Jason's Reign Of Terror Begins...

The Friday The 13th series is easily one of the most popular Horror sagas in modern times, with it's seemingly neverending series of sequels featuring it's star mass murderer Jason Voorhees with his trademark hockey mask, vicious arsenal of weaponry and his superhuman strength (not to mention bad temper), slaughtering endless numbers of victims in inventively gory and grotesque ways throughout the films. The series is hated by many but also revered by it's fans.

While there is no question the series is most (in)famous for Jason, the original 1980 Friday The 13th almost didn't actually feature him at all (except in the highly memorable and scary ending), but instead his grief-stricken and vengeful mother Pamela Voorhees (played brilliantly by Betsy Palmer) who killed off Camp Crystal Lake's promiscuous teenage counselors one by one. It wouldn't be until 1981's Friday The 13th Part 2 that Jason's neverending reign of death would begin.

Produced and filmed after the surprise success of the original (which grossed $37.5 million at the box office), Friday The 13th Part 2 slashed and stalked it's way into theaters in May 1981, grossing a far lower but still solid $19.1 million. The film was more of a straightforward slasher (different from the original's more mysterious/suspenseful approach) and introduced Jason Voorhees as the killer (and is the only film in the series with Jason wearing a pillowcase, it wouldn't be until Part 3 he acquired his iconic hockey mask), and the film remains a fan favorite, and is easily one of the saga's strongest installments.


Story:


Two months after the events of Friday The 13th Part 1, Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) is the only survivor of a brutal murder spree that occured at Camp Crystal Lake (nicknamed by the town locals "Camp Blood"), the heinous death reign initiated by Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), the anguished and vengeful mother of Jason Voorhees, a disfigured and mentally retarded young boy who drowned back at the camp in 1957 when his mother worked as the camp's cook. Alice survived by decapitating Mrs. Voorhees with a machete and was recovered by police the following morning, after having a horrific nightmare with the corpse of the now moldy and decomposed Jason Voorhees attacking her on a canoe on the lake.

While at home and having nightmares from her ordeal, Alice is killed by an unknown assailant (after seeing a rather gruesome surprise the killer left for her in her refrigerator) and her death is unsolved for five years.

Flash forward to five years. A counselor training center has been opened by counselor Paul Holt (John Furey), close by the now derelict Camp Crystal Lake in the woods. Holt is training counselors to work at camp for the Summer. While at the campfire one night with his counselors and girlfriend Ginny Field (Amy Steel), Holt scares the counselors with a story about Jason Voorhees, who many believe did not drown but somehow managed to survive and witnessed his mother's beheading, and now prowls the woods seeking revenge against those who cross his path. The story scares the counselors (and gets them with a prank too), but Holt insists it isn't true.

The next night, Holt, Ginny and most of the other counselors go to the local bar to party before their serious training work begins, with some counselors left behind at the training center, either out of tiredness or for being disobedient. While at the training center, the counselors are murdered one by one by a prowling killer, and Holt & Ginny return later that night during a rainstorm while most of the other counselors are still partying at the bar. When they arrive, the power in the main cabin goes out and Holt is attacked by the killer, who is none other than Jason Voorhees, and Ginny is left to fend to her survival as Jason chases her throughout the training center and woods.


Friday The 13th Part 2 is an excellent sequel that's easily superior to the original in many ways and remains one of the best of the series and a true slasher classic. It's also a great example of how a sequel can improve upon the original, and trash this series all you want, but while it may not be the most intelligent nor thoughtful movie series, most of the installments are just plain fun to watch and this is one of the most entertaining.


Steve Miner (who is the only Friday The 13th director to have directed more than one installment, and also went on to direct Warlock, Halloween H20 and many episodes of popular television shows) is the director and does a rock-solid job of directing. One of the strongest points of Miner's directing is the movie's brisk pacing, the movie is one of the fastest-paced of the series and is never boring, and Miner injects the movie with plenty of suspense and mystery. He also captures some beautiful yet eerie shots of the forest and campgrounds.

Miner also handles the actors pretty well and despite some of the actors' moments of bad acting (always to be expected from this series), Miner at least helps to keep their chemistry interesting.

Miner handles the movie's suspense extremely well and the movie is arguably the scariest of the series (the early Friday The 13th films were actually quite scary), with plenty of jump scares that are genuinely unnerving (nothing cheap like in many modern Horror films), an all-around sense of dread throughout the entire movie, a cold feel, and the chase sequence at the end is simply incredible, arguably the best chase sequence of the series, with it's lightning-quick pace, lots of dark and shadowy lighting, some fine slasher action (with Jason trying to get to Ginny when she's in a car she's trying to start and leaps at her from some bushes), and the sequence leads to an exciting and eerie showdown at Jason's shack (complete with a shrine with Mrs. Voorhees' disembodied head and victims' corpses). All in all Miner does an excellent job of directing and aims for a much more straightforward slasher film and succeeds in doing so, and it's with this installment that the series begins to find it's identity.

While many detractors are quick to accuse the Friday The 13th series of copying Halloween, the series on the whole has very few similarities with Halloween and Jason himself is not that similar to Michael Myers (except for being an indestructable masked killer of course), Jason is much more primal and monstrous (as opposed to Myers being far more like a stalker/prowler) and the Friday The 13th series is much more like a conventional slasher/monster movie than Halloween, which focused far more on the suspense and characters. It's also worth nothing that Mario Bava's classic Twitch Of The Death Nerve (also known as Bay Of Blood) was a heavy influence on the series, especially this film, which takes quite a lot of influence from Italian Giallos (as did the original Friday The 13th).

The acting is what one would expect from this series, ranging from passable to mediocre to just plain bad, but the acting never really detracts from the enjoyment of the movie and if anything only adds to the charm, let's face it, the 1980s was a golden era for slasher films and this movie embraces so many of the traditional slasher elements.

Onto the acting, the best performance is easily Amy Steel as Ginny, who gives a performance that's much better than most of the actors throughout the series. She can act scared extremely well and makes her character very likeable and intelligent (she runs from Jason, tries to fight back when she has to, even tries to get to his most sensitive part - his child-like mind). She also has an amusing spunky sense of humor and is an all-around very likeable character who's easily one of the best of the series.

The rest of acting is tolerable. John Furey is good enough as Paul Holt despite some moments of flat acting, Stu Charno is funny as the obligatory prankster Ted, Bill Randolph and Marta Kober are amusing as the bickering couple, and some of the performances range from passable to weak, but no-one is going to watch this movie expecting acting to sweep the Oscars.

Jason Voorhees makes his debut as the killer here and what a debut it is. Jason is actually very scary and unrelenting here, with so much determination and urgency to kill people who cross his path, his frightening improvision of various bladed weapons (including pick axes, pitchforks, hunting spears, hammer claws, and his primary weapon, a machete), and Jason here seems much more stealthy compared to his "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude of many of the later sequels, although he's always been a sneaky and stealthy killer here the stealth seems to be more vital. Jason is also human here and doesn't quite possess the superhuman strength he would gain later on, but he's still one terrifying maniac I wouldn't want to cross paths with. And the fact he can actually take some serious and harmful damage in his human form sort of increases the tension, knowing you can hurt him enough to temporarily render him immobile and escape.

The film is also noteworthy in that it is the only installment in the series with Jason wearing a pillowcase hood over his head instead of his trademark hockey goalie mask (which he would acquire in Part 3), not counting recap footage in Parts 3 and 4. While I definitely far prefer the hockey mask (it's just unbeatable), I quite like the pillowcase, it's... different. Jason looks quite eerie with it, with only one eye peering out from the hole. Some fans hate the pillowcase but I myself like it, although I'll take the hockey mask anyday. Still, for this film, the pillowcase works.

Jason Voorhees really makes for one incredible villain, not so much because of how jaw-droppingly powerful and invincible he is, but also of how easily one can relate to him, a full-grown man with an incredibly child-like mind and persona and a sad past full of bullies and resentment simply because of his disfigurement, and having lost his mother, the one and only person who ever truly loved him and cared for him. It's hard not to feel sympathy for Jason, and here the character is as tragic and sympathetic as ever - as well as menacing, brutal, and just plain terrifying. Jason is played with much intensity and ferocity by stuntman Steve Daskawisz/Dash, who played Jason for nearly the entire movie (not Warrington Gillette, who only played him during the unmasked scene, despite receiving top billing).

As said earlier, the film is arguably the scariest of the entire series and features a chase sequence towards the end that lasts close to 20 minutes, and the sequence is simply breath-taking, moving at cheetah speed with so much tension and suspense, lots of creepy shots of Jason prowling and sprinting throughout the campgrounds, and an absolutely bone-chilling musical score from Harry Manfredini that really adds to the excitement and tension of it all. The chase leads to a confrontation at Jason's shack which is full of suspense and anticipation. I also would like to point out the campfire story scene, which is one of my favorite scenes of the series, it's wonderfully atmospheric and creepy and the story Paul tells is just plain spooky.

Friday The 13th Part 2 also boasts some amazing death scenes and some of the most (in)famous deaths of the series are here; a slit throat, a barbed wire strangulation, a hammer claw to the head, an ice pick through the temple, and my personal favorite, a double-impaling with a hunting spear on two counselors having sex in bed. The film also contains one of the most notorious death scenes of the series, with a handicapped counselor in a wheelchair killed by having a machete rammed into his face from behind and his wheelchair crashing down a rain-steaked set of outdoor stairs.

Unfortunately the film is also one of the most heavily cut of the series, with very little gore throughout (though there are some nasty scenes), much of the editing in response to critics being appalled by the violence and bloodshed in the original film (but seriously, you see so much worse on the evening news than in any Friday The 13th movie, why don't the critics get sickened by real-life violence broadcast on the news? Are they that stupid?). Still, the death scenes are keepers, and hopefully one day the film will be released uncut in all of it's gory glory to make the death scenes even better.

The make-up work is also good, the death scenes themselves utilize well-done gore work (this time by Carl Fullerton), and Jason's disfigured visage at the end is guaranteed to creep out even the most bold Horror fan. The decrepit shack also looks great.

One of my favorite aspects of Friday The 13th Part 2 is Harry Manfredini's incredible score, which is my favorite of the series, full of so many incredible musical notes and numbers. Manfredini creates some very fast-paced notes that blend in perfectly with the chase sequence, some slower and calmer but equally eerie notes, and also creates some more mellow notes, and the movie features by far the best use of Jason's Ch Ch Ch Ha Ha Ha leitmotif which is impossible not to love. Manfredini's score for this film simply blows me away.


Friday The 13th Part 2 is a real slasher gem and easily one of the best movies of the series (and my third favorite of the series after Jason Lives and The Final Chapter), full of thrills, chills, and fun. Jason is as scary as ever, there's one incredible chase scene, lots of brutal deaths, what more could you want from a slasher? Yes, these movies may be a plot-thin and mindless as can be, but so what, that's what makes them so much fun to watch, this series is the epitome of escapist entertainment and Part 2 is one of the best the series has to offer.


The first eight films of the Friday The 13th series were released in a boxed set by Paramount in late 2004, with four discs containing two films thrown together and the fifth disc being a bonus disc full of supplemental material covering the entire series. Friday The 13th Part 2 is included on the first disc along with the original movie and features a very good 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen transfer, with a lot of sharpness and clarity and no real noticable flaws aside from some occasional grain, and the sound mix is good too. Sadly the film does not have a commentary, although the bonus fifth disc has some good supplemental material, including it's own featurette (part of an eight-part documentary).

See this movie, and beware of Jason!