Dan Bradley: The First Jason Of 'Jason Lives: Friday The 13th Part 6'

There is a long history of multiple actors and stuntmen that have been hired to portray the role of Jason Voorhees in the Friday The 13th franchise. There are also instances of multiple people playing Jason in a singular film. In our running feature, The Other Jason's, we have chronicled Friday The 13th films that have utilized more than one actor in the role with a spotlight on those people who may not have been recognized as performing the iconic villain Jason Voorhees until very recently.

Due to his impressive resume working on A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and other genre films, emerging stuntman Dan Bradley was ultimately cast and transformed into the new zombie version of Jason Voorhees for Jason Lives: Friday The 13th Part 6. The first week of filming happened in a forest in Georgia for the infamous paintball scene for which a paintball tournament between a group of company executives took place. After the end of the second day of the shoot, the filming of the paintball scenes were completed with Jason Voorhees. However, producer Frank Mancuso Jr., who had worked with the franchise since Friday The 13th Part 2, was disappointed with the dailies and asked Director Tom McLoughlin to let Dan Bradley go from the film and recast the Jason Voorhees role.

Little known actor C.J. Graham was hired on to replace Bradley on the film, but his scenes that were filmed for the paintball sequence were kept for the final film. It's surprising, as the reason Bradley was fired was for his work in those daytime scenes, yet they were kept for theatrical release.