How Actors Were Tricked Into Starring in a ‘Friday the 13th’ Film

In 1984, John Shepherd was a young actor looking for his first big break. It seemed to arrive in the form of a leading role in a film called Repetition.

“I read the character breakdown and I thought it was so cool,” he later recalled in the book Crystal Lake Memories. Eager to land the role, Shepherd went “very method,” by his own admission. He wore sweats and a heavy coat while running up 10 flights of stairs jus prior to his audition. “Then when I went into the reading, I took of my jacket and just started sweating. I didn’t look at them, I didn’t talk to them, I was just really intense. I could tell I struck something.”

Shepherd got the role, and then a somewhat unwelcome surprise: Repetition wasn’t really the name of the project. Instead, he would be starring in the fifth Friday the 13th movie, 1985’s A New Beginning. “I remember then finding out it was a Friday the 13th and being really disappointed,” he recalled. “I just thought, ‘Oh, gosh! I always swore I’d never do a horror film.”

He wasn’t the only one taken by surprise. “Nothing was said about the film being a Friday the 13th,” recalled Tiffany Helm, who played the punk rock-loving Violet in the movie. “I thought the reason being that if the potential cast members knew they were going to be involved in such a money making venue, they would ask for a better contract. It was not until we were cast that the real name of the project was even revealed. But I was happy to be working.”

Despite his deep religious beliefs, Shepherd decided to take the role. “I think I rationalized it,” he explains in Crystal Lake Memories. “The reason I found I could do the film was that evil was punished. Mercilessly and graphically. I wouldn’t have a problem with that or nudity in a script that ultimately had a redemptive worldview.”

Read More: Why ‘Friday the 13th Part VI’ is the Best Jason Movie Ever

Shepherd portrayed Tommy Jarvis, an older, traumatized and institutionalized version of the character played by Corey Feldman in the previous year’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. At the end of A New Beginning (spoiler alert, I guess, but the movie is 40 years old…), Tommy battles and kills what turns out to have been a mere mortal impersonating the still-dead Jason Voorhees throughout the whole movie.

The final scene, in which Tommy dons Jason’s hockey mask and machete himself, strongly hinted at the producers’ plans for Tommy to take over as the series’ main villain.

The Box Office Drop for ‘A New Beginning’ Paved the Way for Jason’s Return

But after a strong, box-office topping opening weekend that grossed $8 million, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning faded from theaters rather quickly. Bad word of mouth, perhaps fueled by the fact that the “real” Jason Voorhees only appears in dream sequences, led to a final gross of $22 million, two-thirds of what the The Final Chapter earned the year before.

The studio got the message loud and clear, and the title of the next movie in the franchise – 1986’s Friday the 13th: Jason Lives – made it clear they were determined to give fans what they wanted. The character of Tommy Jarvis still appeared in that movie, but Shepherd declined the role, and instead decided to become a pastor. “I was counseling a church youth group after Part V came out,” he explained. “I felt, ‘How can I create a character in this franchise, then tell kids you shouldn’t go see R-rated films?'”