Thursday the 12th

Read the screenplay (PDF) — Original screenplay.

A young couple lost in an abandoned zoo late at night discovers how quickly Thursday the 12th turns into Friday the 13th.

The two sit by lantern light after sneaking off into the woods together. The boy is pleased with himself. The girl says it was fine, but she is over it because the place is spooky. He teases her for being scared, and she calls him her knight in shining armor.

Then the girl panics. She asks him if he knows what day it is. He says Thursday. She reminds him it is Thursday the 12th, and in six minutes it will be Friday the 13th. They grab their lanterns and run.

They have wandered deep into the old zoo and have no idea how far it is to the way out. They keep running in the dark with only the lanterns to see by, telling each other not to stop. One of them calls out that it is 11:59 and they are never going to make it.

As midnight arrives, Jason Voorhees steps out of the shadows. He cuts the boy down with his machete while the girl screams.

The girl runs alone through the dark. She sees a car's headlights ahead and heads for them, but Jason is somehow already in front of her. She slams into him and falls to the ground. He hacks at her with the machete, then drags her body away across the gravel. The film ends on a title card that reads Happy Friday the 13th. Bloopers and behind the scenes footage from the night of the shoot play after the end credits.

Release & Reception

• Runtime: About 7 minutes as uploaded, with bloopers and behind the scenes footage after the credits. The commentary version, which runs the film alone, is about 4 and a half minutes.

StabMovies.com posted a first teaser on August 2, 2014, a second teaser on February 12, 2015 and a teaser trailer on February 27, 2015. The film went up on the StabMovies YouTube channel on March 11, 2015, for a midnight premiere on March 12. It was the third release of 12 Months of Terror.

IMDb lists a release date of March 12, 2015 and a user rating of 7.2 out of 10 from 13 votes as of September 2026. The full movie upload had about 8,250 views at that time.

Cast

Crew

Production

Fans had asked StabMovies.com for years to make fan films outside the Scream and Stab world, and Friday the 13th was the most requested. In the making-of documentary Joshua Patrick Dudley says he grew up liking Chucky and Michael Myers more than Jason, and came to appreciate Jason later. He saw the Friday the 13th films as the source of the horror rules the Scream and Stab movies play with.

The short was the March entry in 12 Months of Terror, a plan to release a new short horror film every month of 2015 for the site's fifth anniversary. It followed New Year's Resolution and True Love. In his commentary Dudley says March was first meant to get a St. Patrick's Day story, but when he saw a Friday the 13th fell in March 2015 he switched to Jason.

Dudley, Nicole Linton and Patrick Stewart flew to Los Angeles to visit YouTube's studio space there, and decided to shoot the short during the trip. Dudley wanted Rachel Alexandria Arnold in it, but she could not make it. Dudley had met Ruben Morales online. Morales lived in California and was a well known Jason cosplayer, so they asked him to play Jason.

Before the trip they mailed a big box of supplies to Morales, including two gallons of fake blood, a new shoulder rig for running shots and lighting gear. The post office lost it and it was not insured. Later the post office sent Dudley back only a scrap of the box soaked in fake blood. The crew had to rebuy supplies in Hollywood, and Dudley says they paid about $80 for a gallon of fake blood. Since they could not fly the blood home, they used all of it, which is why the short is so bloody.

They shot at night in an abandoned zoo in Griffith Park. Morales arrived after dark and walked up to the crew with his machete already out of his backpack, which scared all three of them until they knew it was him. Some running shots were faked with the actors jogging in place, and Dudley fell a few times running backwards with the camera. The final shots were lit with Morales's car headlights from a nearby parking area because the lanterns were not bright enough.

Stewart had trouble with his death scene. Dudley had to act it out for him several times and dubbed Stewart's screams in post with his own voice. Stewart later showed cuts across his chest from the dulled machete tip scraping him on every take.

A group of StabMovies fans saw the crew's Facebook posts about where they were filming, found them at the zoo and watched quietly from a distance. Nicole Linton heard noises near a bear cave during the shoot and got scared. After the last shots the fans took photos with Jason and the bloody cast, and Morales gave some of them a ride to where they were staying.

Music

IMDb credits Joshua Patrick Dudley as composer.

Filming locations

• Old abandoned zoo, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California: The whole short, including the bear caves and old feeding areas

Effects and makeup

The blood was store-bought fake blood bought in Hollywood after the mailed supply was lost.

The crew forgot the black makeup Morales normally paints around his eyes under the mask. With the strong light used for the night shoot, his real eyes show through the mask in a few shots. Dudley tried to darken them digitally and it did not work. Both Dudley and Morales call it the one thing that bothers them about the short.

Props and costumes

Ruben Morales brought his own Jason costumes and props. He owns a version of every screen Jason, and Dudley picked the Freddy vs. Jason look because he felt it was the most recognizable and simplest version of the costume.

Morales used a real machete that had been dulled down.

The couple carry lanterns that Dudley bought at home before the trip. They were one of the few things that did not go out in the lost box.

The killers

Deaths

STABFLIX

Watch the film

Bonus features and videos

▶

Behind the Mask, Part 13: Thursday the 12th

StabMovies.com

The documentary episode about making this one.

Playlists

• The bonus features playlist

Gallery

Pictures