Film Appreciation - You're All Doomed!

Cody and Priscilla celebrate the slasher classic Friday the 13th Part 2 for Film Appreciation.

Made on a budget of $550,000, producer/director Sean S. Cunningham's independent film Friday the 13th secured distribution from Paramount and ended up becoming a massive hit, earning nearly $60 million at the global box office. So it's no surprise that a sequel was put on the fast track - Friday the 13th Part 2 went into production just four months after the first movie reached theatres, and was released just under one year after its predecessor. Friday the 13th was released on May 9, 1980, and Part 2 followed on April 30, 1981, in a year that was packed with the releases of slasher movies that were trying to replicate the success of F13.

The first movie had been set at Camp Crystal Lake, where a young boy named Jason Voorhees drowned in 1957. Jason's mother, who was the camp's cook, blamed the counselors for Jason's death - they didn't pay enough attention to him, "they were making love while that young boy drowned". So she killed a couple counselors in '58, causing the camp to close down. For the next couple decades she was dedicated to making sure the camp would remain closed, even if that meant going on the killing spree depicted in the first film. If Mrs. Voorhees had been dispatched in a way the filmmakers could work around, or if she had just vanished like Michael Myers at the end of Halloween, maybe she would have been brought back for the sequel. Problem was, Mrs. Voorhees was decapitated with a very impressive gore effect. There's no coming back from that. So how to make a sequel to that film wasn't immediately apparent to everyone involved, and there was some consideration given to going the anthology route. Make a series of movies connected only by the fact that each one would be set on Friday the 13th. But there was one person who was very opposed to the anthology idea. One of the first movie's investors insisted that the sequel should feature Jason Voorhees. The boy who drowned. Which would make no sense if not for the fact that Jason had appeared at the end of the first movie in a jump scare inspired by the ending of Carrie. Little Jason, who suffered from hydrocephalus and wasn't looking so fresh after spending twenty-plus years underwater, was seen rising from the lake to grab Alice (Adrienne King), the counselor who decapitated his mother, out of a canoe. The end of the movie left a question lingering in the mind of the audience: did that Jason attack really happen, or was it a nightmare Alice had? Investor Phil Scuderi felt the sequel had to build on that question.

Ron Kurz, who had written one scene for the first movie (where a police officer stops by Camp Crystal Lake), took over scripting duties on the sequel, and Cunningham passed the helm over to his protégé Steve Miner, who had been working with him since The Last House on the Left in 1972 and was an associate producer on Friday the 13th. Part 2 would be Miner's directorial debut.

The first image of Miner's first film is an atmospheric shot of a residential area in what is apparently the town of Crystal Lake, although this is never directly stated. It's dark, the streets are wet from rain, and a kid is splashing through the gutter while singing about the "Itsy Bitsy Spider". This kid is called away by their mother, and as soon as they leave an adult's boot comes splashing down into the rain water right where the kid had been. The appearance of this boot is accompanied by a musical sting from composer Harry Manfredini, so we know there's something bad going on.

The camera then follows the feet of this mysterious prowler as they walk toward a house. It will eventually be confirmed that this person is Jason Voorhees, so this is the first time we're seeing Jason stalk someone - and, ironically, the person wearing the boots for this shot was a woman. Costume designer Ellen Lutter.

I love this opening moment, it was a great way to start the movie. It's immediately creepy.

While the first movie was shot in New Jersey, Miner shot this one in his home state of Connecticut, and every time I watch this one I'm struck by how sad it is that so few of its filming locations have been preserved. Starting with this house Jason is walking up to. It doesn't exist anymore.

Inside that house is Friday the 13th survivor Alice, who is having a nightmare about being attacked by Mrs. Voorhees a couple months earlier. We know this because we see her nightmare, which is actually 6 minutes of stock footage from the first movie.

6 minutes of flashback is a bit excessive, but that's how movies used to do it back in the day. Filmmakers didn't trust that audience members had seen the previous movie.

Once Alice wakes up, the camera roams around inside the house with her, offering a glimpse into her life. Dialogue in the first movie indicated that Alice was from California, and when Alice gets a phone call from her mom we get the impression that her parents aren't happy that she has decided to stay across the country, hanging out in Crystal Lake. The only explanation for why Alice would still be in Crystal Lake comes in the line, "I just have to put my life back together, and this is the only way I know how."

Alice is a very peculiar character. I can't imagine wanting to be alone after what she had just been through. If anything, if I didn't want to go back home yet for whatever reason, I'd definitely want my parents or anyone familiar to be there with me. So it makes sense that her mom is worried. Checking up on her through phone calls really doesn't seem like it'd be enough.

Not only that, but Alice acts the opposite of what pretty much anyone else would. She doesn't even make sure her doors or windows are locked until she hears something. It'd be expected that she'd be a bit paranoid, but she's not. At all.

It had been established that Alice is an artist, and we see that her artwork now has a bit of a dark edge to it. We also see that Alice takes incredibly quick showers - in an uninterrupted shot, we see her enter the bathroom. The camera moves toward the bathroom, enters the room, goes up to the shower curtain... and Alice opens the curtain, done with her shower. The water wasn't even running for 20 seconds.

She probably just rinsed herself with water, there was no time for soap.

When Alice gets a second phone call, there's no one on the line. And when she opens the refrigerator to get something for her cat, who comes leaping through an open window to provide a jump scare, she finds Mrs. Voorhees' severed head staring back at her from inside. As soon as Alice reacts to the sight of the head, Jason grabs her from behind and slides an icepick into her temple.

That phone call couldn't have been Jason, that'd be a little too much, I refuse to believe it. It was probably someone calling the wrong number, or her mom did call back but had a bad connection.

Less than 15 minutes into the movie, the heroine from part 1 has been eliminated. Quick and efficient. Mrs. Voorhees could have done that herself if she had taken Alice by surprise like she did pretty much every other victim, instead of monologuing to her before trying to attack her. It's unfortunate that Alice was killed off so early, but I expect that sort of thing from slashers.

Jason planned this very well. He wanted to terrify Alice before he killed her. Makes me wonder how he was able to walk around town carrying his mom's head. Maybe he put it in a bag. Something to ponder.

I like that Part 2 takes the same approach to showing the kills as the first movie did. We won't get a good, full look at Jason for a long time. For most of the movie, we only see glimpses of his hands, arms, legs, feet...

That works for me. More suspense.

Jason is kind enough to take Alice's tea kettle off the stove top when it starts to whistle, then a flash of white takes us into the opening title sequence, which is much like the first movie's. Part 1 had the title logo smashing through a pane of glass, and Part 2 goes even further: this time the title logo itself explodes to reveal the "Part 2", which looks like it could be made of shiny steel.

That's awesome. Friday the 13th Part 2 is a simple, low-key backwoods slasher, but the credits have an explosion in them.

Jump ahead five years and we're introduced to the characters who will be carrying us through the rest of the story, a new batch of camp counselors who have made the ill-advised decision to go out into the woods of Crystal Lake. They're not at Camp Crystal Lake this time, though. They're at the Packanack Counselor Training Center, which is across the lake from Camp Crystal Lake (a.k.a. Camp Blood).

Packanack is a fantastic location, one of my favorites in the entire series. I really like the look of this place, and the main lodge and nearest cabins were perfectly recreated in the recent Friday the 13th video game. Unfortunately, this is another location that doesn't exist anymore. Someone bought the property and decided to demolish the lodge and cabins so they could build a home there. How can you buy the place where Friday the 13th Part 2 was filmed and then knock it to the ground? Shameful, as far as I'm concerned. 

They do have a spectacular view, though. It's a beautiful place, I would have loved to have gone camping there. Along with the camp from the first Friday the 13th movie, this is my favorite location in the series.

The first counselors we meet are Jeff (Bill Randolph) and his girlfriend Sandra (Marta Kober), as they make their way out to Packanack with Jeff's buddy Ted (Stu Charno), who makes his first appearance after having Jeff's pickup truck towed as a prank. Ted is the movie's goofball character, always telling jokes, making quips, and pulling pranks.

When Sandra tells Jeff their truck is being towed he hangs up the phone before finishing his last sentence, and that makes it so adorably campy. I love that scene.

Basically, Ted is this movie's version of the Ned character from the first movie, but much less annoying and inappropriate. He wins me over as soon as he talks about a bear wiping its ass with a rabbit.

It took me years to find out the first part of the joke, as well as Alice's fate. Growing up, my brother and I owned almost every Friday the 13th movie on laserdisc, but for some reason we could never get our hands on part 2. We used to watch part 2 from one of the times it aired on TV. It was an open channel, and around that time they would only show horror movies very late at night. This specific night, my brother had gone out with friends, but he programmed the VCR to start recording when the movie was supposed to air before he left.

I don't know if he programmed it wrong, or if there was some kind of error, but it only started recording right when Ted is telling the end of the joke. 17 minutes and 20 seconds in. That's when the movie started for us. And we would be left wondering how much of it we lost, and what that first part of the joke was.

On the way to Packanack, the three counselors pass the entrance to Camp Crystal Lake, and Sandra becomes obsessed with getting a look at the place when she realizes it's so close to where they're going to be. Apparently she finds murder sites to be fascinating. Neither she, Jeff, or Ted put too much effort into wondering who dragged a fallen tree out into the road, trying to block it so people can't get to the camps. Jeff and Ted just move it out of the way. And nobody notices that the person who made that tree roadblock is watching them from the woods.

The road is surrounded by trees. Maybe heavy wind knocked one over. It happens.

The training center is headed up by "senior camp counselor" Paul Holt (John Furey), a fun guy who has a good rapport with the people he's training. Among those trainees are cabinmates Terry (Kirsten Baker), who goes around in extremely skimpy clothes and has brought her little dog Muffin out into the woods with her, and Vickie (Lauren-Marie Taylor), who very obviously has a crush on Mark (Tom McBride), who is in a wheelchair after being injured in a motorcycle accident. A short term setback as far as Mark is concerned. Scott (Russell Todd) clearly has the hots for Terry, but he's the kind of guy who thinks that shooting a girl in the butt with a slingshot or stealing her clothes when she goes skinnydipping is going to win her over.

Miner and Kurz put together a good bunch of characters for this movie. They're not all awesome people, but none of them are too irritating. Most of them are pretty likeable, I enjoy the time we spend with them.

I agree. They're entertaining and mostly funny even when some of them get slightly annoying, like Scott.

It should be noted that there are more counselors-in-training than we get to know, including an African American male and an Asian female... and these background characters survive!

Getting drunk in a bar saved their lives!

Paul's assistant is child psychology major Ginny Field, who was named in tribute to Friday the 13th parts 1 and 2 production designer Virginia Field. Played by Amy Steel, Ginny is a strong, smart, capable character who is the favorite slasher movie "final girl" for a lot of horror fans. Ginny is more than just Paul's assistant; when they're alone together, there's no doubt that they have a romantic history, and Ginny seems to have fun bantering with him.

Once all the characters we need to know have been introduced, we get one of the most iconic scenes in the entire Friday the 13th franchise. A scene in which Paul tells his trainees a campfire story: the legend of Jason Voorhees. Jason was only discussed in the previous movie as a young boy who drowned in 1957, so now Part 2 has to set him up as a living adult and potential slasher. According to Paul, Jason's body was never recovered from the lake after he drowned, and some people believe that he has been surviving in the wilderness, a demented creature who steals the supplies he needs and lives off wild animals and vegetation. Some people even claim they have seen him out in the woods. Legend is that he saw his mother beheaded and took his revenge on Alice - who disappeared from her blood-splattered home. Now Jason will continue to get his revenge on anyone else who enters the Crystal Lake wilderness. The counselors at Packanack are the first to venture out there in five years, and Paul says that Jason's out there, watching, waiting. Then Ted jumps out of the darkness wearing a hideous sort of caveman outfit, holding a spear. Paul was messing with his counselors; Jason drowned, Mrs. Voorhees was killed, and Camp Crystal Lake is off limits. He doesn't want to hear any more about it.

This may have been a joke for Paul, but it's a very effective scene. Furey tells the story in a mesmerizing way, delivering the lines perfectly. The story seems to turn out to be pretty much true as the movie goes along, and the idea of giving us the legend of Jason through a campfire tale was brilliant.

It's my favorite campfire scene hands down. There are some good campfire scenes in horror movies, but none even close to how efficient this one is. And when Paul's talking about nobody knowing what happened to Alice, I was right there with him. Because I had no clue she had been killed by Jason until years later, thanks to the stupid VCR programming.

Paul's story has the opposite of the intended effect on Sandra; it just makes her more interested in sneaking over to Camp Crystal Lake. She tells Jeff she has "just gotta see that camp". We know going over to Camp Blood is a terrible idea, but it's not like going there is going to catch Jason's attention and bring him after the counselors. Jason already saw them when they passed by the entrance to the condemned camp... and he has already followed them over to Packanack.

What did Sandra expect to find exactly? Her behavior is truly weird to me.

The first person to find out that Jason is at Packanack is the only returning character from the first movie other than Alice (and this new, adult version of Jason), doomsayer Crazy Ralph, played by Walt Gorney. Crazy Ralph first appears when we're meeting Jeff and Sandra in town, showing up to tell them, "I told the others. They didn't believe me. You're all doomed. You're all doomed!" Then he peddles off on his bicycle. When Ginny goes to bed her first night at Packanack, Paul visits her in her cabin - and Crazy Ralph is standing outside, watching it all.

It was smart to bring Ralph back for Part 2, because anyone who saw part 1 would remember this guy. Ralph himself, on the other hand, is not smart. He keeps going to the places he warns others to stay away from. He stopped by Camp Blood so he could hang out in the food pantry in the first movie, and now he's stalking around at Packanack.

At least in part 1 he was smart enough to leave before it got dark. This time around he decided to stay. Awful decision. I expected more from Ralph, and I wouldn't have pegged him as a perv.

Jason is inadvertently preserving Ginny and Paul's dignity when he garrotes Crazy Ralph with a strand of barbed wire.

It's sad to see Crazy Ralph go. Given that filmmakers would go on to drop other random doomsayers into future installments in the franchise, I think there was some regret that he was killed off in the first sequel.

Understandably so. He was undoubtedly the best one of them.

The next day seems to begin with a reference to Ginny being on her period. During his introductory speech to his trainees, Paul mentioned that this area is "bear country", and one bit of advice he gave the group on how to avoid having an encounter with bears is for the women to keep clean during their menstrual cycle. When Paul and Ginny start to get intimate that night, she stops and says she has to tell him something. Then when she wakes up in the morning, Paul has left her cabin, and on the way out he wrote a message on her mirror with lipstick: "Beware of Bears". Viewers can debate among themselves whether or not Ginny being on her period would deter Paul from what he was going for.

Ginny goes jogging and swimming while on her period. That's the type of period most women can only dream of having.

Most of the events take place on the second day at Packanack, but if this day is meant to be Friday the 13th it's never stated. In fact, parts 2, 3, and 4 all take place within a short period of time, and it's never said in any of them that it's Friday the 13th. The idea of these movies being set on that date was tossed out the window very quickly.

The only training we see take place is when Paul has the counselors jog along a path in the woods. After that it's lunch time, then everyone takes a swim break. At one point Muffin wanders away into the woods and ends up at the feet of Jason. The dog looks up at this mysterious person, making an uncertain sound, then Miner and editor Susan E. Cunningham cut away to hot dogs being cooked on a grill. Cheeky.

Terry is such an awful pet owner. Muffin is not the type of dog that should be out in the woods alone. She's a small furry dog. She could drag all kinds of stuff on her fur, could get trapped, lost, hurt, not to mention be attacked by animals, especially bears like Paul had previously mentioned. If you absolutely have to bring your little dog to camp, you have to keep her inside, or on a leash at all times.

While others are swimming and joking around with each other, Jeff and Sandra finally have the opportunity to sneak away and check out Camp Blood. They don't even get to the camp before they also bump into someone in the woods... But it's not Jason. It's a cop who was given the name Deputy Winslow in the novelization and is played by Jack Marks. The cop takes Jeff and Sandra back to Packanack, then has a discussion with Paul about his belief that he shouldn't have brought people out into the woods so close to Camp Crystal Lake. He's afraid something's going to happen to disturb the peace in Crystal Lake after five years. And he's appalled that Paul doesn't take Jeff and Sandra's sneaky trip more seriously. Not liking that this guy is trying to tell him how to handle his business, Paul jokingly tells Ginny that Jeff and Sandra's punishment will be "no seconds on dessert" at dinner.

The cop/Deputy Winslow expressing his concerns to Paul is reminiscent of the locals who weren't happy that Camp Blood was being re-opened in part 1. Putting this scene in here was a nice touch, and this character is a doomsayer in his own way.

As the cop attempts to drive out of the woods, we see he was right to be worried. Glimpsed very briefly, someone in boots, bib overalls, a flannel shirt, and with a white cloth sack on their head goes hurrying across the road in front of the cop's vehicle, heading into the woods. The cop stops his car and gives chase.

Jason looks kind of funny running across the road like that, but the cop looks even funnier as he pursues Jason through the woods, frequently taking quick rest stops, at one point even fixing his hair.

The cop's pursuit of Jason - who, yes, does run at this point in the series - leads him to a messily put together shack in the woods. Jason's shack. It was said that Jason steals the supplies he needs, and this shack is visual proof. It was obviously assembled from bits and pieces stolen from various locations. When the cop enters the shack, we see there's even a toilet in there. Everybody poops, even Jason. The most important thing in the shack is the shrine Jason has made to his mother - her decaying head sits in the middle of a table, surrounded by candles and the clothes she died in.

Jason keeping his mom's head and building a shrine around it is extremely creepy, and also shows us what this Jason character is all about. Paul was right, he is avenging the death of his mother... who was avenging his death... It's nonsensical, but who cares? It's all in fun.

Makes you wonder why Jason wouldn't have stepped out to save his mother if he was there watching.

Police must have been baffled when they found Mrs. Voorhees' body, as her head was missing and apparently she was nude or wearing only her underwear, because her sweater and pants are in Jason's shack. If Alice knew someone had stripped Mrs. Voorhees' body after she left it, she was really stupid to stay in Crystal Lake.

Maybe Jason only took the clothes later on, robbed from Mrs. Voorhees' grave. Either way, staying in Crystal Lake turned out not to be a wise decision for Alice. Or even a logical one.

The cop gets worse punishment for trespassing in Jason's shack than Jeff and Sandra got for trespassing on Camp Crystal Lake property. Then it's night, dinnertime at Packanack is coming to an end, and most of the counselors are planning to head out to a bar. A last night on the town before their training gets really serious. Only a handful of them stay behind, all people we've come to know over the last 25 minutes: Terry, who is hoping Muffin will show up; Scott, who stays because Terry is staying; Mark, who doesn't want to spoil the party as the "drunk in a wheelchair"; Vickie, who stays because Mark is staying; and Jeff and Sandra - who want to go, but have been told they can't. This is their true punishment.

Paul doesn't realize he is giving Jeff and Sandra a death sentence when he tells them they can't leave Packanack.

It's almost exactly at the halfway point of the movie when Paul, Ginny, and the other counselors head off to the bar, leaving six behind, and most of the rest of the movie focuses on Jason picking those six characters off. Not realizing they're being stalked by a murderer, the counselors keep managing to isolate themselves and/or drop their guard - and as you'd expect from a slasher movie, these bad moves they make involve skinnydipping, having sex, and preparing to have sex.

When we get to see more of the characters who stayed behind, what we already knew about them becomes even more obvious. Terry still doesn't seem too worried about Muffin: bad doggy mom. Scott is still trying all kinds of ridiculous things to get Terry's attention: awful at flirting. Vickie gets less and less subtle as the movie goes on: horndog for Mark.

When Vickie finally gets Mark on board for some intimate alone time she changes her underwear. She probably thought the golden brown panties would look classy and sensual to Mark, but I'm thinking most guys wouldn't think "sexy" for brown. Oh well, Mark never got to see it anyway.

Vickie definitely should have kept the black panties she started with. 

Every time the characters are alone or preoccupied Jason takes the opportunity to strike. The deaths aren't as bloody as some of the standout kills in the first movie, but there are still a few memorable ones in here.

I don't think the deaths of Scott, Terry, or Vickie are mind-blowing, although it's interesting that Scott gets caught in a snare trap that hangs him upside down. He blames Paul, but some would probably argue that Jason set that up.

We don't know how Terry died, which is never ideal. Vickie was in such complete shock that she didn't even try to escape, she didn't even move. And she had plenty of time to do so.

The other three kills are among my favorites. Jeff and Sandra getting impaled together with a spear while having sex is the more popular one, but my #1 favorite of the film is the death of Mark - and that's actually because of what happens to his body after he's killed. He gets chopped in the face with a machete, then we see his wheelchair go hurtling down the steps that lead from the lodge down to the lake. That shot of his body rolling down the steps, a shot which ends with a freeze frame and a fade to white, is spectacular.

That is my favorite kill as well. Nothing beats Mark's death scene for me. And the fact that it doesn't look fake makes it even better. Very impressive.

We get our first good look at Jason about 63 minutes into the 87 minute movie. Trying to figure out where everyone else disappeared to, Vickie goes into Jeff and Sandra's room - and finds Jason lying in bed next to Sandra's corpse, knife in hand, just waiting to be found under the sheet. When Vickie steps up to the bed, Jason throws back the sheet and stands up... and the sight of this man with a sack on his head is so terrifying that Vickie just backs up against the wall where Jeff's body has been strung up with a sheet and just waits to be killed.

The spookiest Jason looks in part 2 is when he's just lying down in bed next to a dead body. Eerie moment for me. 

Jason's backwoods sackhead look works for this movie, but just for this movie. You couldn't build a franchise around a character who looks like this, so it was very wise of them to change his appearance in the next movie.

While people are being killed at Packanack, the others are partying at a bar / casino where a live band is providing music for people who can't dance.

People in the bar produce the most dreadful dance moves. It's extremely amusing.

This is another location that is gone. The place burned down soon after filming, and someone has since built a mansion on its ashes.

With a couple beers in her, Ginny starts talking to Paul and Ted about the legend of Jason. Although her companions believe Jason has been dead since 1957, Ginny digs into the idea that he's still out there, surviving in the woods, mourning his mother. She clearly feels sympathy for this version of the character she's creating in her mind, this boy who never went to school, never had friends, whose whole world was his mother. He wouldn't have even known the meaning of death until he saw her get decapitated, and now he must be crying for her return.

Paul's campfire story and Ginny's beer-fueled theorizing are the only explanation we get for what's going on with Jason, and these aren't characters who know for sure what happened to him. The movie is better for not giving any solid answers. Fans have been debating for nearly forty years now; has Jason been surviving in the woods since 1957, as the legend and the theories imply, or did he rise from the dead after his mom was killed? Was his spirit truly driving Mrs. Voorhees to kill, or was she insane? If Jason was alive, why did he and his mother never cross paths as twenty years went by? No movie in this series should ever tell us for sure.

And maybe it's for the better. This way there'll always be doubts and different theories popping up. Also, we get to decide for ourselves what we think did happen.

The only characters who return to Packanack before the movie ends are Ginny and Paul - the last time we see Ted, he's even asking another bar patron if there's an after hours place he can go to. His desire to get wasted is what saves his life. Meanwhile, Ginny and Paul run into a whole lot of trouble back at camp. By the time they get there it's raining so hard that they joke it's a "nice night... if you're a duck", but the storm is the least of their worries.

The lights are on, but no one's around. Remnants of weed have been left in an ashtray; Paul comments, "They smoke better dope than I do." Jeff and Sandra's bed is soaked with blood. Then the main fuse in the lodge goes out, and when Paul goes to fix it Ginny senses there's someone in the dark room with them. When she sees Jason and shouts, "Paul, there's someone in this f*cking room!", it kicks off a chase and attack sequence that lasts nearly the entire remaining 20 minutes of the movie.

The fact that Ginny basically stands there allowing for Paul to be attacked, without even trying to do something to help, is a bit of a turn off for me. But she had been drinking, so maybe that's why it takes her so long to react.

The chase is fun, but this is not the strong and capable Jason we'll see in future movies. Sackhead Jason bumbles a bit, and isn't so hard to knock down. There's a really goofy shot of Jason being knocked to the ground by Ginny's car door, soon after he's getting kicked in the nuts, and soon after that he lunges out of the dark at Ginny and misses, so he just falls to the ground. He's a bit dazed and wobbly when he stands up from that. He doesn't get beat up as much as his mom did in the first movie, but he still doesn't fare very well against Ginny.

There is an effective jump scare early in the chase, when Ginny is trying to hold a door closed, believing Jason is on the other side of it, while starting to move toward a window so she can escape. Then Jason comes smashing through the window. That jump used to get me every time I watched the movie.

It didn't get me, but I can see why it got you. It's great and unexpected, at least it was unexpected back then.

The most famous part of the chase may be when Ginny tries to hide under a bed, and seconds after she gets there a curious rat comes strolling up to her face. Viewers debate whether Ginny pees or the rat pees, but whichever one it is sends a stream of urine flowing out from under the bed. That's how Jason figures out where Ginny is. Luckily for her, he completely botches his attempt to kill her while she's under the bed; when she starts to crawl out, she sees Jason towering over her, standing on a wooden chair with his pitchfork in hand, ready to strike. Then the chair collapses under his weight and Jason falls down again.

Seems to me that was way too much pee. Unless Ginny hadn't gone to the bathroom for hours, her panties and jeans pants should have absorbed at least some of the urine. She had been drinking some beers, though. Who knows?

Ginny runs off into the woods and comes across Jason's shack, and she's so desperate she runs into the shack thinking she might find help in there. Instead she finds the shrine to Mrs. Voorhees' head, with the corpses of Alice, the cop, and Terry lying nearby like sacrificial offerings. Alice's corpse decayed even quicker than Mrs. Voorhees' head; Alice is nothing but a skeleton now, the icepick still stuck in her skull.

And I wasn't even aware that it was Alice's skeleton until years later!

Ginny has some child psychology education, she knows Jason was attached to his mother. With Jason busting into the shack with a pickaxe so he can get to her, she has an idea. She puts on Mrs. Voorhees' sweater, and when Jason enters the room she begins talking to him as if she's his mother, resurrected. It's crazy, but it works... which gives us some insight into Jason's mental capacities. He is convinced that Ginny is his mom, and Betsy Palmer reprises the role of Mrs. Voorhees for a few moments as Jason imagines that she's back and talking to him. It isn't until he sees the severed head behind Ginny that he realizes this isn't really his mommy speaking to him.

This is the scene where I really feel Ginny becomes one of the best heroines in the series. She had some good moments before this, but the fact that she believes she understands Jason well enough that she would even try to trick him like this gives her a major boost.

Playing mind games with Jason puts Ginny high on my favorite Friday the 13th series heroines. She had hesitated before, when Jason first attacks Paul in the main cabin, but here she more than makes up for it.

With some help from Paul, Ginny is able to stop Jason, but she does so in a way that any movie killer could walk away from. If Mrs. Voorhees had been stopped in this way in part 1, she might have been back in action for this sequel.

Once Jason is down, the film enters a scene that has been baffling viewers for almost forty years. Ginny and Paul return to her cabin, where Muffin shows up at the door - even though Jeff and Sandra had found a dead animal earlier that looked a whole lot like Muffin. Just when Ginny is happily greeting Muffin, the window behind her shatters and an unmasked Jason - sporting long hair and a beard - comes lunging through, grabbing her. Just like the young Jason grabbed Alice out of the canoe at the end of part 1.

Although Warrington Gillette is credited as Jason and earned all the praise for the role for a couple decades, it was eventually revealed that the person who handled most of the Jason scenes was stuntman Steve "Dash" Daskawisz.

I have yet to meet Warrington Gillette, but I was around Steve Dash on a couple different occasions and he was a fun guy, a very entertaining storyteller who had some good stories about his experience working on Friday the 13th Part 2 and getting injured multiple times during the production. Dash passed away not long ago and it was really sad to see him go.

Very sad. I wish I had met him. Thankfully, along with a lot of other Friday the 13th people, I have his signature, which brings me much joy.

Then it's morning and Ginny is waking up on a gurney while being loaded into the back of an ambulance, and Paul is nowhere in sight. "Where's Paul?" It seems the return of Muffin and this extra Jason attack was all a dream... Or was it? Where is Paul? Some fans believe Paul was killed, some don't.

It saddens me to say this, but yes... in my opinion it was all a dream, which means what Jeff and Sandra saw in the woods was indeed poor little Muffin's remains. Paul left a passed out, completely in shock Ginny in her cabin and went to get help. The reason he's not there at the end is because he was reunited with Ted and the rest of the camp counselors to break the devastating news to them.

Like the first movie, Part 2 leaves some questions lingering in our minds when it ends, but those questions don't lessen my enjoyment of the film. I think this movie is a great follow-up to its predecessor. Miner and the crew did a perfect job of carrying the style Cunningham established with the first movie over into this sequel. It might not be quite as dark or creepy, but it's still an awesome slasher. A lot of slashers were released in 1981, I'm a fan of several, but Friday the 13th Part 2 is my favorite of the bunch.

The first movie has a more serious, threatening tone, which I have grown to appreciate more and more over the years. The sequel's tone is lighter, but still scary. It has been one of my favorites since I first watched it decades ago, even with the first 17 minutes of its running time missing.

Having an adult Jason suddenly show up as the killer may not have been logical, but Ron Kurz actually somehow made it work with his script. This may not quite be the Jason who would quickly become a horror icon, but he gets the slashing done well.

Jason is almost a bit goofy at times during part 2, but that just means he was getting the hang of things. There's room to improve. And he will.

A nice setting, a dark woods, some good slashing, a smart heroine... What more could you ask for? Friday the 13th Part 2 is one of the greats.

I'm always in the mood to watch part 2 even though I've seen it hundreds of times. It remains one of my favorites, not only within the franchise, but horror movies in general.