The Friday the 13th films are still regarded as some of the best slasher movies of all time, but even though the movies have seen obsessive deconstruction, a missing piece of Friday the 13th: Part 2 that fans assumed was lost has finally been recovered.
The Friday the 13th series has left an undeniable mark on the horror genre, and the creepy innovation behind Jason Voorhees’s bloody carnage at Camp Crystal Lake ushered in a slew of imitators that tried to capture the original movie's magic. The slasher franchise may seem generic in retrospect, but it helped establish many staples that are now taken for granted, and the earlier entries in Friday the 13th evolve in surprising ways. Friday the 13th: Part 2 is such an important entry in the series because it introduces Jason as the killer, even if he doesn’t yet have his iconic hockey mask.
Friday the 13th: Part 2 is important for its introduction of Jason, but it’s also a memorable outlier due to it having received such harsh treatment from the MPAA. Every installment in the Friday the 13th movie franchise struggled with this ratings board. It often felt like they were particularly unfair to these films, not only for their gratuitous violence, but how they inspired the trend for others. Friday the 13th: Part 2 suffers more so than other films because these copious edits really make the slasher movie toothless and caused it to lack the main thing audiences wanted to see: gore and violence. Deleted scenes for other Friday the 13th films have surfaced over the years in the form of workprints and dailies, but there was nothing left behind for Part 2. However, the movie's missing footage has miraculously been found and is set to be released to the world.
There have been many impressive and comprehensive Friday the 13th collections that have been released in the past, but the upcoming set from Scream Factory looks to be the definitive edition. The set will feature 4K scans of the movies and a wealth of new commentaries and featurettes, but for some, the greatest inclusion is Friday the 13th: Part 2’s missing footage. In the past, it had been reported that only 48 seconds were cut from the film, but this footage contains all of the movie's goriest moments, including bloodier and more gruesome versions of Crazy Ralph's wire death, Alice's encounter with the ice pick, and a better take of the infamous death scene where Mark receives a machete to the face. Nobody seemed to be able to find this footage, but when Scream Factory assembled everyone together for this new set, it was bonus content producer, Edwin Samuelson, who suggested that they follow up on a hint that legendary FX artist, Greg Nicotero, had mentioned to Samuelson in the past. Bloody Disgusting reported on the expedition that led to the footage's discovery.
Apparently, Nicotero had told Samuelson that Part 2's FX artist, Carl Fullerton, has shown him the uncut death scenes in the past from his own records. The team contacted Fullerton and it turned out Nicotero was correct. The issue then became whether this 40-year old VHS tape could even be found and digitized. The process wasn't easy, and the footage of these uncut death scenes still look like it's off a VHS movie in terms of quality, but it's better than nothing, especially since so many fans have been eager to just experience this footage in any capacity.
The uncut Jason Voorhees kills won't be re-edited into the movie in order to create some master version of the film, but it probably won't be long until the fan community takes it upon themselves to do so. The long-awaited appearance of these rumored scenes is a huge deal for Friday the 13th fans, but Samuelson reported that they've recovered not only 48 seconds, but rather "several minutes" of lost footage. While deleted scenes have become commonplace inclusions on various physical media releases, formerly lost footage isn't often unearthed, making this addition a real treat.