‘Friday the 13th’ Is So Much Gayer Than You Think It Is

You might not know it, but Friday the 13th — you know, the famous series of horror movies — is gayer than you think.

For instance, did you know that a lot of the cast members of Friday the 13^th Part VII: The New Blood were openly gay? Bill Butler, Kevin Spirtas, Craig Thomas and Jeff Bennett: all gay. Having that many openly LGBTQ actors on a mainstream movie set is a pretty big deal now, and this was back in 1988. Very progressive for its time.

Dudes Making Out and Getting Killed

Then there was 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The film focuses on the spirit of Jason Voorhees as he jumps from one body to another, committing murders along the way. How is the spirit passed along? By mouth-to-mouth contact. New Now Next writes:

In one scene, a character possessed by Jason ties up another man and shaves off all his body hair, before French kissing him and inserting the Jason parasite into his mouth. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Director Adam Marcus said he included the scene because previous Friday the 13th installments were somewhat sexist and he wanted to make sure there was equal amounts of male and female nudity.

Some might complain this equates homosexuality with death, but remember that slasher movies usually equate any kind of sexuality with death. If you have sex — straight or gay, vanilla or kinky — you are absolutely going to get murdered.

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So in that way, the Friday the 13th series has proven to be wonderfully progressive. Who would have thought that a machete-wielding zombie in a hockey mask would be such a great queer ally?

Did you know just how gay Friday the 13th actually was?

This article was originally published on November 13, 2021. It has since been updated.