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| “ | Jason, my special, special boy. Do you know what your gift is? No matter what they do to you, you cannot die. You can never die. | „ |
| ~ Pamela in Jason's dream. |
Pamela Sue Voorhees also known as Mrs. Voorhees, was a vengeful serial killer who serves as the main antagonist of the original Friday the 13th and the posthumous overarching antagonist of its many sequels. In the original film, she was the mother of Jason Voorhees, whose drowning death as a child drove her to murder those who she deemed responsible.
Unlike her son, Mrs. Voorhees used the element of surprise to killer her victims. However, similar to her son, Pamela liked to terrorize her victims by propping up dead bodies and throwing them through windows like a rag dolls, and using various weapons to complete her murders. She was portrayed by the late Betsy Palmer, who reprise her role briefly in Friday the 13th Part 2. In Robot Chicken, she was voiced by Jill Talley, who also voiced Karen Plankton in SpongeBob Squarepants, Rita Loud in The Loud House, Nina Neckerly, Gretchen, and Ms. Mucus in Camp Lazlo.
History[]
Early life[]
Pamela (whose maiden name is never revealed) was born in 1930. When Pamela was a teenage girl, she met and married a miner from Ohio named Elias Voorhees. As they lived in a trailer near Crystal Lake, Pamela would often be both physically and verbally abused by Elias like a slave.
Friday the 13th[]
In Friday the 13th (1980), Mrs. Voorhees was responsible for the murders at Camp Crystal Lake. In the summer of 1957 her deformed son, Jason, drowned as a young boy in the lake of Camp Crystal while two camp counselors named Barry Jackson and Claudette Hayes sneak away in order to have sex and not pay any attention him at all. Due to Jason's supposedly demise, Mrs. Voorhees begin to seek vengeance upon any counselor that she deems "responsible" for the death of her first and only son. In 1958, a year later after Jason's drowning and apparent demise both, Barry and Claudette try to have sex inside a barn, only for Pamela to catch them in the act and murder both of them in cold blood with a machete; Barry gets stabbed in the stomach and Claudette, while her death is off-screen, gets the machete slammed into her throat.
After the murders of Barry and Claudette, nobody luckily suspected Pamela of the crime and the camp was soon shut down, giving the nickname "Camp Blood" by the locals. In later years while the camp was elected to be re-opened again, Pamela poisoned the water and ignited the cabins in order to prevent it from re-opening.
In 1979, Steve "Steven" Christy re-opened the camp with the help of his friend Alice Hardy. Friends of Alice; Ned Rubenstein, Jack Burrell, Brenda Jones, Marcie Stanler, and Bill Brown came to help. Seeing this occurring, she began to return to the camp in order to prevent the camp from once again being re-opened. While driving her way to the camp, one of the counselors named Annie Phillips gets hitchhiked by Pamela. Fooling Annie, she drives past the camp and after Annie tells her to stop several times, Annie is forced to jump of the vehicle and runs into the woods, while Pamela pursues her. In the woods, Pamela catches up to Annie and slashes her throat with her hunting knife; she places her dead body in her vehicle and continues back to the camp. After spying on the counselors, she starts to attack while a storm occurs starting off with murdered Ned off-screen by slitting his throat. Jack and Marcie, after having sex, are soon killed by Pamela in cold blood; Jack gets an arrow pierced into his neck while she hides underneath the bed, and Marcie has a felling ax slammed into her face in the women's bathroom. Next, she lures Brenda outside of her cabin during the storm by mimicking a child's voice asking for help. While Brenda looks around, Pamela turns on the archery range's lights in order to distract her before killing her off-screen once again.
After the storm stops, Steve Christy comes back to the camp after having to go a dinner, only for him to be greeted by Pamela, whose face remains unseen to the audience. While he recognizes her, Steve Christy unexpectedly gets stabbed in the stomach by her with a hunting knife. Both Alice and Bill, noticing everyone has vanished without a trace, and begins to investigate; during this, Mrs. Voorhees cuts the phone lines and puts a stone in Ned's truck's engine to prevent them from escaping. She soon turns off the generator, which prompts Bill to investigate while Alice stays back to sleep. Bill is killed off-screen by Pamela in cold blood, slicing his throat with a hunting knife and pinning his body with an arrows in the back of the generator room's door. After discovering Bill's corpse, Alice begins to barricade the cabin just before Mrs. Voorhees throws the dead body of Brenda into the window like a rag doll before escaping to her vehicle. While Alice begins to sob over Brenda's corpse, Pamela drives her vehicle up to the cabin in order to fool Alice, thinking it's Steve. In a friendly manner, Pamela greets Alice and comes inside with her. While seeing the dead body of Brenda, she begins to tell Alice about the story of Jason's drowning.
Showing her true nature and revealing herself to be the killer, she attacks Alice with her hunting knife before the latter grabs a fireplace poker and damages the mad women with it before fleeing. While she chases her around the camp and discovering the bodies of Annie and Steve in the process, she hides inside the food storage closet. Pamela, now armed with a machete, finds her inside before Alice renders her conscious with a frying pan and believes that she killed her.
Afterwards, she goes to the lake to relax before Pamela revives and attacks her once again with the machete. The two struggle to kill each other, but Alice gains the upper head and decapitates Mrs. Voorhees with her own machete, killing her instantly. After Alice decapitates her, Mrs. Voorhees' hands begin to unrealistically clutch in the air and move around from her head separated from the body before she succumbs to her wounds.
Aftermath[]
Unknown to the shaken Alice who boards a canoe to rest, Jason Voorhees who is alive and well, witnesses this and begins to take revenge upon her mother's death by taking her mother's severed head, her machete, and her sweater to a makeshift shack that he made in the woods where he places her mother's belongings on an altar. In Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Jason begins to continue his mother's legacy and murder spree by tracking down Alice and, after placing her mother's head inside a refrigerator, murders his mother's killer with an ice pick to her temple.
While an officer chases down Jason to his shack, he sees his mother's head and belongings on the altar (although unseen to the audience) inside the shack before Jason slams a hammer into the police officer's head.
During the sequel's climax, the last survivor of a nearby training camp in the Crystal Lake named Ginny Field flees from Jason into his shack in the woods, where she sees the altar. Using her child psychology skills, she places Pamela's sweater onto herself and temporarily convinces Jason that he is her mother. This fails however, when Jason sees her mother's head and attacks her. In the end, Jason gets her mother's machete slammed down to his shoulder by Ginny while struggling to kill another revived counselor named Paul Holt and she soon discards his mother's sweater outside the shack.
In the end of Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982), the last survivor named Chris Higgins has a dream hallucination where Pamela Voorhees, with her head attached for some reason, grabs her and pulls her under the water.
While a group of residing residents go to Crystal Lake in Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter (1984), they see Mrs. Voorhees' tombstone before passing by.
In Freddy vs. Jason (2003), Freddy Krueger disguises himself as Pamela Voorhees in order to convince Jason to help him murder the residents of Elm Street. Interestingly enough in 2003, Betsy Palmer was asked to reprise her role as Pamela Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason, but she turned it down since the role was small.
Reboot timeline[]
In the 2009 reboot, Pamela appears in the beginning of the film and is played by Nana Visitor. In a similar manner to the first film, Pamela chases an unnamed female camp counselors (presumably Alice) and explains to the girl about Jason. Just before she is about to kill this counselor, she gets decapitated before doing so (minus the unrealistic hand movement after her beheading like in the original film). A young Jason, revealed that never really drowned after all, sees this and attempts to avenge his mother by grabbing her mother's machete and a locket that she had. Throughout the film, an adult Jason kidnaps a woman named Whitney Miller and keeps her as a prisoner due to her bearing resemblance to Pamela.
Body Count[]
- Barry Jackson: Stabbed in the stomach with a machete (which would become her son's iconic weapon).
- Claudette Hayes: Neck slashed with machete.
- Annie Philips: Throat slit with a hunting knife.
- Ned Rubenstein: Throat slit off-screen.
- Jack Burrel: Stabbed with an arrow through neck from behind.
- Marcie Stanler: Axed in the head.
- Steve Christy: Killed off-screen.
- Brenda Jones: Shot with an arrow, thrown through a window, tied up with rope (all off-camera).
- Bill Brown: Throat slit with a hunting knife and shot with 3 arrows.
Trivia[]
- Betsy Palmer, due to her role as Mrs. Voorhees, made her even more famous. Originally, however, she starred in the original Friday the 13th because she needed a new car and called the script a "piece of shit". However in later years before her death in 2015, she was more respected in her role as the character.
- Betsy Palmer was interviewed about the role in the documentary's "His Name Was Jason" (2009) and "Return To Crystal Lake" (2003).
- In 2004 Sideshow Collectibles released an 12" action figure of Pamela Voorhees. This highly detailed figure comes with an ax, her Bowie knife, a machete and a bow and arrow.
- An action figure of Pamela Voorhees was also released in "NECA Friday The 13th 25th Anniversary Box Set" together with a Part 2 Jason figure.
- Mrs. Loomis, Billy Loomis' mother from the 1997 horror film Scream 2 and Roy Burns from the film Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning share a few similarities to Pamela's.
- The floating head of Pamela Voorhees was a secondary boss in the 1989's NES video game of Friday The 13th. Her shrine is located deep within a series of caves, and defeating her yields her sweater, which will give the player some protection from Jason.
- Pamela's maiden name was never revealed, prior her marriage with Elias Voorhees.
- Pamela's death is similar to that of Maggie's death in Friday the 13th: The Abuser and the Abused and Julius's death in Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan.