Friday the 13th Part 2 is a 1981 American slasher film produced and directed by Steve Miner in his directorial debut, written by Ron Kurz, and starring Adrienne King, Amy Steel, and John Furey. It is the sequel to Friday the 13th (1980), and the second installment in the Friday the 13th franchise. King, Betsy Palmer, and Walt Gorney reprise their respective roles from the first film as Alice Hardy, Pamela Voorhees, and Crazy Ralph. Taking place five years after the first film, Friday the 13th Part 2 follows a similar premise, with an unknown stalker killing a group of camp counselors at a training camp near Crystal Lake. The film marks the debut of Jason Voorhees as the series' main antagonist.
Originally, Friday the 13th Part 2 was intended to be an anthology film based on the Friday the 13th superstition. However, after the popularity of the original film's surprise ending, the filmmakers opted to continue the story and mythology surrounding Camp Crystal Lake, a trend that would be repeated in every film in the franchise.
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 opened theatrically in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco on May 1, 1981. Friday the 13th Part 2 received negative reviews, and was less financially successful than the first film, grossing $21.7 million in the U.S. on a budget of $1.25 million. A direct sequel, Friday the 13th Part III, was released one year later.
Plot Two months after the murders at Camp Crystal Lake, sole survivor Alice Hardy is recovering from her traumatic experience. In her apartment, when Alice opens the refrigerator to get her cat some food, she finds the severed head of Pamela Voorhees and is murdered with an ice pick to her temple by an unknown intruder.
In 1984, Paul Holt has opened a school for camp counselors on the shore of Crystal Lake. The camp is attended by Paul's assistant Ginny Field, Sandra, her boyfriend Jeff, Scott, Terry, the paraplegic Mark, Vickie, Ted, and many other trainees. Around the campfire that night, Paul tells the counselors the legend of Jason Voorhees, a boy who drowned at Camp Crystal Lake in 1957, sending his vengeful mother Pamela on two killing sprees in 1958 and 1979, until Alice eventually killed her in self-defense. According to the legend, Jason survived and is now living in the woods near Crystal Lake; enraged at Pamela's death, he will kill anyone he comes across. As Paul finishes the story, a man with a spear scares everyone, but it turns out to be Ted wearing a mask. Paul reassures everyone that Jason is dead and that Camp Crystal Lake is now condemned and off-limits.
That night, Crazy Ralph wanders onto the property and watches Ginny and Paul make out before being garroted from behind a tree by an unseen killer. The following day, Jeff and Sandra sneak off to Camp Crystal Lake, where they find a dog carcass, but they are caught by Deputy Winslow and return to the camp. Later, Winslow spots a man wearing a burlap sack mask running across the road. Winslow chases him into the woods and finds a shack. The man kills Winslow with a hammer claw.
Back at camp, Paul offers the others one last night in town before the training begins. Six of them stay behind, including Jeff and Sandra, who are forced to remain as punishment for sneaking off. At the bar, Ginny muses that if Jason were still alive and had witnessed Pamela's death, it may have left him with no distinction between life and death, or right and wrong. Paul dismisses the idea, proclaiming that Jason is nothing but an urban legend. Meanwhile, the assailant appears at the camp and kills the counselors, one by one. Scott has his throat slit with a machete while caught in a rope trap, and Terry is killed upon finding Scott's dead body. Mark has a machete slammed into his face and falls down a flight of stairs. The killer then moves upstairs and impales Jeff and Sandra with a spear as they have sex, then stabs Vickie to death with a kitchen knife.
Ted stays behind at the bar while Ginny and Paul return to find the place in disarray. In the dark, the killer ambushes Paul and chases Ginny throughout the camp and into the woods, where she comes across the shack. After barricading herself inside, she finds an altar with Pamela Voorhees' severed head on it, surrounded by a pile of bodies which include Alice, Terry, and Winslow. Realizing that Jason Voorhees is the killer, Ginny puts on Pamela's sweater and tries to convince Jason that she is his mother psychologically. The ruse briefly works until Jason sees Pamela's head on the altar and breaks out of the trance. Paul suddenly returns and tries to save Ginny, but Jason incapacitates him. Just as Jason is about to kill Paul with a pickaxe, Ginny picks up a machete and slams it down into Jason's shoulder, seemingly killing him.
Paul and Ginny return to the cabin and hear someone outside. Thinking that Jason has followed them, they open the door, only to find Terry's dog, Muffin. Just as they sigh in relief, an unmasked Jason bursts through the window from behind and grabs Ginny. She then awakens to being loaded into an ambulance and calls out for Paul, who is nowhere to be seen, leaving his fate unknown. Back in the shack, Pamela's head remains on the altar, but Jason is nowhere to be found.
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" in 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 (Betsy Palmer)'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. At the time Friday the 13th Part 2 went into development, Cunningham opted not to direct as he was directing A Stranger Is Watching (1982). Miner would use many of the same crew members from the first film while working on the sequels. 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 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 as Alice Hardy to be as small as possible, 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.
The film's heroine, Ginny Field, 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."
Gina Gershon was offered an unspecified role, but turned it down due to a "exploitive" topless scene.
Actor Warrington Gillette played Jason unmasked at the end of the film. Stuntman Steve Daskewisz (also known as Steve Dash) was credited as Jason Stunt Double but played the masked Jason throughout the rest of the film.
Filming
Principal photography of Friday the 13th Part 2 in September 1980, and finished in November 1980. Filming took place in Connecticut, primarily in New Preston and Kent, as well as at Kent Falls State Park. The opening scene of the film featuring Alice in her apartment was filmed inside a Torrington residence, while the exterior shots of the apartment were shot in a neighborhood in central Waterbury. The Waterbury residence remained until 2018, when it was razed to make way for a parking lot.
The establishing scene featuring Sandra and Jeff driving toward the camp was shot in New Preston, while the central Packanack Lodge setting was filmed at a private children's camp on North Spectacle Pond near Kent. The cast and crew stayed on location at the camp, living on the premises in cabins, which executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr. described as "barracks"-like. Some lakeside sequences were shot on Lake Waramaug. The roadhouse tavern visited by some of the characters was the old Lake Waramaug Casino in New Preston, which was destroyed in a fire in 1982.
The use of the burlap sack hood worn by Jason (Steve Daskewisz) bears similarity to that used by the villain in the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
Several of the film's actors suffered injuries during filming: Daskewisz was rushed to the emergency room during filming after Amy Steel accidentally cut his hand with a machete. Steel explained, "The timing was wrong, and he didn't turn his pickaxe properly, and the machete hit his finger." Daskewisz received thirteen stitches on his middle finger. Daskiewisz suffered another injury on set after falling onto the pickaxe he was using, breaking several ribs. During one take of Alice being killed by Jason, the ice pick prop failed to properly retract, injuring King.
The scene where Steel's character Ginny gets grabbed from behind by an unmasked Jason in the climax took three takes to shoot it right. Steel was tense and frightened during filming of the scene.
Rumors sparked that John Furey left before the film wrapped, as his character Paul does not appear in the final scene. In truth, his character was not intended to have appeared. Furey stated, "I was there for the whole production," which director Miner verified, commenting: "John was a total professional and he did everything that was asked of him. If the ending was vague, it was the film's fault, not his."
Special effects Special effects artist Tom Savini was asked to work on the film but declined because he was already working on another project, Midnight (1982). In addition, he was not receptive to the concept of Jason as the killer in the film. Savini was then replaced by Stan Winston. Winston, however, had a scheduling conflict and had to drop out of the project.