Pamela Voorhees

Pamela Voorhees (/ˈvɔːrhiːz/) is a fictional character and the overarching antagonist of the Friday the 13th series of horror films. She was created by Victor Miller, and first appeared in Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), played by Betsy Palmer. Pamela is the main antagonist of the first film, in which she is known only as Mrs. Voorhees, and remains an antagonistic presence in its sequels, in which she is seen mostly as a severed head or a figment of her son's imagination. In Friday the 13th Part III (1982), the character appears as a reanimated corpse in a hallucination, played by Marilyn Poucher. Paula Shaw played Pamela in the crossover Freddy vs. Jason (2003); according to Palmer in Friday The 13th Reunion, she was asked to reprise her role in the film, but turned it down after reading the script. Nana Visitor played Pamela in the 2009 reboot. Linda Cardellini is set to portray a younger version of the character in the upcoming prequel series Crystal Lake.

In the original film, Pamela is introduced as the mother of Jason Voorhees, a boy who supposedly drowned in 1957 at Camp Crystal Lake due to the negligence of the staff, while Pamela was working there as a cook. After she has exacted revenge on those she blamed for her son's death, the camp is closed; 22 years later, its new owner and a group of counselors attempt to re-open it. To ensure that the camp remains closed so no other children will ever suffer Jason's fate, the vengeful and psychotic Pamela stalks and kills them one by one but is ultimately decapitated by the sole survivor of her killing spree. After Jason is revealed to still be alive, he avenges his mother and later murders anyone who sets foot into Camp Crystal Lake and the surrounding woods area, guided by Pamela's spirit, which he hallucinates inside his head as urging him to kill.