My mini-Friday the 13th marathon (mini, as in we only watched the first three of the many many sequels) continued with Friday the 13th Part 2. This film is the epitome of a fast-buck sequel. The first film made an astonishing butt-load of money for a low budget Halloween rip-off (hey, the filmmakers said it themselves!), so they raced to get a sequel in the theater.
The second time around, the formula is not really messed with: hot young counselors show up for summer camp training, but they are on the other side of the lake from Camp Blood, which of course is shut down (again) due to the bloodbath that happened a few years earlier. But, no, that doesn’t stop anyone from cheerily showing up to this remote camp in the woods. People start making out, and immediately doom themselves by getting naked and having sex. One girl (who is a refreshingly outdoorsy-looking girl who looks like she should be a river rafting guide in Colorado) shows us her spunk and her will to survive by donning a bra. No short-shorts for her! You see that girl with her ass-cheeks hanging out of her shorts? Doomed.
This time around, Jason IS the killer, make no mistake about it. However, we are forced to deal with a few leaps of logic, like:
If he supposedly drowned 20 years ago in the lake, how come in Part 1 he was a rotting boy in the water, and now, 5 years later, he is a full-grown 30-something man?
Jason’s shack in the woods is ramshackle and made up of a bunch of boards collected and held together. So, where’d he get the plumbing hook-up for the toilet?
If Jason simply (and supposedly) drowned, how come he’s missing chunks of hair and his face is grotesque like he is half-rotten?
And don’t you think someone would have noticed that mom’s head was missing from the crime scene in the first film?
Anyways, that’s just me being a stickler.
Part 2, despite the presence of the spunky river-rafting girl, is just an obvious re-tread of the first. Though the heroine is smarter, the surprise is gone. We’ve literally seen this all before. (And still no hockey mask!)
DVD NOTES
The extra features on this latest DVD release of the series includes the featurettes “Inside Crystal Lake Memories”, “Lost Tales From Camp Blood – Part 2”, the theatrical trailer, and a nice little ode to fan conventions “Friday’s Legacy: Horror Conventions”. The actors and filmmakers talk about the joy of meeting the fans at conventions like these, the event organizers talk about the logistics, and the fans talk about the fun of it all (yay! from someone like myself who has attended a convention or two).
