Friday the 13th Part 2

“
The body count continues...

”— Tagline
***Friday the 13th Part 2*** (also known as ***Friday the 13th Part II***) is a 1981 American horror film directed by Steve Miner. It is a direct sequel to *Friday the 13th*, picking up five years after that film's conclusion, where a new murderer stalks camp counselors at a nearby training camp. The film marks the first time Jason Voorhees is the antagonist (his mother was the killer in the previous film).

Originally, *Friday the 13th Part 2* was not intended to be a direct sequel to the 1980 original but rather part of an anthology series of films based on the Friday the 13th superstition, but after the popularity of the original film's surprise ending to feature Jason Voorhees attacking the heroine, the filmmakers decided to bring back Jason and the mythology surrounding Camp Crystal Lake, a trend which would be repeated for the rest of the series.

Stylistically, *Friday the 13th Part 2* reproduces certain key elements that made the original *Friday the 13th*, a sleeper hit in 1980, such as first-person camera perspectives, gory stalk-and-slash scenes, and campground settings. Although it did not reach the original's box office success, the sequel was a financial success, grossing over $21.7 million in the United States on a budget of $1.25 million.

## Plot

Still recovering from her experiences in the original film two months prior, Alice Hardy is home alone, still experiencing nightmares of her near death experience, she tries to go on. When she goes to feed her cat, however, she finds the head of Pamela Voorhees in her refrigerator and is suddenly killed by an unseen assailant with an ice pick to her temple.

Five years pass and Paul Holt hosts a camp counselor training camp at a building along the same lake. Included amongst the counsellor hopefuls are couple Jeff and Sandra, pervy Scott, sporty Terry, wheelchair-bound Mark, sweet-natured Vickie, comedian Ted, and Paul's girlfriend and assistant, Ginny. Later that night, Paul tells the legend of Jason Voorhees to frighten the other counselors and warn them from entering the property of Camp Crystal Lake. Afterwards, as Paul and Ginny reconcile, Crazy Ralph, who had wandered onto the property to warn the others, is garroted with barbed wire by an unseen assailant. The next day, Jeff and Sandra go to Camp Crystal Lake anyway, and find a dead animal that looks like Terry's missing dog, Muffin. They are caught by the sheriff and returned to the camp; as he is leaving, the sheriff spots someone on the road and chases through the woods, coming across a broken down shack in the woods. As he investigates, he comes across a sight that horrifies him (though it is hidden to the audience), before he is killed by a claw hammer.

Offered one last night on the town, Paul opts that Jeff and Sandra remain behind as punishment for their earlier excursion. Terry stays behind to look for Muffin, while Scott decides to stay in and put the moves on Terry. Mark doesn't want to go and be the "drunk in a wheelchair" and Vickie stays with him as well. After everyone else leaves, Terry goes swimming and Scott plays a prank on her by stealing her clothes. He gets caught in a rope trap and Terry goes to find a knife to cut him down. While she is gone, Scott's throat gets slit with a machete and Terry is attacked when she returns to free him. At the bar, Ginny; who is a student in child psychology, ponders putting Jason into real terms, that having witnessed his mother being beheaded that night would have turned him into a feral man with no distinction between life and death, right or wrong. Paul scoffs at the idea, proclaiming that Jason is just a legend. Back at the camp, Mark looks for Vickie when suddenly gets a machete slammed into his face. The killer then moves upstairs and with a spear (left behind by Ted earlier), impales Jeff and Sandra as they are having sex. Vickie returns for Mark and comes across her friends' bodies. She is attacked and stabbed by the killer, who is wearing a burlap sack to conceal his face.

Ginny suspects something wrong as she and Paul return to find the lights out and the place in disarray. The killer creeps through the dark and attacks Paul before turning on Ginny who runs in fear. She finds Ralph's body before narrowly escaping into another cabin. Almost being caught there, Ginny flees into the woods, eventually coming across the shack. After barricading herself in from the killer she spots a rudimentary altar with Pamela Voorhees' decomposing head on it, surrounded by a pile of the killer's victims, which include Alice Hardy and Terry, revealing that Jason Voorhees is the killer. Realizing this, Ginny quickly puts on Pamela's sweater and uses her psychology skills to convince Jason that she is his mother. The ruse fails though, when he spots his mother's head on the altar, and attacks Ginny. Paul intervenes and attacks Jason. During the fight, Paul gets overwhelmed, but just before Jason attacks Paul using a pickaxe, Ginny picks up the machete and slams it down into his shoulder, seemingly killing Jason and saving Paul.

Paul and Ginny return to the cabin, and are greeted by Muffin at the cabin door. Just as they feel at ease, Jason (now unmasked) bursts through the cabin window behind Ginny and tries to drag her out with him. She then awakens, being loaded onto a stretcher and put into an ambulance. She calls out to Paul, but he is nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, back at the shack in the woods, Pamela's head remains on its altar.

## Cast

* Amy Steel as Ginny Field
* John Furey as Paul Holt
* Adrienne King as Alice Hardy
* Warrington Gillette as Jason Voorhees (unmasked)
* Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph
* Stu Charno as Ted
* Bill Randolph as Jeff
* Marta Kober as Sandra Dier
* Tom McBride as Mark
* Lauren-Marie Taylor as Vickie
* Kirsten Baker as Terry
* Russell Todd as Scott
* wikipedia:Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees
* Cliff Cudney as Maxwell
* Jack Marks as Deputy Winslow
* Jerry Wallace as The Prowler
* Steve Daskawisz as Jason Voorhees stunt double (masked)

## Production

### Development

Following the success of *Friday the 13th* in 1980, Paramount Pictures began plans to make a sequel. First acquiring the worldwide distribution rights, Frank Mancuso, Sr. stated, "We wanted it to be an event, where teenagers would flock to the theaters on that Friday night to see the latest episode." The initial ideas for a sequel involved the *Friday the 13th* title being used for a series of films, released once a year, that would not have direct continuity with each other, but be a separate "scary movie" of their own right. Phil Scuderi—one of three owners of Esquire Theaters, along with Steve Minasian and Bob Barsamian, who produced the original film—insisted that the sequel have Jason Voorhees, Pamela's son, even though his appearance in the original film was only meant to be a joke. Steve Miner, associate producer on the first film, believed in the idea and would go on to direct the first two sequels, after Cunningham opted not to return to the director's chair. Miner would use many of the same crew members from the first film while working on the sequels.

### Casting

Adrienne King was pursued by an obsessed fan after the success of the original *Friday the 13th* and wished her role to be small as possible.

Actor Warrington Gillette only played the unmasked Jason at the end. Stuntman Steve Daskawisz (also known as Steve Dash) played the masked Jason.

### Filming

Principal photography took place in October and finished in November 1980.

Daskawisz was rushed to the emergency room when Amy Steel hit his middle finger with a machete during filming. Steel explained: "The timing was wrong, and he didn't turn his pick axe properly, and the machete hit his finger." Daskawisz received 13 stitches on his middle finger. It was covered with a piece of rubber, and Daskawisz and Steel insisted on doing the scene all over again.

Originally the film's ending was after Ginny was loaded into the ambulance, it would switch to Mrs. Voorhees' head, which then opens its eyes and smile, indicating that Jason had killed Paul, however the ending was scrapped at the last minute for being too fake and cheapened the movie's impact.

In one scene where Daskawisz was wearing the burlap flour sack, part of the flour sack was flapping at his eye, so the crew used tape inside the eye area to prevent it from flapping. Daskawisz received rug burns around his eye from the tape from wearing the rough flour sack material for hours.

The film's ending has been a source of confusion for fans. Writer Ron Kurz has stated that Jason's window jump was intended to be set in reality and that Paul was killed offscreen. However, the beginning of *Part III*, in replaying the end of *Part 2*, instead showed Jason pulling the machete out of his shoulder and crawling away as Ginny and Paul leave him for dead in the shack. This arguably retcons the scene of Jason's window jump into a dream. In addition, near the beginning of *Part III*, a news broadcast reports the body count at eight, thus excluding Paul from this count.

Rumors sparked that John Furey left before the film wrapped as his character does not appear in the end. In truth, his character was not intended to have appeared.

### Music

In 1982, Gramavision Records released a LP album of selected pieces of Harry Manfredini's scores from the first three *Friday the 13th* films. On January 13, 2012, La-La Land Records released a limited edition 6-CD boxset containing Manfredini's scores from the first six films. It sold out in less than 24 hours. Waxworks Records will release the Harry Manfredini composed score, in summer 2015 on Vinyl.

## Release

The film was released theatrically on April 30, 1981, to immediate box office success, bringing in $6,429,784 its opening weekend. It played on 1,350 screens and would ultimately gross $21,722,776. It was the 35th highest grossing film of 1981, facing strong competition early in the year from such high-profile horror releases as *Omen III: The Final Conflict*, *The Howling*, *Scanners*, *Wolfen*, *Deadly Blessing*, *The Funhouse*, *My Bloody Valentine*, *The Fan* and *The Hand*.

## Reception

Much like its predecessor, critical reaction to the film was initially negative. It has a 33% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes among 30 reviews. Roger Ebert of the *Chicago Sun-Times* wrote that *Friday the 13th Part 2* was "a cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead teenager genres; about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk, and they're all about as bad as this one. Some have a little more plot, some have a little less. It doesn't matter."

When reviewing the film's Blu-ray release, David Harley of *Bloody Disgusting* said, "It doesn't exactly stray far from the formula of the original film — neither do most of the other sequels — but *Friday The 13th Part II* still stands as an iconic and important entry in the series due to the introduction of Jason as the antagonist of the series and the usage of Italian horror films as an inspiration for its death scenes — most notably, the spear copulation death from Mario Bava's *A Bay of Blood*." The final scene where Jason crashes through the window and the scene where Jason raises his knife before killing Vicki were featured in the tribute to horror films montage during the 82nd Academy Awards.

## Novelization

A novelization based on the screenplay of Ron Kurz was published in 1988: Hawke, Simon, *Friday the 13th Part II: A Novel*, New American Library, New York, 1988, ISBN 0-451-15337-5

**Films:** *Friday the 13th* • ***Part 2*** • *Part III* • *The Final Chapter* • *A New Beginning* • *Jason Lives* • *The New Blood* • *Jason Takes Manhattan* • *Jason Goes to Hell* • *Jason X* • *Freddy vs. Jason* • *Friday the 13th* (2009)
**Characters:** Jason Voorhees • Pamela Voorhees
**Comics:** *Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash* • *The Nightmare Warriors*
**Games and TV:** *Friday the 13th* (1985 game) • *Friday the 13th* (NES game) • *Mortal Kombat X* • *Friday the 13th: The Series*
**Related topics:** *A Nightmare on Elm Street* • *Mortal Kombat* • *Evil Dead*