Edited Scenes: Tamara's Discovery In Jason Takes Manhattan

Every single fan of the Friday the 13th film franchise knows that the most dangerous opponent of Jason Voorhees is not Tommy Jarvis, but the MPAA. The censorship that plagued the films in the 1980's hindered the efforts of very talented effects artists that worked on the films. Many death scenes in the franchise either had numerous frames cut or the scene itself was pulled from the final print altogether. One such edited scene was the discovery of Tamara's body in Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manattan.

Tamara's discovery had a couple of different versions that were going to be used for the final scene. One such idea was to have Eva (Kelly Hu) find Tamara's body hanging on a hook in the bathroom while Eva's facial expression was reflected in the glass shards on the floor. However, filmmakers felt that it would be a more ironic twist to have a vein Tamara found dead on the floor while her dead stare was reflected in the mirror shards of glass. This scene was indeed utilized for the film, however, the MPAA forced Director Rob Hedden to crop the discovery of Tamara's body to exclude the pieces of glass protruding out of her back.

Below is a comparison of what the scene looked like in the film with a screen capture of the deleted footage found on the Deluxe Edition DVD of Jason Takes Manhattan released in 2009. What version do you think has more impact on the film?

Unused Footage That Was Cropped Due To The MPAA

Tamara's Discovery As Seen In The Final Cut Of The Film

7 comments:

  1. I love the first picture..

    but these two pictures had me looking at two different things.
    The first one had me (naturally) look at the shards of mirror in her back(which is way cool ), but it had me less focused on herself 'looking' at..well... herself in the broken pieces.

    The second one, you don't really have a choice but to notice the irony because of the close up.

    tough choice indeed...

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  2. I agree that each image gets you looking at two different things. Personally, I like the image with the shards sticking out of her back. It shows how pissed off Jason was in this movie!

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  3. I still can't believe that they had to change this shot though..
    I am beginning to wonder if its because of the shards or because of the semi naked girl on the floor..

    Arnold and Sylvester splattered way more blood than Jason ever could in the 80's...And their movies don't seem nearly as cut up as the Friday franchise..

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  4. Yea, I have to agree with you that those two had way more blood in their movies. But those were global icons and got their way. Jason sadly did not have as much pull. :(

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  5. If only the MPAA cut the rest of the movie while they were at it. I love Rob Hedden's commentary in the box set. "We thought this would make a lot of money, and we thought that would make a lot of money." The rest of the movies may have been sloppy, but at least they were made by filmmakers who cared.

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  6. Arnold killed over 80 people on screen in Commando. It took Jason like 5 movies to get up to that, and some of those kills were Pamela and Roy.

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  7. DOWN WITH THE MOTHER F**KING MPAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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