Meet the guy who's murdered the most people on film

By Saloni Gajjar | October 30, 2019 | 5:07pm

Aux Features Friday The 13th

Meet the guy who's murdered the most people on film

Photo: Royce DeGrie

“I’ve stabbed people, I’ve dismembered them, I’ve killed people in unthinkable ways,” confesses actor and stuntman Kane Hodder, discussing the blood he’s spilled across more than 170 films and numerous TV shows. You probably know him as one of the Friday the 13th franchises most frequent portrayers of Jason Voorhees, but he’s also laid waste as the Hatchet franchise’s Victor Crowley and even as serial killer Ed Gein. “I’ve actually murdered more people on film than any actor in history but I’m not such a bad guy,” Hodder continues in a video by YouTube channel Great Big Story.

In the clip, Hodder breaks down his many performances, including an instance when a fire stunt went wrong and he spent five-and-a-half months in the hospital. (Even today, nice guy that he is, Hodder will visit the victims at the burn unit to share his own experience of survival.) The video also offers a glimpse into the actor’s experiences at horror cons like Walker Stalker, where the kids are taken aback by his openness. One might not normally expect it of a man who often has a literal axe to grind onscreen.

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Hodder started acting and doing stunt performances in the early ‘70s but his claim to fame arrived in 1988 when he donned that hockey mask for Jason on Friday the 13th: The New Blood. In a Random Roles interview with The A.V. Club, the actor talked everything from 1974's California Split, one of the first things he did onscreen, to coordinating stunts for 1995's Batman Forever and 2005's Daredevil. In the interview, he also details how he was unceremoniously ousted from the Friday franchise just before Freddy vs. Jason, due to a new director who wanted to cast someone new as Jason. “It’s been speculated that either I asked for too much money or I was difficult to work with, but I’m not that stupid: I love playing the character, and I’m not going to give them any ammunition to replace me,” he told us, but they went another way regardless.

Hodder’s adventurous life was the subject of a 2017 documentary titled To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story, and his IMDB page teases 24 new projects on the horizon. His kill count, we’re guessing, will keep rising.

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