Edited Scenes: Tamara's Discovery In Jason Takes Manhattan

Every single fan of the Friday the 13th film franchise knows that the most dangerous opponent of Jason Voorhees is not Tommy Jarvis, but the MPAA. The censorship that plagued the films in the 1980's hindered the efforts of very talented effects artists that worked on the films. Many death scenes in the franchise either had numerous frames cut or the scene itself was pulled from the final print altogether. One such edited scene was the discovery of Tamara's body in Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manattan.

Tamara's discovery had a couple of different versions that were going to be used for the final scene. One such idea was to have Eva (Kelly Hu) find Tamara's body hanging on a hook in the bathroom while Eva's facial expression was reflected in the glass shards on the floor. However, filmmakers felt that it would be a more ironic twist to have a vein Tamara found dead on the floor while her dead stare was reflected in the mirror shards of glass. This scene was indeed utilized for the film, however, the MPAA forced Director Rob Hedden to crop the discovery of Tamara's body to exclude the pieces of glass protruding out of her back.

Below is a comparison of what the scene looked like in the film with a screen capture of the deleted footage found on the Deluxe Edition DVD of Jason Takes Manhattan released in 2009. What version do you think has more impact on the film?

Unused Footage That Was Cropped Due To The MPAA

Tamara's Discovery As Seen In The Final Cut Of The Film