Friday the 13th Part 2 (Film Review)

1981 Paramount Pictures
Directed by: Steve Miner; Written by: Ron Kurz
Starring: Adrienne King, Amy Steel, and John Furey
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 87 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 6/10

After the horrific, bloody events at Crystal Lake, where her fellow counselors were slaughtered, Alice Hardy just wants to put her life back together. She's gotten an apartment in the city and even a cat. One thing, though: she's pretty sure she didn't leave that window open. Meanwhile, a whole new group of horny camp counselors is gearing up for the summer season, just a few miles down the lake from the events that sent Alice into hiding. The teenagers tell spooky stories to each other about the legend of Camp Crystal Lake, not noticing all the rustling in the bushes just a few feet away.
The Friday the 13th producers had high concept plans for the series, but after the original Friday the 13th made back over 100 times its budget, it was decided that Friday the 13th Part 2 would simply follow the identical plot of the first film: get a bunch of horny teenagers to an otherwise deserted, rural lakeside camp, then have them each taken out gruesomely by an unseen killer. By the end, there's a "final girl" who must contend with the killer alone. There is a definite bump in production values here, with first-time director, Steve Miner (who eight years later, made the Nicsperiment-approved Warlock), adding some style that wasn't present in the first film. The whopping $1.25 million dollar budget is nearly three times that of the original film.
With that said, this is just the original film all over again, sans any of the surprises. While this series' contemporaries like Halloween and The Nightmare on Elm Street had their first installments directed by, respectively, an auteur and a genre legend, Friday the 13th started off as pure schlock. It just gets schlockier from there. Part 2 is somehow even hornier than the first film, to the degree that with all the teens killed pre or mid-coitus, the movie subtitle and killer may have well just been called The Cockblocker. Yes, this film is trash...
But I'd be lying if I said Friday the 13th Part 2 isn't fun. Miner does a great job of building suspense and tension and allowing you to at least visually distinguish each camp counselor--the main killing spree really doesn't kick off until about 50 minutes in--but boy, oh boy do these kids get killed. This flick also features a great final girl, whose personality is just a little different from those that came both before and after. She's also resourceful in some pretty original ways. Also, at 87 minutes, the movie flies by, completely harmless, unless you're squeamish. This is a perfect place to end the series. Wait...
They made TEN more of these?!?!
I guess that makes sense. After two of these things, I still haven't seen one hockey mask.