Editorials
13 Fun Facts About ‘Friday the 13th Part 2!’
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the ultimate slasher sequel Friday the 13th Part 2, the film to introduce a grown up Jason Voorhees to terrified audiences everywhere! It is arguably one of the better entries in the franchise and features the strongest final girl in the series history. It is a film that deserves to be celebrated, even if it is basically a rehash of the first film. We thought we’d celebrate the occasion by looking at some fun facts made public by the fantastic documentary Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. While any Friday the 13th aficionado undoubtedly knows all of these facts, they’re still fun to read about! Enjoy these interesting little factoids and share your memories of Friday the 13th Part 2 in the comments!
1. Adrienne King was originally meant to star in the film, not just cameo in the first scene.
Unfortunately for Ms. King, her agent wanted too much money (it was originally believed she didn’t want to be in the film due to a stalker she obtained after the success of the first film). Funnily enough, she wasn’t even aware of her character’s fate until she arrived on set. They refused to show her a script beforehand! To add insult to injury, they made her wear those atrocious green overalls. Just look at this outfit!
2. In one of the takes of Alice’s death, the prop ice pick didn’t retract and injured King
As if that outfit wasn’t bad enough, one of the prop guys had it out for King too and didn’t do his job right!
3. Stan Winston was set to take over the makeup effects after Tom Savini’s departure.
Savini couldn’t work on the film due to his commitment to Midnight, so legendary special effects master Stan Winston was going to be brought in. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, Winston had to back out and Carl Fullerton was given the job. Fullerton would go on to do the makeup for films like Glory, Godfather 3, Silence of the Lambs, and Philadelphia.
4. Three actors played Jason in the film
For the first and only time in the series, Jason was played by a woman in the film’s opening shot. Those were costume designer Ellen Lutter’s legs walking through the rain puddles on Alice’s street. Warrington Gillette played Jason throughout most of the film, but he did not (or could not) do his own stunts, so Steve Daskawisz was used for all of Jason’s stunts.
From Left, Lutter, Gillette and Daskawisz.
5. The deaths of Jeff and Sandra were deemed too graphic by the MPAA.
Their uncut death scene (where you actually see the penetration of the spear through their bodies) has never been released in its entirety. This is a shame. On another interesting note, the death scene is nearly identical to a scene in Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood). Cunningham claims he had never heard of the film before Part 2‘s release.
6. In fact, 48 seconds of the film were cut to avoid an X rating.
It doesn’t sound like much, but 48 seconds could be 48 shots of really cool gore effects.
7. Marta Kober, who played Sandra, was underage at the time of filming.
The actress originally had a scene with full frontal nudity, but when Paramount discovered her real age they had the scene deleted completely.
8. Ginny didn’t pee her pants. It was the rat!
This one was news to me. I always thought Ginny peed her pants out of fear when she was hiding under the bed. Apparently it was (supposed to be) the rat. Could have fooled me!
9. Steve Daskawisz gave the emergency room quite a scare!
During Ginny and Jason’s big showdown, there is a moment when she brings an ax down on Jason’s pickaxe. Unfortunately for Daskawisz (who was doing Jason’s stunt at the time), the ax came down on his finger and he had to go to the emergency room. Bear in mind, this was after the part of the film where Ginny brings a machete down on Jason’s shoulder, so when Daskawisz walked into the showroom he had a machete sticking out of his shoulder, giving the doctors and nurses quite the scare!
10. Amy Steel was not a fan of the scene where Jason jumps through the window to grab her.
Her frightened reaction is very, very real. The scene took three takes and she would tense up and get scared every time the camera started rolling.
11. Paul’s fate even confuses the actors involved in the film..
Do we even know if Paul died? The film leaves his fate so ambiguous, that everyone involved even agrees that it’s one of the series’ most confusing endings.
12. An alternate ending of the film had Mrs. Voorhees’ severed decomposing head winking at the audience and smiling.
The footage has been unreleased, but the sequence was apparently never seriously considered for the film’s actual ending.
13. Both Friday the 13th Part 2 and Halloween II feature their villains killing a law-enforcement officer with a hammer to the head. Both movies were also released in 1981.
Crazy coincidence or secret conspiracy? You decide!
Share your memories of Friday the 13th Part 2 in the comments below!
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
You must be logged in to post a comment.