FRIDAY NIGHT FRIGHTS: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981) “…He's Still Out There... Some Sort of Demented Nerd, Surviving in the Wilderness…”
Released in 1981 (nearly one year to the day after the first film) Friday the 13th Part 2 was yet another big box office success for Paramount Pictures. Once again shot on the tiniest of budgets, the film easily earned well over it’s money back and a formula was now in place. Though it could have been dismissed as a quick cash in project, fans clearly filled the theater seats and wanted more. This is the one that really laid the groundwork for the series moving forward, while also firmly establishing the franchise’s dominance in horror. Rising to the top as an annual must see event for genre fans swimming in an ocean of imitators.
This is the one where Jason arrives.
Before we get into 2 though, let’s address the Psycho(tic) elephant in the room shall we? Hitchcock’s classic about Norma and Norman Bates is largely considered to be the original slasher film, and Friday the 13th took that Mother/Son narrative dynamic and inversed it: In that first movie, we’ve got the Mother as killer exacting brutal revenge over the careless loss of her son in Camp Crystal Lake. BUT…unfortunately this didn’t turn out so great for her since she *spoilers* gets her head lopped off before the end credits.
Which brings us to the sequel!
Part 2 begins with a recap of the first film’s finale with Alice, the sole survivor and murderer of Pamela Voorhees, recalling the events as she strolls through her apartment. Apparently Jason can read a phone book because he’s tracked her down and has hidden his Mother’s head in her refrigerator. Then upon her discovery of it, boom just like that: Alice is killed in a shocker of a first act death. This would become a staple of the Scream franchise years later, and years before you could even see the long build up to that shower Marion Crane takes as the murder of someone you expected to follow throughout the entire film.
So now we officially have Jason as the killer in this series and the dude is cleaning house left and right. Taking out any and all remaining characters from the first movie before heading back to the lake. It’s like watching the producers go down the line, erasing previously showcased actors who may have had royalty/percentage contracts in place. Our new group of campers are for the most part forgettable but likable enough to make the kills feel like y’know…like a bit of a bummer. And the new main lead Ginny (Amy Steel soon to become famous for her role as Penny in Walk Like a Man) is good. I like her. Not a lot of plot here of course, it’s really just the systematic murders of innocent teenagers by a grown man clearly suffering from some undiagnosed form of mental health. And it sure is fun to watch because man, Jason is a shark (the movie’s string heavy theme keeps telling us so).
Friday the 13th Part 2 is a total bridge between one and three in the sense that while the first is iconic, we don’t get the hockey mask fans know and love until the next one. Until he dons that iconic head gear, he’s just running around with a potato sack or something over his head. In fact, because of this he’s affectionately referred to as “Farmer Jason” in some nerd circles that I just made up for this post.
Overall, I really like this movie. *It’s a solid entry in the series that while not being as great as the best one (Freddy Vs Jason, if you count that as a true installment), it’s also not as awful as the worst one (Friday the 13th 2009 if you count that as a true installment). It rests somewhere in the center of the pile for this viewer and that recent rewatch was a lot of fun, picking up all the small details that made their way into the video game.
I’d say the real contribution this movie adds to the overall lore is the iconic imagery of Pamela Voorhees’ decapitated head. That shrine is a great visual and would have been very cool to see more of throughout subsequent movies, gradually decaying into rotted bone. Maybe even propped up as a silhouette in a window of that rickety old house on top of the hill in the eventual next movie?
Goodnight, Mommy.
C’mon Friday the 13th Part 13, where are you?
