Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

The second part of Friday the 13th leaves us with Alice (Adrienne King), the Final Girl from the first Friday the 13th movie suffering from nightmares about what happened at Camp Crystal Lake. If you've read my review of the first movie, or are in any way, form or shape familiar with the film (and you should be!), you might remember (or not, depends) that the kills in Friday the 13th were being committed by Mrs. Voorhees, as played by Betsy Palmer. Alice, the lucky one, survived by going all medieval on Mrs. Voorhees' head.

Now, Alice is not just suffering from nightmares - no, she is a classical PTSD-story. She needs to put her life back together, apparently, and that means that she more or less hides away in her home. Feeling sorry for herself.



What particularly haunts her is the memory of the little boy who pulled her under the water those two months ago...

Jason v.01

...and of course Mrs. Voorhees also makes for convincing nightmares. No insult intended to Betsy Palmer, but man, she's one creepy lady. Or maybe it's just me being used to her being Jason's mother, who knows. Early childhood imprinting tends to leave mental scars.

However... All is not well in ...uhm... wherever Alice's house is standing. Her rest is interrupted by the screeching, ringing sound of a telephone. An actual ringing, not like those mobile phones these days which play fancy ringtones (guilty as charged - I have the Gutter Demons as my standard ringtone...). The first time, it's her mother, bothering her the way only mothers can. The second time... silence?

No, it'sa kitteh!

Fetching food for kitteh reveals the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees in the fridge, as well as... well. Jason.

Kitteh watching mommy die...

...and what really makes this first kill in the movie for me is how considerate Jason is: He puts the kettle down. No need to cause a catastrophe involving boiling water, right? For those of you who keep track, this is actually the first kill of our beloved Jason, as, don't you dare to forget it, his homicidal mother collected all of the kills from the first part.

5 years later...

Cut to the beautiful Crystal Lake, where two young people are greeted by - you guessed it - Crazy Ralph (and his trusted sidekick, his bike)!

"You are all doomed!"

Turns out that, this time, there is a training centre set up for camp counselors, so that they may learn how to be... uhm... camp counselors? For being a counselor is not just some job for a baby, or just a summer job. For someone who is irresponsible.

Say hello to our victims. Take your pick!

These young people are going to learn the basics - survival, first aid, boating, archery... you get the picture. Also, they are meant to make merry, goof around, drink, do drugs (it's the early 80s and I am biased, because if I was at such a place, I'd totally smoke something for atmosphere... but then again, I totally do NOT condone the use of illegal but pleasurable herbs used for relaxation, chilling out and relieving pain), kiss, have sex... in short: Getting doomed. We all know the rules of slashers, and those camp counselors are easy prey for Jason.



Funnily enough, our first victim isn't one of those easy, tight-panted kids, but...



...yes. You are looking at Crazy Ralph, coolest character in a Jason flick ever. Death by garrotte / barbed wire. I am not sure if I can forgive the young Voorhees boy for that. After all, it's the death of the most nifteh character in the history of Friday the 13th. He brought me happiful*.



I will, however, admit that I find the sequence with the little dog-like creature terribly funny. "Muffin"... what a particularly stupid name for a dog. Well, not that that thing qualifies as a dog, really. I apologise to all lovers of small, unnecessarily furry dog-like creatures who look as if they had been bred by an insane scientist who got the concepts of "dog" and "sewer rat" mixed up in a horrible, horrible way.



And who, of course, die (or do they?!). In a way that they're too mangled to tell whether they're a dog or not. Note that I'm still siding with Jason. But I want to genuinely apologise to those people who are horrified by the above picture. Remember: It's just a movie, and none of what happens in there is real.

Anyways... on with the plot (yes, it IS hard to believe, but there is an actual plot beyond "all the kids get killed"...):

Now, five years after what happened at Camp Crystal Lake, the local arm of the law enforcement wants to make sure that things stay calm and good in his area - and on his way to do so, he finds two of the counselors (who found the animal-remains pictured above on their way to Camp Crystal Lake, to sneak a view at the horrible haunted place - Camp Blood... [There, I said it. Fine now?]) trespassing. He returns them to the training centre, but on his way back to town, he sees a person dashing into the woods. Being a clever policeman, he follows the figure...

And voilá, Jason's villa.

The man has to enter, of course. It's part of the dynamics of slasher movies, and especially the Friday the 13th series is fond of that. So... what may happen, pray tell?

It's Hammer Time!

...ehm... I mean... pardon the pun.

If your guess was "one hammer to the back of the head", you can pride yourself on knowing the Friday the 13th franchise very well. If your guess was "death", then you can still take solace in the fact that you were right, even though you were lacking the fine details.

Back at the training camp, the counselors-in-training get told that they can spend a night out in town, and only those who will be our victims stay behind. Now that the night has come and the number of potential victims has lessened to a practical amount, the killings can really begin.

We start out with exhibit A, Terri, a young lady who decides to go skinny dipping in the middle of Crystal Lake. For an extended amount of time. Her clothes are being stolen by exhibit B, Scott, an annoying but oh so charming guy - who sort of gets stuck upside down in a trap when he tries to run away from the enraged Terri. She promises to get him down... and so she leaves for her cabin.

Neither situation nor separation work out well for exhibit B:

One machete to the throat.

Exhibit A, on the other hand, returns with a ridiculous-looking pocket knife to retrieve her colleague... only to be killed by Jason. Offscreen. Presumably with a machete as well. But damn you, Jason, for not showing us! ...or should I make that "Damn you, Steve Miner!"? Presumably so.

Back at the camp, we cut to exhibits C and D - the horny couple, their names being too unimportant for me to notice or even remember. They go upstairs, to do... you know. The big nasty. Meanwhile, exhibits E and F (a girl named Vicky and the guy in the wheelchair, Mark) are to be offed - Vicky walks outside during the storm that has come, and Mark eagerly awaits her coming (they kissed before leaving for their respective cabins).



But alas, Mark is not greeted by his Vicky... instead, Jason - possibly as befuddled as we, the viewers, are as to the fact what a guy in a wheelchair is doing in the woods - gets creative and sticks his machete into the head of the guy before throwing him down a flight of stairs. That's what I call irony - and truly, Jason has a black sense of humour.

What follows is death by editing (though presumably it should be death by spear) of the lovebirds, exhibits C and D. Impaled by a spear whilst cuddling happily after sex.

Vicky (exhibit F) finally enters Mark's (wheelchair-guy-with-machete-sticking-in-face) flat - only to find out the horrifying truth: The lovebirds are dead, but... but...

...what's this?

It's pillowcase-Jason v.02.0!

...and he kills her by editing. Again. With a knife to the stomach, but just because my logic centre works well enough in these instances doesn't mean I let it count as a proper onscreen death.

With the kids being out of the way, Paul (the equivalent to Stephe Christy from the first movie and played by John Furey) and his assistant and love interest Ginny (Amy Steel) return to the trainee-camp - just to discover the gruesome deaths of the young adults in their care. As well as the death of Crazy Ralph - true to his habit of locking himself in cupboards to be the doomsayer we love and adore, Jason locked his corpse in a cupboard. I guess he was going for maximum ironic effect there.

Paul is apparently suffering death by spear through the hands of Jason, who in turn gets attacked by a desperate Ginny who thinks he's dead (Jason) when she attacks him with a chainsaw and he falls down, face (pillow?) down, apparently without any life left in him. Screaming, she runs into the woods, where she finds Jason's cabin... and his lovely altar to his dear mother, Mrs. Voorhees (accompanied by a few other dead people).



Playing the hand of using his psychological vulnerability towards his mother, Ginny sneaks into the deceased woman's sweatshirt and convinces him that she's Mrs. Voorhees... which doesn't turn out too well when Jason sees the actual head of his mother still on the altar. With Paul storming into the shed (surprise! He wasn't dead! Only wounded!) the young Voorhees fashioned for himself, they all struggle... to death. Jason is left for dead, and the two lovers leave, shocked and traumatised by what has happened.

Fazed and shocked, they return to their own cabin - and oh, once again stress is is intruding into their lives as they hear... something... at the door. But oh no, it's not Jason - it's Muffin! The little dog! The music softens, becomes a beautiful crescendo of love and happiness...





The soundtrack by Manfredini is, as was the soundtrack of the first movie, eerily evocative and really added to the movie itself. I like the first sequel better than the original movie, mostly because I adore the altar, it's more fast-paced than its prequel, and yay for Jason! However, the death by editing really got on my nerves...


8/10 machetes, spears, throats, axes, icepicks and editings.



* Remember...