Friday the 13th Part III is one of the most important entries in the much loved franchise. By introducing the ski mask, it made Jason become an iconic figure in horror history and the sequel’s many moments inspired a lot of scenes in the 1996 classic Scream.

Things could have been quite different if actress Amy Steel agreed to reprise her role as “Ginny” from Part II, the final girl who defeated Jason as the original plan was for the character to return in the next film but Steel rejected the offer, a decision that she now admits was “stupid of me.”

Here is what she said during a  Q&A panel at the Crypticon convention.

“Ginny was kind of a badass, she went to go learn jiujitsu and self-defense, and she was in college, and she was being called weird by all these people because she had PTSD and she was flashing back on this guy named Jason at some lake where people died, and everyone was making fun of me. 

So my roommate one day says, ‘Hey, Ginny, can I borrow your car?’ The red Volkswagen. And I said, ‘Sure,’ because Ginny didn’t go out at night, she was so weird. So my roommate took my car out. In the meantime, I’m doing my laundry because it’s Friday, of course everybody does their laundry Friday night. I go downstairs to the laundry, I open up the dryer, and Paul’s head is in the dryer. (Paul was Ginny’s love interest in PART 2.) 

So that’s how it starts. And then from there, all of the sudden the police come. They find me in the dorm, and they said, basically, that I’ve been killed. And I go, ‘No, I haven’t been killed.’ Evidently Jason or somebody attacked my roommate, who was driving my car. 

And then Ted and I… remember Ted? (Returning character from PART 2.) Ted and I start on this wild goose chase because we know Jason’s out there. And so we start hunting him down.“

While as a Friday 13th fan, I am curious to see how this sequel would have panned out, I am glad that Steel turned down the chance to return. Steve Miner created a third film that has rightly become a huge favourite among fans and I quite like the fact that each sequel introduces a new batch of teens for Jason to kill -apart from good old Tommy of course.