Five years after the horrible bloodbath at Camp Crystal Lake, it seems Jason Voorhees and his demented mother are in the past. Paul opens up a new camp close to the infamous site, ignoring warnings to stay away, and a sexually-charged group of counselors follow — including child psychologist major Ginny. But Jason has been hiding out all this time, and now he’s ready for revenge.
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) Movie Review
The middle of this nearly plotless sequel, which is essentially a collage of increasingly tedious, censor-trimmed stalk-and-slash scenes, drags this entry down a little. Director Miner (who had served as the production manager on the original FRIDAY THE 13TH) frames this entry with a stylish opening and suspenseful ending. Not that it really mattered: Although ticket sales were just 21 million, which was less than half the original’s in cinemas, it was still a respectable amount, especially considering that the film had a small 1.25 million budget. The pressure from the slasher-hating moralist critics of the day probably contributed to Paramount’s continued attempts to distance itself from these “disreputable” movies. They even made an attempt to prematurely end the series with “Final Chapter” in 1984, but in the end, the allure of the almighty dollar ultimately triumphed and made everyone’s complaints irrelevant. To quit up on something that was reliably yielding 10 to 20 times the initial investment each and every time, you’d have to be the worst businessperson in the world, right? If you compare Friday 2 to Paramount’s other 1981 films, only Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark brought in more money for the studio. Warren Beatty’s widely hyped Reds, which earned $40 million on a $35 million budget, couldn’t even compete with other studio’s top offerings.
Alice (Adrienne King), the lone survivor of the first massacre at Camp Crystal Lake (also known as “Camp Blood”), is being tormented by flashbacks of the terrifying night she narrowly avoided dying. However, we can know that someone is watching since there was a footfall in a watery puddle in front of her flat, and there was a lot of POV camerawork. The mysterious attacker quickly slips in and drives an ice pick into her brain after a clichéd cat leaping in from a window false alarm. We are all aware that Jason, the monstrous, undead son of the insane Mrs. Voorhees, is the murderer at this point. After exacting retribution on the person who caused his mother to lose her mind, Jason vows to follow in the footsteps of his dearly departed mother by returning to camp and attacking a fresh group of dope-smoking, oversexed twenty-something counsellors “five years” after the initial events. It turns out that the young people in this entry are setting up a camp close to the location of Camp Crystal Lake, which is sufficient.
Camp counsellor isn’t the best summer job like everyone thinks it is, Paul Holt (John Furey), the center’s owner, decides to rally the troops when our assortment of ill-defined knife fodder enters the counsellor training facility. Although it turns out that he is right in this specific case, it’s probably not as everyone anticipated. Around a campfire later that night, Paul makes everyone in attendance reconsider their seasonal career choices by relating the story of Jason, including how his body was never found in the lake, how the only witness to his existence mysteriously vanished, and how this “demented creature” is rumoured to still be prowling the woods. Nice! That could be even worse than his earlier warning to all the chicks that if they don’t stay clean throughout their menstrual periods, bears will attack them. If only Walt Gorney’s Crazy Ralph (who was about to deliver the customary “death curse” prophecy) hadn’t already been garroted…
Paul provides everyone the chance to go out to the town one final time to get drunk after a demanding first day of training that consists primarily of jogging, trekking, eating hot dogs, and swimming. Some people accept his invitation. Perhaps others wished they had. Jason then goes on the prowl and kills everyone left behind while still needing one more entrance to obtain his infamous hockey mask. One of many instances of the director, er, “paying homage” to Mario Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD includes a cop getting a hammer to the back of the head, a peeping tom having his throat slashed with a machete while hanging upside down, a man in a wheelchair getting a machete to the face before rolling backwards down some stairs, and a lovebirds getting speared together (1971). A small group of people return to camp to confront the killer once the supporting cast has been sufficiently reduced. This week, Amy Steel plays Ginny, a child psychologist who might want to keep her job choices open if she keeps using terms like “frightened retard.”
Overall, I was really conflicted about this one. It’s interesting to see Jason wearing a tater sack over his head instead of the hockey mask, even though they obviously just copied this look directly from The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The opening recap with King was a decent starter, and the last 15 minutes feature some of the best jump scares of the entire series (1976). The makeup design, created by effects artist Carl Fullerton, is one of Jason’s most terrifying appearances until he is ultimately revealed at the conclusion. The rest? Well, I can’t really say that the gratuitous killer POV views stalking a fairly uninteresting ensemble and the lacklustre murders they committed impressed me. Similar to the original, a few of the death sequences have to be toned down to earn a R classification. Since they never disrupted the flow or coherence of the movie and none of the killings were very graphic to begin with, I don’t believe that second-long snippets here and there (less than 50 seconds was cut) could have done any damage.
The character of Mrs. Voorhees, played by Betsy Palmer, is seen in flashback scenes from the first film and in a brief segment of fresh material (she was only employed for one day of filming). In addition, Stu Charno from Carpenter’s CHRISTINE, Lauren-Marie Taylor from the slasher Girls Nite Out, Russell Todd from Chopping Mall, Marta Kober, and Muffin the dog are also part of the cast. Jason is portrayed by Warrington Gillette as well as an uncredited Steve Dash. Another Harry Manfredini music was composed, and screenwriter Ron Kurz again penned a novelization for the movie that was released in 1988.
There are a tonne of thorough books and documentaries about the series, most notably the 320-page “Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th” book, which was itself turned into a 400-minute (!) documentary in 2013. This is because there is such a large fan base for these movies and many fans want to know every last detail about them. It undoubtedly outshines the 90-minute documentary His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009), which was published a full 4 years earlier.
