Jason Voorhees' Appearance On An '80s Late Night Talk Show Was Absolutely Inspired And Surreal

For just about as long as he was on the air, Johnny Carson was the undisputed "King of Late Night." From 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. on NBC, the native Midwesterner's "The Tonight Show" was the talk show to go on if you were promoting a movie, an album, or trying to launch your stand-up comedy career. Everyone took a seat on Carson's couch. Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Grace Kelly, Burt Reynolds, Bob Hope ... no one was too big for "The Tonight Show." Almost. There was one big guest who snubbed Carson in favor of the upstart Arsenio Hall in 1989.

Johnny Carson never hosted mass murderer Jason Voorhees on his program.

The waterlogged scourge of Camp Crystal Lake, who killed over 150 people across 10 official "Friday the 13th" movies — a franchise currently on pause due to legal wrangling — was quite the get for Hall. At the time, it confirmed that "The Arsenio Hall Show," which premiered at the outset of 1989, was becoming the hip alternative to the establishment which Carson alone represented ("The Pat Sajak Show" was the only other competitor, and no one wanted to chop it up with that ultra-conservative dullard).

In all seriousness, this bit, which might've been forced on newcomer Hall by his corporate overlord Paramount Television, was the kind of stunt that could fall embarrassingly flat. The whole premise was to have non-verbal, axe-wielding Jason, promoting the release of "Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan," sit opposite Arsenio as the host lobbed a litany of questions and observations that would go unaddressed. Impressively, what could've been an absolute death wound up being a very funny five-minute segment.

The key to making this appearance work is Arsenio and his staff's refusal to write in some kind of mini-narrative that would've had the host enraging Jason and either begging for his life or fleeing the set as the audience is prompted to scream in mock horror — something cheesily akin to Robocop turning up at a WWE match.

Instead, Arsenio uses Jason as a menacing straight man to near perfection. He gets off to a rocky start when he professes to be a fan of the series, then proceeds to ask what drove Jason to become a killer. For the majority of television viewers, Arsenio asking Jason if his murdering ways were caused by a bad romantic relationship is pretty damn funny, but I would've preferred to see Arsenio get personal and probe his guest's inciting fury over the beheading of his mother, Pamela Voorhees.

Arsenio deserves kudos, however, for wondering why Jason eschewed his trademark machete in the new movie. Is he worried about getting typecast? His suggestions for future film titles are also pretty great (huge fan of "Jason's Big Top").

The actor playing Jason is Kane Hodder (who also played him in the movies), serving as the Jack Benny of slashers. His timing and economy of movement knock most of Arsenio's material into the stratosphere — particularly when the host asks Jason to set up the customary movie clip (which is a late-film scene in Times Square, and, thus, spoils which characters will make it to the final reel.

As far as promotional gimmicks go, this is fairly ingenious. "The Arsenio Hall Show" ultimately got too safe and conservative, allowing its once-fresh shtick to grow depressingly stale. The original run of the series quietly tapped out in 1994, thus denying Arsenio the opportunity to interview Ghostface.