There are some popular misconceptions about history that need to be debunked at each opportunity. Columbus wasn’t the first person to claim that the Earth was round. D-Day wasn’t the most decisive battle of Second World War. Jason Voorhes, one of the most iconic characters in history of horror genre, didn’t have his debut in 1980 film Friday the 13th. It actually happened a year later, in its sequel Friday the 13th Part 2, directed by Steve Miner.
The film begins with a long prologue featuring Alice Hardy (played by Adrienne King), former summer camp counsellor who was the only one to survive murderous rampage of Pamela Voorhes (played by Betsy Palmer), demented woman who had wanted to avenge drowning death of her son Jason. Alice, who has saved herself by decapitating Mrs. Voorhes, is stalked and murdered at the home by unknown assailant. Five years after the first massacre, the camp at Crystal Lake, New Jersey is opened again and new batch of young counsellors come there to prepare it and use opportunity for various pranks and sex. They are warned about local legends about Jason actually surviving drowning and living as hideous recluse in the woods, but they disregard it. One night Jason (played by Steve Daskewitz), still angered by his mother’s death, comes out of hiding and starts murdering young men and women one by one.
Despite huge commercial success of Friday the 13th, its cast and crew showed noticeable lack of enthusiasm for the work on the inevitable sequel. Make-up specialist Tom Savini and director Sean R. Cunningham refused studio’s suggestion that Jason should be the next main villain and opted out of the project. Betsy Palmer agreed only to appear in what was glorified cameo, while Adrienne King, traumatised by the demented fan stalking her, was delighted to have her character eliminated in the beginning and thus unable to appear in more of such films. This reluctance can be explained with everyone’s realisation that Friday the 13th was in its essence derivative exploitation film made with little ambition and that the next one would be even worse. Steve Miner, young producer who had replaced Cunningham in director’s chair, didn’t do anything to prove doubters wrong.
The only thing in which Part 2 happens to be better than the original is the cast, and only in terms of physical attractiveness. Kirsten Baker, thanks to night skinny dipping scene, provides a little bit more nudity than in previous films, and the only wheelchair-bound character in film is played by professional model Tom McBride. Just like in the first film, acting is nothing to write home about and it isn’t surprising that none of the young cast, including Amy Steel in the role of Final Girl, didn’t have much of a career afterwards. Miner’s direction mostly copies the style of the previous film, with occasional attempt to make each killing different from another. One such attempt might be found in the scene in which Jason spears couple having sex, something obviously picked from Mario Bava’s 1971 giallo classic The Bay of Blood. Impact of this and similar scenes is dampened by heavy cutting and censorship considerations over the increasingly squeamish MPAA ratings board, which began to see graphic depictions of sex and violence at odds with increasingly conservative sentiments of Reagan’s America. Even the introduction of actual Jason looks less impressive, because the character wears burlap sack instead of his iconic hockey mask. But even worse is the script. While Friday the 13th, with all its faults, at least had a plot that made some sort of sense, Ron Kurz’s script abandons any kind of plot continuity and logic. The audience must accept that a boy, whose apparent death triggered the series of gruesome murders, would actually survive the drowning only to spend next quarter of century or so living in the woods. Commercial success of this film shows that many viewers, especially teenage males who like slasher films, didn’t care. Friday the 13th Part 2 thus in many ways shows everything that people love and hate about the film series.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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