Newb Views the 80s #2: Friday the 13th Part II (1981)

Well, it delivers what it promises.

Directed By: Steve Miner

After the surprise success of Friday the 13th, a sequel was fast-tracked into production to be released the following year. The question was, since Jason Voorhees was only meant to be a "chair jumper" gag at the end of the first movie, what would a Part II be about? The first thought was to keep the Friday the 13th name, but have each sequel be a separate story with only a loose connection to the others, if any. Enter Georgetown Productions President and holder of the money Phil Scuderi who insisted that, despite it making zero logical sense, Jason Voorhees himself become the focus of the next film. Sean Cunningham had no interest in returning to Crystal Lake behind the director's chair, opting to produce instead, so the duties were handed off to Miner, who had acted as Associate Producer & Unit Production Manager on the original, and who was so desperate to direct a film he thought to himself "Yeah, I'll do Friday the 13th Part II!".

In the hands of anyone who actually gave a shit about continuity, there would be some thought put into how to logically make Jason, who had supposedly drowned as a boy, the killer. These guys simply threw their hands in the air and said "fuck it", starting with a prologue that perfectly encapsulates just how ridiculous the premise is. Alice Hardy, the lone survivor of the massacre at Camp Crystal Lake, is tracked all the way to California (where she mentioned being from early in the original), and murdered by Jason. How he figured out where she lived and made it all the way across the country, while toting his mother's severed head is not explored, That could have made a much more interesting movie in of itself. What makes the prologue worse is that it's not needed in the slightest. It has no connection with the rest of the movie, and since they made a slight effort even after saying with that opening that *SPOILER ALERT* Jason is the killer, to make this a suspense thriller in the vein of the original (Miner and others have gone on record stating that this was made as a carbon copy of the original on purpose, a la The Hangover Part II), the movie could have been more effective, even with them being married to the Jason idea, of having him be revealed at the end, or they could have had time for common sense to set in, and change the identity of the killer. But hey, making Jason the killer spawned, to date, ten more movies and a healthy profit for the producers, so who am I to argue?

On the plus side, he did take the teapot off the burner.

What follows is a glossier version of the original, only this time the main action takes place with a group of camp counselors at a training center, at a site adjacent to the off-limits Camp Crystal Lake. There are some things I like here, namely Paul's campfire story about the legend of Jason and Scott's increasingly desperate attempts to hook up with Terry. There's also decent chemistry between Amy Steele's Ginny and Richard Feury's Paul, and the jump cut from the dog Muffin running into Jason, to a shot of hot dogs cooking on a grill. 

Aside from those positives, there's not much to sink my teeth into. There are a couple decent kills, including the fan-favorite "shish kabob", and the poor paralyzed guy getting a machete to the face and falling backward down some steps, before the screen freezes and goes white for no particular reason. Jason's movements make no sense, and he is simply placed wherever he needs to be for that particular scene with no rhyme or reason to his actions. A few cast members are only in one scene, that being Paul asking who wants to go out for a night on the town. These people do not appear to be in any of the scenes taking place the first day, and are not seen again later, having not stayed out all night, but apparently not gone back to the camp either. The only one who is shown to have stayed out is Ted, the resident jokester, who defies genre convention by surviving the movie. That he had to vanish for the last act is immaterial. He made it!

Pictured: The luckiest bastard in "Friday the 13th" series history.

Oh! Another scene I do like in this movie: Ginny giving exposition and trying to bring some logic to the idea of Jason being the killer, and Paul's immediate reaction is to literally call "bullshit". I don't like her getting mad when Paul (and Ted) react like normal people, especially since she herself at this point in the movie has no real reason to think Jason is actually alive.

Watching this again, I'm more than a bit surprised that this movie led to anything after it. It's very paint-by-numbers with nothing particularly notable about it, since the gory, SFX-laden slasher movie had already started taking over the landscape, so gore hounds weren't nearly as limited in options as they were the previous year, and while there were a couple decent ideas, I can't imagine that there's anything here that made it stand above it's contemporaries, aside from the Friday the 13th title. On the other hand, people can get attached to brand names, and this did open at #1, making another nice return on investment for Paramount. The producers would be smart enough to realize that a Part III would need something to set it apart, but that's for the next review.

There has been some speculation that Paul disappears for the final stretch because John Feury had a dispute with Steve Miner. This is NOT the case, as the original ending had Ginny asking for Paul like she does in the final ending, but then the scene cuts to a shot of Mrs. Voorhees' head, and she smiles, supposedly indicating that Jason has killed Paul. This was deemed too fucking stupid even for a Friday the 13th and jettisoned, so we were left with no resolution for the Paul character.

Rating: *3/4 Some ok ideas keep the movie afloat, but the general goofiness of the premise along with the movie itself not really bringing anything to the table weigh it down considerably. Not the worst movie I've ever seen, but you could skip over this one and not miss much.