He's hacked, he's slashed, and he knows his way around a chainsaw. You might not know Kane Hodder's face, but you've definitely seen him pile up some bodies.
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00:00He's hacked, he's slashed, and he knows his way around a chainsaw.
00:05You might not know Kane Hodder's face, but you've definitely seen him pile up some bodies.
00:10While Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and Freddy Krueger are iconic in their own
00:15right, most casual moviegoers wouldn't be able to name the actors who portrayed them.
00:20They might be able to summon up Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, but the other three will
00:24probably prove elusive — except for Kane Hodder.
00:28The longtime stuntman was 33 when he first stepped into the boots of Jason Voorhees.
00:32The film was 1988's Friday the 13th Part VII, The New Blood, a fairly awful movie that started
00:38the franchise on its downhill slide.
00:40But while most of the Friday the 13th films Hodder appeared in are considered among the
00:44franchise's worst, his portrayal of Jason is considered strangely definitive.
00:49What's more, he was so adept at portraying monsters that he wound up hitting the slasher
00:53trifecta by playing three of the aforementioned characters.
00:57How did he pull it off?
00:59Willer-Eel, Kane Hodder, please, stand up.
01:08Hodder got his first stunt credit on the Chuck Norris-David Carradine action extravaganza
01:12Lone Wolf McQuaid.
01:14He worked frequently in horror, performing stunts in films like The Hills Have Eyes Part
01:18II, House, and House II The Second Story, before serving as stunt coordinator and murderer
01:23of teenagers in The New Blood.
01:26Hodder quickly became a fan favorite thanks to features in magazines like Fangoria, and
01:30it's not hard to see why if one knows what they're looking for.
01:34Hodder's Jason is actually the first iteration of the character to register as more than
01:38an unstoppable killing machine.
01:40Just look at one of his signature kills, the smashing of a camper against a tree in their
01:44sleeping bag.
01:45There's something undeniably humorous about the way he drags the poor woman out of her
01:49tent, hauls her with difficulty toward the tree, and completes his kill.
01:53After seven films, it's as if the task of keeping Crystal Lake free of fornicators and
01:57pot smokers has turned into work for the big guy.
02:01Hodder would go on to appear in Friday the 13th Part VIII, Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason
02:05Goes to Hell, The Final Friday, and Jason X before being replaced by Ken Kersinger on
02:10Freddy vs. Jason.
02:12Just three years into his tenure as Jason, Hodder, by now a slasher icon, donned flayed
02:17human skin as Leatherface in 1990's Leatherface Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.
02:22Okay, technically, the chainsaw-wielding killer was played by R.A.
02:25Mihailov, but Hodder doubled the actor for all of his stunts.
02:29I did quite a few scenes because there was a lot of scenes with a live chainsaw with
02:35a chain on it near the actors.
02:38And since stunts are an integral part of getting the hulking, limb-rending character right,
02:43this more than counts as a performance.
02:45Furthermore, Hodder also played Leatherface in the 2023 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre video
02:50game.
02:51Even the most dedicated horror fans might be wondering when and how Hodder played Freddy
02:55Krueger, but it really happened.
02:58Hodder's moment as the dreamworld menace came on Jason Goes to Hell when, in the final minutes,
03:03Krueger's claw breaches the soil to drag Voorhees' mask to the underworld.
03:07The man manipulating the clawed glove wasn't Robert Englund, but Hodder pulling slasher
03:11double duty.
03:13And that's how, over the course of his still-slaying Hollywood career, Kane Hodder managed to play
03:17Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and Freddy Krueger.