Pamela Voorhees is the overarching villainess of the Friday the 13th franchise. She was known simply as Mrs. Voorhees, the mother of Jason Voorhees and the ex-wife of Elias Voorhees, who drowned to death as a child, which drove her to murder those who she deemed responsible. She was also the archenemy of Alice Hardy.
Unlike her son, Pamela used the element of surprise to kill her victims. However, similar to her son, Pamela liked to terrorize her victims by propping up dead bodies, throwing them through windows like a rag doll, and using various weapons to complete her murders. She was portrayed by the late Betsy Palmer, who reprised her role briefly in Friday the 13th Part 2. In Robot Chicken, she was voiced by Jill Talley, who also voiced Ms. Mucus, Gretchen and Nina Neckerly in Camp Lazlo, Karen Plankton in SpongeBob SquarePants and Rita Loud in The Loud House.
Early life[]
Pamela Voorhees (whose maiden name is never revealed) was born circa 1930. She married Elias Voorhees, a miner in Cadiz, Ohio, as a teenager, and lived with him in a trailer located near Camp Crystal Lake, where he would abuse her physically and verbally like a slave. In 1946, a 16-year-old Pamela learned that she was pregnant with a son. Elias' fate after this revelation is unclear, but it is assumed that either he walked out on her, or was killed by Pamela with an axe after beating her, as depicted in the comic, Friday The 13th: Pamela's Tale, and mentioned in the 2017 game.
Friday the 13 Part 1[]
In Friday The 13th (1980), Pamela Voorhees was responsible for the murders at Camp Crystal Lake. In 1957, her hydrocephalic son, Jason, drowned as a young boy in the lake of Camp Crystal, while he was being bullied by most of the other campers. Worse, the counselors weren't paying attention at all, more interested in shooting the breeze and/or having sex. Pamela began to seek vengeance on any counselor that she deems "responsible". In 1958, a year later after Jason's drowning, two of them named Barry and Claudette try to have sex inside a barn, only for Pamela to catch them in the act and murder both of them with a machete in cold blood; Barry gets stabbed in the stomach and Claudette, while her death is off-screen, gets the machete slammed into her throat.
Nobody suspected Pamela of the crime and the camp was soon shut down, giving the nickname "Camp Blood" by the locals. In later years, while the camp was elected to be reopened again, Pamela poisoned the water and ignited the cabins in order to prevent it from re-opening.
In 1979, Steve Christy reopened the camp with the help of his friend, Alice Hardy. Friends of Alice; Ned, Jack, Brenda, Marcie, and Bill came to help. Seeing this occurring, Pamela began to return back to the camp in order to prevent it from once again being reopened. While driving her way to the camp, one of the counselors, Annie, gets hitchhiked by Pamela. Fooling Annie, she drives past the camp and after Annie tells her to stop, the young girl is forced to jump off of the vehicle and runs into the woods, while Pamela pursues her. In the woods, Pamela catches up to Annie and slashes her throat with her bowie knife; she places her body in her vehicle and continues back to the camp. After spying on the counselors, she starts to attack while a storm occurs starting off with murdering Ned in cold blood off-screen by slitting his throat. Jack and Marcie, after having sex, are soon killed by Pamela in cold blood; Jack gets an arrow pierced into his neck while Pamela hides underneath the bed, and Marcie has a falling axe slammed into her face in the bathroom. Next, she lures Brenda outside of her cabin during the storm by mimicking a child's voice asking for help. While Brenda looks around, Pamela turns on the archery range's lights to distract her before killing her in cold blood off-screen once again.
After the storm stops, Steve Christy comes back to the camp after having to go to a dinner, only for him to be greeted by Pamela (whose face remains unseen to the audiences). While he recognizes her, Steve Christy unexpectedly gets stabbed in the stomach by her. Alice and Bill, noticing everyone has disappeared, begins to investigate; during this, Pamela severs the phone lines and puts a stone in Ned's pickup truck's engine in order to prevent them from escaping. She soon turns off the generator, which prompts Bill to investigate while Alice stays back to sleep. Bill is killed in cold blood off-screen by Pamela slicing his throat and pinning his body with arrows in the back of the generator room's door. After discovering Bill's body, Alice begins to barricade the cabin just before Pamela throws the body of Brenda into the window like a rag doll before escaping to her vehicle. While Alice begins to sob over Brenda's dead body, Pamela drives her vehicle up to the cabin in order to fool Alice thinking it's Steve. In a friendly manner, Pamela greets Alice and comes inside with her. While seeing the dead body of Brenda, she begins to tell Alice about the story of Jason's drowning.
Showing her true nature and revealing herself to be the real killer, she attacks Alice with her bowie knife before the latter grabs a fireplace poker and damages the madwoman with it before fleeing. While she chases her around the camp and discovers the dead bodies of Annie and Steve in the process, she hides inside the food storage closet. Pamela, now armed with a machete, finds her inside before Alice renders her unconscious with a frying pan, believing she killed her.
Afterwards, she goes to the lake to relax before Pamela regains consciousness and attacks her once again with the machete. The two struggle to kill each other, but Alice gains the upper hand and decapitates Pamela Voorhees with her own machete, killing her and avenging the deaths of all the people she had killed in cold blood. When Alice ultimately decapitates her, Pamela's hands begin to unrealistically clutch the air and move around from her head, which is separated from the rest of her body, before she succumbs to her wounds.
Aftermath[]
Unknown to the shaken Alice who boards a canoe to rest, Jason Voorhees, who resurrects after drowning to death, witnesses this and begins to take revenge upon his mother's death by taking his mother's severed head, her pants, her machete, and her sweater to a makeshift shack that he made in the woods where he places his mother's belongings on an altar. In Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Jason begins to continue his mother's legacy and murder spree by tracking down Alice and, after placing his mother's head inside a refrigerator, murders his mother's killer with an ice pick to her temple. While an officer chases down Jason to his shack, he sees his mother's head and belongings on the altar (although unseen to the audience) inside the shack before Jason slams a hammer into the officer's head.
During the sequel's climax, the last survivor of a nearby training camp in the Crystal Lake, Ginny, flees from Jason into his shack in the woods, where she sees the altar. Using her child psychology skills, she places Pamela's sweater onto herself and temporarily convinces Jason that she is his mother. This fails, however, when Jason sees his mother's head behind Ginny and attacks her. In the end, Jason gets his mother's machete slammed down to his shoulder by Ginny while struggling to kill another revived counselor named Paul and she soon discards his mother's sweater outside the shack. In the end of Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982), the last survivor named Chris Higgins has a dream hallucination where Pamela Voorhees, with her head attached for some reason, grabs her and pulls her under the water. While a group of residents go to Crystal Lake in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), they see Mrs. Voorhees's tombstone before passing.
In Freddy vs. Jason (2003), Freddy Krueger appears as Pamela Voorhees in order to convince Jason to help him murderer the residents of Elm Street. Interestingly enough in 2003, Betsy Palmer was asked to reprise her role in Freddy vs. Jason, but she turned it down since the role was small.