Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981)
d. Steve Miner, 86 minutes

Film Plot Summary

The film's prologue recapped the ending of the previous film, beginning with sole-surviving Alice Hardy's (Adrienne King) flashback nightmare, in which she recalled encountering schizophrenic mother Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). The camp's ex-cook was seeking homicidal revenge for the tragic and accidental drowning death of her young son Jason Voorhees at Camp Crystal Lake in 1957. Two months later (revealed later), Alice was reliving the horror of that night, when she decapitated Mrs. Voorhees with a machete, was attacked in a canoe on the lake by the rotting decomposed corpse of Jason, awoke screaming in a hospital bed, and was told by a police officer that she alone had been pulled from the lake - culminating with her final words in the original film: "Then he's still there." She was struggling to put her life back together, as she told her mother on the phone.

There were some bogus scare moments in Alice's apartment - during her shower, a hang-up phone call, a banging noise, and a screeching cat that lept through her kitchen window. When she opened her refrigerator door, she viewed the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees. While screaming, an ice pick was thrust through her temple (# 1 death) by an unknown killer, whose dirty hand removed the whistling tea kettle from the hot stove burner.

During the credits, the words "Friday the 13th" in white block letters exploded, revealing "Part 2."

The setting was five years later (1984 or 1985?). Three teens (prospective camp counselors) were introduced in this opening scene:

• dim-witted Jeff (Bill Randolph)
• his girlfriend Sandra Dier (Marta Kober)
• their friend Ted (Stu Charno)

Jeff and Sandra drove into a rural town, and from a payphone phoned their friend Ted for directions. They were warned by doomsayer Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), but ignored his words: "I told the others. They didn't believe me. You're all doomed. You're all doomed." Their illegally-parked truck was being towed away behind them, and they ran after it as it was taken away by Max (Cliff Cudney), the gas station owner, not realizing that it was a prank orchestrated by their nerdy friend Ted who was around the corner.

A large group of young adults were converging on the area, for a training session in a course called "Senior Camp Counselor Course," led by Paul Holt (John Furey). The two-week training was to be held near the notorious Camp Crystal Lake (nicknamed "Camp Blood") at a new counselor training center called Packanack Lodge, in the Lake Region. From deep woods foliage, the trio were spied upon by an unknown individual, when they removed a large tree limb blocking the road, and found a broken down sign for "Camp Crystal Lake" lying nearby.

As the trainees assembled for the first time, a number of them were introduced by serious-minded leader Paul, including:

• sexy and nubile short-shorts wearing Terry (Kirsten Baker)
• pretty Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor)
• handsome but semi-creepy blue-eyed Scott (Russell Todd)
• wheelchair-bound ex-jock and football player Mark (Tom McBride), who had been in a motorcycle accident which left him with paralyzed legs

They were told that the course would be "back to basics" - survival, first aid, boating, archery, rifle range, etc. The group was interrupted by the late arrival of another counselor, driving a back-firing red VW convertible:

• strawberry blonde Ginny Field (Amy Steel), Paul's assistant, his tough-minded girlfriend and a child psychology major

Prophetically, Paul unwittingly cautioned the counselors about safety: "Axes, knives, lanterns, saws, they can all be trouble. Their misuse is the main cause of camp accidents." He also reminded them that it was "bear country" and that bears were dangerous - therefore, no food fights. He recommended:

"Change often. Food odors cling to clothing. If you're a woman, don't use perfume. And keep clean during your menstrual cycle."

At a nighttime marshmallow roast around a fire, Paul lectured to the eleven attentive members of the group, promising "I'm gonna give it to you straight about Jason." He proceeded to spin a long 'ghost-story' rendition of the Jason legend:

"His body was never recovered from the lake after he drowned. And if you listen to the old-timers in town, they'll tell you that he's still out there. Some sort of demented creature, surviving in the wilderness. Full-grown by now. Stalking, stealing what he needs. Living off wild animals and vegetation. Some folks claim they've even seen him right in this area. The girl who survived that night at Camp Blood, that Friday the 13th? She claims she saw him. She disappeared two months later. Vanished. Blood was everywhere. No one knows what happened to her. Legend has it that Jason saw his mother beheaded that night. And that he took his revenge. A revenge that he'll continue to seek if anyone ever enters his wilderness again. And by now, I guess you all know we're the first to return here. Five years, five long years he's been dormant. And he's hungry. Jason's out there. Watching, always on the prowl for intruders. Ready to kill. Ready to devour. Thirsty for young blood."

Suddenly, the counselors were shocked by a dead, caveman-like Viking individual with a hideous mask and spear who jumped from out of nowhere, and they screamed as they fled, only to learn it was Ted in costume. As they expressed relieved laughter, Paul told the crowd:

"Now that we got that out of our system, I don't wanna hear any more about it. That's ancient history. Jason drowned. Mrs. Voorhees was killed. And Camp Crystal Lake is off-limits."

Later in the lodge building, the counselors entertained themselves by arm-wrestling, electronic video game-boy play, chess, or flirtatious getting-to-know-you talk. Sandra told her boyfriend Jeff that she was intrigued by 'Camp Blood' and had to see it: "Maybe there is something to that legend." As Ginny prepared for bed in her cabin, the shadow of Crazy Ralph crossed the entrance, just before Paul joined her for smooching-fraternizing. Prowler Ralph (first seen at shoe-level until the camera tracked up to his face) watched them kissing through the front screen door - but was garrotted around the neck with barbed wire held from behind a tree trunk (# 2 death).

The next day, labored breathing and the sound of footsteps accompanied the group of counselors as they engaged in "fun and games" training exercises (jogging, hiking a half-mile trail through the woods, etc.). Pony-tailed camp fitness director Ginny sensed a presence watching them (and later experienced the same feeling in her cabin). During a hot-dog BBQ lunch, Terry left the group looking for her shaggy pet dog Muffin. While the others had an afternoon swim break in the lake, bikini-topped Sandra convinced Jeff to join her, as they snuck away and hiked to see the nearby legendary campgrounds, although it was strictly off-limits. An unknown figure wearing muddy workboots and heavily-soiled jeans noted their trespassing. They found the mangled remains of an unrecognizable dog, conjecturing it was the work of wild animals, and later decided not to tell Terry - fearing it was her dog Muffin.

Local Deputy Winslow (Jack Marks) confronted trespassers Sandra and Jeff and escorted them back to camp. He sternly warned Paul that the nearby property was condemned and that the next group of trespassers would be jailed. Winslow stated: "Things have been quiet for five years and that's the way we want to keep it." The two were dismissed, but received no reprimand or serious punishment. As the Deputy drove away from the camp in his squad car, he saw a mysterious individual, the same one with workboots and jeans, disappear into the woods from the road - and he chased after him on foot. When he came upon a dilapidated, boarded-up ramshackle cabin with tarps on its roof, he entered the makeshift wooden building. Inside were pieces of broken-down furniture and rotting wood. As he opened a door to an inner room (not shown) and exclaimed: "Oh, my God!", an unseen figure bludgeoned him in the back of the head with a hammer claw (# 3 death).

After dinner, Paul offered the counselors a beer-drinking and dancing "last night on the town," although the "wanderers" (Sandra and Jeff) were told to remain behind (as their punishment for straying) to watch the camp. Terry volunteered to also stay behind to continue searching for her dog Muffin. Scott decided to remain (presumably to get to know Terry better), as well as wheel-chaired Mark ("Nothing spoils a party faster than a drunk in a wheelchair") and Vickie, who were becoming interested in each other. Terry announced she was taking a walk - and was followed by an unknown shadow.

At the lakeside, Terry stripped down and went skinny-dipping near the dock. As she swam, an unidentified hand stole her clothes - soon revealed to be Scott who then ran off with her pink half-shirt top. When she demanded her clothing back, Scott was caught in a noose snare-trap that grabbed his feet and hung him upside-down by a rope (Scott: "God-damn that Paul! Him and his wilderness bulls--t!"). She teased slightly before leaving for her cabin to search for a knife to cut the rope: "I oughta let you hang, you pervert." While she was away, Scott's throat was cut with a machete (# 4 death). When Terry returned (and before cutting the rope and noticing his bloody neck), she ironically threatened: "If you ever do this to me again, I'm gonna kill ya." As she screamed and turned, she became the killer's next victim (# 5 death) (off-screen).

At the town bar, serious-minded Ginny suggested that Jason might exist, when Paul and Ted questioned his existence. She speculated that Jason had seen the decapitation death of his raging mother, all on account of her love for him, and that he was longing for her resurrection:

"What if there is a Jason?...What if there is some kind of boy-beast running around Camp Crystal Lake? Let's try to think beyond the legend, put it in real terms. I mean, what would he be like today? Some kind of out-of-control psychopath? A frightened retard? A child trapped in a man's body?...He'd be grown by now, right?...And you know, the only person that ever knew him was his mother. He never went to school, so he never had any friends...She was everything to him....I mean I doubt Jason would have even known the meaning of death, or at least until that horrible night. He must've seen the whole thing happen. He must've seen his mother get killed, and all just 'cause she loved him. Isn't that what her revenge was all about? Her sense of loss, her rage at what she thought happened? Her love for him? Bizarre, isn't it?...He must be out there right now crying for her return. Her resurrection."

Paul disagreed with her, calling Jason only "a legend."

Back at the lodge, Sandra led boyfriend Jeff upstairs for love-making, as sexually-suggestive Vickie coyly asked Mark about whether he could still function sexually: "Just your legs, huh? Is everything else okay?" She suggested a toke of a marijuana joint, but he claimed he was in training. She also proposed that they sleep together: "You wanna stay together tonight?" as he concurred: "I was just about to ask you."

When Vickie went to the room she shared with Terry to get a few things (including changing into a sexier pair of panties and applying perfume in private spots), a thunderstorm began - and she was apparently being watched. When Mark wheeled himself onto the lodge's porch, a machete sliced diagonally into his face (# 6 death), and his wheelchair crashed backwards, down a steep outside flight of stairs.

The killer entered the lodge and took Ted's costume spear, then ascended the stairs to where Jeff and Sandra had just climaxed during intercourse in the second floor bedroom. In the film's notorious double-impalement scene, the nude lovers lying on each other were speared together like shish-kabob - the bloody spear-head struck the wood floor beneath their bed's mattress. Jeff (# 7 death) (off-screen) and Sandra (# 8 death) (off-screen) were both lethally speared. [Jeff was later hung by the neck with a rolled-up sheet.]

Vickie returned to the lodge looking for Mark, and in the upstairs bedroom as she called out for Sandra and Jeff, she approached the bed to look under a white sheet. The killer (wearing a pillowcase on his head with only one eye hole) sat up in the bed next to a bloodied Sandra, slashed at Vickie's leg with a butcher knife, and then fatally stabbed her in the abdomen (# 9 death). Vickie's body was dragged face-first down the stairs.

When Ginny and Paul returned to the campgrounds, they found the lodge empty, although all the lights were on. In the upstairs bedroom, they discovered bloody sheets. Then the lights went out as they continued searching for the six counselors they had left behind. Paul was suddenly attacked with the spear by the head-covered, pillow-case wearing killer, and subdued. Ginny screamed and first fled from the masked figure into the lodge's bathroom, and then into the kitchen where she grabbed a large knife. Crazy Ralph's corpse fell out of the pantry, prompting her to escape through the kitchen window and race to her car. Trapped in her temperamental, non-starting vehicle, Ginny cringed as the killer stabbed at her with a pitchfork through the car's convertible covering. She kicked him away (effectively connecting with his groin) and ran into the woods, repeatedly evading him during their lengthy cat-and-mouse pursuit. She hid under the bed in her cabin, and urinated in her pants as a rat scurried close to her. She fended off the killer's pitchfork, assaulted him with a chain-saw, and broke a chair over his head.

Ginny eventually ended up at a run-down, backwoods shack where in an inner room, the same one where Deputy Winslow was murdered, she saw Mrs. Voorhees' severed and mummified head (plus sweater and pants) on a makeshift candle-lit table-altar. The identify of the camp's grotesquely-deformed stalker-killer was revealed to be Jason Voorhees (Steve Daskawitz) who had survived the drowning and had maintained the shrine to revere his beloved mother. His altar hideout was also strewn with the mutilated dead bodies of his murdered victims, including Alice's rotted corpse, the Deputy's body, and Terry's lifeless form.

While Jason battered down the door with a pick-axe, Ginny dressed, in a clever ploy, as Mrs. Voorhees (in her foul-smelling sweater) to stall and fool Jason for awhile. She told him:

"Jason, it's all done, Jason. You've done your job well, and Mommy is pleased. That's a good boy. Now come to Mommy, come on. Come on. Mommy has a reward for you. Jason, Mother is talking to you...That's my boy, come, kneel down. That's a boy. Kneel down...That's my good boy."

But as Jason kneeled down before her, and she prepared to decapitate him with a machete, he saw his mother's severed head on the altar - and counter-attacked. Ginny was sliced in the leg, but was protected when Paul burst into the room and wrestled Jason. Although wounded, she was able to deliver a decisive and deep blow to Jason's shoulder with the machete. After Jason collapsed to the floor and they believed him to be dead, she unmasked him (not visible on-screen), and then they retreated back to her cabin in the camp, with Paul carrying her.

Hearing a noise at the front door of the cabin, they armed themselves with weapons (a pitchfork and handle), and then tensely opened the door, discovering only Muffin, Terry's dog. As Ginny called to the dog, Jason (unmasked and with the machete still embedded in his shoulder) (Warrington Gillette) re-attacked her by bursting through the cabin window and grabbing at her.

The screen turned bright white (was Ginny only dreaming?). In the next cliff-hanging scene the following morning, Ginny was being put into an ambulance on a stretcher, as she asked: "Paul? Paul? Paul? Where's Paul?" (# 10 death?). [Had he disappeared? What was his unknown fate?] The film concluded with a slow tracking shot toward the decomposed, rotted head of Mrs. Voorhees on the altar.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

The film was notable for its almost 15-minute pre-credits sequence. It was also typical of the slasher horror genre gathering strength in the early 1980s, with attractive actors, some nudity, and lots of bloody killings.

This second Friday the 13th film reportedly copied some of its death scenes almost verbatim (the machete to the face, the impalement of two lovers) from Mario Bava's bloody horror-thriller Bay of Blood (1971, It.) (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve). The R-rated film was threatened with an X-rating for its double-impalement scene, which was cut to receive an R-rating.

With a production budget of approximately $1.25 million, and box-office gross revenues of $21.7 million (domestic).

With the tagline: "The body count continues...," or "Just when you thought it was safe to go back to camp."

This film was pre-hockey mask - Jason wore a pillow-case with only one eye-hole.

Body Count: 9, or 10 (all committed by Jason). At the end of the film, Paul's whereabouts and fate were unknown.