That might sound cynical but this film, made at the dawn of teen slashers while the rules were still getting their first draft, happily reinforces everything that works and presages some features that the franchise itself would use. The first Friday the 13th was an attempt at distilling what worked about Halloween and dispensing with all that pesky character development. It worked and its first sequel added even more filtration. Get young adults together in a remote location. Kill them.
While I am not about to exaggerate the nuances of the relationships and characterisations here, there is some basic work done on what's between Paul and Ginny, Vickie shows paraplegic Mark that her attraction to him is not drawn from pity, whacky Ted is not just a pranky git. Ginny's bar-side musings on the legend of Jason and that he might have grown to age with no means to distinguish violence from morality. Surrounded by people washing their own ethics away with gushes of beer, it's a poignant moment.
So then you get the kills and they're good. Although gore effects emperor Tom Savini did cross paths with Jason and his victims, this time the setups are handled by Steven Kirshoff. Hammer claws to the skull, machetes to the neck, an encore of a javelin through sexually engaged bodies. All who paid for more of the first one were getting just that. As to the score, Henry Manfredini is back with his Psycho-inspired shrieks in the high stirngs. There is more electronica on the same stage though and the viewing I did for this featured a scene backed by the violin intensity and some strange synthesised chirping which added an uncomfortable weirdness to the scene.
The most famous setpiece in the film comes at the end when Ginny musters everything she knows about psychology to hypnotically convince Jason that she is his murdered mother. She dons the deceased's jumper and talks to the killer, stopping him as he crashes through the door. It works. With her life at stake, and those of countless future others, she does a turn for the ages as Jason's vision blurs through confusion to acceptance, right up to the moment where he sees his mother's dessicated head still on the altar where he left it. Ginny is making good with her theorising and adding a comprehension to it that feels like compassion. Where the inspirational figure of Michael Myers in Halloween's sequel (same year) might benefit from a few sprinkles of rounding back detail, he remains a mechanical predator. Jason gets a personality and history of abuse, the childlike killer left is made all the more terrifying.
The Jason of this outing has yet to put his iconic hockey mask on his face. He does wear an Elephant Man hessian sack with a single eyehole over his head, though. In the first we only see him as a mangled child projecting from the water in Alice's memory. The dialogue states that it was five years between then and this one. Now, Jason is a grown man who has learned to dress himself and survive in the woods without discovery. Ok, but if you're going to hold what will increasingly be a disturbing thread of a figure liminally between worlds who becomes a slashing monster in this one, you won't be getting much out of this franchise.
So, this one does what it says on the tin without pretending it's doing anything else, while adding some intriguing innovations. As to the tired criticism of slashers being puritanically anti-sex, recall the cry of the hosts of the great Faculty of Horror podcast: the film is rad, the killer is the prude. On the other hand, if I've managed to interest you in this one, move to the underrated Part 3. He gets the hockey mask in that one ;)
Viewing notes: I watched my blu-ray from a set of all the Paramount chapters. The presentation is stellar HD with good muscular audio mix. This set is no longer currently available but the whole franchise is rentable through a few streamers.
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