HALLOWEEN 2K18: A Review of "Friday the 13th Part 2"

I wonder what made producers responsible want to make a sequel to Friday the 13th? What would you make it about? Well, they found a way. Already with like six bodies on its conscience, the franchise was gearing up to make the 1980s one memorable decade. Just shy of a year later, not even a full year, and Friday the 13th Part 2 came out in theaters, and boy, this is when the movies started descending into the realm of hilarious Hollywood trash. Interesting to note, these movies weren't released in the Fall, like you'd expect. No, these movies were coming out in Spring. I don't know who dictated horror movies' release schedules but I sure hope they got fired.

These two would be in a serial killer Hallmark card

Two months after the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, sole survivor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) is recovering from her traumatic experience. In her apartment, she wakes up to take a shower. As Alice opens the refrigerator to get her cat some food, she finds the decapitated head of Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) in her refrigerator and is murdered by an unseen adult Jason Voorhees (Steve Daskawisz) with an ice pick to her temple. Jason walks around in flannel and overalls, sporting a burlap sack over his head with a single eye-hole cut out. Not yet the infamous iconic Jason look we'd soon get. He doesn't even carry a machete, yet. This Jason carries an axe. For having a set picture in our head of what Jason Voorhees looks like, this franchise sure took a while to get there.

Jason picks Alice's brain
*ba dum tss*

Five years later, camp counselor Paul Holt (John Furey) hosts a counselor training camp near Camp Crystal Lake. The camp is attended by Sandra (Marta Kober), her boyfriend Jeff (Bill Randolph), troublemaker Scott (Russell Todd), tomboy Terry (Kirsten Baker), wheelchair-bound Mark (Tom McBride), sweet-natured Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor), jokester Ted (Stu Charno), and Paul's assistant Ginny Field (Amy Steel), as well as many other trainees. These moronic children will be the shooting gallery for the evening. Kindly don't get emotionally attached to any of them because they're bound not to last long. Around the campfire that night, Paul tells the counselors about the legend of Jason, of how he survived his drowning, grew up living in the woods, and is now seeking to kill any intruders to avenge his mother's death. That's a far different legend than the one we got just one movie ago, about just how Jason drowned and the Camp is cursed. Oh well, I'm sure legends change as frequently as Star Wars does. As Ted appears with a mask and a spear, Paul reassures everyone that Jason is dead and that Camp Crystal Lake is off limits. You know what means! Time to infiltrate it and have sex! That night, Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) wanders onto the property to warn the group but is garroted from behind a tree by Jason. I thought it'd be hilarious if Crazy Ralph became a trope of the films, but it turns out he was a two-trick pony. The following day, Jeff and Sandra sneak off to Camp Crystal Lake upon finding a carcass, before getting caught by Deputy Winslow (Jack Marks) and returned to the camp. Later, Winslow spots Jason and chases him into the woods before he is killed with a hammer claw.

Jason's stylistic table and dinnerware set from Sears

Back at camp, Paul offers the others one last night on the town before the training begins; only Ginny and Ted accept his offer. Jeff and Sandra are forced to stay behind as punishment for sneaking off. At the bar, Ginny muses that if Jason were still alive and witnessed his mother's death, it may have left him with no distinction between life and death, right or wrong. Valid deduction Ginny, but too bady anybody with a brain stem could've told you that. Paul dismisses the idea, proclaiming that Jason is nothing but an urban legend. Despite two murders since his drowning and a massacre just five years prior. But yeah, Jason's probably just made up local-talk mumbo-jumbo. Meanwhile, the legend of Jason appears at the camp and kills the counselors one by one. Scott has his throat slit with a machete while caught in a rope trap, and Terry is killed off-screen upon finding his dead body. Mark gets the machete slammed into his face and falls down a flight of stairs. Jason then moves upstairs and impales Jeff and Sandra with a spear as they have sex (make a Friday the 13th drinking game and see how many times you have to drink when people die having sex), and also stabs Vickie with a kitchen knife. FUN FACT: The actress who played Sandra was underage when she filmed her full-frontal nudity scenes, and naturally the studio got in huge trouble so the footage was permanently destroyed and never released. Why is that a fun fact?... uh, I have no clue. So, you know what? WEIRD FACT.

She's cosplaying as "indiscriminate
slutty slasher movie victim #1"

Later, Ginny and Paul return to find the place in disarray. In the dark, Jason ambushes Paul and then chases Ginny throughout the camp and into the woods, where she comes across his shack. After barricading herself inside, she finds an altar with Pamela Voorhees' head on it, surrounded by a pile of Jason's victims (the sheriff, Terry, and a decomposing Alice) with the machete that killed his mother placed on the altar. Ginny puts on Pamela's sweater and tries to psychologically convince Jason that she is his mother. Jaosn, like a dumbass, falls for it. "Oh hi, woman-who-looks-nothing-like-my-DEAD-mother. I guess you're my mother". Thankfully, the ruse fails when he spots his mother's head on the altar, because I guess Ginny in her infinite wisdom forgot to fucking hide the real head, and Jason attacks Ginny. Paul appears and attacks Jason, but he is quickly overwhelmed. Just as Jason is about to kill Paul with a pickaxe, Ginny picks up the machete and slams it down into his shoulder, seemingly killing him.

Paul and Ginny return to the cabin. They think that Jason has followed them, but when they open the door, they are greeted by Terry's dog, Muffin. Suddenly, an unmasked Jason bursts through the window from behind and grabs Ginny. She then awakens to her being loaded into an ambulance and calls out for Paul, who is nowhere to be seen and his fate left ambiguous. Ah, yet another "twist ending" undone by the "It was all a dream" bullshit. Back in the shack, Pamela Voorhees' head remains on the altar as Jason is nowhere to be seen. So... there you go. Nothing got accomplished.

Friday the 13th Part 2 is when the franchise hit the skids. Obviously, it's still dumb popcorn entertainment, but you really have to lower your intelligence when you watch this movie, or really any movie in this franchise. The characters are stock, the story is recycled and the ending is a complete copy of the last movie's ending, with Jason being seen and then not being seen at all. CONFUSING. The kills are what makes the movie, as will be the case with all of these movies, but still, don't expect groundbreaking horror here.