Like a lot of kids, I didn’t have the luxury of watching the “Friday the 13th” series in the intended numerical order. I just watched whichever ones came on TV. I didn’t catch “Friday the 13th Part II” until after I’d seen pretty much every other film in the franchise (well, back when the franchise was still only eight movies strong), so as you can surmise, seeing Jason running around in a plaid shirt and overalls with a burlap sack over his head, wielding a pitchfork, was fairly jarring. That’s a reaction a lot of people have to this movie, but even though the “Friday the 13th” series still hasn’t quite hit its stride, “Friday the 13th Part II” is actually pretty good, if a different experience from most of the other flicks in the franchise.
A few months after her narrow escape from the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, Alice (Adrienne King) mysteriously vanishes. Five years later, Paul Holt (John Furey) has just opened a new camp counselor training center across from the infamous “Camp Blood”. The usual menagerie of horny teenage stereotypes show up for the ride: including Paul’s love interest, the feisty Ginny (Amy Steel). The good times don’t last for very long, as the counselors begin to drop one by one as a creepy sack-wearing madman stalks the woods. Could the legends of Jason Voorhees (Steve Daskawitz - masked, Warrington Gillette - unmasked) be true?
Steve Miner, producer of the first “Friday the 13th”, takes the Director’s chair with this installment as well as “Friday the 13th Part III”. While Sean S. Cunningham will forever be recognized as the creator of the series, Steve Miner is the man who truly created Jason and shaped him into the horror icon we know him as, today. With this installment, Jason gets behind the wheel and becomes the face of the franchise and it couldn’t have been a better move. Cunningham-himself has stated that the shock-ending of the original “Friday the 13th” was never meant to imply that Jason would be starring in a sequel; it was just a means to get one last scare in before the credits. Thankfully, Miner thought better and here we are.
This is a very different Jason, not only in appearance but in attitude and mannerisms. We view Jason today as the silent stalker, who walks at an even pace behind his victims and always manages to catch up to them. He’s cold, mechanical and just about devoid of human emotion like some kind of masked Terminator. Jason as he appears in “Friday the 13th Part II”, on the other hand, is a little different. He grunts and groans rather loudly when he gets hit and can run pretty fast. Sure, he’ll be seen running briefly in the next few flicks, but not the same way as he is here. In this movie, the guy’s really gunning it.
Lastly, his face when unmasked is radically different from how he’ll appear in all the future films (which is really saying something, considering how his appearance fluctuates so violently with each and every movie). When he appears at the end, he has long brown hair, a beard and big ole eyebrows. His head is still all malformed and lumpy; he’s just very fuzzy. While this doesn’t gel with future depictions, it fits his origin as presented in this flick, what with him being interpreted as a crazy hillbilly and all.
The kills in this one are a step up from the last film. While not the most innovative, moments such as Jason spearing two people at once as they have sex or hoisting some dude up in a snare and slitting his throat will have a lasting effect on you. One kill, though, thanks to some wacky editing, is my absolute favorite if only because it unintentionally makes Jason out to be ten times more sadistic and insane than ever.
So, this guy named Mark (Tom McBride) is in a wheelchair and he rolls out onto the porch of the counselor’s cabin, looking for his girl. Jason comes up behind him and buries a machete in his noggin. Mark then rolls backward toward the porch stairs. Now, we’d seen those stairs earlier in the movie. They were short; maybe seven steps, tops. The stairs Mark rolls down are as long as the stairwell from “The Exorcist”. From a fictional standpoint, the only explanation for this is that Jason, after burying his weapon in the cripple’s face, proceeded to wheel him over to a completely different staircase and shove him down them.
Dude, what an asshole.
The cast is as forgettable as any slasher film’s line-up of victims. One thing that always bugged me was Ted (Stu Charno), the zany prankster of the film. Nine times out of ten, this character archetype always dies in these kinds of movies. But Ted doesn’t. He goes out for a beer on the town and avoids the whole ordeal. Son of a bitch.
There’s also our heroine, Ginny, who plays more or less a polar opposite of Alice, the survivor of the last film. Whereas Alice was meek, her entire strategy against the killer being “shove her over, run, hide, repeat the process”, Ginny is far more interested in her own self-preservation. While she still runs and hides, Ginny actually fights back against Jason in a fairly reasonable manner. She smashes a chair over his head, attacks him with a chainsaw, kicks him into a ditch, and even impersonates his mother so she can get the drop on him. Perhaps her best strategy, though, involves her hiding behind a bush and then ambushing Jason with a swift kick to the balls. Few have delivered a nutshot unto Jason and lived to tell the tale.
While “Friday the 13th Part II” still isn’t quite the “Friday the 13th” we recognize, it’s getting just a little bit closer. As it stands, even without the hockey mask, this is a pretty entertaining and offbeat version of Jason.
Grade: B (as in “Better not try that again, Ginny. Cheap shots only last you so long”.)
A few months after her narrow escape from the Camp Crystal Lake massacre, Alice (Adrienne King) mysteriously vanishes. Five years later, Paul Holt (John Furey) has just opened a new camp counselor training center across from the infamous “Camp Blood”. The usual menagerie of horny teenage stereotypes show up for the ride: including Paul’s love interest, the feisty Ginny (Amy Steel). The good times don’t last for very long, as the counselors begin to drop one by one as a creepy sack-wearing madman stalks the woods. Could the legends of Jason Voorhees (Steve Daskawitz - masked, Warrington Gillette - unmasked) be true?
Steve Miner, producer of the first “Friday the 13th”, takes the Director’s chair with this installment as well as “Friday the 13th Part III”. While Sean S. Cunningham will forever be recognized as the creator of the series, Steve Miner is the man who truly created Jason and shaped him into the horror icon we know him as, today. With this installment, Jason gets behind the wheel and becomes the face of the franchise and it couldn’t have been a better move. Cunningham-himself has stated that the shock-ending of the original “Friday the 13th” was never meant to imply that Jason would be starring in a sequel; it was just a means to get one last scare in before the credits. Thankfully, Miner thought better and here we are.
This is a very different Jason, not only in appearance but in attitude and mannerisms. We view Jason today as the silent stalker, who walks at an even pace behind his victims and always manages to catch up to them. He’s cold, mechanical and just about devoid of human emotion like some kind of masked Terminator. Jason as he appears in “Friday the 13th Part II”, on the other hand, is a little different. He grunts and groans rather loudly when he gets hit and can run pretty fast. Sure, he’ll be seen running briefly in the next few flicks, but not the same way as he is here. In this movie, the guy’s really gunning it.
Lastly, his face when unmasked is radically different from how he’ll appear in all the future films (which is really saying something, considering how his appearance fluctuates so violently with each and every movie). When he appears at the end, he has long brown hair, a beard and big ole eyebrows. His head is still all malformed and lumpy; he’s just very fuzzy. While this doesn’t gel with future depictions, it fits his origin as presented in this flick, what with him being interpreted as a crazy hillbilly and all.
The kills in this one are a step up from the last film. While not the most innovative, moments such as Jason spearing two people at once as they have sex or hoisting some dude up in a snare and slitting his throat will have a lasting effect on you. One kill, though, thanks to some wacky editing, is my absolute favorite if only because it unintentionally makes Jason out to be ten times more sadistic and insane than ever.
So, this guy named Mark (Tom McBride) is in a wheelchair and he rolls out onto the porch of the counselor’s cabin, looking for his girl. Jason comes up behind him and buries a machete in his noggin. Mark then rolls backward toward the porch stairs. Now, we’d seen those stairs earlier in the movie. They were short; maybe seven steps, tops. The stairs Mark rolls down are as long as the stairwell from “The Exorcist”. From a fictional standpoint, the only explanation for this is that Jason, after burying his weapon in the cripple’s face, proceeded to wheel him over to a completely different staircase and shove him down them.
Dude, what an asshole.
The cast is as forgettable as any slasher film’s line-up of victims. One thing that always bugged me was Ted (Stu Charno), the zany prankster of the film. Nine times out of ten, this character archetype always dies in these kinds of movies. But Ted doesn’t. He goes out for a beer on the town and avoids the whole ordeal. Son of a bitch.
There’s also our heroine, Ginny, who plays more or less a polar opposite of Alice, the survivor of the last film. Whereas Alice was meek, her entire strategy against the killer being “shove her over, run, hide, repeat the process”, Ginny is far more interested in her own self-preservation. While she still runs and hides, Ginny actually fights back against Jason in a fairly reasonable manner. She smashes a chair over his head, attacks him with a chainsaw, kicks him into a ditch, and even impersonates his mother so she can get the drop on him. Perhaps her best strategy, though, involves her hiding behind a bush and then ambushing Jason with a swift kick to the balls. Few have delivered a nutshot unto Jason and lived to tell the tale.
While “Friday the 13th Part II” still isn’t quite the “Friday the 13th” we recognize, it’s getting just a little bit closer. As it stands, even without the hockey mask, this is a pretty entertaining and offbeat version of Jason.
Grade: B (as in “Better not try that again, Ginny. Cheap shots only last you so long”.)
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