On "Friday the 13th" of last October, I took a look at the film that started the famous horror franchise staring Jason Voorhees that was thrilling, but wouldn't have been as popular and iconic as a stand-alone slasher film. This October I'm going to look into some of the sequels from the 2nd film up to "The Final Chapter". Let's make a second visit to "Camp Crystal Lake" in...
5 years after when Jason's Mother (Betsy Palmer) slaughtered all the counselors of Camp Crystal Lake except for Alice (Adrienne King) who survived and killed Mrs.Voorhees; Paul Holt (John Furey) hosts a training camp for camp counselors right by the original camp. But rather than starting training right away, Paul gives the counselors two days to get settled in and to get to know each other. But all their fun and games get cut short when Jason begins slaughtering everyone to avenge the death of his Mother, even though they had no part what-so-ever with killing her, except for Alice. The plot is doing nothing that different from what the first film did. It literally follows the same exact formula from A to Z! We get a killing in the pre-title sequence (just with a flashback of the ending from the last film); the counselors are doing naughty things as they're being axed off by the killer who we don't see until the climax; one of the girls in the camp runs and fights against the killer; and we get one final scare that you don't see coming that gets ruined by a tacked on scene that happens afterwards. It's technically the same film all over again, and yet a lot of fans consider it to be an improvement over the first film. What makes the film better than its predecessor?
Well many would say that this is because it was the introduction to Jason being the killer who after this will become the series primary antagonist, which is important alone, but if we didn't have any of the sequels after this, he wouldn't be as iconic. Now if Jason drowned in the lake, and is killing counselors as a grown man how is it possible that he's out and about and aged since he was a child when he died. Well in a very chilling and atmospheric campfire scene with the counselors, we find out that he's been living out in the wilderness by the camp, and decided to take revenge after seeing his Mother die. Its cool how we see Jason grown-up living as a hermit, however his return and motivation makes no sense at all! We're never sure if he drowned and came back to life as a zombie at the end of the first film, or if he ran away from the camp with the people (including his Mother) presuming that he died, and even if any of these two theories were true, neither of them would add-up. If he rose back from the dead and aged at the end of the last movie, I don't think a small boy would age into a full grown adult in 5 years; and if Jason's appearance at the end of the last film was really a hallucination from Alice, it would still make no sense since there were no other signs of Jason walking the camp grounds after he drowned. Many people believe that he didn't drown and ran away to live in the woods so he won't be harmed by people ever again. If Jason loves his Mother so much that both films clearly establish, why would he fake his own death and push himself away from the only person that show's genuine love and sympathy for him to the point where she would kill other counselors to avenge her son by no longer running a camp in the area where he died? It's a pretty lame way of bringing back this character who we heard so much about before this film. What's even lamer is he has no motivation. We see him take revenge against the last surviving counselor in the pre-title sequence (somehow knowing where she lives, even though he's been isolated from society after what happened to him when he was a boy), but after that he just randomly starts killing counselors for no rhyme or reason. I guess maybe it’s because he hates camp counselors and doesn't like them in his territory, but it's not as clearly established as his Mother's motivation. Where it all boils down to when it comes to having Jason present in this movie is that the filmmakers are simply retconning him with little thought put into his return because they had no intention of making a sequel to begin with.
But who cares if Jason's motivation and presence makes no sense, as long as he's scary and killing people left and right we can probably overlook how nonsensical everything surrounding him is. Well I wish I could say so, but Jason is not really all that scary. As you can clearly see, he isn't the Jason that we're familiar with since he's not wearing his trademark hockey mask. And I'm not against that, because this is before the idea ever came about, and I admire seeing the series slowly give newcomers what they want. With that said, whether when comparing him to Jason's iconic design, or judging his appearance on its own, he's not all that intimidating or even that original. His design is a rip-off of the killer from the 1976 film "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" except that he looks a little goofier with his ridiculous hillbilly clothes and only having one hole in the sack for him to see. Maybe the scenes with him chasing victims on-screen would make up for it, but it only makes his silly design look worse for how much he trips, falls, and gets kicked around by the victim most of the time that looks pretty cartoony for feeling more like slapstick as opposed to life or death horror suspense. Jason's Mother may have moments where she was kicked around too, and resorted to less of her special methods of violence such as slapping, but she was so deranged and near unstoppable that the abuse she took didn't feel as silly as this since there is a sense of pain and terror to be felt when watching the whole sequence. And as if he's not laughable to look at enough, we get this build-up to his deformed face (that was never established why or how he got it) as you wonder what is hiding under that poorly made KKK mask, and when we finally see it during a very weak jump-scare, his face looks as disappointing as seeing Gerard Butler unmask himself as "The Phantom of the Opera" since his actual face looks even goofier. It's like he's wearing part of a cheesy Halloween mask used for farms that feature scary corn-mazes during this time of year. It's an incredible down-grade since little Jason looked so grotesque looking when he appeared in the first movie.
Are the killings that Jason causes in this movie as bloody and horrifying as the killings that his Mother brought in the last movie? Well there are some highlights, such as Jason using his machete to slice open a kid's throat who's hanging upside down; a kid falling down a long flight of stairs after getting a machete to the face; and a double-impalement as a couple are seen to be making love. But they're mostly not as gruesome or horrific to look at when compared to Tom Savini's work in the first film. This was mainly because that 48 seconds of the film was cut by the MPAA so that it wouldn't be rated X, much like what happened when making the film that began the franchise, except that we're finally given the chance to see the film uncensored, when here we don't. There were at least 7 scenes that had more graphic detail than what we were given to make it as shocking as it previously looked, where instead we are given violence that feels very lackluster and at times goofy. For example, in the scene when a character gets a hammer nail to his head there was originally going to be blood gushing out, but to please the censors the scene cuts right back to what the counselors are doing before we can see the victim collapse which leaves us with a silly reaction and a death that looks as cartoon-like as Jason's abuse in the climax. What this film does exploit more than the violence is the sexual themes, which are more perverted than what the previous film had, for its close-up panty-shots, breasts, and full nudity when one of the female counselors goes skinny-dipping. The only scene involving the film's nudity that was reported to be cut is when two of the counselors are having sex before Jason's arrival due to the actress they casted being underage.
The killings are a bit of a let-down but what made the first film so good was its atmosphere, for capturing that good old summer time feel at a beautiful camp while making it seem ominous and chilling. Well the film on the technical level while being on a higher budget this time, does make it look and feel like that it's part of the same franchise unlike most of the other films in the franchise that follow. It uses all the tricks that were used to make first film so unsettling such as the P.O.V. shots; the darkness; the music (that still sounds like "Psycho" in-spite of its alterations); and making this new camp look like the perfect place to relax. I was even happy that there weren't as many pointless scenes that went on forever to pad things out like what we had seen previously. And though I'm not a fan of Jason's design and presence in the movie for not being frightening, the shack where he lives in the woods, is very spooky as well as fascinating to see how he lives, and what shocking secret he keeps in one of his rooms. Unfortunately in terms of the film's atmosphere being suspenseful, I can't say that it was as terrifying and shocking as what we had before. Since the film uses the same exact tricks and formula, there's nothing new that this film has to offer which makes it predictable as most of these scenes of suspense drag-on for such a long period of time to the point where I was eagerly waiting for the film to get on with the reveal as much as I wanted the scenes of filler from the first film cut to the next scene. And when we get mostly false scares in the first half, and a good majority of the deaths being cut short when the killings do start to unfold, it makes it less thrilling to get into it since your being teased most of the time, causing the pay-off of the experience to feel underwhelming. There are some shocking surprises here and there, the scene when Jason crashes the window in the climax (the first time in the film) for instance actually made me jump even though I knew it was coming for how well timed and appropriately fitting the loud sound effect was, but there's very few of those scenes.
With the exception of Jason, only three of the characters from the first film played by their original actors return which are Adrienne King as Alice, Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph, and even Betsy Palmer as Jason's Mother. Each of them do a solid job at recapturing their characters, but their presences are very short-lived. There are a few reasons for why they're only in the film briefly. Since the death of Jason's Mother is what becomes his motivation for vengeance, it wouldn't seem satisfying to have Betsy Palmer in the film as often as Jason's, unless they were saving her appearance for the end as a final jump scare, like Jason's corpses, but that isn't the case (even though there was a scene filmed with Mrs. Voorhees coming to life at the end, but was deleted for the effect looking very cheesy). She appears when Jason sees a vision of her talking to him, that was shot in half a day as Palmer was given so little to do that she forgot that she was even in the second film. Another reason for why the appearances of the original characters don’t last long is because Adrienne King demanded to be in the film for a short-time since an obsessive fan of the previous film would keep stalking her which caused her to quit acting (until 1993 when ironically "Jason Goes to Hell" came out), hence why she gets killed off in the film's overlong pre-title sequence, rather than being the main character again.
It's disappointing that Alice isn't the focus of the film since it would give Jason more of a motivation for him to kill-off innocent people around her (like maybe her friends and family) as opposed to random people by the camp, but the new characters in the very least don't appear as disposable as most of the original characters were! That's the main advantage that this film has over its predecessor because the characters do seem more down to earth and identifiable when the teens in the original were bland and uninteresting. The head counselor Paul takes the training camp seriously as Steve treated “Camp Crystal Lake”, except rather than being a stick in the mud boss, he's also playful and understanding which makes him appear to be a well rounded character. Then there's Ginny (Amy Steel) the main girl who is way more interesting than Alice was. Rather than being an ordinary teen age girl who gets the last encounter with Jason, she's instead an aspiring children's psychologist who sympathizes for Jason after hearing his back-story as she tries to dive into his psyche. And when being attacked by Jason, she does all the right things like Alice did, only since she knows Jason's past she uses psychology on him by pretending to be his Mother, which is bizarre and makes no sense, but is a very touching scene, where you can feel Jason's torment through that stupid sack. The rest of the characters do have their stereotypical traits to make them stand-out like the comic relief and the pervert. But then you have an ex-sports player named Mark who's now confined to a wheelchair, who you feel bad for but applaud him for trying the make best out of his condition, that I don't see too often in a slasher film of this type. What's also refreshing about these new characters are the way they work-off each other and joke around. It mostly comes across as believable since their interactions with one another feels mainly naturalistic. I'm not going to act like that these characters as a whole are well written and greatly acted because they aren't. Half of the things they do (such as some of their pranks) feel forced to play-up on the horror tropes, some of them are nearly as dull as the original set of characters in the franchise, and their acting can be very hokey for being either bland, nonchalant, or awkwardly delivered. But to have characters in a franchise that's more focused on the killer than the victims to be likable, resourceful, and interesting is undoubtedly a rare element to be admired.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Both of these movies are very hit and miss, and while I know that many fans prefer this film over the original, I still think the original had more hits when compared to its sequel. The sequel has better characters, occasional horrifying and shocking moments involving atmosphere and people being slaughtered, and is above all important for establishing Jason as a killer. However since the film decides to recycle every trick and element used from the last movie, tame the violence, and make the scenes of suspense insufferably long where it loses its affect after awhile, it results to giving us a water-down experience of the first movie with nothing that new to offer. And though Jason would become more badass and intimidating in the films that follow, the Jason that we get here is a weakling who's not as scary or fleshed-out as his Mother was, for his ridiculous design and confusing origin and motivation that in the end makes absolutely no sense. The film is not a bad follow-up and has an essential place in the franchise, its just in my opinion an overrated sequel!
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