Friday the 13th Part 2

Friday the 13th Part 2
Directed by	Steve Miner Sean S. Cunningham (additional scenes)
Produced by	Steve Miner
Written by	Ron Kurz Phil Scuderi
Based on	Characters by Victor Miller
Starring	Amy Steel John Furey Adrienne King
Music by	Harry Manfredini
Cinematography	Peter Stein
Edited by	Susan E. Cunningham
Production company	Georgetown Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	April 30, 1981 (1981-04-30) (US)
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.25 million[1]
Box office	$21.7 million[1]

Friday the 13th Part 2 is an 1981 American slasher film directed by Steve Miner, and the second installment in the Friday the 13th film series. It is a direct sequel to Friday the 13th, picking up five years after that film's conclusion, where a new murderer stalks and begins murdering the camp counselors at a nearby training camp in Crystal Lake. The film marks the first time Jason Voorhees is the killer; his mother was the killer in the previous film. It also features the brief return of Alice Hardy, who is currently one of the only Friday the 13th heroines to return in a sequel.

Originally, Friday the 13th Part 2 was not intended to be a direct sequel but rather part of an anthology series of films based on the Friday the 13th superstition; however, after the popularity of the original film's surprise ending where Jason Voorhees attacks the heroine, the filmmakers opted to revive Jason and the mythology surrounding Camp Crystal Lake, a trend which would be repeated in the following films.

Like the original film, Friday the 13th Part 2 faced opposition from the Motion Picture Association of America, who noted its "accumulative violence" as problematic, resulting in numerous cuts being made to allow an R rating. The film was released theatrically in North America on April 30, 1981.^[2] Although it did not gross as much as the original, the sequel grossed over $21.7 million in the United States on a budget of $1.25 million.

Plot

Two months after the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, sole survivor Alice Hardy is recovering from her traumatic experience. She has returned to the town of Crystal Lake to try and deal with her trauma. One day in her apartment, she finds the decapitated head of Pamela Voorhees in her refrigerator, then is murdered by an unseen Jason Voorhees with an ice pick.

Five years later, Paul Holt hosts a camp-counselor training camp at a building near Crystal Lake, attended by lovers Jeff and Sandra, troublemaker Scott, his girlfriend Terry, wheelchair-bound Mark, sweet-natured Vickie, jokester Ted, and Paul's assistant and girlfriend Ginny, as well as numerous unnamed counselor trainees. At the campfire that night, Paul tells them the legend of Jason to scare the other counselors from entering Camp Crystal Lake. That night, an elder named "Crazy" Ralph wanders onto the property to warn the group, but is garroted from behind by Jason. The next day, Jeff and Sandra attempt to go to Camp Crystal Lake, but find a recently killed dog. They are then discovered by the sheriff and return to the camp. Later, the sheriff spots a figure wearing a sack hood, revealed to be Jason, and chases him into the woods. He comes across a rundown shack and goes inside, where he is killed.

Back at camp, Paul offers the others one last night on the town before the intensive training begins, but out of the named counselors, only Ginny and Ted accept his offer. At a bar, Ginny muses that if Jason were still alive and witnessed his mother's death, it may have left him with no distinction between life and death, right or wrong. Paul scoffs at the idea, proclaiming that Jason is nothing but an urban legend. Meanwhile, Jason kills the others at the camp. Ginny suspects something is wrong when she and Paul return to find the lights out and the place in disarray. Jason ambushes Paul, then chases Ginny through some of the cabins and then the woods, before she eventually comes across the old shack.

After barricading herself inside, she finds an altar with Pamela Voorhees' head on it, surrounded by a pile of Jason's victims. Ginny puts on Pamela's sweater and tries to psychologically convince Jason that she is his mother. The ruse fails when he spots his mother's head on the altar and he attacks Ginny. Paul appears and attacks Jason, but is quickly overwhelmed. Just as Jason is about to kill Paul, Ginny picks up a machete and slams it down into his shoulder, apparently killing him.

Paul and Ginny returns to the cabin and are greeted at the door by Terry's dog Muffin. Just as they feel at ease, an unmasked Jason suddenly bursts through the window behind Ginny, grabbing and dragging her out. She then awakens to her being loaded into an ambulance and calls out for Paul, who is nowhere to be seen.

Cast

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 one another 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.^[3] Cunningham had mixed feelings about the entire "Friday the 13th" enterprise that he outlined for film critic and author Stephen Hunter in an interview for a book Hunter wrote on violent films. Hunter stated that Cunningham "wasn't particularly proud" of his work on these films, and Cunningham bluntly said that the only thing that seemed to reach a teenaged audience at that time period involved high levels of gore and graphic violence.

Casting

Adrienne King was pursued by an obsessed fan after the success of the original Friday the 13th and purportedly wished her role to be small as possible,^[4] though in the documentary Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, it was stated that King's agent had asked for a higher salary, which the studio could not afford.^[5]

The film's heroine, Ginny, is played by Amy Steel, who won the part through an audition. "At the time of [making the film], it was before the genre really picked up so I didn’t give it a lot of credit or take it seriously. For me, it was just another audition because I had no idea what it would end up meaning after all this time. When I played Ginny, I was really young and different from a lot of the people working at the time so that came out in my character. I was naturally suspicious of cocky guys at that age, and you see a lot of that when I’m on screen with Paul (John Furey). I tried to put so much behind the actual words in the script just so she felt almost unreachable, to Paul and to audiences. I wanted her to have some power."^[6]

Actor Warrington Gillette played Jason unmasked at the end of the film. Stuntman Steve Daskawisz (also known as Steve Dash) was credited as Jason Stunt Double but played Jason throughout the rest of the film.^[7]

Filming

The small village of New Preston, Connecticut was one of the filming locations.

Principal photography took place from October 3 and finished in November 1980, and primarily occurred in New Preston and Kent, Connecticut.^[8] Special effects artist Tom Savini was asked to work on the film but declined because he was already working on another project, Midnight (1982).^[5] Savini was replaced by Stan Winston.^[5]

Steve Daskawisz was rushed to the emergency room during filming after Amy Steel cut his hand with machete during filming.^[5] Steel explained, "The timing was wrong, and he didn't turn his pickaxe properly, and the machete hit his finger." Daskawisz received thirteen stitches on his middle finger. During the subsequent shoot, Daskawisz was forced to wear a piece of rubber over his finger, and both he and Steel insisted on reshooting this scene.^[9]

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.^[10] The use of the sack hood was similar to the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown.^[11]

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.^[12]

Post-production

Like its predecessor, Friday the 13th Part 2 had difficulty receiving an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).^[13] Upon reviewing the film, the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) warned Paul Hagger, an executive at Paramount, that the "accumulation of violence throughout the film" may still lead to an X rating even if substantial cuts were made.^[14]

A total of forty-eight seconds had to be cut from the film in order to avoid an X rating.^[5] Most noted by censors was the murder scene of Jeff and Sandra, who are impaled by a spear while having sex in a bed (a scene many have compared to a scene in Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood), which the censors found particularly graphic.^[5][13]

Release

The film was released theatrically on April 30, 1981, 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.^[15]

Reception

Much like its predecessor, critical reception to the film was initially negative. It has a 32% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes among 31 reviews.^[16] 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."^[17]

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."^[18] Scott Meslow of The Week described it as a transitional film that blended elements of the original film and those to come later in the series.^[19] 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.

In 2014, the film ranked at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Slasher Movies on the genre website Vegan Voorhees.^[20]

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.^[15] 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.

Music

In 1982, Gramavision Records released an LP album of selected pieces of Harry Manfredini's scores from the first three Friday the 13th films.^[21] 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.^[22] Waxworks Records released the Harry Manfredini-composed score on vinyl in summer 2015.^[23]

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

References

Bibliography

• Bracke, Peter (2006). Crystal Lake Memories. United Kingdom: Titan Books. pp. 50–52. ISBN 1-84576-343-2. 
• Kendrick, James (2009). Hollywood Bloodshed: Violence in 1980s American Cinema. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-809-32888-8. 

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Friday the 13th Part 2

• Friday the 13th Part 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• Friday the 13th Part 2 at AllMovie
• Friday the 13th Part 2 at Box Office Mojo
• Friday the 13th Part 2 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Film page at the Camp Crystal Lake web site
• Film page at Fridaythe13thfilms.com