For his final stunt, Shelly grabs a hockey mask, a diving suit, and a harpoon gun. He scares Vera with it, who once again tells him that she doesn’t like being scared, but also explains calmly that people would want to spend time with him if he actually treated them well. Instead, Shelly goes off to pout, a pity party that thankfully gets cut short when Jason arrives to cut his throat. Even better, Jason takes the harpoon gun and the mask for himself. While the gun doesn’t return after this entry, the mask stays forever.
Jason’s hockey mask has become such an accepted part of horror lore that nobody really questions its origins. When watching Part III with fresh eyes, however, one has to wonder: why wear a hockey mask in the water? The answer involves the Detroit Red Wings.
A Different Type of Dead Thing
In 1926, the National Hockey League was looking to expand further into the United States and sought applications from teams in Detroit and Chicago. In addition to the Chicago Black Hawks (now Blackhawks), the NHL accepted the Detroit Cougars, in honor of the recently-folded Victoria Cougars. The Cougars struggled in its first few years, so badly that they changed the name to the Falcons in 1930 in hopes that the rechristening would inspire the players. When that didn’t work, new owner James E. Norris called the team the Red Wings, and gave them a distinctive logo that honored their Motor City roots. Even better, Norris hired legendary coach Jack Adams, who turned around the team’s fortunes.
In 1936, the Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup, and would win seven more over the next few decades. Their teams would include some of the greatest names in sports, including Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio, and, of course, Gordie Howe. The highlights of those years were enough to make the Wings favorites, even when the team returned to their losing ways.
That was certainly the case in 1980, the year that Jason Vorhees first hit our screens. Starting in 1967, the Wings entered a 20-year slump, a period marked by poor general manager decisions and dissension among the players. Combined with the recession that hit the blue-collar city, Detroit stopped caring about their hockey team. Owners tried to lure fans to the Detroit Olympia and, later, Joe Lewis Arena with new car giveaways, but fans dismissed the product on ice as the Detroit Dead Things.
Yet, as bleak as things were, the team still had its fans. In fact, three of them were working on Friday the 13th Part III, including Martin Sadoff, the man responsible for the film’s 3D effects. According to Crystal Lake Memories, when director Steve Miner noted that the script by Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson called for Jason to don another mask, Sadoff ran to his vehicle and grabbed the replica Terry Sawchuk mask he had and the rest is movie history.