Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)
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CLIFF CUDNEY:
You know, despite the conditions and the challenges and the craziness, Part 2 is probably one of the most fun movies I've ever worked on because we had creative license. They had no idea how to do these things or what they wanted to do. As long as we make it gory and make it exciting and make it scary. I remember many of those days on Part 2, asking, "Hey Steve, instead of seeing Jason's face, how about if just his hand comes through the window?" And then we would just do it. The script was loose and it's like an improv show. And once everybody gets into it, you feed off each other and the ideas just flow. If you can come up with a surprise that scares the audience in a new and different way, it makes a world of difference.
Original continuity photos.
DENNIS MURPHY:
One of the aspects of the first two Friday the 13th films that holds up best is the art direction. Virginia Field did a terrific job. That little home she made, Jason's shack, it was perfect. She conceived the design and had it all built, from nothing. I thought that was very effective. And I remember her coming to me one night almost in tears, because they were going to shoot a whole sequence differently, of John and Amy in the house, when they first find Jason. They weren't going to shoot her set at all. She said, "The whole thing is now going to be shot up against a refrigerator!" She was pretty mad about that, but then we went and talked to Steve Miner and Peter Stein about it, and worked it out. Now, I think it is one of the most effective sequences in the film.
STEVE MINER:
I never try to figure out what I think people are going to find scary. I just do what I think is scary. I'll sit there on the set and watch the scene unfold and try to watch it like I'm in the audience. Suspense and scary moments are created by nothing happening so much. But you've got to be careful having nothing happen for too long. It'll get boring. You also can't have the same thing happen too often. You have to have chase sequences and humor and scares and suspense. Part 2 is a quick movie. I just tried to mix it all together and keep the film moving. To get the rhythms of it going, knowing where to keep the frame open, and knowing how to create expectation in the audience that something is going to happen. Then sustain those moments, that tension, for as long as possible.
DENNIS MURPHY:
Looking back, to be honest, I thought most of the scares in Part 2 were not executed very well. They were kind of flat. I thought the most exciting part of the film was the last third or so, when Jason is chasing Ginny. And during that chase, there's a scene where Ginny's in the kitchen of the cabin, holding tight on a doorknob, because she thinks Jason is on the other side. And she's reaching over to the window, thinking that is her escape route. And then, bam! Jason smashes through the glass. Creatively, that and the chair jumper are the best scares in the movie. Those were great.
PETER STEIN:
The first thing I did when I got the job on Part 2 was take a look again at Part 1. I don't remember really talking with Steve Miner about the color concepts for the film. My idea was that blue for night is scary, and some of the scenes were warmer, such as in the cabins. And a lot of Part 2 was shot at night, outside in the woods. When it comes to horror films, one of the biggest challenges is lighting trees. Onscreen, they are basically just black blobs, but if front light them then they look completely fake. To make it look like moonlight, it has to come from a high angle, be an edge light. Rain is localized, too, so you just put the rain where you'll see it—some rain in the foreground, some in the background and some in the middle. But you also have to backlight rain in order to see it.
You want to know my biggest creative challenge on Part 2? Just lighting the Jason bag was very difficult. The thing was to keep it edgy. Because white's horrible—white and black are the hardest things to light. I just didn't want to front light Jason. It was a real challenge to make it scary, not silly.
STEVE MINER:
We had finished shooting Part 2 right before The Elephant Man came out, and the whole thing with the bag was just an unfortunate coincidence. The mask wasn't meant as a joke. I never wanted people to laugh at Jason.
DENNIS MURPHY:
How did we end up with the bag as Jason's mask? The bag was not a favorite of mine. Or anybody's. I believe the costume designer was the one who came up with it. Nobody else had a better idea how to do it. It came out of not having a great idea.
STEVE DASKAWICZ:
That fucking bag! It was a nightmare. We had a lot of problems with it. The bag would go around my head, and there was a little rope on the bottom and it only had one eye hole. I couldn't even see out of that because the bag would flop. So Cliff devised a way of putting double-faced tape over my eyebrow and double-face tape under my eye so I could see where I was going. But I still had no peripheral vision and I got burned on my face from taking the double-faced tape on and off.
CLIFF CUDNEY:
Steve Daskawicz had it the worst. There is a scene where Jason has trapped Amy in a room, and he's supposed to break through a door with a pitchfork. So we took two thin sheets of wood and glued them together with grains going the opposite way. Well, unknowingly the effects guys built the first door with crossed grain, so when Steve ran up there and hit that door with the pitchfork, all the pitchfork did was vibrate. It was like hitting a telephone pole with a baseball bat. It almost broke his wrist.
The filmmaker's original vision for Part 2's final shot were considerably more animated. "Steve Miner wanted Mrs. Voorhees' head to smile and for her eyes to open," recalls special makeup effects designer Carl Fullerton. "So we hired an actress, Connie Hogan, and built the head so she could fit into it. I'm glad that, ultimately, they chose not to use that footage of the head opening its eyes and smiling, because quite frankly, it looked humorous rather than scary."
STEVE DASKAWICZ:
When we were doing the scene where Jason is chasing Amy at night through the woods, the camera was mounted on the back of a station wagon. Amy was running and I'm supposed to fly out of the woods to try and grab her. So they built this platform that was elevated—three feet up—and they dug the ground out where she'd run in front of where I landed, and put a mattress under there to soften my fall. I also had a pickax in one hand. So, I'm supposed to literally fly out of the woods and land on the ground with a real pickax! Amy was so scared that she was running incredibly fast, too fast, so by the time I leaped I wasn't even close to her and it didn't look right. They kept telling her to slow down, and we did take after take. Finally, the last time I jumped I landed with the pickax under me and it broke my ribs. I had to go to the hospital a lot on that movie.
CLIFF CUDNEY:
The shot where Amy came out the window, hell, it was a big drop. And, boy, did she do a lot of running and clawing and being in the mud. And it was freezing. Amy did a lot of her stunts, as did most of the actors. We didn't have stunt doubles. But there was no time when she was in any danger of being seriously injured. There was never anything that was harrowing, other than wrestling with a stuntman. But I think she did great.
AMY STEEL:
It was a television schedule. There was just so much to get done. It was so emotionally draining. I acted my ass off. Scenes like when I was hiding behind a car and Steve Miner was like, "Amy, look scared!" All you can do is run around before the take to get the emotions going—the adrenaline would start pumping and then you can just jump in there. I also had not worked a chainsaw before—I learnt quickly. I felt really cool doing all my own stunts. For one sequence, where I'm supposed to fall out of the cabin window and run to the car, they said, "Just jump through this window and fall down and walk away." And I did it. The adrenaline started and I broke open the screen on the window. Then the stunt guy comes up to me and says, "You know, you could be getting stunt adjustments for this," especially considering I was getting like $5 for six weeks. But that didn't work because the Mafia guys showed up.
DENNIS MURPHY:
Let it be known that Amy Steel was no prima donna. She definitely fought for her point
of view and her character, but she didn't exhibit any of that kind of behavior at all. She was terrific.
STEVE DAKAWICZ:
When we got to doing the altar scene, where Amy is attempting to fool Jason into thinking she is his mother, Steve Miner gave me about the only bit of directing in the entire film. He said, "You have to recognize that Amy is your mother. It's going to be hard because you've got the bag on your head, just do your best." So we did a rehearsal, and that's when, as I'm looking up at Amy, I tilted my head a little bit, like some sort of demented recognition. I'm very proud of that little moment—I thought it gave a little shading to the character that wasn't originally in the script.
CARL FULLERTON:
We did do one terrific effect in that fight, with a dummy Jason. There's a nice tight closeup as the machete goes into the dummy's shoulder, and its head moves with the impact. The dummy head was sawed through the neck and put on a pivot which came out the bottom and was turned as the machete hit. Then, there's a reverse cut, in which a prop machete was contoured and fitted into the body of the real stuntman, and blood is pumped. I must say, all of these reverse angles were marvelously cut together in the completed sequence.
CLIFF CUDNEY:
The climactic scene in Jason's shack—that was the only time Amy did anything with a real machete. It was an all-night shoot and it was very late, and we're filming the shot where Amy swings the machete down at Jason, and he blocks it with a pickax. Well, we had blocked this whole thing, and I had taken the machete and rounded off the blade so there were no sharp angles on it. But then, at the last minute, Steve Miner decided to change the choreography. Amy got confused halfway through and swung the machete the wrong way. It caught Steve Daskawicz in the hand, and the machete came down right between two of his fingers.
AMY STEEL:
The timing was off, and I basically cut Steve's finger clear off. We had to stop filming, and he had to go to the emergency room. I felt so bad. I was really mad at Steve Miner. I yelled at him, "Oh, my God, why didn't we use a rubber machete?" But Steve was just like, "No, don't worry, he's a stuntman. It's just another scar. It's okay." And he was right! Eventually he came back, put the bag back on and just kept going. It was just another battle wound for him.
STEVE DASKAWICZ:
Amy takes the machete and she slices me. I'm lying on the floor and they yell, "Cut!" Cliff comes over, leans down and says, "Man, buddy, that was great!" Then they realize she cut me, and there's panic. You have to picture this: it's the middle of the night, we're in this makeshift shack, and the entire crew is running around, trying to find my finger, thinking it has been sliced off. Then Cliff says, "I've got a great idea. Let's go to the hospital, but with the machete in your shoulder. It'll be hilarious!"
I was already a frequent flyer at the hospital, and we'd get accolades every time we arrived—"The actors are here!" So we walk in through this big automatic door, and a nurse says, "Don't tell me you're back!" Then they see the machete in my shoulder. There are nine nurses standing there with their mouths hanging open. And I'm covered in blood and the whole thing. Then two or three interns and doctors ran out. They looked at Cliff, turned around and went back out. Everybody left. Then four or five of them came back in with cameras and started taking pictures.
Some of Jason's most memorable onscreen moments often came out of on-set improvisations. "When we were doing the scene where Amy Steel is attempting to fool Jason into thinking she is his mother, we did a rehearsal," recalls stuntman Steve Daskawicz. "That's when, as I'm looking up at Amy, I tilted my head a little bit, like some sort of demented recognition. I'm very proud of that little moment—I thought it gave a little shading to the character that wasn't originally in the script."
CLIFF CUDNEY:
We finally got Steve's wound all taken care of, and everyone at the set had decided to wrap for lunch, which was at like 1:00 a.m., at this restaurant downtown. We knew it was a bad night and everyone was in bad spirits, so Steve and I put on pink tutus. Everyone broke into hysterical laughter, and it made everybody feel a lot better. But that was some night.
Although Steve Miner and his battered cast and crew had managed to complete principal photography on Friday the 13th Part 2 by the end of November of 1980, the neophyte director was not quite done putting the finishing touches on his sequel. Much to the delight of fans, Part 2 would see the return of two of the most beloved characters from the original Friday, with stars Adrienne King and Betsy Palmer both agreeing to return for cameo appearances. Shot over two days in the outskirts of Kent, Connecticut, King's extended pre-title prologue sequence would help usher in the now-common slasher franchise device of killing off a previous movie's heroine in its sequel's first few minutes. Palmer would also reprise the role of Mrs. Voorhees to ghoulish perfection in a memorable dream sequence. Further seeking to bridge continuity between his sequel and the original, Miner would bring back composer Harry Manfredini, who, armed with a higher budget, contributed an even more polished and multilayered score, as well as hire title designer Dan Curry to perfect what would come to be recognized by fans as the now-prototypical Friday the 13th white-on-black, block-lettered opening credit sequence. Less well received, however, is Part 2's ending. Miner's attempt to recall yet surpass the original Friday's now-classic "chair jumper" climax and ensuing denouncement, as well as employ an evocative—and ultimately unused—final shot involving Mrs. Voorhees disembodied head, left many in the audience scratching their heads. To this day it remains a source of confusion for many fans.
ADRIENNE KING, "Alice":
After the success of Friday the 13th, we were all shocked. I don't think anyone expected a Part 2—we were all just happy to finish Part 1. I was also in my late 20s, and I think by that point you realize, career-wise, it's going to happen the way it's going to happen, no matter what you put out.
When Part 2 came around, I don't remember reading a script. I just remember having dinner with Steve Miner and his assistant Denise Pinkley, and them saying, "Would you be willing to do this?" And that was fine with me, because while I was not contractually obligated to come back for a sequel, when the success of the first film happened it was a dream come true. So why would I ever think twice about coming back? I felt like I owed it to them. Honestly, where would I be otherwise? And I don't think they really needed me, anyway. Jason became the star.
RON KURZ:
Adrienne King was written out early on. I got the impression that her agent was trying to stiff us, and you just didn't do that. So I had her killed off before the opening credits.
STEVE MINER:
Alice was a very special character. She was the hero in the first film, and indestructible in a way. So it was important that, dramatically, she be killed off because Part 2 was Jason's film—avenging the death of his mother is what motivates him.
I thought we really had fun doing the opening prologue. I just loved the way it developed—I would tell Adrienne to walk a certain way and move at a certain pace. It was scary because you know that something's going to happen, but it keeps getting dragged out... and then the killer pounces.
ADRIENNE KING:
I was all done in a weekend. They brought me up to Connecticut to shoot, and before I knew it, it was over. To be honest, the filming wasn't the easiest or most enjoyable. It was just me, a head in the refrigerator and someone outside, ready to throw a black cat at me through the window. And during my death scene, the ice pick was supposed to go straight into my temple and retract, but the first time we shot it, it didn't work. It went straight into my cheekbone instead. And it hurt.
But worst of all was my outfit. That was so horrible, wasn't it? Why did they do that? The wardrobe lady must have hated me. I was so happy to get out of that jumpsuit thing and into the robe. I'm so afraid people thought I dressed like that. No! Not ever! A couple of people even asked me after the movie came out if I was pregnant.
BETSY PALMER:
I couldn't believe it when Steve Miner called me and ask
ed me to come in for Part 2. I thought to myself, "Who's Jason?' Isn't he supposed to be dead? How is this happening?" But I liked Steve and thought I'd help him out. All I remember about filming it was sitting in a booth and being asked to read six or seven lines with the camera on me. I also had to come in so they could do another mockup of my head—I guess I end up in a refrigerator or something. And I've still never seen Part 2. Or any of the sequels—I don't even have an idea of how much I'm in any of them. If fact, somebody only recently gave me pictures from Part 2, of my head surrounded by candles. It's just ghastly.
Filming the "chair jumper."
HARRY MANFREDINI, Composer:
I was happy to come back and do Part 2. Work was not that plentiful, and I was now a part of a dynasty—I like to think an important part. But I have to say I was not aware of the "iconicity" of the score at the time. I still find it hard to believe. The direction from Steve Miner was simply, "Do it again." The second one is a little more complicated. I got better. It was clearer what I had to do. On the first one, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I had never written music like that. This time, I knew what worked and I knew how to make it work. I think that is true of the second film as a whole.
Danny Elfman says there's a difference between puke and shit. Puke is where you take something, you eat it and then you throw it up. Shit is something that you eat, you digest and then turn it into something of your own. So I've gotten both sides of this. There are a lot of people who say to me of my score, "It's so derivative." I don't want to argue with them. But if you've never heard Bernard Herrmann, how are you going to do a horror picture? Not even so much what the music sounds like, but just the way the music approaches the picture. He understood the attitude of the music. This is the way it's supposed to be done. If you want to go a different way, you can, but it won't work. Same with a sequel.