Amazon.com video review:
As bad as Friday the 13th, Part 2 is, it's a work of art in
comparison to the rest of the Friday the 13th flicks that came
afterward. This installment officially introduced us to Jason Voorhees as
the killer (if you remember Drew Barrymore's fatal phone quiz in
Scream, you know that the killer in the first Friday the 13th
was actually Jason's mother), and made the slicing and dicing even more
generic. Survivor Alice is dispatched within the first 10 minutes, and
we're left with plucky Ginny (Amy Steel, doing a fairly decent Jamie Lee
Curtis impression) to do battle with the monstrous Jason. Ginny's part of a
another group of horny teenagers (less intelligent as well as less
attractive than their predecessors) who try to resurrect Camp Crystal Lake
five years after the initial murders--a pretty mean feat, considering this
movie was made only a year after the first one. Being a smarty-pants
child-psychology major, Ginny tries to outwit the dim Jason, and at one point
dons the bloody and moldy sweater of Jason's late mother (which is more
disgusting than any of the killings beforehand) in an attempt to confuse
the masked killer. Jason may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but the
only one who's going to pull the wool--or in this case, the burlap--over
his eyes is Jason himself, who wears a sack with one eyehole throughout the
movie to hide his deformed features (he finally found his way to a
sporting-goods store and his trademark hockey mask appears in the third installment of the series). Directed by Steve Miner, who also helmed the next Friday the 13th film (in 3-D no less) as well as the more reputable House, Forever Young, and Halloween: H20. --Mark Englehart
