ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 1st
"FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2" released in 1981
Mrs. Voorhees is dead, and Camp Crystal Lake is shut down. Five years later, a camp counselor in training program begins at Campanack Lodge - right near Jason's home, Camp Crystal Lake - and as teenagers in the program start snooping around Camp Crystal Lake, they start getting killed violently one by one, in Steve Miner's chilling Friday the 13th, Part 2!
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Two months after the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, sole survivor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) is recovering from her traumatic experience. In her apartment, she finds the decapitated head of Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) in her refrigerator and is murdered by an unseen adult Jason Voorhees (Steve Daskawisz) with an ice pick to her temple! Five years later, camp counselor Paul Holt (John Furey) hosts a counselor training camp at a building near Crystal Lake, attended by lovers Jeff and Sandra (Bill Randolph and Marta Kober), troublemaker Scott (Russell Todd), tomboy Terry (Kirsten Baker), wheelchair-bound Mark (Tom McBride), sweet-natured Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor), jokester Ted (Stu Charno), and Paul's assistant - and girlfriend - Ginny (Amy Steel), 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. As he and Ted orchestrate a prank to scare the camp counselors by having Ted appear with a mask and a spear, he reassures the counselors that Jason is dead, and that Camp Crystal Lake is off limits. That night, the elderly "Crazy" Ralph (Walt Gorney) 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 upon finding a killed dog, before getting caught by the local policeman, Deputy Winslow (Cliff Cudney) and returned to the camp. Later, Winslow spots Jason, revealed to be wearing a burlap sack to conceal his identity, and chases him into the woods. When he finds a rundown shack that he enters, he discovers something horrifying inside before getting killed by Jason with a hammer. Back at camp, Paul offers the others one last night on the town before the training begins, but out of the named counselors, only Ginny and Ted accept his offer. Jeff and Sandra are forced to stay behind as punishment for sneaking off to the campsite. As the few remaining campers are dispatched one-by-one by the vengeful Jason, Ginny and Paul later return to the camp for a final confrontation with Jason!
TRIVIA: Throughout the final scene, the mummified head of Mrs. Voorhees is noticeably an actress wearing makeup rather than a fake head. The final shot is a close-up of the head, ending in a freeze frame before the credits roll. Originally this shot ended with Mrs. Voorhees opening her eyes and smiling, but at the last minute Steve Miner decided this effect was hokey and cheapened the movie's impact.
Top and Above: Just after Jason gets his bloody revenge on Alice (Adrienne King), a new group of campers arrive on the shores of Crystal Lake.
Following the success of Friday the 13th in 1980, Paramount Pictures immediately began plans to make a sequel, as it was rumored at the time had Paramount not agreed to finance Friday the 13th Part 2 (and the following sequels), Warner Bros., who distributed the first film outside the US with great success, were willing to step in and take over. The initial idea for a sequel involved simply using the Friday the 13th title for a series of films, released once a year, that would not have any direct continuity with one another, but be a separate "scary movie" of their own right. However, 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 brought screenwriter Ron Kurz (who performed un-credited re-writes on Victor Miller's original Friday the 13th script) on-board to write the script. Original producer/director Sean Cunningham had already remarked "how stupid" he thought the idea was that Jason be alive the whole time (as had Betsy Palmer and Tom Savini), believing the plot to be too counter intuitive from the first film; although he did return to assist his friend Miner with pre-production and casting.
Amy Steel was among the first to be cast as heroine Ginny Fields, 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." Stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer would also return for brief cameos in the Part 2. King, who at the time was being stalked by an obsessed fan after the success of the original Friday the 13th, purportedly wished her role to be small as possible (although 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). According to King, there was no script for her scene which is why she didn't know her character died. She showed up to set, found out Jason was going to kill her, and that they needed her to completely improvise a phone conversation. So, everything with Alice talking to her mom on the phone about struggling to move on with her soon-to-end life was unscripted. For her part, Palmer was very surprised to be asked back for a cameo appearance by Miner, as she assumed - like everyone else - that Jason was dead. Palmer later filmed her lines in half a day in front of a black screen, and a new mockup of her head was created by the make-up effects team. Warrington Gillette originally auditioned for the part of head counselor Paul (which would end up being played by actor John Furey), However, the producers liked him, and, knowing he had gone to stunt school, asked him to be Jason. Although Gillette is credited as playing Jason, in most of the scenes the character was played by stuntman Steve Dash (Gillette only plays the unmasked Jason in the sequence where he bursts through a window). Dash was upset at being uncredited in the role, as he has most of Jason's screen time, but Dash eventually received sole credit for the archival footage used for the next film in the series, Friday the 13th Part III.
Amy Steel was among the first to be cast as heroine Ginny Fields, 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." Stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer would also return for brief cameos in the Part 2. King, who at the time was being stalked by an obsessed fan after the success of the original Friday the 13th, purportedly wished her role to be small as possible (although 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). According to King, there was no script for her scene which is why she didn't know her character died. She showed up to set, found out Jason was going to kill her, and that they needed her to completely improvise a phone conversation. So, everything with Alice talking to her mom on the phone about struggling to move on with her soon-to-end life was unscripted. For her part, Palmer was very surprised to be asked back for a cameo appearance by Miner, as she assumed - like everyone else - that Jason was dead. Palmer later filmed her lines in half a day in front of a black screen, and a new mockup of her head was created by the make-up effects team. Warrington Gillette originally auditioned for the part of head counselor Paul (which would end up being played by actor John Furey), However, the producers liked him, and, knowing he had gone to stunt school, asked him to be Jason. Although Gillette is credited as playing Jason, in most of the scenes the character was played by stuntman Steve Dash (Gillette only plays the unmasked Jason in the sequence where he bursts through a window). Dash was upset at being uncredited in the role, as he has most of Jason's screen time, but Dash eventually received sole credit for the archival footage used for the next film in the series, Friday the 13th Part III.
TRIVIA: Originally, sex scene between Sandra and Jeff was longer and it included full frontal nudity from actress Marta Kober, but when Paramount studio discovered that she was underage, the scene was deleted completely.
Top and Above: One by one, Jason (Steve Daskawisz) dispatches the camp counselors in bloody fashion!
Principal photography began on October 3, 1980 (just a few months after the release of the first film!), primarily in New Preston and Kent, Connecticut. While most of the crew from the first film returned, special effects artist Tom Savini, who was asked to work on the film, declined to return because he was already working on another project, Midnight (1982). Legendary make-up artist Stan Winston was then contacted to replace Savini, but unfortunately he too had a scheduling conflict, leaving the make-up effects to be handled by Carl Fullerton. Fullerton - who only had six weeks to plan and create all the FX on the film, and basically one day to plan and create Jason - designed the "look" for the adult Jason Voorhees and went with long red hair and a beard while following the facial deformities established in the original film in the make-up designed by Tom Savini for Jason as a child. Another notable addition to Friday the 13th's production crew was Frank Mancuso, Jr., a recent college graduate at the time who happened to be the son of the President of Paramount Pictures. Mancuso, Jr. worked on Part 2 as a roving crew member, but by Part III, he became the steward of the Friday the 13th franchise, producing the sequels Part III to Part VII: The New Blood, and executive producing the Friday the 13th TV series (running from 1987-1990).
To keep costs down, the actors stayed in the cabins on-set during filming. Lauren-Marie Taylor later recalled how one night, John Furey, Bill Randolph and Russell Todd played a practical joke on her; scratching on her screen window until she hyperventilated from fright (and eventually fainted!). Likewise, during a break between takes, the cast and crew were highly amused when two girls attempted to use the telephone in the phone box which the Jeff and Sandra characters use in the film. The telephone was, in fact, fake, and the girls soon stormed off in anger, assuming that the phone was not working. During the climactic fight between Jason and Ginny, when Jason raises the mattock to block Ginny's machete swing, Steel got the timing was wrong during the first take and she accidentally hit Daskawisz's finger, causing him to have to go to the emergency room. Dash reportedly still has photos of him being treated in the ER in full costume, with the fake machete still stuck through his shoulder. After his finger was stitched up, he returned to set that night and insisted they complete the scene. Steel said they simply put a condom on his finger, and applied make-up to make it look dirty to disguise the bandages. In another 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, however, received rug burns around his eye from the tape from wearing the rough flour sack material for hours. Daskawisz also injured himself again while filming the scene where Jason is chasing Ginny through the woods; Daskawicz ended up falling on the pickaxe and breaking some of his ribs.
To keep costs down, the actors stayed in the cabins on-set during filming. Lauren-Marie Taylor later recalled how one night, John Furey, Bill Randolph and Russell Todd played a practical joke on her; scratching on her screen window until she hyperventilated from fright (and eventually fainted!). Likewise, during a break between takes, the cast and crew were highly amused when two girls attempted to use the telephone in the phone box which the Jeff and Sandra characters use in the film. The telephone was, in fact, fake, and the girls soon stormed off in anger, assuming that the phone was not working. During the climactic fight between Jason and Ginny, when Jason raises the mattock to block Ginny's machete swing, Steel got the timing was wrong during the first take and she accidentally hit Daskawisz's finger, causing him to have to go to the emergency room. Dash reportedly still has photos of him being treated in the ER in full costume, with the fake machete still stuck through his shoulder. After his finger was stitched up, he returned to set that night and insisted they complete the scene. Steel said they simply put a condom on his finger, and applied make-up to make it look dirty to disguise the bandages. In another 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, however, received rug burns around his eye from the tape from wearing the rough flour sack material for hours. Daskawisz also injured himself again while filming the scene where Jason is chasing Ginny through the woods; Daskawicz ended up falling on the pickaxe and breaking some of his ribs.
TRIVIA: 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.
Top and Above: Ginny (Amy Steel) appears to be the sole survivor of Jason's (this time played by Warrington Gillette) rampage... or did she?!
In fact, the hardest scene Steel found shooting was final "window scene". The shot required three takes, and each time her frightened reaction was genuine, due to every time she heard the high speed camera (for the slow motion effects) start running she would tense up and get scared. It was during this scene where Warrington Gillette recieved an injury of his own! After trying to to break through the window for the shot, the "break-away" glass didn't break, and he ended up getting a concussion from banging his head against the pane.
Like its predecessor, Friday the 13th Part 2 had difficulty receiving an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). 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. A total of forty-eight seconds had to be cut from the film in order to avoid an X rating, most notably cut by censors was the "double impalement" 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. Eventually, Part 2 was released across 1,350 screens on April 30, 1981, against strong competition early in the year from other 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. Nevertheless, Part 2 grossed an impressive $6.5 million in it's openign weekend, and earned over $21 million at the US box office.
Agan like its predecessor, critical reception to the film was initially negative, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times writing that Friday the 13th Part 2 is "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." David Harley of Bloody Disgusting reviewed, "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", while 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.
Like its predecessor, Friday the 13th Part 2 had difficulty receiving an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). 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. A total of forty-eight seconds had to be cut from the film in order to avoid an X rating, most notably cut by censors was the "double impalement" 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. Eventually, Part 2 was released across 1,350 screens on April 30, 1981, against strong competition early in the year from other 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. Nevertheless, Part 2 grossed an impressive $6.5 million in it's openign weekend, and earned over $21 million at the US box office.
Agan like its predecessor, critical reception to the film was initially negative, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times writing that Friday the 13th Part 2 is "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." David Harley of Bloody Disgusting reviewed, "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", while 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.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 34%
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