Pamela Voorhees

Lore & Background

In the original film, Pamela is introduced as the mother of Jason Voorhees, a boy who supposedly drowned in 1957 at Camp Crystal Lake due to the negligence of the staff, while Pamela was working there as a cook. After she has exacted revenge on those she blamed for her son's death, the camp is closed. Twenty-two years later, its new owner and a group of counselors attempt to re-open it. To ensure that the camp remains closed so no other children will ever suffer Jason's fate, the vengeful and psychotic Pamela stalks and kills them one by one but is ultimately decapitated by the sole survivor of her killing spree, Alice Hardy.

After Jason is revealed to still be alive, he avenges his mother and later murders anyone who sets foot into Camp Crystal Lake and the surrounding woods area, guided by Pamela's spirit, which he hallucinates inside his head as urging him to kill. Pamela (whose maiden name is never revealed) was born in 1930 (as revealed in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). At age 15, Pamela became pregnant by a man named Elias Voorhees. On June 13, 1946, at age 16, she gave birth to a hydrocephalic boy and she named him Jason (as shown in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday).

Because of his condition, Pamela never sent him to school, and was extremely overprotective of him. Pamela later got a job as a cook at Camp Crystal Lake through her acquaintances David and Louise Christy. On a fateful day in 1957, Jason, infuriated by the constant teasing and harassment from other children, snuck out of his cabin late at night to prove that he could swim. No counselors were watching him, as they were partying and having sex in one of the adult cabins.

Jason was presumed dead by drowning, but his body was never found in the lake. After Jason's death, Pamela began to hear auditory hallucinations of her son telling her to kill those responsible for his demise. In 1958, a year after Jason's death, Pamela brutally murdered two counselors, Barry and Claudette, in cold blood, blaming them for allowing her son to drown. Camp Crystal Lake was closed after the murders and nicknamed "Camp Blood" by local residents.

When the owners tried to re-open the camp in 1962, Pamela returned, poisoned the water, and set several fires, causing the camp to be closed once more. At the time of these incidents, Pamela lived in a house that bordered Camp Crystal Lake, which allowed her to observe that the camp remained unattended.

Reader's Guide

Although Pamela does not share her son's later immortality, she does reappear in later films, as a corpse or a hallucination in Jason's mind urging him to kill. In Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Pamela's head is used by the revealed-to-be-alive Jason to scare Alice by placing it in her fridge, before killing her to avenge his mother's death. The head is later seen on a shrine built by Jason in his cabin, which also stores the rest of Pamela's body and those of some of Jason's victims.

One of the few survivors of Jason's killing spree, Ginny Field, stumbles upon the cabin and dons Pamela's sweater to trick Jason into thinking she is his mother. When Ginny attempts to calm Jason down, he briefly visualizes his mother (again played by Betsy Palmer) talking to him, but then notices Pamela's head on the shrine and sees through the deception. Despite this, Ginny is ultimately able to escape from Jason and injure him with his machete.

Pamela is seen again in Friday the 13th Part III (1982) when lone survivor Chris Higgins has a nightmare which ends with Pamela's corpse (played by the Second Assistant Director, Marilyn Poucher), with her head attached, reaching up from the lake to pull her underwater. Pamela's grave briefly appears in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), revealing that her body was eventually found in Jason's cabin after he abandoned it, and laid to rest in a run down, roadside cemetery.

Pamela's final appearance in the original series is in Freddy vs. Jason (2003), where she is played by Paula Shaw. While in Hell, Jason sees his mother commanding her son to come back to life and kill the children of Elm Street. However, it is quickly revealed that "Pamela" was actually Freddy Krueger in disguise, trying to manipulate Jason for his own ends. Jason is notably furious when the deception is revealed.

Pamela (played by Nana Visitor) has a minor presence in the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot. The opening scene shows her chasing a young girl, presumably Alice, at the end of her Camp Crystal Lake killing spree, who ultimately decapitates Pamela with her own machete. The event is witnessed by a young Jason, who later examines his mother's corpse and finds a locket containing pictures of him and a younger Pamela, before hearing her voice commanding him to "kill for Mother."

As an adult, Jason kidnaps one of his potential victims, Whitney Miller, who resembles the young Pamela seen in the picture, setting the film's events into motion.