly immolated in the resulting explosion. RIP, horny space students.
Charlie and Kia in Freddy vs. Jason
All the couples in Freddy vs. Jason are kind of terrible. Charlie (Chris Marquette) and Kia (Kelly Rowland) barely count as a couple, though they’re the closest the movie has to anyone tolerable (Kia’s brief bout of homophobia aside). They last a pretty danged long time, too, with Charlie meeting his end after he’s impaled on a wall bracket, and Kia getting the full GLAAD Award treatment when she’s struck with Jason’s machete after tossing some slurs at Freddy Krueger. It’s not perfect, but they tried their best.
Trent and Bree in Friday the 13th
Yes, Travis Van Winkle’s Trent in the Friday the 13th reboot is awful, but it’s an endearing kind of awful, largely because of his sheer commitment to being the most hostile person in existence. The entire movie is just Trent treating friend and stranger alike terribly, fussing over his parents’ cabin like the least fun person to bring on vacation. Somehow, he’s endearing enough for Bree (Julianna Guill) to sleep with, and audiences are treated to his should-have-been-an-inner-monologue notes on how “stupendous” Bree’s body is. After they finish, Bree is impaled on some antlers, and Trent, looking to flee, is stabbed and tethered to the back of a truck.
Which couple from the Friday the 13th franchise is your favorite? Whose death hit you the hardest? Let us know over on Twitter @Dread Central!
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