A Bulge, A Blue Speedo, A Bloody Death: Kevin Bacon at Camp Crystal Lake

Before he was Footloose, prior to his name becoming synonymous with Six Degrees of..., years before the adulation began in earnest; Kevin Bacon was just another young struggling actor trying to get noticed.

It was while he was appearing on the soap, The Guiding Light, that Bacon took a part in a low budget horror film being filmed in north/western New Jersey - that film, of course, was Friday the 13th, and Bacon would go on to play Jack Burell a doomed camp counselor.

While the young thespian did not have much to do in this movie prior to his gruesome death scene, viewers were treated to his lean frame poured in to a pair of impossibly tight speedos that left little to the imagination. As a matter of fact, I believe that Bacon's basket was the second most eye-popping moment in Friday the 13th (the first of course being Mrs. Voorhees' decapitation at film's end).

Bacon's bulge (that is so much fun to type! try saying it out loud !) is on display a few more times in the film especially when Kevin is wearing a form-fitting pair of jeans earlier in the festivities. But of course, it is most noted during the swimming scene.

But a nice basket does not a Final Boy make, no sir, and it seems that our chubby sporting pal comes to a nasty end when after making love to his girlfriend, Jack Burell is dispatched in one of the more ingenious offings a slasher film has ever portrayed: While lying back in post coital bliss, our hero is smoking a joint and smiling smugly when suddenly a drop of something hits his forehead. It is a small speck of blood and faster than you can say, "Kill him , mommy kill him!" a hand comes out from under the cot our boy is laying in and clamps down on his forehead while an arrow comes up under the mattress and through his neck leaving poor Jack gagging on his own fluids. ... say what you will, but special effects wiz, Tom Savini outdid himself with that stunt!

I've often wondered why the filmmakers never cashed in on Bacon's protruding manhood -- maybe one of the sequels could have featured the vengeful ghost of Jack Burell - Friday the 13th Part 11 - Jason vs Jack's Bulge.