Mike_Bracken's Full Review: Friday the 13th - Part 2
Friday the 13th Part 2: Paramount Pictures Rating: USA: R/ UK: 18/ Australia: R
After the unexpected box office success of Sean Cunningham’s 1980 film, Friday the 13th (see my review if you’re interested in a detailed discussion of that film), a sequel was almost inevitable. So, a year later, Steve Miner would make his directorial debut with the imaginatively titled Friday the 13th Part 2 (hereafter abbreviated F13: 2 because I’m too lazy to keep typing that title out), and the great slasher glut of the 1980’s would cycle up to full speed.
If you’ve seen one these films, or almost any 80’s slasher film for that matter, then you already know what the plot is. But, in the spirit of being thorough, I’ll give you the brief rundown here.
Five years after the events in the first film, another gung-ho guy (Paul, played by John Furey) has decided to open a summer camp on the shores of Crystal Lake (which is completely different lake than the one they used in the first film)—this one across the way from the condemned and abandoned Camp Crystal Lake (aka Camp Blood) of the first film. Soon, the usual assortment of teenage spam shows up, including child psychology major Ginny (Amy Steel: April Fool’s Day). Then, before long, flirtation, fornication, and murder start happening all over the place until our two heroes are the only ones left. Together, they must battle the evil Jason Voorhees (who makes his series debut here—complete with a burlap bag over his head in place of the trademark hockey mask) or die trying.
Plot-wise, this is almost a remaking of the original film, but there are just enough new twists thrown in to make it different. Counselors come to camp early, die horrible deaths in inventive ways; a female heroine is forced to confront the murderer, and must kill it (or at least hurt it) in order to survive. However, the actual inclusion of Jason as the murderer here (and that’s not a spoiler—it’s painfully obvious from the first scene of the film) brings something new to the film…and sets it off in a new direction.
The first Friday the 13th was essentially a giallo (see my review of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage for a more detailed discussion of gialli films). There were elaborate murder setpieces, a mystery involving the identity of the killer, and the killer was mentally disturbed…all trademarks of the Italian gialli. Part 2 goes in a bit of a different direction—leaving the gialli influence behind (for the most part, but more on that in a bit) and opting to follow the more Americanized slasher film formula. Still, it’s a decent film in some aspects—and awful in others.
Steve Miner (Warlock, Halloween H20) has never been one of my favorite directors—his work is largely hit and miss and has an overall uneven quality. His work here is pretty much indicative of most of his career—a few inspired moments are followed by what seem to be hours of boring shots. Simply put, there’s very little visual aesthetic at work in Miner’s films—and it’s really obvious here. There’s a major over-reliance on killer POV shots throughout much of the short running time, as well as some really shaky handheld camera work while in the woods. Most of the interior scenes are shot as plainly as possible—very straightforward and with almost no visual flair. If I had to describe the visuals in a word, I’d call them bland. Of course, this is partially the fault of the set designer, who makes sure that the entire camp (and hence the entire film) is colored with muted Earth tones. The only splashes of color here come from the blood—and there’s really not enough of that to balance it out.
Miner does do a decent job of setting up his setpieces, though. The opening sequence (which runs nearly 15 minutes—all before the credits ever hit the screen) is taut and suspenseful, with first film survivor Adrienne King making a brief return appearance. Miner admits to ‘borrowing’ several setpieces from Mario Bava’s amazingly influential Bay of Blood aka Twitch of the Death Nerve (a film that is widely regarded as the first slasher film), including the double impalement of a copulating couple and a vicious machete to the head shot. At least Miner is wise enough to realize that if you’re going to crib your setpieces, then you should borrow them from a master.
The film features more than a few jump scares throughout its incredibly brief (roughly 84 minutes) running time. I’m not a fan of jump scares (scenes where the tension cycles up then a cat jumps through a window, for example), but there are several effective ones here. Miner does a nice job of building tension and anticipation in many of the sequences, and even though we know what’s coming, he still manages to surprise us from time to time.
Of course, much of the credit for the film’s atmosphere has to go to composer Harry Manfredini, who turns in another highly effective film score. Manfredini brings back the infamous ‘chi chi chi ha ha ha’ (onomatopoeia was never one of my strong points), which works very effectively during the stalk sequences, but even more impressive is the nerve jangling violin pieces that play during the climax. Much like Carpenter’s Halloween, F13: 2 is more effective because of the score.
The acting here is pretty much what you’d expect—which means bad. Amy Steel (who seems to be the serious Friday the 13th fan’s choice for best scream queen in the series) is decent, as is John Furey, but everyone else is pretty awful. Walt Gorney returns as ‘Crazy Ralph’, and he’s pretty good, too, but Jason takes him out early in the film.
The film sticks to the sequel maxim—there must be more sex and death in each subsequent installment of a horror series. There’s a lot of murder here, including the double impaling, death by strangulation with barbed wire, the claw of a hammer to the head, throat slashing, stabbing, ice pick to the temple, and probably a few others I’m forgetting. The machete to the face I mentioned earlier is easily the best of the bunch.
Still, despite all the mayhem mentioned above, the film is relatively bloodless. This stems from the fact that in its original form (as submitted to the MPAA rating board) F13: 2 garnered an X rating for violence. Since an X rating was akin to committing box office suicide, Miner and company were forced to go back and trim several gore sequences in order to get the much coveted R rating. Trimming is particularly noticeable in the double impaling (we only see the point of the spear slam into the floor, and a few drops of blood) and the throat-slashing scene (we see the wound open, but cut away as the blood begins to flow). These cuts hurt the overall gore quotient, but the film’s still suitably icky. Gore fans will enjoy it (although, any self respecting gore fan has probably seen this flick a dozen times already, at least).
I was never really a huge fan of this film, but upon a re-viewing for this review, I did come to appreciate it more than I had before. There are problems with the script (like the awful dialogue and dumb stage direction in some scenes—when one person is looking for a character who’s confined to a wheelchair, she heads up the stairs to look for him), but there are also moments where it genuinely tries to be something at least somewhat intelligent (which is generally a lot more than any of the other sequels ever bothered with). Ginny is a child psychology major, and as such gets to pontificate on the motivations behind why Jason would murder if he were alive. Sure, it’s mostly pop psychology stuff, but at least someone’s trying to give the character a motivation beyond the hoary old ‘absolute evil’ angle that is so prominent in slasher cinema.
On the other hand, the script’s treatment of Jason himself is a bit of a mixed bag. Personally, I’ve always found the burlap bag over his head, coupled with the fact that he actually runs after people here, to be sort of overly comical. I’ve always found Jason in a hockey mask and methodically stalking people at a brisk walk more frightening than this incarnation. Couple that with the fact that Jason seems a bit buffoonish here (he takes a kick to groin, dives for and misses his victim, and is pretty much an even match wrestling-wise with Paul) and you’ll find the character at least somewhat less fear inspiring here than he is in later installments.
Finally, one last tidbit that didn’t fit in anywhere else. Undoubtedly, if you’ve seen this film, you’ve found yourself wondering ‘hey, where’d Paul get off to?’ after you’ve seen the climactic scene. Rumor has it that John Furey got ticked off and quit prior to that scene being shot—hence no Paul in the little epilogue to the film.
At any rate, Friday the 13th Part 2 is the prototypical slasher sequel. It ups the stakes in terms of gore and nudity while essentially telling the same story as its progenitor—only with different characters. Amy Steel is actually decent as the heroine, and Jason is sort of creepy, despite the fact that he’s traipsing through the forest with a burlap sack over his head. Manfredini’s score brings a lot of tension and atmosphere to the film, which, when coupled with the setpieces Steve Miner (and Mario Bava) have concocted, give the film several scary moments. This isn’t a great film, or even all that good, but it’s effective. It knows what its goals are (titillating and scaring a teenaged audience) and basically succeeds in achieving them. It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone out there reading this who hasn’t seen these films, but if you haven’t, and you like slasher cinema, then Friday the 13th Part 2 is worth a look.
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