Friday the 13th Part 2
Friday the 13th Part 2 picks up where Friday the 13th left off and brings us closer to the iconic Jason Vorhees, introducing him as the main antagonist and terrorist of Crystal Lake. With the original movie enjoying some success in 1980, Paramount Pictures decided to build on it by releasing Part 2 a year later. The events of the film take place some five years after the events in the first picture, though.
Friday the 13th Part 2 is a better film than its predecessor. The characters are slightly more interesting and the movie is more suspension, Harry Manfredini’s insistent “ch-ch-ch” score aside. It’s still not an overly creative venture, but the bones of a fairly compelling set of circumstances do make themselves known by the time the events play out.
We start by getting reacquainted with Alice (Adrienne King) from the first picture. She’s trying to put her life back together and we find her tossing and turning to a nightmare about what happened when she tangled with Pamela Vorhees (Betsy Palmer). Alice soon discovers that the nightmare isn’t over, however, when she’s confronted by Pamela’s very alive son, Jason (Steve Daskawisz/Warrington Gillette).
Five years later, a new crop of camp counsellors are getting set to reopen Camp Crystal Lake. They’re in training, whatever that means, and they basically party and pair off to have sex. The legend of Jason is coursing through the crowd of teens, but nobody takes it seriously except Ginny (Amy Steel). As the teens get bumped off one by one, Ginny starts to piece together the real story of Jason Vorhees.
Friday the 13th Part 2 really fiddled with the intentions of the series. Originally planned as a mere set of scary movies to be released as “events” for teens to flock to once a year at the theatre, the character of Jason Vorhees really began to emerge. In truth, he wasn’t supposed to be a part of the rest of the series after the first movie. We all know how that worked out. Friday the 13th Part 2 helps the man-beast emerge as a sort of unstoppable force, although there’s still a thread of vulnerability and even clumsiness to the monster.
Logistically, the film is not all there. Director Steve Miner does try to evoke an amount of suspense and he succeeds in many places, using Peter Stein’s cinematography to distance us from the action. The camera often sits in the woods or off to the side of the road, observing the characters from a distance. The visuals are, at least at first, often shrouded or obscured. We don’t see exactly what’s going on, but we know someone sinister objects to all the sexy cavorting.
When the killing starts, it’s not overly inventive. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Jason to drag bodies around like he does. Why choke a guy near a tree and then drag him inside to stuff him in a closet? These sorts of questions aren’t particularly meant to be asked, I know, but there’s always a thread of nonsense in slasher movies that leaves a lot of questions. Isn’t Jason just making a lot of extra work for himself? Why stand on such a rickety chair?
The shocking ending is almost identical to what happened at the end of the original flick, so it’s clear that Friday the 13th Part III is set to follow up on it. Friday the 13th Part 2 does a nice job setting things up and it is a rather suspenseful little treat, but it still lacks originality and wallows in repetitive killing. Thanks to the performances and one Marta Kober, however, this little nugget of slasher trash is worth a look.
Trailer:
