Photo Gallery
Coming five years after the first film, Camp Crystal Lake is now a condemned piece of property. But on the other side of the pond lives Paul Holt (John Furey) and his school for would-be counselors. With the help of his galpal Ginny (Amy Steel), he hopes to rally a ragtag group of party-mined young people into responsible camp employees. Of course, he has to address the rumors about Jason, the son of the late Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer). Seems many of the locals, including Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), believe the boy has been living in the woods, and ever since he saw his mother decapitated by the previous movie's last girl standing, Alice (Adrienne King), he's been on a murderous warpath. And wouldn't you know it, Paul and his students are the next in line.
Without the need for much backstory and an amplified sense of slaughter, Friday the 13th Part 2 should actually be a much better movie than its predecessor. The murders are more inventive. Director Steve Miner (taking over for Cunningham) provides plenty of naturally-endowed eye candy, and the arrival of Jason as a big screen splatter icon is here in full, ferocious force. So why does Part 2 feel like less of an already established brand? Why do the killings come off as anemic instead of aggressive and awe-inspired? The answer arrives in two forms -- the unconscionable cuts made by Paramount to protect the project from the MPAA and the groan-inducing performances by most of the rank amateur cast.
With the sudden success of the slasher film, the faux moral watchdogs of the movie ratings board began balking at all the brutality they were seeing onscreen. Films like My Bloody Valentine and The Burning were forced to remove sequences of ample arterial spray just to get a viable release. Even with their status as a major motion picture studio, Paramount was not immune. They trimmed nearly a minute out of the movie, rendering some of the deaths almost anticlimactic. After all, what's the good of a machete in the face if you can't see the actual damage, right? The lack of legitimate talent was another stumbling block. While Amy Steel is wonderful as the proverbial last girl, many of her co-stars seem way out of their acting league.
Of course, the film still made money, though nothing compared to the nearly $40 million the original raked in, and some argue that without the complete cut of the film, it's hard to debate Part 2's impact. In the Friday the 13th lexicon, this sequel remains important, if not definitive. At the very least it gave us the hulking, hate-filled killer obsessed with carrying on his mother's work. It also illustrated the backlash building against the entire slice and dice dynamic.
The new Deluxe Edition DVD includes a handful of making-of featurettes, plus a vignette on Jason's impact on horror movie conventions.
Aka Friday the 13th Part II.
