Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

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The body count continues at Camp Crystal Lake, as a new batch of teenaged camp counselors gather at a neighboring campsite and learn about the legend of Jason Voorhees — the little boy who drowned in the lake when counselors were too busy having sex to notice him. We know right away, courtesy of killer point-of-view shots, that someone’s watching and planning to kill. But could it really be Jason himself?

Friday the 13th Part 2 sets up a couple of murder suspects to compete with the legend, but Jason takes center-stage soon enough. This sequel strictly follows the first movie‘s formula, offering only a slight twist on a ride there’s no shame in taking twice. The disposable teenagers are attractive, providing eye candy for all persuasions. Kirsten Baker gets bonus points for providing a gratuitous, full-frontal skinny-dipping scene. Explicit gore is kept to a bare minimum by today’s standards, but that doesn’t keep one of the death scenes from being perhaps the most memorable in the franchise’s history. That honor goes to actor Tom McBride, playing a wheelchair bound hunk about to get laid, who gets a machete to the face before rolling backwards down a long staircase during a lightning storm.

The opening sequence is a tedious one, with a thankless return performance from the first film’s only survivor (Adrienne King). Walt Gorney makes an equally unnecessary, laughable reprise as the friendly neighborhood doomsayer. On the plus side, Amy Steel makes for a competent ‘final girl’, the only character who takes a minute to think about things from Jason’s perspective. Her psychological approach ends up saving her life in an ending that is a little more complicated that simple hacking and slashing. And the movie also does a good job competing with the first one’s final, departing scare.

You have to take impossible leaps in logic to accept how Jason is still alive all these years later. The events of the sequel contradict the first film in fundamental ways, but Friday the 13th is immune to such logic. Audiences seem to treat Jason like Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell — if you clap your hands, Tinkerbell is resuscitated. And if you buy tickets for more sequels, Jason will indeed rise from the grave.