For decades, the topic has been fiercely debated. Some fans believe Paul is dead, while others contend that he’s very much alive. An argument can be made either way, so which is it? Let’s examine the evidence and see if we can’t get this sorted.
One urban legend you may have heard, dating back to the sixties, alleges that Beatle McCartney died before Sgt. Pepper’s could enter production and was replaced by a perfect double of equal or greater talent. Why else would an act bigger than Jesus quit touring? Proponents claim the band covered this up, but hid cryptic allusions to such in their artwork and lyrics. By combining lines from “She’s Leaving Home”, “A Day in the Life”, and “Lovely Rita”, a theory emerged that McCartney crashed his car because he was ogling a meter maid.
The iconic Abbey Road image contains sundry clues to his death. For starters, the quartet appears to be leading a funeral procession. John Lennon is dressed like a priest, Ringo Starr a funeral director, and George Harrison a gravedigger. Conspicuously, Fake Paul (or “Faul”) is barefoot, out of step with his bandmates, and holding a cigarette in his nondominant hand. The license plate of the Volkswagen Beetle behind them reads “LMW 28IF”, meaning McCartney would have been twenty-eight years old if he were alive at the time, “LMW” standing for “Linda McCartney, Widow” (alternately, “weeps”). If that’s not incriminating enough, at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, Lennon utters what many interpret as “I buried Paul”. Additionally, when “Revolution 9” is played backward, a voice repeats “turn me on, dead man”. The more creative you are, the more clues you’ll uncover. These are the ones that I find most compelling.
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Officially, as of this writing, the real McCartney is still bangin’ around. It would be rather amusing if he outlived Starr. Although the legend above has been soundly debunked, it’s a fun rabbit hole to explore. I place it alongside these others I was led to believe as a gullible youth:
• the scream in Ohio Players’ 1975 hit “Love Rollercoaster” is that of a model being stabbed to death by their manager over a lawsuit
• a Munchkin hung themselves on the set of The Wizard of Oz
• Disney cartoons are full of subliminal sexual imagery/audio (this is at least partially true)
• a ghost appears in Three Men and a Baby
• Marilyn Manson is Paul from The Wonder Years, all grown up, minus ribs
The mystery I’m addressing today pertains to a third Paul, whose fate is much more ambiguous. Paul Holt is a pivotal character in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). As the owner of a counselor training center opening on Crystal Lake where eight people (including mass murderer Pamela Voorhees) were hacked apart five years earlier, safety is Paramount to his operation. He’s introduced giving a speech about going back to survival basics. If there’s one thing he wants to impress upon his teen pupils, it’s good vaginal hygiene. Why? Because uterine linings attract wild bears. Or at least people thought they did.
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Apparently, this too is a myth. According to bear.org, no evidence exists that menstrual odors precipitate ursine attacks. “The misconception began in 1967 when grizzly bears killed a menstruating woman and a woman… approaching menstruation in Glacier National Park.” Premature warnings were issued by government agencies.
Paul doesn’t know they’re inaccurate. He’s only trying to help. He spreads the word in good faith out of kindness, same as religious folks trying to save sinners’ souls. Paul protects the vaginas of every camper he meets, and that’s a cause I can rally behind.
His assistant/girlfriend Ginny shows up mid-speech, driving a broken-down, backfiring VW Bug (!). This embarrasses Paul, who reprimands Ginny for making him look bad. He does so privately, wishing to keep their relationship quiet and separate from work. Just because Paul and Ginny are dating doesn’t mean she’ll get preferential treatment.
The protagonists make up that evening over passionate kissing. Ginny starts telling Paul that her Aunt Flo is visiting. Paul cuts her off. He’s having sex, no ifs, ands, or butts (anal), so he goes to her pad and pulls a few strings. When Ginny awakens, a message is scrawled in red on her mirror: “BEWARE OF BEARS”. I pray Paul used lipstick. How nice of him to inform her. What a guy! Here he is.
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
Halfway through the movie, Paul, Ginny, third-in-command Ted, and six of their twelve trainees depart camp for a night on the town. Paul assigns Jeff and Sandra to lodge-watching duty as punishment for sneaking into restricted areas. Terry also hangs back. Scott feigns tiredness, hoping to fuck Terry. Mark and Vickie join them. One by one, these horny characters are bumped off by Jason, Pamela Voorhees’ facially deformed, mentally handicapped son.
By the time Paul and Ginny arrive at the crime scene, all six of their friends have been slaughtered. Ginny’s gut tells her something is wrong. The feeling is heightened by the sight of a second bed soaked in blood. Jason lunges forth from the shadows, narrowly missing Paul. The two men tussle to the floor. Only Jason rises. Ginny escapes through a window. First, her period. Then, bears. Now, Jason. What’s next?
After a tense game of cat and mouse, Ginny runs to a cabin, where she hides under a bed. Jason enters moments later. While he searches the room, a rat frightens Ginny so bad that she pees. Either smelling her urine or hearing it trickle with bear-like ability, Jason turns around knowingly. Assuming he left, Ginny crawls out to see that he’s actually standing atop a rickety chair. Luckily, the chair breaks under Jason’s weight and he comes crashing down, leaving him stunned. Ginny revs up a chainsaw she put away earlier. Jason is so scared by this that he clumsily trips backward over a table. Instead of doing the smart thing and amputating his arms and/or legs, Ginny smashes a chair across his spine and calls it a day. That barely affects Homer Simpson. Did Ginny think it would stop Jason Voorhees? To be fair, he’s not at full power yet, not an irresistible, Terminator-esque force of nature. Here, he’s just kind of a klutz.
Credit: The Simpsons, Disney, Frinkiac
Ginny flees into the night. She eventually comes to a shack owned by Jason, assembled from random materials, containing a shrine to his dead mother’s head. Future Jason would never waste time constructing a home or using it to sleep, as this version presumably does. Well, I guess we don’t know that he built it. We’re making a lot of assumptions. Ginny barricades herself in the shrine room. Jason hacks at the door.
Throwing his mother’s old sweater on, Ginny uses her child psychology schooling to bamboozle Jason (Tommy Jarvis employs a similar technique to great effect in Part 4). She tells him he’s done a good job and his mission is over, all the while raising his trademark machete. At the last second, Jason snaps out of his hypnotic state and blocks Ginny’s attack. Paul appears in the doorway and wrestles Jason again, allowing Ginny to unleash her PMS — powerful machete strike. She embeds the Central American brush-clearing implement deep into Jason’s left shoulder, almost down to his heart. We’re focusing on Paul today, but let’s take a minute to recognize Ginny. She’s the coolest, toughest chick in this series. Period.
Paul and Ginny hike back to the piss-coated, rat-infested cabin. Soon, they’re startled by faint scratching noises. Preparing for battle once more, they breathe sighs of relief when they realize it’s Terry’s dog, Muffin. Suddenly, just like the end of Part 1, an unmasked Jason bursts through a window, grabbing Ginny and pulling her out. Dude is really cramping her style.
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
You’d think it would be rather obvious whether Paul lives or dies, but the action stops there. Ginny awakens being loaded into an ambulance, frantically asking for Paul. Her inquiries yield no answers. Instead, we zoom in on Pamela’s mummified head till the image freezes. This shot used to be longer. Pamela’s head, portrayed by an actress in prosthetic makeup, opened its eyes and formed a sinister smile, hinting that Jason killed Paul. However, the supernatural visual was deemed too hokey and was therefore removed from the final, theatrical cut. Despite this, many fans still came to believe the ending is a product of Ginny’s imagination.
Confusingly, screenwriter Ron Kurz intended both the ending to be real and for Paul to be dead. If Jason grabs Ginny, how does Paul wind up dead? That’s never made sense. Paul saves her, then… what? Jason leaves Ginny lying unconscious? Why?
Leaked footage.
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
I’m of the mindset that we viewers must go by what happens — or doesn’t happen — on screen. Production info and books can be useful, but nothing takes precedence over the films. Paul’s death, Pamela’s smile… none of that is shown. The way it is now, Paul disappears between scenes, Ginny asks where he is, and the credits roll. We’re left with a few options. Did Paul go for help? Is he standing offscreen, recounting his version of events to a detective holding a notepad? Was he already loaded into an ambulance? Or, was he in fact slain, having gone the way of old Eleanor Rigby? The lack of a definite answer invites speculation, spurring debate. To solve this mystery, we must analyze it for hidden meanings, Abbey Road-style. Put on your tinfoil hats.
The first clue I want to inspect is Muffin, Terry’s fancy lapdog. Muffin’s presence at the end is a huge, blinking sign that something is off. Let’s rewind. While the counselors are jogging one morning, Muffin wanders into the woods, up to the feet of a stranger presumed to be Jason. As she nervously whimpers, the point-of-view shot looking down cuts to wieners on a grill, signifying the dog is dead meat, so to speak. Terry calls out for Muffin. There is no patter of puppy paws.
The very next scene, Jeff and Sandra sneak off to explore Camp Crystal Lake, known colloquially as “Camp Blood”, where they come upon the eviscerated remains of a critter Jeff claims is too mangled to identify, but is clearly Muffin. After a cop returns the curious couple to Paul’s training center, Sandra asks Jeff if they should tell Terry about what they saw. Jeff says as far as he’s concerned, they didn’t see anything. This is all very deliberate.
A small set of fans refuse to believe that Jason is capable of harming a dog, ignoring the graphic image above and a campfire story in which it’s rumored that Jason subsists on wild animals. According to the trivia section of Kane Hodder’s IMDb page, Jason was supposed to kick a dog near the climax of Part 8, but Hodder nixed it, claiming Jason would never do such a horrible thing. This monster butchers a pregnant woman for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and nearly sacrifices his own infant grand-niece. With all due respect to Kane Hodder, he was the tenth person to play Jason and was maybe third or fourth best at it, so he doesn’t make those decisions, even though he apparently did. There’s also the matter of Gordon, a golden retriever whose fate is almost as controversial as Paul’s. When Gordon flies out that window in Part 4, is it murder, self-preservation, or suicide? Either way, Jason causes his death, assuming he dies. Let’s not pretend canine cruelty is some taboo Jason is unwilling to break.
The second major clue that what we’re seeing is factually unreliable is the weapon embedded in Jason’s shoulder. At the start of Part 3, Jason removes it on the floor of his shack as he crawls away, before grabbing Ginny (It’s important to note that Parts 2 and 3 were directed by Steve Miner. The hotshot retconning his contributions was him.). These inconsistencies bring the reality of the ending into question. Is it all a nightmare?
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
Answering that requires an understanding of how closely this sequel follows the template drawn up by Sean Cunningham’s original. There are quite a few parallels. For instance, the owner of the camp is romantically linked to the final girl, the couple that has sex arrives with a prankster, whose name is three letters long and ends in E-D, Kevin Bacon’s equivalent is impaled in bed, and it storms the night of the murders. The biggest similarity between the two is their jump scares. In both films, Jason lunges forward in slow-motion, grabbing the final girl from behind. His window stunt here is staged exactly the same as when he drags Alice into the water, leading me to believe that both scenes are real, or both are dreams.
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
I don’t consider the ending of Part 1 to be “real” for two reasons — the policemen who rescue Alice would have seen the attack, yet don’t remember it happening, and Jason is fully grown two months later. The ending of Part 3 is unequivocally a dream. A decayed Mrs. Voorhees pops out of a shallow inlet, head re-attached. If you take that literally, I dunno what to say.
The original ending of Part 4 is of interest as well. Trish finds her mother submerged in a tub full of blood. Mrs. Jarvis then opens her eyes, while Jason slashes at Trish. “This was done because the other Friday the 13th movies had [a] terrifying dream sequence at the end.” director Joe Zito recalls in a commentary track recorded for the scene. Clearly, Mr. Zito was under the impression that all the previous endings were dream sequences, too, and felt obligated to honor them.
So, taking into consideration the start of Part 3, the endings of Parts 1 and 3, the alternate ending of Part 4, and Joe Zito’s claims, it’s reasonable to conclude that the ending of Part 2 was also intended (by Miner) to play as a dream. It’s purely hallucinatory, like Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine. If that’s the case, the only reliable shots we have of Jason’s face in Parts 1-5 are Chris’ flashback to being molested, Jason taunting Chris, and when he gets his ass kicked by Corey Feldman. So where does reality transition to fantasy? Your guess is as good as mine.
Ponder this. Ginny removes Jason’s sack while he’s stunned. If she really sees his true face, we’d expect the depiction of Jason with long, scraggly hair and a beard who grabs her to be totes legit. However, he’s shown the next day in Part 3 from a distance completely clean-shaven. Unless he busts out a razor prior to swiping those clothes, he was always bald. Why would Ginny hallucinate Jason with long, scraggly hair, knowing he’s bald? She wouldn’t. This makes me think that our dream sequence commences before Jason is unmasked, but after he’s incapacitated (as the shoulder slashing carries over to Part 3). This means the last time we see Paul for sure is on the floor of the shack, suggesting he does die, below our field of view.
Credit: Screen Rant, Reddit, Scooby-Doo, Warner Bros. Entertainment
Is there anything else we can go on? Affirmative. At the start of Part 3, a news anchor announces that eight corpses have been recovered. His figure merely accounts for the onscreen deaths — Crazy Ralph, The Cop, Scott, Terry, Mark, Jeff, Sandra, and Vickie (Alice’s death occurred five years earlier, at her house). Ginny is called a survivor, though not “sole” survivor. No mention is made of Paul either way. Ginny is said to be suffering from “severe hysterical shock”. That’s on top of the bloating and mood swings. Hey, it’s better than toxic shock!
What does this prove, in regards to Paul? Nothing! Here’s where the trail goes cold. With no definitive answer, I return to my first point — we never physically see Paul sustain serious damage. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe that he rides off into the sunset, blood-stained penis flapping majestically. Some say he dies. I say no. You say goodbye. I say hello.
This is my humble interpretation. My wishful thinking. What’s yours? I welcome all takes in the comment section below. The reality of the situation is, all we can do is form our own theories. Making sense of this series is nigh impossible. Don’t let faceless assholes tell you you’re wrong, or that an entry sucks for contradicting the lore, then turn around and praise this one, cos that starts here. From the opening bell, inconsistencies pile up just as fast as the bodies. For example, Sean Cunningham’s original tells and shows us that Jason drowned as a boy. In Part 2, he’s miraculously grown two months later. The story is changed so that Jason lived or was wrongly assumed to have drowned (perhaps he splashed to the opposite shore), got lost, and grew up in the woods, at no time making his way back to camp, where his mom worked for at least one more year. Ok. How is he present to see her decapitated?
Exhibit B: Jason drowned because nobody kept an eye on him. Here, it’s explained that his body was never recovered. If nobody witnessed him drown and his body was never recovered, how was it even determined he drowned?
Credit: Paramount, movie-screencaps.com
Exhibit C: As I understand it, the town, camp, and lake all bear the name “Crystal”. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall if the lake is referred to as such in Part 1, though it is for sure in the novelization by Simon Hawke, based on Victor Miller’s screenplay, so that was at least the intention. Chapter 1, Page 6, line 7 reads: “A shy child, quiet and strange, went swimming alone out in Crystal Lake.” Paul’s signage, however, refers to the body of water as “Packanack”. Why does it have two names?
Exhibit D: How does Jason track Alice down, and where does Alice reside? Even supposing it’s in Crystal Lake would mean Jason hikes for some distance, past the kid singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, holding his mother’s severed head, with a sack on his own, and that nobody noticed or cared. In Part 1, Alice mentions possibly having to go back to California. If that’s where she is, are you telling me Jason makes the incredible cross-country journey on foot? It’s also implied that he calls Alice. Where did he get Alice’s number? A phone book? Can Jason read? I venture no.
And what about these little plot holes? The mayor in Part 5 is adamant Jason was cremated. The town is renamed “Forest Green” before the events of Part 6. Both developments are tossed out the window in subsequent entries. The contradictions go on and on. Picking them out is as simple as shooting fish in a barrel. The series is more erratic than a late-stage Vince McMahon-controlled episode of Raw. That’s why it’s fruitless arguing over the timeline, or what’s canon. We fans put more effort into understanding the saga than its writers/directors ever did. If they don’t care, it’s not worth a flame war. So, form your theories, cos that’s what we do, just keep it civil, and have fun. Should you feel the urge to school a newbie, follow McCartney’s advice — Let it Be.
Channel that energy into honoring the man who may or may not make the ultimate sacrifice for Ginny and her precious vagina. When all is said and done, Paul’s fate remains an open question, reminding us to never stop seeking the truth, no matter how elusive it may be. Alive or dead, he lives on in our hearts, and his message echoes through time.
Credit: Ohio DNR
Credit: The Simpsons, Disney, Frinkiac
The Devil's DVD Bin 