Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) is the sequel that replaces Pamela Voorhees with her son. Steve Miner directed. Ron Kurz wrote the screenplay. Paramount Pictures released the film in the United States on May 1, 1981. Amy Steel plays Ginny, the counselor who figures the local story out, and a sack-headed Jason Voorhees does the killing. The hockey mask is not in this film. It arrives in Part 3. This is the one that decides Jason survived the lake.

At a glance

Release date	May 1, 1981 (United States)
Director	Steve Miner
Writer	Ron Kurz
Starring	Amy Steel, John Furey, Adrienne King, Warrington Gillette, Steve Daskawisz
Runtime	87 minutes
Rating	R
Genre	Slasher
Budget	About $1.25 million
Box office	About $21.7 million domestic

Plot summary

Five years after the Packanack killings, Alice Hardy is still living with the night she survived. Someone finishes that story in her apartment. The film then moves to a counselor-training camp on the shore next to the closed Camp Crystal Lake. Paul Holt runs the course and tells the Pamela Voorhees legend as a campfire warning, including the local claim that her son did not drown. Ginny Field, a child-psychology student, is the only one who listens as if the story might be useful.

The trainees do what trainees in these films do, and a large man in a burlap sack starts removing them. The camp is rural, the phones are not reliable, and the woods belong to someone who knows them. Ginny’s read on the killer is the film’s only plan: if this is a boy who watched his mother die, he can be talked to as a boy. The shack in the woods, with a shrine in it, is where that theory gets tested.

Spoiler section: the ending

Ginny puts on Pamela’s sweater and speaks to Jason as his mother long enough to get a machete into him. Paul disappears in the struggle. Ginny wakes in an ambulance. The last image puts Jason through the window of her hospital room, or seems to. The film leaves both the window and Paul unresolved.

Production and behind the scenes

Paramount had released the first film after an independent production proved the title would sell. Miner, an associate producer and editor on that film, stepped up to direct. The script had to solve a problem the ending of Part 1 had created: the killer was dead, and the boy in the lake had been a dream or a jump scare. Part 2 simply declares that Jason lived in the woods, and that Alice was unfinished business. Adrienne King returned for the opening and then left the film. She had been stalked after the first movie’s release, and the production wrote her out rather than ask her to spend the shoot at the camp.

Jason was split between performers. Steve Daskawisz did most of the sack-headed stunt work and was injured on a machete gag. Warrington Gillette played the unmasked Jason at the end. The sack was a practical choice, a way to hide the face without inventing a brand yet. The look people mean by Jason, the hockey mask, is a Part 3 decision. Carl Fullerton handled the makeup. The camp scenes were shot in Connecticut, not New Jersey, on a budget of about $1.25 million. Harry Manfredini returned with the score and the “ki-ki-ki” motif.

Release and reception

Paramount opened the film on May 1, 1981. It made about $6.4 million in its first weekend and about $21.7 million in the United States and Canada. Reviews were poor, as they had been for the first film, and the gross was strong enough that Part 3 went into production in 3-D. Steel’s Ginny is still the survivor fans rank highest in the early sequels, because she has a theory and uses it.

Cast

Amy Steel as Ginny Field
John Furey as Paul Holt
Adrienne King as Alice Hardy
Warrington Gillette as Jason Voorhees (unmasked)
Steve Daskawisz as Jason Voorhees (stunts)
Bill Randolph as Jeff
Marta Kober as Sandra
Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees, in a flashback and a shrine

Trivia

The sack mask was burned and replaced for later shots after it kept falling apart in the rain.
King agreed to the opening only. She did not want to spend another shoot as Pamela.
Miner cut several kills to win an R after the MPAA rejected the first pass.
Ginny’s sweater trick is the model for later “speak as the mother” beats in the series.
The training camp is not Camp Crystal Lake. It is next door, which is why the film can claim the old camp is closed.
Daskawisz was uncredited on original prints. Later home-video editions added him.