Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Episode 114, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  tHello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. And Todd, we are back again with another notorious number 2 horror film. This being February, the 2nd month of the year, in case you haven’t figured out how clever we are. If you haven’t figured out how clever we we are, you’ll figure it out later as we go along through this podcast, I’m sure. Yeah. Friday 13th part 2.  So this is a film that, I think both you and I, Craig, realized that needed to be on this list. Our

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  We really were aiming for number twos that had some significant departure from the first or were in some way weird or significant. And this is definitely a bit of an outlier in the series, kind of along with the first one in a way. Because after the first two, all the rest of them, to my mind, are all the same. Yeah. When people think of of Jason Voorhees in the Friday 13th series, they think of this guy in a hockey mask running around. But, if you’re familiar with the first movie, spoiler alert, or you’ve seen Scream, you will know that, actually, in the first film, it’s not Jason who goes around and kills anybody. It’s Jason’s mother. She is basically taking revenge against the camp counselors for allowing her child to drown.  Only at the end of the movie after missus Voorhees is dispatched and the producers stepped in and said, you know, we really wanna add a jump scare at the end. Did they add an extra scene where Alice, the final girl on that one is floating around in a canoe, and this deformed kid jumps up out of the lake and drags her down in, which paves the way for the sequel in a way, and in a way really not. This movie opens up with Alice. She is older, and the first, gosh, almost 10 minutes of this film are nothing but flashbacks to the first film just to catch you up on it, laying in bed, tossing and turning, and playing bits from the first movie in her head over and over again. And before that happens, we do see some legs walk across the street, towards her house. So we know that Alice herself may be in a bit of danger. And and she was played by Adrienne King who, you know, replies to her role from the first film. She had a bit of a problem actually, after the first movie.  Wasn’t terribly interested in coming back in for this movie because she had a stalker problem that was pretty serious. But she end up coming back for this film anyway. And depending on which account you believe, either she wanted her herself to be ended for the movie so that she didn’t have to participate in any future ones, or she asked for the door to be left open for her to participate in the future ones, but they just didn’t do that.

Craig:  Yeah. That’s what I heard.

Todd:  Yeah. In either case, it makes a little more sense of the latter. If she had a stalker problem, you know, I don’t think she’d wanna continue. Very few people involved in the first movie wanted to be involved in the second movie because they thought it was really stupid.

Craig:  Yeah. And it and it is, I mean, it’s kinda stupid. Whatever. I mean, the series gets far more stupid moving forward, but, yeah, I mean, it doesn’t make really any sense. The opening scenes of this movie are supposed to be soon after the events of, the first movie and and Alice’s, you know, dealing with her trauma or whatever, many people involved, like you said, were not interested in returning because they thought, well, if Jason was alive the whole time, then missus Voorhees’ motivation in the whole movie is suspect. Like, why is she running around killing all these people out of revenge if Jason was alive the whole time? Did she not know? Like, I I think I read somewhere that somebody said what like, is Jason, like, surviving on acorns, like, out in the woods and nobody sees him? Like, where where is where is he? Has where has he been?

Todd:  Where’s he been for these, like, 30 years?

Craig:  Yeah. And it it also doesn’t really make any sense because the events of the this movie, except for the opening scene, which is supposed to be right after the events of the first movie, the rest of the movie is supposed to take place 5 years after, the events of the first. In the first movie, when Jason jumps out of the water and grabs Alice, he’s still clearly a kid, like, maybe a teenager, maybe an adolescent, but, in this movie, he is certainly an adult man. Yeah. So it really doesn’t make any sense, but ultimately, who cares?

Todd:  Money talks. Right. That’s basically it. The first movie had Tom Savini, you know, doing the makeup effects. He decided because he thought it was stupid, he wasn’t gonna come back. Instead, he went and did a movie that we have reviewed before called The Burning, which he thought would do a little bit better, but didn’t. Even though I think it’s a fine film, they were all rip offs of each other. Even the Friday 13th was a rip off of Halloween.  And then, there was high pressure to get to get on John Carpenter to get Halloween 2 out after this movie came out. So, yeah. This is all just a very cannibalistic process at this time period in 1981, when, everybody’s trying to leap on the slasher bandwagon. Even Sean Cunningham, the director from the first film, wasn’t really involved. I think he did come back a little bit to help with a little bit of pre production on it and some of the casting, but he wasn’t interested. He also thought it was stupid. So he’d really paved the way for a few other people to come in and actually get a bit of a start here. I I was interested to see that the director of this film was Steve Miner who did House.  Yeah. And then I think he also went on to do Warlock and H2O Halloween in the nineties. Yeah.

Craig:  He did some work on the Wonder Years. He did part 3 Todd.

Todd:  You’re right. Friday 13th. The producer, Frank Mancusco Manusco junior happened to be the I think he’s the son of the head of Paramount at the time, jumped on here. I mean, he was, like, fresh out of college, like, 22, 23, jumped on here to produce because the original producer wasn’t interested, and, then ended up producing all the rest of the movies in the series as well as the TV show and and a lot of other stuff. Actually, ended up being a really big name, in producing. But, you know, I mean, come on. If you’re the son of the head of Paramount, what Right. What else you gonna do? This movie is rocketed into stardom.  Right. But anyway, I had seen this movie before because one Halloween, I put it to myself that I was gonna watch all of the Friday 13th from the first one all the way through the, what, 26th one or whatever was was out of this time. And I know you’re a big fan of these or just you’re a fan of these. I’m I’ve never really been a big fan of these, but I did my best and I think I got through, I think I’ve turned off Jason Goes Todd New York well before he even got to New York, and I said this is dumb. I’m I really can’t sit through any more of these movies. But I do have a healthy respect for the first one, and this one, and I think it’s either the which is the one with Corey Feldman in it.

Craig:  Maybe 3.

Todd:  3 or 4?

Clip:  I don’t

Craig:  no, no, no, no. Yeah. It’s it’s gotta be 4. I I don’t remember. 3 is where he gets the mask. I don’t know. It it goes all over the place. To say I’m a big fan would be a stretch, Even though I like the Nightmare on Elm Street series far more, I’m a fan of these movies for a similar reason, in that it was just something throughout my childhood that these movies would come out and it was something that I was familiar with and it was just fun and exciting to have a new one every year or every couple of years.  It’s not that they’re great. They’re they’re not great. Like, I I I really do like the first two. I think that the first one is interesting in that, you know, the killer is kind of unexpected, and the first one really is very much a suspense film. Yeah. You’ve got the killing and the gore, but it’s it’s it’s kind of a murder mystery. You know, who is it? And then when missus Voorhees, shows up at the end I mean, you don’t even see her until the very very end of the movie. She just pops up, like, hello.  I’m this strange character you’ve never seen before. Let’s talk for a minute before I try to kill you.

Todd:  Yeah. Exposition lady.

Craig:  Yeah. I mean that was kinda cool and, who’s the lady that played Mrs. Voorhees? Betsy Palmer. Betsy Palmer. I liked her as a villain because at the same time that she’s very much, you know, just like kind of a motherly, grandmotherly type presence with her appearance and her voice, she is actually very scary. Yeah. Like, she’s she’s clearly very unhinged and, she’s she’s a frightening presence. And then this one, you know, the second one, it’s so formulaic.  You know, when I was watching this, I was thinking whereas maybe Halloween should get a lot of the credit for establishing the slasher movie. It’s really Friday 13th, and I think especially Friday 13th part 2 that really sets up the formula for the eighties teen slasher movie. I mean, it just really doesn’t get more formulaic than this movie. I mean, you’ve got this mysterious killer who kills a bunch of teenagers who are doing the sex and the drugs and, you know, and and that’s that’s legit all it is.

Todd:  Like, there’s nothing more to

Craig:  it than that. And, and then they move on. In in part 3, he gets the mask, which is iconic and great, but it’s really still the same formula, a bunch of teenagers out of the camp. And then after that, you know, they realized, of course, that if they were gonna continue this, they couldn’t just keep making the same exact movie over and over again, and so they did different stuff with it. But in this movie and that’s one of the things that I appreciate in this movie. In this movie, Jason is still just a backwoods deformed, you know, socially inept guy. Yeah. And, you know, he he’s just a guy and and you can fight a guy.  Later on in the series, he becomes, you know, like this zombie unstoppable monster demon force. Right? Which is, again, you know, I that’s fine. I I don’t have a problem with it, but I I do appreciate that in this movie, it’s a little bit more grounded, not necessarily realistic by any stretch of the imagination, but, you know, he’s not this unstoppable supernatural force. He’s just a backwoods guy, who, you know, they kinda have a fighting chance against and Yeah. It is what it is. It’s funny. I don’t I don’t have a whole lot watching it again. And and I’ve watched these movies many, many times.  In fact, when I was in, I don’t know, junior high, high school, I had a VHS tape that had Friday 13th part 12 on it. And that VHS tape got a lot of use because I would watch it. I would take it to, you know, friends’ houses if we were gonna stay up late and have a movie night, and we would just watch them back to back 1 and 2. And it was fun. I I watched them a lot. They’re fun popcorn kinda slasher movies, but watching it again and, oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize how long it had been. It’s got to have been at least 15 years since I’ve seen this movie. Mhmm.  But watching it again, I’m, like, oh, man. It’s so formulaic and

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Really a little bit hokey. I guess, to be fair, it it just probably hasn’t aged well, and that must be just because so many. We’ve seen so many of these Yeah. Since. At the time, you know, of course, there had been the Giallo films. It’s not like, you know, slasher movies, killer movies were a new thing, but this I feel like this and Halloween, really kind of set the mold for a certain genre of horror films that is still thriving, you know. People are still making these movies, and people are enjoying them. So, it certainly has its place in horror cinematic history, So I’m not gonna take that away from it, but from a modern perspective, it’s a little bit, yeah, been there, seen it.  Yeah.

Todd:  I guess, yeah, the most disappointing stuff is probably, like, the acting, the writing, all the stuff that happens in between the killings is really good. It’s all a groaner. I mean, it actually makes the burning look quite Todd. And I think we enjoyed the burning, but one thing I think we had to say about the burning is that it had a lot of heart. And I think we felt like the characters in that film seemed like real people, seemed like normal, you know, campers that we would wanna hang out with and spend time with. Whereas everybody in this film feels like a like a movie character. You know?

Craig:  Oh, yeah. It’s just a a bunch of horny 20 somethings. Like, that’s that’s all they boil down to. Like, there’s 1 guy in a wheelchair, so I guess that makes him kind of interesting. But beyond that, they’re just a bunch of rowdy, horny. There’s I I assume they’re supposed to be late teens, early twenties, but, I mean, they’re obviously all in their twenties. And, you know, that’s that’s something that’s funny about it too. Like, the the whole premise is that, it’s 5 years after the original events, and they’re not actually at Camp Crystal Lake, which they refer to as Camp Blood because of the events of the first movie.  They’re not actually there, but they’re they’re on Crystal Lake. Right? They’re, like, hopscrip a little jump away. And, there it’s it’s all of these, counselors. They’re at a camp counselor training facility. Is that a thing? Like, I was never a camp counselor. I was never, you know, one of the camper type of kids, but, I didn’t I didn’t know that they had to go to school for that.

Todd:  I don’t know. I yeah. It’s a good question. And maybe it was to save money, you know, and maybe it was to to get some slightly older people involved so they didn’t have to worry too much about, like, minors or whatnot. And, like, you you have a slightly older population now. Right? They’re not.

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  They’re older teens and and not the younger ones. Like, if you watch Sleepaway Camp, you know, there are kids in that movie that Yeah. They’re, like, 9 12. Whereas these people, I think they’re still supposed to be 1920, but they still look like they’re, you know, 28, 30. Yeah. But I think, you know, I think it takes a little bit of the bite out of Jason a little bit just because, like you said, he is just kind of a backwoods guy. And with the loss of the mystery, those two things combined, I think, make this one of the I don’t know. It’s I guess, I should say, every time some legs came on the screen and started walking towards somebody or, you know, a hand pushed aside a bush so that they could creep peek out at somebody else, I think, it just didn’t seem that sinister to me, as impending as the later films do, when you know that, you know, Jason is just is a zombie dude who could be anywhere he wants to be.

Craig:  Well, to be fair, I guess in 1981, people wouldn’t have necessarily known. They wouldn’t have the context that we have. For sure. And they, you know, they wouldn’t have known that necessarily that this was Jason. It could have been anybody. You know, they the the this movie does the same thing that, the first movie did by introducing the creepy character of Craig Ralph. Oh, yeah. Crazy Ralph was in the first movie too, and you wondered if he was the killer, and he comes And Craig it.  Like, you’re all doomed. That’s it. Like, I feel like that’s his only line in the movie. And then he creeps around for a while, and so, you know, people in 1981 may not they wouldn’t have had the expectation, that we have. And I can see how coming from our perspective, this seems a little bit tame just because eventually Jason is this bio like like he’s in space and he’s like That’s right.

Todd:  He’s bursting out of graves and yeah. He Right. He’s appearing in one place and then suddenly disappearing and appearing in another place. Just it’s like he’s outside of time and space itself.

Craig:  There are demons flying out of his face and, you know, like Yeah. Yeah. The the stakes are raised, the later movies. Just a little bit. Eventually, he turns into, like, an evil worm that can infest other people.

Todd:  And here, he’s he’s a hillbilly with a pillowcase over his head.

Craig:  You’re right. Right. So, yeah, the it’s it’s a little bit less climactic with within the context, but it it seemed much fresher in 1981 than it seems today.

Todd:  Of course.

Craig:  When I was thinking about talking about this and I was thinking about plot, you know, and I took all these notes with all, you know, the details of what happens, but after Alice is killed, and and she is, you know, like you said, she has those flashbacks and then she wakes up and she has a phone call with her mother which I read was entirely unscripted because when Adrian King came back to do this movie, she only wanted to be in it for a little bit because she was dealing with, like you said, that stalker problem. And so she showed up and she hadn’t even been given a script. She didn’t even know that Jason was the killer when she showed up on set, and she only shot for 2 days. It’s just this scene with her, and there are some jump scares with her cat and, you know, silly stuff.

Todd:  What? But eventually The cat jumpscare is hilarious because she goes into the kitchen, the windows open as she approaches it. It literally looks like somebody threw the cat in the window. Yeah. It definitely does. Poor cat was probably more surprised than she was.

Craig:  Yeah. And and, you know, we see somebody in, like, workman’s boots and jeans or, you know, work pants or something stalking around outside her house. And there’s a lot of not a lot as an exaggeration, but there are several things in this movie that are just kind of hilarious in the context of the whole thing, like like, Jason Prank calls her. That’s like You know, it’s not like he’s heavy breathing or, like, asking her if her refrigerator is running or anything, but, like, he he he, like, calls her and she answers and and he hangs up. And, also, like, I have no idea where she’s supposed to be. Like, after all of her friends were murdered in Crystal Lake, did she just, like, get an apartment there? Like, it doesn’t make sense

Todd:  to me. To me. That’s true. Either that or Jason, like, learned to drive, and he had to, like, lure her up in the phone book or something to drive to her house.

Craig:  Right. And and he finds her, apparently. And my favorite part about this scene is that she opens up her refrigerator, and missus Voorhees’ head,

Todd:  which

Craig:  Alice had chopped off in the first one, is in her refrigerator. And, she screams, and then Jason kills her with an ice pick. And, like, I read that there was an accident. The ice pick was supposed to be retractable, and it didn’t retract, so she was actually injured. And she didn’t know she was gonna be killed off, but she was. And you kind of briefly mentioned it before, but that scene, this is all pre credits. It’s 16 minutes, I think, before we get the the the title Mhmm. And and the credits.  And the the title comes on Friday 13th

Todd:  in, like, big block letters and it explodes. Mark 2 jumps in. And then the title sequence is long Todd, and it’s just music with a black screen and words coming up on it. I mean, it’s really kind of strange how they put it together. I felt like maybe they were trying Todd pad it pad it with the extra footage from the first movie, pad it with a really long Craig scene. And like you said, this whole sequence that’s really long before the the credits, I think, is actually really well done. Yeah. If you look at it, it’s only 2 or 3 shots.  He he does these really long takes where he’s following her through the house and I’m sure that’s why it took so long was just to get everything very right. But I think overall, this might be one of the better made of the films as far from a, you know, just from a cinematography perspective.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. I don’t think it’s poorly made really at all and and actually as I was watching there are some shots of them, the counselors who we eventually get to, like, walking through the woods and I, you know, I’m watching it this time, I’m, like, oh, the color looks really nice here. Oh my goodness. Like, things that I’ve never considered before we started doing this. But, I thought that, you know, the the cinematography was pretty good and that opening scene is interesting and, you know, I enjoy it. You know, you reconnect with the the the main character from the first movie, which draws you in. That’s great. And then you get to the movie proper which by the time you get there is really only an hour long movie.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  It’s about these camp counselors and they all arrive at this training facility and you’re introduced to all of them and they’re all young and hot and, you know, fun and that’s great. And the main character shows up, Jenny, and she’s played by Amy Steele. Is that yeah. Amy Steele. Mhmm. And she’s kind of this sassy blonde who doesn’t follow the rules and in a romantic relationship with the guy who’s running the place. And from that point on, it’s just kind of shenanigans leading up to each of the well, a group of the counselors. I actually thought this was really clever.  Okay. 1st, they have all the counselors there and there’s a whole bunch of them. And they have a campfire where Paul, the main the guy who’s training the counselors, I guess, they have this big bonfire and he tells the legend of Jason Voorhees.

Clip:  I’m gonna give it to you straight about Jason. His body was never recovered from the lake after he drowned. And if you listen to the old timers in town, they’ll tell you he’s still out there. Some sort of demented creature surviving in the wilderness. Full grown by now.

Craig:  And it’s this fun campfire thing where he’s telling the story and then at the end, the goofy guy, Todd jumps out in, a mask with a spear and he’s got like a loincloth on and everybody’s scared and Then there’s some goofiness where, like, they’re, you know, people are talking and they’re swimming and they’re doing counsellory type things and a couple of the kids go off to try to find camp blood, and throughout all of this, you’re getting the killer point of view shots. So we you know that somebody is lurking and watching. Mhmm. But a couple of them go off, Jeff and Sandra, go off looking for Camp Blood, and you think surely that they’re gonna be the first ones to go, but they’re not. The cops catch them and and bring them back. And it what I was trying to get to is that eventually, what I think that they do that is really smart is they get most of them out of there. Like Yeah. Like, after all of this happens, Paul says

Clip:  Anybody wants a last night on the town, now’s your chance.

Todd:  Yeah. I’ll get you the whole.

Clip:  Okay. Who else? William Tarrant. Oh, and by the way, our wanderers have volunteered to stay behind and watch the camp. Isn’t that nice? Uh-huh.

Craig:  And 2 thirds of them leave. Yeah. So we’re only left with a third of them left. So then we just get to watch them get picked off 1 by 1 after they start doing the sex and the drugs. Yep.

Todd:  And it’s really not even that much sex and drugs, especially compared to later of the films, you know. Yeah. I mean, it’s really pretty tame all around. I mean, I think they’re smoking some weed. Yeah. And a few characters have sex, and that’s

Craig:  It’s a gate wager at

Todd:  the top. Is it the okay. Right? You you should be taking this more seriously. What are the sex scenes too? I was I mean, Sandra and Jeff who go upstairs, they’re gonna have sex while the wheelchair guy and the his girl the girl who’s coming on to him are downstairs playing handheld video games. Yeah. Which is impressive for 1981. I mean, I remember what those were like. They were pretty lame.  They they keep you occupied for about 5 minutes, then you have to move on to other activities. But anyway, yeah, the the the 2 upstairs, you know, their sex scene is actually mostly not there because, apparently, they had a whole long sequence of full frontal nudity and everything, and it turned out the Paramount learned that the actress was, underage. Yep. So they they cut that. And and this this scene, we did Bay of Blood earlier, that, older giallopic Italian movie that was a precursor to these and arguably precursor to all of these slasher movies and really set that pattern. And this death is just ripped straight out of there, even though Mhmm. The the makers of this film swear that they didn’t. It’s the same thing, and it’s so much the same that there’s no way they couldn’t have.  And that is that Jason grabs a spear that happens to be there. This is what goofy man, you know, was dancing around with at the campfire and had put it up against the wall. Grabs a spear, goes up the stairs, and the 2 of them were laying down in bed, and he just spears through them both. And what what could’ve been, like like in Bay of Blood, a really amazing and incredibly cool, you know, scene ended up getting cut. I mean, there’s very little sex. You just see them on top of each other for a split second, and you see the spear approach from the same point of view shot as in Bay of Blood. But then, it cuts to a shot underneath the mattress, and you see the the bloody tip of the spear come through, and that’s it. I don’t even think you see the aftermath, and I think that was cut.  That was one of the scenes that was really had to be cut in order to avoid, getting an x rating. The only thing

Craig:  that you see of the aftermath because another actress, you know, and it’s it’s funny because you know once they get rid of most of the counselors, then Jason just starts picking them off really quick. And don’t be sad, horror fans, if you haven’t seen this movie because you do get plenty of nudity.

Todd:  Nudity of blood.

Craig:  But before this, you get, you know, a a very attractive skinny young lady stripping down to go skinny dipping, which

Todd:  For no good reason.

Craig:  Right. Well,

Todd:  she’s looking for her dog, Muffins. Yes.

Craig:  That’s gone missing Muffin. Muffins. Muffins. Where are you, Muffins?

Todd:  Well, I think I might take a quick dip. All this looking for muffins has gotten me hot. Practically naked before she took her clothes off because

Craig:  she was wearing like this this top that’s cut right below her breasts and no bra.

Todd:  No bra.

Craig:  And she was leaving nothing to imagination anyway. But she goes skinny dipping. And I read I don’t know if this is true or not, but that this was kind of, you know, what started the whole if you go skinny dipping, you die, trope in in horror. But and, okay, this is so random, but funny story. I was watching this I was watching this and, my partner came home and he wanted to talk to me about what we were gonna have for dinner. And so he’s like, can you pause? And I said, yeah. And I paused it and it was right at the scene where this girl, I don’t remember her name, was was stripping, and she was almost entirely nude, like, she was pulling her bottoms off. He saw me pause it right in that moment.  He’s, like, what are you watching? And I said, Friday 13th, 2. And he said, is that that gayest movie you’ve ever seen movie? And I said, no. And then I just kinda let it go. Like, that’s the most random question ever. And later, he was like, oh, yeah. You were watching that gay movie. And I’m like, what are you talking about? It was a naked chick on the screen. And he was like, oh, I thought it was a dude.

Todd:  Actually, I could see how he would think that. Yeah.

Craig:  He said he said, I guess everybody was just really skinny in the seventies. But anyway, the naked chick gets teased and taunted by a guy and then he runs off with her clothes and he ends up getting pulled up into a rope trap.

Todd:  That was pretty brutal.

Craig:  I I didn’t really under, like, did Jason set a rope trap? Did somebody else set a rope trap as a joke? I don’t know. But anyway, they so Jason slits his throat and then she comes back to cut him down because she had to go get a knife to cut him down or whatever. And she comes back and he’s dead and then she gets killed with something. It’s just boom boom boom boom boom. Yeah. Pretty quickly. These counselors get picked off in a in a matter of, I would guess what, maybe 15 minutes. Everybody who stayed back at camp just gets slaughtered.

Todd:  By this point, we’re we’re at least 3 quarters of the way through the movie. I mean, they kinda have to. Yeah. There’s There’s been just a bunch of nonsense up until then. And not, like I said, not even really interesting nonsense. A lot of really goofy banter back and forth.

Clip:  Mark, what happened? Did you have to be in a chair?  Motorcycle accident. Paralyzed my legs.  Is it permanent?  Doctor thinks so. I don’t. I don’t intend to be in this thing the rest of my life.  Just your legs, Is everything else okay?  Oh, I do alright. One way or another.

Todd:  The wheelchair dude gets picked off as well.

Craig:  I remember this scene. I don’t know if it’s iconic or if it’s just iconic in my head, but he gets sliced A machete to the face. With the machete and then his wheelchair goes flying down the stairs. And and it like, you don’t even see him land at the bottom. Like, they, they freeze it. Like, you get a freeze frame of him just in process of of going down the stairs, but it it sticks in my mind. It’s a a pretty cool image.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s it’s it’s interesting, actually. Like I said, when I say this is maybe more well made, it feels like the director here has some ideas. And even with this bit where, like you said, it’s going the the wheelchair is going backwards down with him on it, going backwards down these steps. And suddenly, there’s a freeze frame and the freeze frame kinda zooms in on it and then kinda goes to white. It’s just a really jarring thing that I think has a has a certain effect of really burning that image in your brain and making it Mhmm. Just a little more impactful even though we really didn’t get to see a whole lot, you know, of the detail of the gore and stuff. It was pretty well done.  I thought maybe a good way. I imagined anyway that this is one of those cases where they had to cut seconds off of this. And this was a way for him to to do that and keep the impact.

Craig:  Well, and I know they did. I can’t imagine that this is one of those scenes, but I know that they did have to cut almost a minute of footage to avoid getting an x Craig, which is is so funny to me. I know that Wes Craven struggled with the the ratings board all the time and was always having to cut his movies, to avoid x or NC 17 ratings. But it’s just so funny to watch a movie like this and think that they had to cut it down to avoid an x Craig. Yeah. Because by modern standards, it is unbelievably tame. Like, like, this is stuff that you could easily see on network television, you know, like, 7 or 8 o’clock at night. It’s I don’t know if to say we’ve come a long way is the right way of putting it, but things have changed since 1981.

Todd:  Saw, this is not. Let’s put it that way. No. Still, this is not for by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah. So yeah. Alright. Well, I’m just gonna show you the head upstairs upstairs.  Let me show you the head. Right? Just, like,

Craig:  go down the checklist. Right? Yeah. So so they all get killed. I mean, there’s a lot of goofiness with, like, the girl who is trying to seduce the wheelchair guy and, like, the wheelchair guy is cute. I might wanna seduce him too. I get it. So but she, like, she goes and, like, sprays perfume, like, on her vagina. Meanwhile, he’s getting a machete to the face, and then she comes back and and she finds No.

Todd:  No. No. No. No. But before in order before she does that, she changes from her from her sexy black panties to her sexy brown pants. Sexy brown panties. I actually thought her black panties were far sexier. I don’t know what you were saying.  Understand what was going on there. I was like, did the prop people swap this?

Craig:  Yeah. Her satin brown panties looked a little droopy. I don’t know. Yeah.

Todd:  They sure did.

Craig:  But, yeah, she changes into her sexy brown panties, and then she goes back and she there’s, like, a clubhouse where they all hang out. And, she goes back and her wheelchair guy is gone because he’s dead and she can’t find him. And then it’s really quiet, so she can’t find anybody. She knows that Jeff and, Sandra were upstairs having sex, so she goes to look for them. And she opens the door and they’re in bed under the sheets, but they’re not responding to her. And so, like, she goes over and starts to pull back the sheet and Jason pops up in the bed. Yeah. That was good.  Which I thought yeah. It was a great scare. I didn’t see that coming.

Todd:  It was a little bit it’s a bit of a nod to Halloween though. This is the first time that we actually see Jason’s head. Right?

Craig:  Yeah. He’s got the

Todd:  it’s basically if you know the town that’s dreaded sundown and the Bandido in that, it’s exactly the same look. And I guess it was a costume designer who decided that a pillowcase pulled over his head, tied around the neck or whatever with a with a couple holes cut in it would be something that this guy living in the woods for all this time would have ready access to. Right. Because, you know, there’s, like, a Bed Bath and Beyond around the corner or something. So but but but because, you know, if you look back at this at the scene in Halloween when the girl is in bed, and she thinks that her boyfriend is coming in. You know, this is right after they have sex. And it turns out to be Mike Myers, and he’s approaching her with the sheet. This is almost just a flip flop of that scene instead of Yeah.  Her in bed and somebody coming to, you know, the killer coming towards him in a sheet. This is another girl coming in and the killer coming out of bed in the sheet, but I just I it felt like almost the same scene to me.

Craig:  I don’t know. I guess it’s been so long since I’ve seen that movie. I didn’t think about it, but I didn’t remember this. You know, I remember so much about this movie, and I didn’t remember this. And when he popped out from under the sheet, I jumped a little bit.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. And then after that, the camera changes perspective and and films the girl who was coming in from, like, facing her front. And then you see behind her that the guy, Jeff or whoever it is, is, like, impaled and hanging up on the wall, and she kind of cowers back against him and and then she gets stabbed, I think. Yeah. Jason utilizes many utensils and He does. He’s got a he’s got a machete. He’s got a knife. He’s got a pitchfork.  He’s got all kinds of things.

Todd:  He settles on the machete eventually, but this one, he’s he’s trying them all out to see which one

Craig:  fits Yeah.

Todd:  Meanwhile, we’ve got the bar scene. They’re at this big bar. The rest of them are

Craig:  Bar and Casino. But yeah. That cracks me up. They pull up to this place, which, like, we’ve told you all before that, you know, Todd’s lived all over the world, but, at one time we both lived in, you know, a small Midwestern Todd, and I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve seen these places.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  Like, these these dives, these country dives, they’re, like, restaurant, bar, casino, gas station. That’s right. In a,

Todd:  like, a large converted house that’s been added on to over the years to some kind of crazy monstrosity. I just loved it that they

Craig:  were going to this bar, and you see on one side of it, there’s just this little sign, casino. Casino. They probably got, like, 2 slot machines in there.

Todd:  But you you know what’s hilarious? As I was looking through the credits at the end, special thanks to casino blah blah blah. And I was like, are you kidding me? They didn’t Oh, Todd. That was

Craig:  a real location? That’s hilarious.

Todd:  Yeah. For sure.

Craig:  Yeah. They’re there, and, of course, it’s just revelry. Another thing that I found really amusing about this movie was the dancing. There’s more than one time when people are dancing, and they’re just kinda, like, standing still and kinda bopping. Like, it’s so funny. And in in the bar scene, you see all these people dancing and there’s a band playing and it’s this very generic music that I’m sure that they used so that they didn’t have to pay any royalties for any actual music. But if you look, the band is clearly singing, and there’s no

Todd:  No. There are

Craig:  no vocals to the music at all.

Todd:  Oh, it’s funny. That is funny.

Craig:  The whole reason for the bar scene is, well, there’s some comic relief with Todd. Excuse me. The goofy one. Ted and Paul and Paul and Jenny. Jenny are sitting at the bar talking and they’re talking about Jason. And Jenny goes into this whole, like, serious monologue about, like, what if Jason is real?

Clip:  No. What if there is some kind of boy or beast running around campus Todd Lake? I mean, let’s try to think beyond the legend, put it in real terms. And what would it be like today? Some kind of out of control psychopath? A frightened retard? A child

Craig:  Todd empathy. Oh, he’s probably really sad. He probably sits in his cabin crying all day. It’s funny. I think as it turns out, she’s like a psychology student. Right? Or like a child psychology student or something like that?

Todd:  Figuring all this out, I guess, on her own. I mean, she practically says, I bet he’s sitting in his cabin right now with her severed head and some candles around it. Wouldn’t that be crazy?

Craig:  Yeah. Ultimately, that kind of plays out to how she wins in the end, which is, you know, kind of fun and clever, but, that whole bar scene is is just funny. In many ways, this movie just feels very cobbled together, like Rushed. Like you could you could cut everything except for the Jason killing people and, you know, that’s that’s the meat of the movie. And then everything else just kinda feels like, well, we still got 30 minutes.

Todd:  It and and and it feels so low budget too. Like, I’m watching this, and I’m, like, man, they didn’t spend any money on this movie at all. I think these people are wearing their same clothes that they probably wore to set, you know. Probably. Yeah. There’s nothing for props. There’s nothing for locations. It’s also bare bones.  The actually, this leads to what I thought was the creepiest, part of the film, and that was when Paul and Jenny come back. And the lights are on, but nobody’s home, and they’re wandering around trying to find, where they are, and they think maybe people playing a trick on them. And as they go upstairs, the lights go out. So then they come back downstairs, and Paul is by the window. I think he might be trying the phone or something, and Jenny is I think I

Craig:  think he’s messing with the fuses or something. I’m not sure. That’s it.

Todd:  Yeah. And Jenny comes down, and so this room is half in shadow. It’s like patches of shadow all around, and you know that there’s just gotta be something there. And the minute that you know there’s gotta be something there, Jenny says, Paul, there’s someone in this room, and that, like, for this movie that that actually sent a little bit of a chill up my spine.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Me too. This bit was really effective and sure enough,

Todd:  you know, there is and and Jason jumps out and Todd wrestling with Paul on the ground. That was just really well done.

Craig:  I agree. It’s it’s such a simple line. There’s somebody else in this room. And she she repeats it twice, I think. And she’s like, there’s somebody in this room. And then then you see Jason standing there and he attacks Paul. And again, this is another reason why I appreciate this movie is that, you know, he attacks Paul and they fight.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Like a couple of guys. You know. Like, it’s it’s not some supernatural being that can just crush your head with his hands, you know. It’s they they they fight like a couple of dudes.

Todd:  Well, Jenny just stands there staring at them. Yeah. To make absolutely nothing. Yeah. Anyway, Jenny ends up trapped. Right?

Craig:  I thought that, this part was really good too and pretty suspenseful because she runs away, but she’s still kinda stuck in the house. Like, she just runs to the bathroom, like, right at, like, the next room over and she’s standing there holding the door, like, pulling it, like, she’s trying to keep somebody out, but then she sees that there’s a window. You see her struggle with the decision, like, what do I do? Do I let go of the door then he could get in or do I go for the window? Eventually, she decides to go for the window, but this is after kind of like, I don’t know, 10 second, 15 second kind of tense moment where she’s making the decision. And then she finally goes through the window and then there’s a great jump scare where Jason bursts. I mean, he doesn’t burst through the window. It’s a tiny bathroom window. But his arm comes through the window and tries to grab her, and then she runs away again. It’s stereotypical and that it’s, you know, it’s a a typical kind of girl in peril chase.

Todd:  Right.

Craig:  But it’s not stereotypical in that she’s actually pretty clever.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Like, at at one point, I don’t know, she gets in the kitchen, he finds her there, but eventually she gets outside and she takes off running, and she does the thing that I always want people in horror movies to do. Like, if you’re running away from somebody in the woods, like, run until you’re out of sight and then hide. Like and and that’s what she does. And she she hides, and he goes past her looking for her, and she’s able to double back. There’s also something at one point she gets in her car and he, like, gets on the roof and does the pitchfork through the car, and it it’s it’s it’s a a pretty long chase scene. And they’re at the camp, and then they’re in the car, and then they’re in the woods, and then they’re back at the camp.

Todd:  There’s even like a passage of time sequence where it’s like shot of her running, shot of the moon, shot of him running, shot of the moon. You’re thinking, jeez, how long how long is this going on?

Craig:  Well, and she and she gets after she tricks him in the woods, she goes back to a cabin. I don’t know whose cabin it is. She goes back to a cabin and she hides under the bed And, he comes to that cabin. I don’t know how he knew to go to that one, but whatever. And, she’s hiding under the bed and he doesn’t notice her there, but then a rat comes along the wall and, like, comes right up to her face. And she doesn’t scream or anything, but she pees herself. Yeah. And, he sees the pee trickle out,

Todd:  I guess, down her leg and out the back. It must have made a lot of noise. It’s you know what? I actually read online or saw, an interview or something where somebody had said that the filmmakers insisted that that was not her pee. It was the rat’s pee.

Craig:  What? That doesn’t make any sense. Doesn’t make

Todd:  any sense. The rat came and peed and and left

Craig:  came and peed more than its body weight. It’s so stupid. But, anyway, Jason sees her there. And so then he tricks her and makes her think that he left, but he didn’t. He really stood on a chair. And then she comes out and he tries to kill her with the pitchfork, but the chair breaks and he falls and the pitchfork breaks and she takes off running again and she runs through the woods and she ends up at this shack, which we hadn’t mentioned before. There was a whole scene with a cop who saw Jason running through the forest and chased him to this shack, and then ended up getting killed. Well, anyway, now Jenny ends up at the shack.  Jason is right on her heels and she ends up in this back room in his makeshift shack that has a toilet in it. Apparently, he has plumbing, and he’s got some plumbing, apparently. Makeshift shack in the woods. But she ends up in this room that we the cop had found, but we had only seen his facial expression, like, like, scary. I don’t know. It’s a shrine, and his mother’s head is on the shrine. And the bodies of most of the people that he’s killed throughout the movie and Alice’s body are kind of strewn around this shrine to his mom. And Jenny, being the child psychologist that she is, takes missus Voorhees’ sweater from that’s on the shrine from the first movie and puts it on and tries to arrange her hair to look like, missus Voorhees so that when Jason finally breaks through, she’s there.  And I have to say, this is one of my favorite scenes from the whole series.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  I just think it’s it’s clever and it’s Smart. Well executed and for a final girl, she’s smart. You know, she’s a smart final girl, all around really and she’s tough. I really like this scene.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s great. She’s just standing there, and she starts talking to him like she’s his mother. Jason.

Clip:  It’s all done, Jason. You’ve done your job well, and mommy is pleased. That’s a good pull. Now come to mommy. Come on.

Todd:  And it’s superimposing footage of Jason’s mother, Betsy Palmer. And, apparently, she came in and just, like, filmed these scenes in, like, 40 minutes in front of a black screen.

Craig:  And didn’t even remember that she had done it later. She’s like,

Todd:  I never should I never was in the second one. What are you talking about? Right. And and it it has an effect on Jason. And it’s cool because we can actually see Jason’s eye through one of the holes in the sack. And she essentially you see, it’s it’s almost like a tug, like, you you wonder if if it’s working or if it’s it’s it’s having an effect. Jason starts to approach, but then he stops. He starts to approach again. And then suddenly hear, Jenny, and Paul shows up for behind which which is a little disappointing.

Craig:  Yeah. You kinda you kinda wish that Jenny could have taken care of it on her own. But the stuff with Betsy Palmer and, you know, the way that they kinda superimpose her her face over and it’s not there’s a little bit of superimposing, but it’s really kind of cutting it’s just fading back and forth. But I I really liked it, and I really like Betsy Palmer as missus Voorhees.

Todd:  Yeah. She She was

Craig:  great in the first movie. She’s good here. This is a little off topic, but I know that they tried to get her for Freddy versus Jason to to reprice her role. And, she demanded too much money and so they ended up casting somebody else which was unfortunate. I think that she’s since passed away, but, she’s she’s good and it was nice to see her. But I also thought in this scene, and I don’t know if that’s what they were going for at all, but you can just there’s only one hole in Jason’s head sack.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  And so you can only see one of his eyes, but it’s the non deformed one and I felt like this scene gave him a little bit of humanity.

Todd:  It really did.

Craig:  And and almost made you feel a little bit sorry for him. And, ultimately, you should. You know? Like Yes. This is a kid who was tormented throughout his life and then left to die or not die, whatever, who knows. The premise of this movie is that he saw his mother get killed. Now how that’s even possible. Right. Even possible is beyond me, but okay, whatever.  If all of that is true, it doesn’t excuse him killing a bunch of people but,

Todd:  you know, you But gosh darn it.

Craig:  Right. Show the guy a little empathy. He’s been through shit.

Todd:  He he really has.

Craig:  And you see and you see that a little bit. And just seeing his eye, which is just, you know, a man’s eye or a woman.

Todd:  I I was gonna say it even seems a little boyish. I mean, I I felt when I looked at that eye, I was seeing a kid. You know? It was, it was really well whether intended or not to go that far, it really it really hammered that point home, I felt like. And the acting, you know, from Jason, I guess.

Craig:  Yeah. I mean, as as little as he has to do. And and I have no idea whose eye that was because there was one guy was credited with playing Jason, but actually several people were in the costume at

Todd:  It was not his eye. The guy who’s credited from playing Jason only comes in, like, one more one moment later, which pissed off the other dude who spent most of the time playing Jason in this show.

Craig:  Well, yeah. And at one point, it was a woman. It was the costume designer or somebody. Yeah. At the very beginning. When you see him.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  But anyway, it gives him a little bit of humanity. And then when what what breaks the spell is that she inadvertently, I guess, kind of moves and he sees his mom’s severed head and that kind of breaks his spell. But you then you’re right. Then Paul comes in and they fight and it looks like Jason’s gonna kill Paul, but then Ginny gets Jason through the shoulder with a machete. And it appears that he’s dead. And so Paul and Jenny go back to camp and they’re in, one of the cabins and they hear a scary noise at the door. So they go, and and Jenny, you know, sets herself up with the pitchfork. So if somebody comes in, she’s ready.  And it’s it’s really kind of tense and good, but, Paul opens the door and it’s Muffins, the dog. And I was really glad because they had strongly implied earlier that Muffins had been killed and I was Yeah. Happy about that.

Todd:  That’s the one death that really bothered me. Yeah.

Craig:  It’s muffins and she’s fine.

Todd:  The guy in the wheelchair, who cares?

Craig:  Yeah. Screw him. Whatever. That’s what you get for riding motorcycles. Then the the very last, well, not the very last thing, but Jason unmasked because Jenny had taken off his sack in the cabin. Even though we hadn’t seen it, they saw it. She took off his sack. He jumps unmasked through the window and grabs her and drags her out.  And and it’s all in kinda, like, stop motion slow mo. It’s it’s odd, frankly.

Todd:  It goes on a little too long in slow motion.

Craig:  Yeah. And and you get to you see him in all his glory, which this is also interesting because they try to remain fairly consistent with his look. Now his look progresses over the course of the movies, but in this one, on one half of his head, he’s a long haired hillbilly looking type guy and on the other side, he is a deformed I I don’t know. Something bad. You know, he’s deformed. Sanctuary. Right. And, you you know, you you see him in full glory.  Like, they they make a point of showing you all of it. And she gets pulled away and it’s reminiscent of the first movie when Alice got dragged down by, creepy Jason at the end and the same exact things happens. It cuts away from that and it breaks into the next day and it’s daylight And Jenny is getting put into an ambulance, and she says, where’s Paul? Where’s Paul? And she gets no answer, and that’s it. That’s the end.

Todd:  That’s the end.

Craig:  So the ending is left a little bit ambiguous. Was that a dream? That last scene

Todd:  Where’s Paul?

Craig:  Was it real? Where’s Paul? From what I’ve read from what I’ve read, the filmmakers say, no. It wasn’t a dream that really happened, happened and, Paul likely was killed. Why she wasn’t? I have no idea. Yeah. And the actress, who played Jenny oh, gosh. What’s her name? Amy Steele. She really had hoped that because she survived the end of the movie that she would kind of come back and be the protagonist for the series and, of course, that didn’t happen. They went in a completely different direction, but part 3 really kind of sticks, you know, with the Jason as this backwoods figure, but still human.  And then I don’t remember. There’s there’s some point, it’s either in part 4 or at the very beginning of part 5 that he’s dead and he gets struck by lightning and reanimated. And from that point on, it’s just there are no rules. We can do whatever. He can be, you know, a zombie. He can be a demon. He can be what he can be in space,

Todd:  you know, whatever. He can be in the in Times Square for 5 minutes.

Craig:  Right. And what else are they gonna do? I mean, you have to take it in different directions. You can’t keep making the same movie over and over again. But funnily enough, fans of the franchise who want to see it continue and this franchise is one of those franchises that has just is just in hell. Like, it it it’s been owned by Paramount and, Warner Brothers. It’s it’s yeah. It’s switched hands back and forth and, you know, they made a remake. I saw the remake.  It was okay. I didn’t think it was very good. The the fans of the movies keep saying, take it back, you know, put them in camp with with kids, put it back in the eighties. Mhmm. You know, we want classic Jason again. If we’ll ever get that, I have absolutely no idea. But as much in development hell as this whole franchise has been in for the last 10 years at least, I very seriously doubt that we’ve seen the last of Jason Voorhees.

Todd:  Oh, for sure. As long as there’s money to be made, somebody can put on a hockey mask and be Jason. That’s it. And and we haven’t looked at hockey the same way again. Right. One thing that you neglected to mention was the very last shot of the film, which is a slow motion

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  Zoom in on well, dolly in on Jason’s mom’s head in the in the middle of the table, and I had actually forgotten about this last shot. And this it was dollying in. I was like, oh, please Todd, no. I was just waiting for those eyes to open or for her to wink at the camera or something like that. Uh-huh. And thankfully, it freezes, but it just freezes there, and it’s just weird. It’s an odd shot because you’re not really sure what its purpose is at the end of the day. Is it to show that Jason’s still alive because the candles are still burning, or she’s still there, so not forgotten? Is it, you know, is it to introduce some voodoo element later or whatever? It just it just doesn’t seem to you don’t really know.  And apparently, when they originally shot it, they did indeed have her, like, eyes opening up and winking at the camera. Yep. But, of course, it looks stupid, and so they cut that. But why they even kept the shot in them at all is a little strange, unless they just spent so much money on it, and they need another, you know, 20 seconds.

Craig:  I I don’t know. I I wish they would’ve kept it. I think that would’ve made it as campy, pardon the pun, as it, it should have been. I I just think that would have been really funny, but, you know, it’s it’s fine. It is what it is. Yeah. I don’t know.

Todd:  You know, when I was growing up in the eighties, my my impressions of Jason were already in the 3 and the fours, you know. It’s this big brute Yeah. That’s supernatural who

Craig:  And always the hockey mask. I mean, that’s iconic.

Todd:  But this is this is a this is a pretty well made film even though it doesn’t really stand the test of time. Like you said earlier, I think I think if we had seen this back when it had come out, we would have been thoroughly satisfied. Now you look at it, and it’s just like any other movie that kinda sets the standards for the rest of them. It it it looks pretty hokey, you know, when you go back and look at it now. Even judged on its own merits, there’s not a lot going on. Like we said, most of the movie is corny jokes and silliness and, dumb dialogue and characters who really you just really can’t get very close to. And then Jason hacks them all away in the last 10 minutes or so, 15 minutes or so. But I I I really like the bit about the cabin, You know, the you mentioned earlier that the cop had found the cabin.  I like this idea that maybe the police for the last, you know, 9 years or whatever have just been patrolling the lake just looking for people who might I mean, they found that one couple who were poking around trying to get back to Camp Crystal Lake, like, right away. Mhmm. But he doesn’t know, but, apparently, this cabin has gone unnoticed in the woods for all these years. Yeah. But the one thing, every time somebody comes up to this cabin, just like a puddle. There’s a Yeah. There’s a puddle in the ground that’s maybe about, I don’t know, 4 feet wide that they step in, or they they fall in, or they trip in. Like like, it’s it’s how we as the viewer know, oh, no.  They’re coming close to the cabin. Yeah. And I’m thinking this puddle’s supernatural. Like, it it has some kind of, like, black hole type force that no matter where you’re which direction you’re walking towards that cabin in the woods, you’re gonna have to step in it on the way there and the way back. I wanna see a movie about that puddle. I really do. There’s something in there, man. There’s something in there.

Craig:  Alright. I’ll get right on that.

Todd:  Well, thanks again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook where we have a website where you can let us know what you thought of this episode. Let us know other things you’d like us to review. We’re still gonna finish out February with 1 or 2 more of these number 2 films, so stay tuned for that as well. And, every Thursday, we do have a horror movie review in text form posted on our website at 2 guys dot redfortynet.com. Until next time, I’m Todd And I’m Craig. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.