‘Jason Goes to Hell’ Director Elaborates on Film’s ‘Evil Dead’ Connection

With no new Friday the 13th films on the horizon, fans are left to reminisce about the franchise’s past, exploring what we loved about the iconic slasher Jason Voorhees. The director of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Adam Marcus, previously confirmed that he included The Evil Dead‘s Necronomicon in a scene to link the two franchises together. The filmmaker recently offered more insight on the narrative threads that tied the two series together, despite the films being released by competing studios.

“If I just take that prop and put [the Necronomicon] in the Voorhees house, and use the Kandarian dagger as the thing that kills Jason, what I’m doing is setting up a mythology that Jason’s mom wanted her son back so badly that she made a deal with the darkness,” Marcus detailed to SYFY WIRE. “So she reads from the Necronomicon and brings about the resurrection of her son, so now the fact he lived at the bottom of the lake and grows two feet makes sense.”

Marcus also noted that, due to rights issues, he couldn’t overtly mention “Deadites” or “Evil Dead,” with the prop merely being a subtle homage to the Sam Raimi films.

This Friday the 13th film famously ended with Jason’s hockey mask getting pulled down to Hell by Freddy Krueger’s iconic glove, yet it would be many more years before the two met on screen in Freddy vs. Jason. Marcus explained how he was able to get a number of references to other horror films into his movie, even if he wasn’t allowed to mention them by name.

“Jason Goes To Hell is one of the most referential horror movies ever made,” the filmmaker admitted. “We see the Necronomicon and Kandarian dagger from Evil Dead, The Crate from Creepshow in the basement of the Voorhees house, and you’ve got Cunningham County. The jungle gym at the end is from The Birds. Universal packed it up and gave it to me and I put a bird at the top of it. I asked if New Line owned the rights to Freddy so I called up my two executives, Mike De Luca, and Mark Ordesky, the guy who brought Lord of the Rings to New Line. I told them I wanted the glove and his laugh for the movie and I gave them the ending I wanted. Freddy just died in Freddy’s Dead and he’s in Hell.”

He added, “Who better to drag Jason into Hell than Freddy? These guys went nuts! When Sam Raimi gave me the Necronomicon he handed it to me in a plastic bag. When I asked for the original glove from Freddy’s hand, it came in a box handcuffed to a guy who delivered it. It was Kane Hodder’s hand inside the glove that pulls Jason’s head down, making him the only guy to play Jason Voorhees AND Freddy Krueger.”

Sadly, neither Friday the 13th nor A Nightmare on Elm Street have any confirmed films in their future, while the Evil Dead saga has temporarily wrapped up with the final season of Ash vs. Evil Dead.

Stay tuned for details on the future of these horror franchises.

Do these connections make this film more exciting? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

[H/T SYFY WIRE]