Today we return to Crystal Lake camp, AKA Camp Blood to witness the very first adventure starred by the legendary Jason Voorhees. After the immediate success of Friday the 13th Part I it became an obligation for the film makers to turn a one night horror flick into a bloody franchise Writers, directors & producers made the smartest move they could for a horror film that seemed to be over. Part II wasn't going to become a clichéd version of itself. There was neither a return, nor a magical revival of the schyzo mum we all wouldn't like as a mother for ourselves. In part I this bloody mum explained how her little son Jason Voorhess drowned in Crystal lake while everyone around seemed to be having fun with some dirty sex. So, as now you can easily guess part II would take us into the psycho world of little Jason Voorhees a child who likes to play tough.
Friday the 13th Part II not only introduced us to Jason Voorhees but it also introduced us to some new elements that would become mandatory in this kind of teenage horror flicks: extremely violent deaths (in those days these kind of scenes belonged exclusively to gore films alone) and of course teenage getting wasted and having either nude scenes or sex scenes. So if you kids happened to have watched 80's horror flicks and thought sex & blood were an invention of other films you have just met your maker: Friday the 13th Part II.
Now, let's get down to business. The movie is set five years after the first movie massacre, and to tell us the origin story we revisit the past with part one's hero Alice and her dreams (or nightmares for that matter) After we refresh our minds and see Alice die, we meet a new generation of teens looking forward for the fun only mother nother nature can deliver. These teens know about the legend of Camp Blood, so they stay in a different place by the same Crystal lake area. However, being close to such an evil place is not a good idea as Jason Voorhees is stalking the scene. Obviously, after so many years of Friday the 13th movies, connoisseurs will not be surprised with the elements this movie depicts, but if you're yet to become a Friday the 13th fan let me tell you that this movie is not clichéd, this is the trend setter for clichés in horror movies.
Jason's mum hasn't aged!
Jason didn't have enough money to afford a hockey mask.
Is part II better than part I? Although both movies are part of a saga, they hare very different from each other. Part I was all about an insane frigid bitch, while part II is about the apparently "dead" son she lost in a camp weekend. Both stories share the vacation setting next to crystal lake and the camp adventures but part II is definitely updated in terms of the gore and nudity.This is an underrated sequel, definitely. It's well
made, with 2 relatively strong leads, and a very suspenseful and scary
finale!. Jason is a bit of a weakling in this one, and is probably the
weakest Jason in the series. i really liked a few of the characters, but of
course as in all Friday the 13th movies some are just there to get killed off.
There is a fair amount of nudity, and there is a couple pretty cool
death scenes as well, however the ending was kinda cheesy, and a lot of
the death scenes were cut due to censorship, but i really enjoyed this sequel overall. Steve Miner, the film director does a very good job here,
creating a few scares, and lots of suspense,in the finale however it
did take a while to get going, and the ending could have been better,
but overall a very good job. There is a bit of
gore. but way too many off screen murders!. We get a severed head in a
fridge, another severed head, ice pick in the side of the head (off
screen),throat cut by barbed wire (off screen ATF), gory mangled dog,
double impaling, machete in the face(cut),hammer in the back of the
head (cut), bloody slit throat, 2 bloody stabbings, bloody corpses,
machete in the shoulder, Axe in the leg,and a machete in the neck.
Nightswimming.
Nude nightswimming.
80's Bush.
See the bush?
Jason unmasked.
The
Acting is what you can expect from this kind of movies, everyone does their with a fair amount of talent. The gals are all pretty hot, although only Kirsten Baker does get a full nude scene. Jason Voorhees looks and feels as if he was just getting into the killing thing, so every move he does sort of feel amateur in comparison to the next sequels where Jason is definitely the strongest, meanest character in a hockey mask. The rest of the cast is average teenage stereotype kind. The cons from this flick are the cut death scenes, the slow paced storytelling where nothing seems to happen up until the movie is minutes close to the climax. The pros are the music score, which is probably one of the most intense I've listened to in a horror flick, something I wanted to say because without such a powerful score the movie would have been sitting ducks badly. Another good element is the camera work that makes us see through Jason's eyes everytime he's stalking his victims, although the abuse of it may seem boring at times. And last but not least, we have Jason's house in the middle of Crystal Lake forest, where he's built a temple to worship his late mother (yes he owns her rotten head and sweater and puts them on an altar)
Overall, a movie that is on the way to make Friday the 13th a succesful saga, we still don't have the tall and mean Jason Voorhees that wears his signature hockey mask and scares the shit out of you. Although it is one of the weakest movies from the saga, it is still worth watching to understand the evolution of an iconic character in the world of horror films.
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