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Friday The 13th Part 2 (1981)

DVD Cover (Paramount Deluxe Edition)
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Overall Rating 67%
Overall Rating
Ranked #1,992
...out of 20,324 movies
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Connections: Friday The 13th

Months after Alice beheaded psycho killer/mother Pamela Voorhees at Camp Crystal Lake, survivor Alice is still traumatized because of the murders. But there is one problem: Mrs. Voorhees' son Jason never drowned and died, so he saw Alice behead Mrs. Voorhees. Jason finds Alice soon and murders her. Five years later, a camp counselor-in-training program begins at Packanack Lodge, right near Camp Crystal Lake. As teenagers in the program start snooping around Camp Crystal Lake, they start getting killed violently one by one. --IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: April 6, 2005
Five years after the events in the first movie, Paul (John Furey) and his girlfriend Ginny (Amy Steel) set up a camp counselor training center just a few miles away from the now-abandoned Camp Crystal Lake. Paul's goal is to bring in a group of counselors, train them in the timeless art of counseling for two weeks, and then send them out to various camps to ply their trade. We have six main people (and a slew of nameless extras) showing up for the training - Terry (Kirsten Baker), Sandra (Marta Kober), her boyfriend Jeff (Bill Randolph), wheelchair-bound Mark (Tom McBride), Vickie (Lauren Taylor), and Scott (Russell Todd). Also along for the ride is the wise-cracking Ted (Stuart Charno), an assistant to Paul. As day one passes, the group goes through your typical camp day... running through the woods, swimming, and a ghost story is even told by the campfire. The story being told involves the happenings around Camp Crystal Lake and how Jason was never found, which leads some of the locals to believe that he is still out and about in these woods, dispatching anyone foolish enough to venture to close to his home at Crystal Lake. Paul, the teller of the story, also explains that Alice (Adrienne King), the sole survivor of the events that took place five years ago, has recently turned up missing... the only thing found when police investigated her apartment was a huge pile of blood, but no body was ever found. The night winds down, and everyone passes the story off as an urban legend... everyone, that is, with the exception of Sandra and Jeff, who decide to hike over to Crystal Lake and see what's going on over there. This prompts Jason (played here by Warrington Gillette) to make his return and tack ten more victims onto his growing body count.

Entry number two in the series plays out in much the same fashion as the first: a group of young adults show up to some cabins in the wilderness, have some premarital sex and smoke some weed, all prior to being picked off one by one. The difference here, however, is that now Jason is the one responsible for the murders, with his motive being vengeance for his dead mother. The other big difference here is that the pace of the movie has been sped up considerably; there's no more of that waiting until forty-five minutes into the movie before anything happens nonsense. The gore, however, has sadly been knocked down a notch. Most of the kills presented here followed the same basic pattern - Jason hits someone with a machete / hammer / knife, we see the victim for a split second, and then it cuts over to the next scene. Not every murder suffers from this this sad state of affairs, but a grand majority do. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the edited American DVD release and how much is due to the director simply not wanting to show too much of the red stuff, but if it was the former, I do believe that Paramount should have went the extra step to put out a better edit.

As far as sequels go, this was a worthy entry into the series. The storyline progresses along nicely, continuing the tale that began in the original and expanding it in order to keep the idea semi-fresh. The same basic formula that made the original entertaining is kept, which is both a good and bad thing. It's good, because it shows that the people responsible for the film realized which aspects of the original made it so popular and hung on to those for the sequel. However, this is a bit bad because not enough has been changed up (with the obvious exception of the killer and the end revelation), so in the end, this entry feels almost like a rehash of the original. Hell, even the survivors from this and the first movie share something in common - both were the young, blonde assistant to the person in charge of the camp. The only real difference between the two ladies was that while Ginny is currently dating the man in charge in this film, Alice had recently broken up with the leader in the first film. A little more variety could have went a long way here.

If you enjoyed the first entry, this one is more of the same. The pacing is better, the storyline is enhanced nicely, and there's an excellent body count... however, I couldn't help but feel that this one was too similar to the original. Just for the record, I've seen each of the movies in the series and I'm fully aware that the same basic thing occurs in each... but even with that standard storyline of the series in mind, this one was much too close to the original in terms of storyline and the way it played out. Thanks to the better pacing and the better kill methods (even though they were cut away from too quickly), this one would have ranked higher than the original... but the lack of originality here brings it back down to a 7/10.
Ginose #1: Ginose - added June 11, 2007 at 11:45pm
Best of the series in my opinion. This was the only one that ever instilled any fear in me (I watched the series primarily because of some of the bad-assity of a masked killer like Jason) and I have to admit, I've always found that damned burlap-sack a hundred times scarier than his trademark hockey-mask... either way this one had the creepiest feel to it. 9.1/10
bradbunson #2: bradbunson - added October 30, 2008 at 12:18am
Yeah I LOVE THIS MOVIE. #3 is my favorite. I am very excited for the remake after seeing it on here.
Tristan #3: Tristan - added February 14, 2009 at 4:14pm
Among the best in the series, no doubt. Eons better than the original.

9/10
Nirrad #4: Nirrad - added February 14, 2009 at 4:20pm
The atmosphere in this one is incredible. So many creepy moments like when Jason is hiding in the dark living room. The only thing setting this back from perfect are the mediocre kills. 9/10 as well. I also love the idea of Jason living in a shack.
Tristan #5: Tristan - added February 14, 2009 at 4:25pm
"There is someone in this room"

Best scene in the series.
waxtadpole3657 #6: waxtadpole3657 - added October 27, 2009 at 12:00am
Pretty awesome movie. The ending actually made me jump, and that hardly ever happens. That slow-mo shot of Jason jumping through the window is creepy as hell.
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