Kevin Bacon reveals ‘remarkable’ details about his ‘Friday the 13th’ death scene 40 years ago – USA TODAY

Kevin Bacon chats with USA TODAY's Brian Truitt about his new horror movie, "You Should Have Left" and making new music with his brother. USA TODAY

Everybody knows Kevin Bacon can cut loose on the dance floor (see: Footloose) and is down for heading into the cosmos (for Apollo 13), but hes also a fiend for scary movies.

Horrors always been a part of his filmography. His latest film You Should Have Left finds Bacon dealing with a sinister house that wont let him leave, and over the years hes also battled giant worm monsters in Tremors (1990), saw paranormal visions in Stir of Echoes (1999), became an invisible mad scientist in Hollow Man (2000) and, going back to his early years, met the business end of an arrow in his neck courtesy of Pamela Voorhees in 1980s original Friday the 13th.

I was a fan of horror before Friday the 13th but not so much in the Friday the 13th slasher vibe, Bacon tells USA TODAY. I lovedfilms like Don't Look Now, The Exorcist, The Shining, Poltergeist, Rosemary's Baby these character-driven films that relied less on teenagers getting their throats cut and more on either supernatural or creepy vibes.

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When I was in Friday the 13th, it's not that I was hungry to be in a horror film. It was just that I was hungry, he adds with a laugh. I just needed to work.

Kevin Bacon plays a man who sees some sinister and bizarre stuff stuck in a house in "You Should Have Left."(Photo: UNIVERSAL PICTURES)

Bacon, who starred as stoner camp counselor Jack Burrell, admits that the first Friday the 13th which celebrated its 40th anniversary last month became this unexpected hit that spawned a franchise with 11 more films (including a 2009 reboot), a TV show, video games and a place in pop-culture infamy for hockey-masked maniac Jason Voorhees.

It was part of kicking off this era of that kind of low-budget slasher film, Bacon says. But whats brought him back to the fright-fest genre over the years arecharacters who are in life-or-death situations. I just like to play that stuff. I like to have high-stakes things to play and horror movies are generally very high stakes.

Bacon admits that he had the classic horror-movie death in Friday the 13th I had sex with a girl and smoked a joint, which means that you gotta die and the scene where he gets fatally impaled by an arrow was memorable for him in how it came together.

In one of his earliest roles, Kevin Bacon plays a camp counselor who meets a bad end when smoking in bed in the 1980 horror classic 'Friday the 13th.' USA TODAY

I was on my knees underneath the bed with my neck in a really uncomfortable angle, and then the fake neck and chest were built out from there, Bacon explains. I remember them saying, Listen, we gotta get this right because we only have one of these necks. So there was somebody underneath the bed whose job it was to push the arrow through, somebody underneath the bed whose job it was to pump the blood and I had to pretend like it was happening to me.

It was a lot of stuff to think about and if I remember correctly, the pump on the blood pack actually broke and the blood-pumping person had to grab it and actually blow through the tube to make the blood spurt up. So the fact that we got that was really kind of remarkable.

Bacon also reveals that the No. 1 picture fans ask himto sign isnt from Footloose, Animal House or A Few Good Men, but instead a still of the actoras a Friday the 13th corpse.

Im an easygoing person when it comes to people wanting autographs. I'm glad they still would want an autograph from me, Bacon says. But it gets a little rough after a while signing a picture of yourself dead and bloody. They keep coming back with that one.

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Kevin Bacon reveals 'remarkable' details about his 'Friday the 13th' death scene 40 years ago - USA TODAY