Friday the 13th Part 2

Two months after the Camp Crystal Lake murders, Alice Hardy, the only survivor, is still trying to recover. In her apartment she opens the refrigerator to get her cat some food and finds Pamela Voorhees' severed head inside. Before she can get away, an unseen intruder drives an ice pick into her temple.

Five years later, Paul Holt opens a training center for camp counselors at Packanack Lodge, right next to the old Camp Crystal Lake. His assistant and girlfriend Ginny Field helps run it. The trainees include Jeff and his girlfriend Sandra, Scott, Terry and her dog Muffin, Mark (who uses a wheelchair), Vickie, and joker Ted. On the way in, Jeff and Sandra run into Crazy Ralph, who warns them to stay away.

Around the campfire that first night, Paul tells the legend of Jason Voorhees. The boy who drowned in 1957 supposedly lived. He watched his mother get killed by the one survivor of her spree, and now he lives in the woods and kills anyone who goes near. Ted jumps out of the bushes in a mask with a spear to scare everyone. Paul calls the story nonsense and tells them Camp Crystal Lake is condemned and off limits. Later that night, Crazy Ralph creeps up on Ginny and Paul's cabin and is strangled against a tree with barbed wire by someone unseen.

The next day Jeff and Sandra sneak over to the old camp and find a dead dog before Deputy Winslow catches them and drives them back. Paul punishes them. That evening, Winslow sees a man with a sack over his head run across the road, chases him to a shack in the woods, and is killed with the claw end of a hammer.

Paul gives the trainees one last night out in town before training starts. Most go to a bar, but six stay behind, including Jeff and Sandra, who are grounded. At the bar, Ginny wonders out loud what a boy like Jason would become if he saw his mother die. She suggests he might not know the difference between right and wrong or life and death. Paul laughs it off.

Back at the lodge, the killer goes to work. Scott gets caught in a rope trap and hangs upside down until his throat is slit with a machete. Terry finds his body and is killed offscreen. Mark goes outside thinking Vickie has come back and takes a machete to the face and rolls backward down a long flight of stairs. Upstairs, Jeff and Sandra are having sex when the killer drives a spear through both of them and the bed. When Vickie walks into that bedroom, the killer rises out of the bloody bed and stabs her with a kitchen knife.

Ted stays at the bar drinking. Ginny and Paul come back to find the lodge dark and a mess. The killer jumps Paul in the dark and chases Ginny through the grounds and into the woods. She reaches the shack and finds a shrine inside: Pamela Voorhees' head on an altar, with the bodies of Alice, Terry and Winslow piled nearby. She realizes the killer really is Jason.

Jason finds her. Ginny puts on Pamela's old sweater and talks to him in a mother's voice, trying to convince him she is his mother. It works for a moment, until he sees the head on the altar behind her and snaps out of it. Paul shows up and fights Jason, who gets the better of him. As Jason raises a pickaxe over Paul, Ginny grabs a machete and drives it into Jason's shoulder. He goes down and seems to be dead.

Ginny and Paul get back to a cabin and hear something at the door. It turns out to be Muffin the dog. As they relax, the unmasked Jason bursts through the window behind them and grabs Ginny. The next thing she knows, she is being loaded into an ambulance and asking for Paul, who is nowhere to be found. The last shot is back in the shack. Pamela's head is still on the altar, and Jason's body is gone.

Story notes

• Five years after the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, a nearby counselor-training center opens despite warnings about the area's legend.
• Jason Voorhees, now an adult living near the camp, begins stalking the new counselors.

Release & Reception

Paramount spent $2 million on ads in the first week, according to Daily Variety. The campaign tied the sequel to the first film with the tagline The body count continues. Spiros Angelikas designed a poster modeled on the first film's one-sheet, with a figure holding an axe and Jason attacking a woman in a boat inside the silhouette. Paramount liked it but thought it gave away the killer, so it sent out a teaser of just the title on black, then a final version without the boat image.

The film opened May 1, 1981, on 1,350 screens. It took in $6,429,784 its first weekend, more than the first film's opening and the biggest opening for an original 1981 release up to then. Its second weekend dropped 37 percent, and by day twelve it had made $13,045,189. It finished with $21.7 million, the 35th biggest film of 1981.

It sold about 7.8 million tickets, around 53 percent of the first film. Competition that year included The Howling, The Evil Dead, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, Halloween II and The Burning. It reached Argentina on October 29, 1981, Sweden on November 2, 1981, and France on January 13, 1982.

Critics were harsh. Roger Ebert gave it half a star and said the review would do for any Friday the 13th film you liked. John Corry of The New York Times said it existed only to shock. Helen Verongos of The Clarion-Ledger called it dimestore cheap. Terry Lawson of the Dayton Journal Herald called it a gratuitous effects freak show. Jacqi Tully of the Arizona Daily Star was one of the few who liked it, calling it gross but very effective.

Later views are warmer among fans. Rotten Tomatoes lists 29 percent from 70 critics as of April 2026. Bloody Disgusting's David Harley called it an important entry for introducing Jason and borrowing from Italian horror. Jeremiah Kipp of Slant said the grainy, cheap look gave it a base in reality. IFC's Bill Steele ranked it the best film in the series. Scott Meslow of The Week called it a bridge between the first film and the later sequels.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: IMP Awards — Friday the 13th Part 2 poster archive.

Cast

Crew

Production

Paramount wanted a sequel right away and took worldwide distribution rights. Frank Mancuso Sr. said the goal was an event movie teenagers would line up for on a Friday night. Early plans treated the title as a yearly anthology of unrelated scary movies. Phil Scuderi, one of the Esquire Theaters owners behind the first film along with Steve Minasian and Bob Barsamian, insisted on bringing back Jason, even though his lake scare had been meant as a joke.

Sean S. Cunningham passed because he was directing A Stranger Is Watching (1982). Steve Miner, associate producer on the first film, believed in the Jason idea and made his directing debut. He kept much of the original crew, and Cunningham's wife Susan E. Cunningham edited. Ron Kurz, who had done uncredited rewrites on the first film, wrote the script. The film's first title was Jason, and Georgetown signed an interim deal with the Screen Actors Guild so it could shoot during the 1980 actors' strike.

Adrienne King came back only for the opening. After the first film she had been stalked by an obsessed fan and reportedly wanted a small part. The documentary Crystal Lake Memories says her agent asked for more money than the studio would pay. Amy Steel won Ginny in an audition. She has said she played Ginny as wary of cocky guys and wanted her to have some power. Gina Gershon was offered a role but turned it down over a topless scene. Warrington Gillette played Jason unmasked at the end, while stuntman Steve Daskewisz played the hooded Jason for the rest of the film.

Filming started in the fall of 1980 (sources give September or October 3) and wrapped in November, all in Connecticut. The main Packanack Lodge set was a private children's camp on North Spectacle Pond near Kent. The cast and crew lived in its cabins, which Frank Mancuso Jr. compared to barracks.

The shoot was rough on Daskewisz. Amy Steel hit his hand with the machete when their timing was off, and he needed thirteen stitches on his middle finger. He also broke ribs falling on the pickaxe and got rug burns around his eye from tape used to keep the sack from flapping. In Alice's death scene, the ice pick prop failed to retract and hurt Adrienne King.

The climax where the unmasked Jason crashes through the window and grabs Ginny took three takes, and Steel said she was genuinely tense and scared. Rumors said John Furey left the production early because Paul is missing at the end. Furey said he was there the whole shoot, and Miner said the vague ending was the film's fault, not the actor's.

The MPAA gave Paramount trouble again. The rating board warned executive Paul Hagger that the pile-up of violence could still earn an X even with big cuts. Forty-eight seconds came out to get the R, with the spear through Jeff and Sandra drawing the most attention. A nude scene of Marta Kober was dropped completely once Paramount learned she was 16.

John Caglione Jr. said this was his first feature. He worked as lab assistant to makeup department head Carl Fullerton and remembered seeing Fullerton finish sculpting Jason's face on a plaster cast of Warrington Gillette's head on his first day. Photographs by electrician William Klayer show campfire and cabin lighting-test Polaroids and the tree-trap rig being prepared before Russell Todd was put in his throat-wound makeup.

John Caglione Jr. identified Part 2 as his first feature-film job and described his role as makeup laboratory assistant to department head Carl Fullerton.

The William Klayer archive includes campfire and cabin lighting-test Polaroids, documenting preparations before principal scene photography.

William Klayer’s photographs document the tree-trap rig being prepared and Russell Todd wearing the completed throat-wound makeup afterward.

Filming locations

• Private children's camp on North Spectacle Pond, near Kent, Connecticut: Packanack Lodge, the counselor training center; cast and crew lodging
• New Preston, Connecticut: Jeff and Sandra driving to camp
• Lake Waramaug Casino, New Preston, Connecticut: The roadhouse bar; the building burned down in 1982
• Lake Waramaug, Connecticut: Some lakeside scenes
• Kent Falls State Park, Kent, Connecticut: Exterior footage
• Torrington, Connecticut: Interior of Alice's apartment
• Central Waterbury, Connecticut: Exterior of Alice's apartment building; torn down in 2018 for a parking lot
• Filming took place in Connecticut, primarily New Preston and Kent, with additional work at Kent Falls State Park.
• Packanack Lodge was represented by a private children’s camp on North Spectacle Pond near Kent; some lakeside material was shot at Lake Waramaug, while Alice’s apartment used Torrington interiors and Waterbury exteriors.

Effects and makeup

Tom Savini was asked back but said no. He was busy on Midnight (1982) and did not like the idea of Jason as the killer. Stan Winston was hired next but had a scheduling conflict and dropped out. Carl Fullerton ended up with the job.

Fullerton designed the adult Jason with long red hair and a beard, keeping the facial deformity Savini gave the boy in the first film. Part III dropped his look entirely even though it takes place the next day with the same director. Some fans explain the change by saying the unmasked Jason at the end of Part 2 is Ginny's nightmare or her guess about what he looks like.

The spear kill of Jeff and Sandra was the effect censors cared about most. Fans and critics have long compared it to a nearly identical death in Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood.

William Klayer's behind-the-scenes photos show the tree-trap rig for Scott's death being set up and Russell Todd afterward in his throat-wound makeup.

Longer versions of several kills existed before the cuts: more blood from Winslow's head wound, Jeff's body pressed onto the screaming Sandra with blood pouring from the wound, and a longer shot of Vickie's bleeding leg as she slides down the wall.

Carl Fullerton is credited for special makeup effects, with John Caglione Jr. among the makeup-effects crew supporting the sequel’s practical gore work.

Caglione recalled seeing Fullerton finish Jason’s sculpture on Warrington Gillette’s plaster head cast on his first day at the effects laboratory.

Props and costumes

The masked Jason wears a burlap sack over his head. The hood looks a lot like the one worn by the killer in The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976). Steve Daskewisz got rug burns around his eye from tape put inside the sack to stop it flapping.

Pamela Voorhees' severed head sits on the shrine in Jason's shack along with her sweater, which Ginny puts on.

Jason's weapons include an ice pick, barbed wire, a claw hammer, a machete, a spear, a kitchen knife and a pickaxe.

Ted scares the campfire crowd in a monster mask. The mask seen in the campfire scene is known as the Fantome, a Zagone Studios design that Trick or Treat Studios now sells as a heritage mask sculpted by Bill Ystron.

The campfire-scene mask known as Fantome is represented by the revived Zagone Studios design; Trick or Treat Studios currently sells the classic sculpt as a heritage mask.

Tom Spina Designs documented later conservation of the original Pamela Voorhees severed-head prop. The workshop photographs show conservation work rather than the film shoot.

Production artifacts

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Harry Manfredini scored the film.

1982: Gramavision Records LP of selected cues from the first three films.

January 13, 2012: La-La Land Records limited 6-CD box set of the first six scores, sold out in under 24 hours.

Summer 2015: Waxwork Records vinyl release of the score.

October 10, 2017: La-La Land Records 2-CD set pairing Part 2 and Part 3, using the 2012 master.

January 13, 2023: La-La Land Records expanded Ultimate Cut, remastered from original master tapes that had been thought lost, with unused cues.

The end credits thank The Smokey Boys Band along with The Casino in New Preston, where the bar scenes were shot.

• Waxwork Records deluxe vinyl of Harry Manfredini's complete Part 2 score, sourced from the original 1981 master tapes.

Home Media

• 1981: Paramount Home Video VHS and Betamax.
• 1994: Paramount VHS reissue.
• October 19, 1999: first Paramount DVD, widescreen, with the trailer as the only extra.
• 2004: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan DVD box set of the first eight films.
• 2009: Paramount Deluxe Edition on DVD and Blu-ray with several documentary featurettes and the trailer. The censored footage was still missing.
• 2011: 4-disc DVD collection with the first, third and fourth films.
• 2011: Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray set with a roughly three-quarter-size replica Jason mask and a cardstock booklet; reissued in 2018 in a plastic multi-disc case.
• 2013: Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection Blu-ray set.
• October 13, 2020: Scream Factory Friday the 13th Collection Deluxe Edition, Disc 3: new 4K scan of the camera negative, restored mono, Slashed Scenes (the recovered uncut gore footage), commentary with Amy Steel, Thommy Hutson and Peter M. Bracke, commentary with Russell Todd, Kirsten Baker, Bill Randolph, Lauren-Marie Taylor, Stu Charno and Bracke, My Life with Ginny, Inside Crystal Lake Memories: The Book, Friday's Legacy: Horror Conventions, Lost Tales from Camp Blood Part 2, theatrical and Japanese trailers, TV and radio spots, and still galleries.
• October 1, 2024: 4K Ultra HD debut in the United States as part of the Paramount Scares Volume 2 collection.
• October 7, 2024: standalone 4K Ultra HD release in the United Kingdom.
• February 3, 2026: Paramount standalone 4K Ultra HD for the 45th anniversary.

Home video history

• Friday the 13th Part II: A Novel by Simon Hawke, New American Library, 1988, ISBN 0-451-15337-5, based on Ron Kurz's script.
• NECA Ultimate Part 2 Jason 7-inch scale figure (product 39719), with two heads, a campfire base, Pamela's severed head, machete, knife, pickaxe, spear and pitchfork, over 25 points of articulation, in a window box with an opening flap.
• Zagone Studios Classic Fantome latex mask sold by Trick or Treat Studios (SKU MATTZS101), the monster mask recognized from the campfire scene, sculpted by Bill Ystron.
• Waxwork Records vinyl soundtrack (2015) and La-La Land Records CDs (2012, 2017, 2023).
• Original Paramount pressbook with black-and-white publicity photos, and the advance teaser one-sheet with only the title on black.
• NECA Ultimate Part 2 Jason 7-inch Scale Action Figure, cataloged for Friday the 13th Part 2.

Books and publishing

Replica props and masks

The catalog

Trailers & clips

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Press & Promo

Effects

Props

Production Art

Merchandise