Festival to celebrate ‘Friday the 13th’ set for September

The New Jersey towns where the original Friday the 13th film was shot will be celebrating with a new festival in September. Jason Fest (honoring the film’s Jason Voorhees) will be held in conjunction with the grand opening of the Blairstown Museum and will be held on Friday the 13th. One of highlights of the festival will be a meet-and-greet with actor Ari Lehman who played Jason Voorhees in the original 1980 film. According to Bloody-Disgusting.com, the festival will actually start on Thursday the 12th at Hunter’s Lodge outside of Blairstown; a performance by the metal band First Jason (fronted by Ari Lehman) will also be featured.

The film is set at the fictional summer camp of Camp Crystal Lake, which in real life is Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Hardwick, New Jersey and still operates as a camp as well as hosting tours for Friday the 13th fans. For years, the camp (owned by the Boy Scouts’ Northern New Jersey Council) did not allow film fans to tour the property, but as of 2011, organized tours of filming locations are available. Additional scenes were shot in Blairstown and Hope in Warren County. The film’s plot revolves around camp counselors being murdered at a re-opened summer camp where a young boy (Jason Voorhees) drowned years before. I’m not going to tell you who the murderer turns out to be.

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