Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART 2 (1981)

After Friday The 13^th made an absolute crap load of money compared to the miniscule budget it had, Paramount jumped right on to making a sequel. It was decided that Friday The 13^th part 2 would use Jason Voorhees as its antagonist- even if his character was never intended to be used for a sequel- and fresh young faces that he could swing his machete into. Like most sequels, this movie is practically a carbon copy of the first with a few differences that help remind the audience that it is a different movie. While Part 2 is a relatively good sequel compared to others (lets be honest; it didn’t really have much to live up to), a few things hindered it from being as ‘good’ as Friday The 13^th.

It has been five years since the events of the first film. A new camp has been built adjacent to the one of Friday The 13^th, and new camp counsellors are brought in to help revitalise the area as a campsite. What happened to Pamella Voorhees and the counsellors in Friday The 13^th has managed to achieve legendary status (don’t you think it would have been all over the news?) and the new batch simply brush it off as fiction. Well, turns out Jason saw his mum ‘loose her head’ in more ways than one, and he never actually drowned. He has been scraping out a living in a wooden shack deep in the forests surrounding Crystal Lake, and these new kids on the block are unwelcome visitors.

The new camp councillors sitting around a fire while they chuckle at the story from the first film. Idiots.

 With ‘classic’ horror/’slasher’ movies like this, its’ hard to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of the film. What would usually be bad- like terrible acting and dialogue- are really just part of the genre. For this reason, the following discussion is more of a mish-mash off good and bad aspects. The first scene involves Jason tying up a loose end with Friday the 13^th’s heroin Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), starting things off with an unintentional funny note. Her dreaming is terribly acted (she sounds as though she is constipated and having sex at the same time) and some flashbacks of that hilariously goofy scene towards the end of Friday the 13^th between her and Pamella Voorhees make this even funnier. Other than that this scene where the heroine from the first film is killed off is pretty good. Some effective tension and jump-scares managed to give me the heebie-jeebies, at least. The choice to return ‘crazy Ralph’ to the cast was a good one; he was both funny and creepy in the original, as he is here.

Ok I think even people who say 'Im up for anything' in terms of sex would agree that this is a tad extreme. Well except Jason, because he is into all kinds of weird shit apparently.

 The score is good, if extremely outdated, and much the same as the first with a few deviations; that famous ‘kee-kee-keee-mah-mah-mah’ queue is used whenever Jason is lurking around and it’s very un-nerving. Some of the deaths are pretty good; particularly an unfortunate fellow who takes a machete to the face and then gets pushed down the stairs. They are pretty gore-less compared to the crazy blood and guts of movies these days (It’s clear these where cut significantly so they could be shown back then). I’m not sure which copy I watched, but I couldn’t get my hands on an uncut version unfortunately. Still, the kills are good but brief. A few constants in the Friday the 13^th series are the camp setting with the wooden cabins, horny teenagers who get killed and a storm with lots of rain and lightening in the last third. It’s definitely a combination I love. This campy, haunted-house type feeling is a classic horror movie atmosphere. It’s good that Betsy Palmer from the first movie came back to do a few more shots of Pamella Voorhees. It really helped to tie the two movies together. The actress for the heroine also does a good job in terms of acting.

This is the heroin of Part 2, Ginny. More like Ginnysquisha, am I right? You can just tell this bitch is from the ghetto, and she is ready to cut Jason UP. 

 Most of these negatives are part of the movies charm. For example, the dialogue is pretty bad (never distractingly so, however). One of our characters says “this place is creepy” when she gets out of the car, and then goes for a walk around in the woods alone? Now that’s what I call common sense. You cant help but laugh at all the short-shorts exposing ass-cheeks, the mid-drift shirts that barely cover a women’s boobs, the 80’s haircuts and the sweat bands, and the abundance of turtle-necks. It’s pretty obvious that most of these characters are going to die, but Friday The 13^th part 2 was made before this became a painfully predictable cliché. The movie structure is much the same as the first (Although the last third is not as comical the first movies).

Hmmm, yeh I'm not sure how scary the 'pillowcase killer' sounds or looks.

Jason doesn’t get his iconic hockey mask until part 3, so he is stuck with a not-so-scary pillowcase for a mask in Friday the 13^th part 2. Not that we see it much, most of the time he is just a pair of shoes. It’s pretty funny when some of these teenagers just stand there while Jason walks very slowly towards them for a stab, but its just part of the fun and charm of these movies; we are meant to think “bitch, what the hell are you doing?! RUN!” The ending is a little confusing, even if the jump scare (again similar to the one from Friday The 13^th) is good. It was all just a bit sudden and unexplained. However the movies main negative is a big one: how is Jason still alive? That scene right at the end of Part 1 was meant to be a dream sequence, not actually Jason (if it was, the police would have seen; they where standing on the shore), and so him still being alive is a huge plot hole. Oh well, if they hadn’t brought him back for this one, we wouldn’t have the next ten movies! Although the dialogue is bad there isn’t’ much of it, so that made quotes limited, but I did find it funny when Amy steel (the heroin) theorises that Jason is a ‘boy beast’ in the woods and he could be a ‘frightened retard’ in a very serious tone (it took many takes because she couldn’t say it with a straight face).

Pamella Vorhees's rather shrivelled decapitated head. Well, I suppose that's one way to create a memorial for a loved one...

 Friday the 13^th Part 2 is an ok sequel for a good movie. If I went on a rant about how big my expectations where for this after I watched the first I would be lying. These are simple movies, and they are hard to stuff up (although some of the sequels managed to stuff themselves up). If you watched the first film and liked it, think of Part 2 as going on the same roller coaster a second time; it's not quite as thrilling but you should still have a good time.

3.5/5

Recommended classification: 15+ for strong horror violence, nudity, brief sex scene and infrequent coarse language