‘Crystal Lake’ Pays Tribute To Snake Killed In Making Of ‘Friday the 13th’: “A Direct Nod”

More than 45 years after the first Friday the 13th, Brad Caleb Kane is righting a wrong from the set of the 1980 slasher.

Ahead of Friday’s premiere on Peacock, the Crystal Lake creator noted that a snake Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) sets free after finding it in the camp pantry in the first episode is “a direct nod” to a trained serpent that was actually killed while filming the original movie.

“But [Pam’s] a different person in the first episode than the kids are [in the movie],” he explained. “Yes, it’s a direct nod, but then it goes to the place of the first movie.”

Kane clarified, “But we don’t actually kill a snake in hours. No, no animals were harmed in the making of Crystal Lake. Some hippies might have been harmed in the making of Crystal Lake, but no animals.”

During the filming of the original 1980 slasher Friday the 13th, a domesticated bull snake was infamously killed in real life while shooting the scene in which “final girl” Alice (Adrienne King) finds the reptile slithering around her cabin and calls for her fellow counselors to come help.

In the scene, Bill (Harry Crosby) runs in with a machete and kills the snake, before it’s shown writhing and dying on the floor. Cast and crew have since revealed that the sequence was real, noting that the snake’s handler was unaware of the film’s intentions and was “inconsolable” afterward.

With PETA launching two months before Friday the 13th‘s premiere in 1980, there were no animal protection laws in place yet during the filming of the Sean S. Cunningham-helmed movie.

Streaming Friday on Peacock, Crystal Lake stars Linda Cardellini as Pam Voorhees, who struggles to grieve after her son Jason drowned the summer before. As two strangers begin digging into her mysterious past, Pam goes to murderous lengths to keep her secrets buried.