This may have been the one that scare me most probably because Jason with that brown sack over his head with eye holes cut out is far creepier than the absurd hockey mask. Of course in the later films he's built like a tank and takes on the aura of something akin to the Terminator, making it a little hard to take seriously. But a crazy guy living in a shantytown shack in the woods with a shrine to his dead mother? And he wears a bag on his head? And he kills people? Man, that f---ed me up.
Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.
As bad as Friday the 13th is, it’s nothing compared to Friday the 13th Part II. Here’s a film that makes the
absolute minimum effort to present something new and different. It basically
recreates the same premise but sets it in a camp on the other side of Crystal
Lake: a group of young people preparing for a youth camp get killed on-by-one
by a stalking psycho lurking in the surrounding woods. The big difference is
that Jason is now the killer. We only learn that for certain at the end when
Ginny (Amy Steel) stumbles upon his lair complete with a creepy shrine
featuring his mother’s severed head.
It looks as though the body count is set to be doubled in
this first sequel. The total number of counselors is far greater. But half of
them are anonymous and leave for a night on the town, but don’t return for the
slashing. Most everything else is identical. The cast of characters is dull and
uninspired, existing only to be killed in new and not so inventive ways.
Steve Miner’s direction is even more erratic and less
concerned with continuity and logic than his predecessor’s. He’s taken the
hand-held point of view camera technique to a new level of incoherence. It’s
clear that Miner and screenwriter Ron Kurz had every intention of making a
scary movie. It’s just that they didn’t do their homework to learn what really
makes for a frightening movie experience. There’s no building of tension.
There’s just a whole lot of stupid and badly-written dialogue punctuated by
shock scares complete with orchestral stingers. The absence of Tom Savini in
the makeup department leaves a gaping hole where decent gore effects should be.
There are a lot of creepy elements in the film. The whole
idea of a deranged, child-like monster living in a shantytown house in the
middle of the woods is unsettling. When a local police officer stumbles across
it shortly before taking a hammer to the head, the shocked look on his face
doesn’t come close to preparing us for the discovery at the end of the film of
what’s really there. And truthfully, I’ve always recalled Jason’s visage after
the cloth sack (he doesn’t acquire the hockey mask until the next film) is
removed. That image used to give me childhood nightmares. Oddly enough, it
turned out to be nothing like I remembered it. It’s more disturbing than scary
looking.
The opening devotes far too much time to rehashing the
ending of the first film. Maybe a year after the first film’s release audiences
needed that, especially in a time before everyone had home video. But now it
just feels superfluous. It would have been better, perhaps even in 1981, to
jump directly into Alice in her home a few months after the events of the first
film. She is dispatched after finding Mrs. Voorhees’ head in her refrigerator.
The premise is established in a story told by lead
counselor Paul (John Furey) to his newly assembled crew of youngsters some 5
years after the last murders (which means this movie takes place in 1984). He
tells of the drowning of the boy Jason and lack of a body; the murders
committed by his mother followed by her decapitation; and the possibility that
Jason is out roaming the woods, now a grown man seeking vengeance. Wouldn’t you
guess that it turns out to be accurate?
And so it goes that the camp counselors begin pairing off
to have sex or simply going off on their own, giving Jason ample opportunity to
rip them apart until only one remains. That’s when the movie really starts to
go off the rails. Up to that point, Jason is a methodical, patient, and
stealthy killer. From the moment that Ginny catches sight of him he becomes a
bumbling oaf. He’s just plain clumsy, falling over furniture and failing to
hold onto a young woman half his size. I always thought Scream was being totally original in having a clumsy killer. It
turns out Wes Craven may have been inspired by Friday the 13th Part II.
But that’s not all. The movie culminates in a climax and
conclusion that make absolutely no sense. I thought the ending to the first
film was illogical. This takes it to unbelievably new heights. I can buy into
the absurdity of Ginny putting on Mrs. Voorhees’ sweater and tucking her hair
back to fool Jason into thinking that his mother is speaking to him. I can even
stay with it when Paul, presumed dead, turns up to save the day (never mind
that he could hardly have had any chance of finding that ramshackle shed in the
woods in the dead of night). The problem comes after Paul and Ginny, believing
Jason dead, return to their cabin. Suddenly Jason jumps through the window
(recalling the shock ending of the first film when Jason jumps out of the water
to drag Alice down) and grabs Ginny. The slow motion shot fades out and the
next thing we know it is the next morning and Ginny is being loaded into an
ambulance. What happened to Jason, you might ask? And where’s Paul? Was the
last bit only a dream? In that case, why is Paul’s fate left a complete
mystery? If Jason really did attack through the window then how the hell did
Ginny escape and where’s Paul? This is the kind of incoherent mess that gets on
my nerves. It’s just lazy writing.
Friday the 13th
Part II is not the worst in the series, but it’s pretty damned close.
Deaths (with my
rating out of 10)
Total deaths: 9 (8 on screen), not counting Paul, whose
fate remains unknown
Average rating: 4.56/10
Highest rating: 9
Ratings are based on my personal reaction to the killing
taking into account factors such as shock, surprise, and fear, as well as the
creativity involved and how graphic it is.
1.
Alice has an ice pick driven into her temple
(6).
2.
Crazy Ralph is strangled by a wire from behind a
tree (3).
3.
Officer Winslow gets the claw of a hammer in the
back of his head (6).
4.
Scott gets caught in a rope snare hanging upside
down then his throat is cut by a machete (7).
5.
Terry’s death is not shown. We see her body at
the end in Jason’s lair (1).
6.
Mark takes a machete to the face and goes
rolling backward in his wheelchair all the way down a long flight of outdoor
stairs (9).
7.
Jeff and Sandra get speared together in bed
after having sex (2 each).
8.
Vickie has her leg slashed and is then
repeatedly stabbed with a kitchen knife. This death has the reveal of Jason
(5).
No comments:
Post a Comment