Thread by @midnitetease

Friday the 13th Part 2. An early horror sequel. An unexpected horror sequel. Is there another murderer at Camp Crystal Lake? Did the goofy ending from the first movie mean the corpse of 11-year-old Jason Voorhees is seeking vengeance for his beheaded mother?

The movie opens in a completely unexpected way: in a Halloween or possibly Nightmare on Elm Street sequel.

By which a mean, on a dark residential street, following a young girl (or her feet) splashing through puddles and singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

And yet it can't be a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel, that didn't come out for another 3 years. Hmmm. And Halloween 2 didn't come out until later in the year. Was this the first slasher sequel?

The little girl is called inside, and she's followed by adult feet (in shoes) stepping into the puddle she previously occupied. Those steps are accompanied by a sharp violin sting, so we know this (probably) a/the killer. Whoever that is.

Feet walk toward house. It is clearly a house that belongs in a Halloween movie. Someone is confused.

At 1:30, we see that Alice from the first movie is in the house. She's having nightmares because she's watching the final 15 minutes of Friday the 13th edited for time. This literally is the next 5 minutes of the movie. LITERALLY. Bit much, guys.

Something I noticed in the first movie is repeated: Alice talks a call from her mother, then returns to her room and disrobes behind a partially open door (clothes thrown into view on the bed). She re-enters the shot pulling her robe closed, implying just-missed nudity.

Oh, I just remembered; I never updated the Camp Crystal Lake Lore count:

1957: Jason Voorhees and fires
1958: two camp counselors.
Present day: 7 camp counselors and the new owner of CCL; Mrs. Voorhees.

Two tropes: camera zooms in on the shower curtain (you can see the cameraman's shadow) when the curtain is yanked open (meant to be a jump scare?); then phone rings and there's NO ONE THERE.

It seem odd that someone paranoid about being stalked by a killer would leave their door unlocked and window open.

Sudden cat jump scare! (I know for a fact this wasn't the first.)

Mrs. Voorhees' head in the fridge, and the killer is behind her. Icepick to the head, surprisingly cut just a bit quick. Guess they didn't have a good effect for that.

And somehow the killer has something to do with Mrs. Voorhees and the first movie. And is clearly not an 11-year-old.

The credits just exploded. Weird choice for a horror movie.

First movie started with a solo girl who should be the final girl, but was in fact the first to be killed. Ditto, the second movie.

First movie then introduces the cowboy kid, his hot girlfriend, and a geek/slimeball in a pickup.

Second movie now introduces a cowboy kid and his hot girlfriend in a (really nice, new) pickup.

Except the girlfriend looks like a technically underage porn star.

Girlfriend is played by Marta Kober. She was 17 when this was filmed. So......hmm. I feel creepy calling her "bouncy bouncy" or "jelloboobs" now. Because she doesn't wear a bra and they have a mind of their own.

Slimeball/geek has their pickup towed as practical joke, then joins them in the pickup for the trip to the lake. So we've gone through all the same characters in the same order still.

A convenient dead branch in the road allows underage to find a Camp Crystal Lake sign, so that the slimeball/geek can explain they're NOT GOING to Camp Crystal Lake. This is some other camp that's being setup as a counselor training course. Watcher in the woods is back.

This time the movie is making it clear it's a man.

Lots of unnamed counselors, + short shorts and Couldn't Get John Travolta.

Seriously, those are some VERY short shorts. Like, better than Screen Nudity short shorts.

These people have names: Short Shorts is Terry, we're introduced to Vickie, Not-Travolta is Scott, wheelchair guy is Mark, the geek is Ted, Cowboy Kid is Jeff, Underage is Sandra, and the boss is Paul.

And finally Ginny, who is the final girl for this movie. That's my bet, anyway. Vickie is too incidental, Terry is too hot, Sandra is paired with someone from the start, no one else is named.

Ginny is Paul's assistant/former/current/girlfriend; and brings the non-functioning vehicle for this movie.

And now we're 1/3 of the way through the movie. And we just finished introducing everyone.

If she is the final girl in this movie, she's already violated one of the early rules. She hasn't had sex with anyone, but she's openly flirtatious and disrespectful of authority.

She's also allowed to embarrass Paul when he attempts to engage in a little White Knighting. This is still early in the original "final girl" era.

Interesting. A ghost story introduces the idea that Jason's body was never found, and he's lived all these years as a hermit in the woods, and witnessed Alice kill his mother.

After a jump scare, Paul explains the story is BS: Jason drowned, his mother was killed.

But now the idea is out there. What if that WAS true?

Turns out it's the creepy prophet of doom from the 1st movie who's stalking the counselors.

Or not. Killer from the opening act strangles him against a tree. 2 dead.

Don't kill the dog!

Really? Cut to cooking hot dogs after that?

Everybody keeps seeing the killer. And I don't mean "thinks they see the killer"; because they're being directed to stare DIRECTLY and UNFLINCHINGLY into the eye of the camera. Which gives the impression that they are looking at something very specific, not "a direction".

Jello. Boing Boing Boing Boing. Don't let them out, there could be an accident.

I'm so sorry.

He killed the dog. At least they didn't show it.

Ah. This is five years after Present Day. I'll update the Lore later.

Sheriff chases a guy in a sack-hood through the woods to a make-shift shack. OMG the story is true!

Sheriff see's something horrible/amazing, then is killed by the murderer. But I guess we're supposed to assume at this point that, yeah, the ghost story is what ACTUALLY happened. Jason didn't die in the lake. He lived as a hermit from 11-years-old to 5-years-after Present Day.

Short-shorts also wears bare-midriff shirts and no bra.

Short-shorts goes skinny-dipping in the lake. There really wasn't a need to strip; she's basically been naked the entire movie.

Riffs on the Jaws theme while short-shorts is swimming.

It's becoming clear that Part 2 already crosses the line from trying to do something original to being a cash-in genre film. A handful of references to other movies, the use of jump scares, and shots set up solely because the audience is expecting to see the killer.

By which I mean, you are expected to use your experience with the first movie and other slasher movies to anticipate what's going to happen. The movie is built to use that.

Confirmed kills so far:

Alice
Muffin (the dog)
The Sheriff
Scott (not Travolta)

That's the kind of "the killer sneaking up on you" that doesn't work. The cut back and forth from first person view camera sneaking right behind Mark, then 180 it to show his face, but the camera is far enough out that you can CLEARLY see there's no one behind him. That's cheap.

Interesting cut, though. Mark gets hacked, goes flying backwards down steps in his wheelchair, then halfway down they freeze, quick-fade to white then flash into Underage and cowboy kid orgasming. Just to make the sex and murder link complete.

Another great classic kill. The two-in-one spear through the bed.

Interesting note: Underage (who was 17 at the time) is depicted as being IN the act of sexual intercourse, is implied to be nude, but never actually appears nude or even topless in the movie. Two women in bras, although everyone is bra-less when they have their clothes on...

...and short shorts, who appeared topless, nude, and bra-less.

Also note that short shorts is not confirmed to be dead. Yet.

Hand-holding-knife cam, first seen in Halloween. Lot of laziness in this movie.

Kill update:

Alice
Muffin (the dog)
The Sheriff
Scott (not Travolta)
(maybe) short shorts
Mark (wheelchair guy)
Jeff then Sandra (cowboy kid & underage)
Vickie (likes wheelchair guy)

Car won't start. <drink>

YOU HAVE A CLOTH ROOF.

Amazing how people forget that.

In Halloween, part of the scariness of Michael is that he's human, but not quite right. He doesn't react to things correctly. Mrs. Voorhees was just a normal person who killed everyone who did certain things in a certain place because of her particular psychosis.

Whoever this is (presumably Jason) seems to be more human than Michael Myers. He's not super-strong, not impervious to pain, the only reason he hasn't been beaten yet is because no one has had the right tool at the right time. He's just a guy with a bag over his head.

Now that he's out in the open, he's not even scary. He's just...alarming.

Oh, good grief. Her head was sticking up over the top of the car. How did he not see her?

TWO "time passes" shots while running through the woods.

I need to watch a "making of" for this film. I bet there was a TON cut out. The editing in this final segment is slipshod. Rushed, maybe.

Dumbass. That's a wicker chair and you're huge.

How did you get on it without anyone hearing?

NO! I don't care if the chainsaw stopped! Hit him with the chainsaw! It's got sharp pointy bits! Chairs don't!

Friday the 13th, people mostly acted in ways that made sense in the context of the movie.

Part Two polishes all the tropes we've come to expect in horror movies. Currently, people doing things that make no sense purely because the movie needs them to.

Ginny finds the shack. Now we get the proof this is Jason, who has lived as a hermit at Camp Crystal Lake ever since he was 11.

The shocking room contains the head of Mrs. Voorhees and her clothes on a shrine, the dead bodies of Scott and Terry (now, they weren't there earlier), and the corpse of Alice, who is somehow the most decomposed body of all. Which makes no sense.

OK. She treats him like he's Jason and he responds. (She's a child psychologist, that's how she knows this will work). So confirmation, this is Jason Voorhees, who has lived as a hermit all these years. Although I guess his mother must have known? Right?

And so she was killing people to keep them from finding him?

Retcons are hard.

Well, it almost worked. You had the time, you could have thrown the head behind the shrine.

Remove the hood, don't show us what's underneath. Guess who ain't dead yet. Gotta save that reveal.

Wait, the dog is still alive? Cheap. The dead dog earlier was clearly meant to be Muffin, even if they did say they couldn't tell for sure.

Jason leaps through a window and grabs Ginny, and it's clearly Jason because the right-side of his head is made up to resemble the decomposed-looking head of 11-year-old Jason from the first movie. So I guess he wasn't decomposed, he just looked like that.

I guess that's what Mrs. Voorhees meant by "he was..."

And then we jump-cut to the ending. Ginny is alive and being loaded into an ambulance, Paul is not, Muffin is not, and Jason is maybe dead, maybe not, because maybe that last sequence was a dream and maybe not.

And one named camper and a bunch of unnamed ones just disappear from the movie.

Final Lore:

1957: Jason Voorhees doesn't die in a drowning accident. Fires occur.
1958: Two camp counselors are killed by probably Mrs. Voorhees.
Present Day: 7 Camp Counselors, the owner of the camp, and Mrs. Voorhees are all killed.

Final Lore:

Five Years Later: Alice from the first movie, the current town sheriff, and Ralph the town loony are all killed by Jason Voorhees, a hermit in the woods.

Jason also kills: 6 camp counselors at a training camp, maybe or maybe not a dog and the owner. 9 people.

Upon completing the movie, the big thing that stands out is that this is what would come to be seen as a "by the numbers" slasher movie. It's unimaginative and quite lazy. It's sloppy. Reliant on jump scares.

The gore is turned down from the first movie, but the nudity is turned up. One extended fully nude scene, another "technically" full frontal, a sexual act that actually depicts, non-explicitly, intercourse rather than the tangentials. Porky's was a big hit earlier in the year.

This was a cash-in movie, which is disappointing after how great the first one was. But...that's also the nature of the beast. It'll take a creative mind to do something new with this property.