The Beach Girls and the Monster (AKA: Monster From the Surf) (1965)

The Beach Girls and the Monster is a horribly inept horror film and, more importantly, one of my all time favorite bad films. It attempts to crossbreed two genres - the horror and beach party movies and fails miserably at both. It plays like Creature From the Black Lagoon meets Beach Blanket Bingo. 

The film doesn't waste time in claiming it's first victim, a giggling blonde conveniently named Bunny. Bunny is being chased on the beach by her boyfriend and hides behind a couple of rocks, located near a dark cave. Just then the monster slowly emerges from the foreground and strangles her to death. This scene is a missed opportunity. It begins promisingly enough with the camera stationed inside the a cave; everything in the foreground is in shadows while Bunny is standing in the background, outside the cave, in sunlight. The monster emerges from the shadows and can only be seen in silhouette. It then slowly creeps upon Bunny and then ATTACKS! Unfortunately, the camera then cuts to an all too revealing close up of the monster and, needless to say, it is extremely laughable. The monster mask is cheap knock off of The Gill Man and looks like something you might find in the Halloween section of a department store. After Bunny's murder, there is a shot of a newspaper with the headline, "SURF BEAUTY CLAWED TO DEATH."

Bunny's murder is cruel in that it teases the audience into believing that they will be watching a much more exciting movie. Unfortunately, the next monster attack won't occur for another forty minutes. Instead, the audience is treated to endless surfing stock footage, rock n' roll numbers, and lots of family squabbling.

The Beach Girls and the Monster is noteworthy in that it has the one of the most inept (and apathetic) protagonists in cinema history, Richard Lindsay. After Bunny's murder, Richard goes on with his life as if nothing happened. When his girlfriend Jane begins to lament Bunny's death, he comforts her with, "Don't feel bad. Let's try to forget it." Richard has given up his career in oceanography to become a full time beach bum, much to the annoyance of his father, Otto. When Richard isn't getting any hanky panky from Jane, he's riding the waves with his buddies or watching surfing footage. He is a remarkably dull and ineffectual character. He doesn't do a damn thing in the entire film, other than argue with his father and sneer at his drunken (and two timing) step mother. Even in the film's climax, he is more of an observer than an actual participant.  Yet, he's the guy the audience is supposed to be rooting for!!!!  The low point of the film is when Richard brings out the acoustic guitar and serenades Jane with an original composition, "More Than Wanting You." This happens during a beach party and Jane, along with a few other girls, begin to swoon over Richard's, theoretical, musical talent.

His girlfriend Jane is pretty much a non-entity - she is extremely cute and looks good in a bikini, and that's about it. She is given center stage later in the film when she and a puppet Lion, named Kingsley, lead the merry band of surfers in a sing a long, "There's a Monster From the Surf."

The beach party scene happens about 40 minute into the film and is tonally different from the rest of the film. Everything before and after has a fairly somber tone, but this scene is played entirely for laughs; to the point that even wacky sound effects are played on the soundtrack. It should be noted that the surfers are having the beach party on the exact spot that Bunny was murdered. Talk about sensitivity! Kingsley appears literally out of nowhere; there's some brief comic banter between him and Jane (who dons an annoying Betty Boop voice) and then they begin their painful sing a long. It goes on and on to the point that you wish the monster would show up and just off everyone in sight, just to put an end to this movie. Sadly, this does not happen. Finally, after this "comedic" interlude the monster  shows up and kills some random surfer dude who happens to be all alone. Despite everyone being a stone throw away, no one witnesses the murder except for Richard's friend Mark, who literally stumbles upon the scene. The surfer dude's girlfriend, Sue, accuses Mark of murdering her boyfriend and the police are called in. Mark has a gimpy leg, due to an auto accident he was in with Richard, yet some how manages to sneak away and steal a police car. Yet another scene that will make you slap your forehead in sheer frustration!

Beach Girls and the Monster is 66 minutes long and about ten minutes of that is devoted to surfing stock footage. Despite its short length, there apparently wasn't enough of a story to fill up an entire feature length movie, hence the filmmakers padded it's running time by adding endless surfing stock footage. It's also done in the least subtle way possible; at one point in the film Richard and his gimpy friend, Mark, watch surfing footage on a film project, while generic surf music (by Frank Sinatra, Jr.) plays on the soundtrack. This scene last FIVE MINUTES. It has absolutely no narrative value, it's just there to waste precious screen time. In another uproarious scene, Mark comes upon three attractive women dancing on the beach, while commenting on what good surfers their boyfriends are. The scenes plays like this:

Attractive Brunette: Look at my Billy go!

Cut to surfing stock footage.

Then other two women comment on their boyfriends surfing skills and we are shown more surfing shots. These three women have no purpose in the entire movie; this is the first and last time they appear. Though, oddly enough, the print floating around on the Internet uses an alternative take for this scene -  instead of the three girls cooing over their boyfriends surfing abilities, we are shown a medium long shot of four bikini clad girls dancing to music emanating from a nearby radio.

The horror, and even the beach movie shenanigans, often are shoved to the sideline to make room for the subplot involving Dr. Otto Lindsay. Dr. Lindsay completely disapproves of Richard's lifestyle and blames his son's seemingly downward spiral on his beach bum friends. At one point Dr. Lindsay tries to pinpoint the murders on those "no good " surfers.  The sheriff counters that most surfers are just young people trying to find themselves. Dr. Lindsay retorts, "They'll find themselves....in your jail one day!" The sheriff backs down, realizing he can't argue with such sound logic.

When Dr. Otto isn't bemoaning his son's fall from grace, Dr. Lindsay spends most of his time trying to please his bitchy, alcoholic wife Vicky.  She is completely bored with Otto and tries to seduce Richard at one point, who flat out rejects her. She then spends most of waking hours tormenting Mark, who is overwhelmed with his lust for her. Mark is a sculptor that lives in the Lindsay household; he  has been free loading off of Dr. Otto's good will for over a year. He has been making a sculpture of Vicky for some time and has her pose for him, so he can spend time with her. She is the ultimate cock tease, often tantalizing Mark with hints of sexual goodies, only to pour a bucket of cold water over him every time. This enrages Mark so much that he smashes the clay sculpture of her, screaming, "I'LL KILL YOU!" Of course, this only serves to make Mark a, rather unconvincing, red herring.

In a not surprising twist ending (SPOILERS) the monster turns out to be Dr. Otto Lindsay dressed up in a ridiculous costume. His plan of murdering surfers to help snap Richard out of his funk proves to be a bust. Oh, both Vicky and Mark meet untimely ends as well. Vicky gets hers after coming home from a date and Mark bites it after discovering the monster's true identity. However, before Mark kicks the bucket, he manages to stab Dr. Lindsay with a knife. While fleeing from the police in Jane's car, Dr. Lindsay loses consciousness and goes careening off a cliff, meeting a firey end. Richard with Jane in his arms just stares at the wreckage. THE END!

The most irritating thing about the movie, aside from the personality free Richard, is it's overuse of the zoom lens. Practically every other scene begins with a close up of an object or person, only to zoom out to a long shot of a room or location. One scene begins with a close up of Vicky's legs and then zooms out to reveal that she is sitting on a bar counter, while Richard looks on disapprovingly.  The beach party scene is filled with endless zooms; when Richard is serenading Jane on the acoustic guitar, the camera constantly zooms in on Jane's face. 

The Beach Girls and the Monster wasn't the only film to combine the horror and the beach party genre, a year before Del Tenney made The Horror of Party Beach, which, while terrible, is a lot more entertaining movie, due to it's more excessive nature. The body count in The Horror of Party Beach is much higher; there is a memorable scene in which the mutations crash a slumber party, abruptly putting an end to an acoustic guitar sing a long. Plus, the protagonist in that film actually does something as opposed to just sitting around. It's wonderfully awful movie filled with unintentionally surreal moments.

The Beach Girls and the Monster was directed by Jon Hall, who also stars as Dr. Otto Lindsay (and was the film's director of photography as well).  Hall was a matinee idol in the 40s, best known for the six technicolor adventures movies he made with screen goddess Maria Montez; the most entertaining one being the wonderful silly Cobra Woman. He also starred in not one, but two Invisible Man movies, The Invisible Agent and The Invisible Man's Revenge.  Unfortunately, by the 50s his career (and his good looks) had faded and he was reduced to making films like The Beach Girls and the Monster. 

The Beach Girls and the Monster is largely enjoyable, due to the stupidity (and inactivity) of the characters. It lacks the excesses of The Horror of Party Beach, but it makes up for that with its "What the hell were they thinking?" moments. Whose idea was it to make Richard so apathetic? Why is Mark constantly at the wrong place at the wrong time? This guy has knack for getting into trouble. Laugh at the non-existent chemistry between Arnold Lessing (Richard) and Elaine DuPont (Jane). Practically every ten minutes there is either a shot of a random bikini clad woman shaking her booty, or of Mark sulking over his impotence. The less said about the soundtrack by Frank Sinatra, Jr. the better.

Credits

Cast: Jon Hall (Otto Lindsay), Sue Casey (Vicky Lindsay), Walker Edmiston (Mark), Arnold Lessing (Richard Lindsay), Elaine DuPont (Jane), Read Morgan (Sheriff Michaels), Gloria Neil (Bunny), Caroyln Williamson (Sue), Kal Roberts (Brad), Clyde Adler (Deputy Scott).
Director: Jon Hall
Screenplay: Joan Gardner
Running Time: 66 min.

The Son of Kong (1933)

King Kong is one of my all time favorite movies and is, probably, the best monster movie ever made. It's just as exciting to watch now as it was when I was a twelve year-old kid. However, it's also one of the most written about movies in cinema history, meaning there's really nothing more I can say that hasn't been said already. The Son of Kong, however, has been fairly neglected by more film historians; if it is mentioned, it's usually in passing, and very rarely do they have anything positive to say about it. In his book "Movie Magic," John Brosnan has this to say about The Son of Kong:

Unfortunately the film had none of the grandeur of it's predecessor, and the script, by Ruth Rose was abysmal. Robert Armstrong, who played the hero in King Kong, returns to the island looking for a comparable attraction, apparently not having learned anything from his previous experience, and discovers 'Little Kong.' This baby Kong would have made his illustrious father roll over in his presumably giant grave - a mere twenty feet tall, he has the instincts of amiable puppy. The effects were impressive, but the overall result was disappointing. 

There's no doubt that The Son of Kong is an inferior film to it's famous predecessor, but Brosnan's summary makes me wonder if he's actually ever seen it. For instance, Carl Denham (Armstrong) doesn't return to Skull Island looking for a "comparable attraction," but rather goes there hoping to find an ancient treasure that Helstrom, a down on his luck Norwegian skipper and the film's main antagonist, has told him about. .  Kong Junior is, indeed, a much more friendlier creature than his chest pounding, bad tempered old man, but if the filmmakers would have made him a ferocious beast, then the film would merely be a rehash of the first film. Finally, Junior isn't twenty feet tall, but twelve feet. In his movie guide book, Leonard Maltin gives the film two and a half stars, which is about right. It's not a remarkable movie, but it is entertaining.

As for the script being "abysmal," I'd say that given the circumstances, Ruth Rose churned out a fairly adequate screenplay. After the success of King Kong, the sequel was rushed into production and made for less than half the budget of the first film. These budgetary lapses are fairly noticeable; Junior doesn't appear until the 42 minute mark (it's a 69 minute movie), and the Skull Island scenes are isolated to a small section of the island.  In King Kong, we were treated to many exciting scenes of Denham and company trekking through the dense jungle and bumping into all sorts of prehistoric life. In The Son of Kong, the prehistoric life has a knack for wandering into Junior's territory. The Son of Kong is a mini-adventure, completely lacking the epic scope of the first film.

However, there are two things are I find extremely interesting about The Son of Kong that most film historians tend to overlook:

1) Carl Denham's character arc.

The Son of Kong takes place a month after the events in the first film and Carl Denham is up to his neck in lawsuits. This experience has made him a more humbler person. In the first film, he was an extremely reckless filmmaker, who often regarded Ann Darrow as prop, rather than an actual human being. He didn't have a single, compassionate bone in his body; all he could think about was how swell everything would look on film. He's so single minded in his obsession to bring entertainment to the masses that he doesn't even harbor any sort of romantic feelings towards Ann Darrow (despite her being an attractive blonde) and is fairly indifferent when she and Jack Driscoll fall in love. In The Son of Kong, Denham has learned from his mistakes and when he finds Hilda alone in Bakang, mourning the death of her father, he does everything he can to cheer her up.  When he finds Junior trapped in quicksand, his initial reaction is not one of fear, but of saving the clumsy gorilla from certain death.  He knocks over a tree and Junior uses it to pull himself out. After Junior has injured his finger battling a giant bear, Denham (at Hilda's urging) bandages up the finger, such an act of kindness would have been foreign to the old Carl Denham.

2) Helen Mack.

I'm going to say it, The Son of Kong has a better leading lady than it's predecessor. I understand that Fay Wray's performance as Ann Darrow (or rather her screaming) is fairly iconic, but Helen Mack is much better actress. In the first film, Ann Darrow's character development essentially ends at the midway point, she falls in love with Jack and that's about it. It can be argued that Ann Darrow is more of a plot device than an actual character, as she's the reason Kong rampages through New York at the end. Ann's role in the second half of the film is that of a nonstop screamer (which is understandable given that the she is being carried around by a giaint ape), while Hilda remains brave throughout, often urging Denham to help Kong Junior.
 Hilda is a much more interesting heroine; she's first introduced as the star attraction of a rundown circus managed by her alcoholic father. She plays a guitar and sings a song called the "Runaway Blues," which is greeted with complete indifference by the small audience. Helen Mack specialized in playing feisty females (she's absolutely wonderful as Harold Lloyd's tough as nails sister in The Milky Way) and The Son of Kong is no exception. When Denham and Englehorn leave Dakang, Hilda stows away on board, partly because she has "nowhere else to go," but mainly to be around Denham. Robert Armstrong is old enough to be Helen Mack's father, but the romance in The Son of Kong is fairly believable; Denham is quite possibly the first person to offer any words of kindness (and encouragement) to Hilda in a long, long time, therefore it makes sense that she would take a liking to him. They are kindred spirits,  both of them have essentially lost everything; Denham is in complete debt at the beginning of the film and is facing being indicted by the grand jury, Hilda loses her father and the rundown circus she's called home for many years (it goes up in a fire). Yet, despite these obstacles both characters keep fighting on, never looking back. Though, the romance itself is fairly chaste, they don't even share an onscreen kiss. Then again, romance (and women) aren't exactly Denham's forte, he slowly learns the ropes as the movie progresses.

Because it was decided to make Kong Junior a good guy, the film is fairly lacking in the villain department; the closest thing we get is Captain Helstrom and he's fairly inept. It is revealed that Helstrom is the Norwegian skipper that sold Denham the map to Kong's island and since then his life has taken a turn for the absolute worse; he has lost his ship, is penniless, and is stranded in the Dutch Port in Bakang. He accidentally kills Hilda's father in a drunken brawl, which in the process burns down the circus tent (and Hilda's home).  Hilda threatens to report him to the Dutch magistrate, which only fuels his desire to get away. He stumbles upon Denham and Englehorn at a bar, and then makes up a story of a lost treasure (unaware that there really is a treasure on Skull Island) as a way to get off the island. However, Helstrom has no desire to go to Skull Island, once aboard Englehorn's ship (The Venture), he starts talking to the crew and leads them in a mutiny against Englehorn. Denham, Hilda, Englehorn, and Charlie are set adrift in a lifeboat, while Helstrom and the crew look on. However, Helstrom's reign as captain is short lived, after the crew refuses to  obey his orders, he pulls a gun on them, but is overpowered and thrown overboard. Denham and company pick him up, albeit reluctantly, and row their way to Skull Island. Once on Skull Island, Helstrom really is given nothing to do. He also has a fairly anti-climatic death; the sight of Junior frightens him and he runs towards the lifeboat, however, as he is ready to shove off, a giant serpent emerges from the water and devours him.

What The Son of Kong lacks, and what it's predecessor did so well, is the grand build up. The original King Kong effectively builds up to Kong's first appearance; he's first brought up in a conversation between Denham and Captain Englehorn. We first get a hint at his physicality, when we view the great wall for the first time. Why is the wall so big? What is it shielding the natives' from? The natives are holding a ceremony, where they sacrifice one of their virginal girls to be Kong's "bride." Then there's Kong's first appearance; we first sense his presence when we hear footsteps on the soundtrack, then the sound of trees being pushed over, and, finally, a load roar. After all this build up, Kong finally emerges from behind the trees and we (along with poor Ann Darrow) overwhelmed by the sheer size of this gorilla. There's a practically no build up in The Son of Kong, the closest thing we have is when Charlie, the Chinese cook, says to Denham early in the film, "I guess next time you leave big monkey alone, huh." Junior's introduction is fairly unremarkable; Denham and Hilda literally stumble upon him as he struggles to get out of a quicksand. Going by Denham's reaction, he doesn't seem a bit surprised that there is miniature Kong running amuk. It's also extremely odd how the filmmaker choose to introduce Junior from a stylistic stand point; there is a long shot of Denham and Hilda as they climb up an ancient stairwell, then the film cuts to a three way shot of Helstrom, Charlie, and Englehorn as they converse with each other. Helstrom tries to apologizes for leading a mutiny against Englehorn, but Englehorn will have none of it. Then it cuts back to a long shot of the top of the stairwell, with Junior's heading bobbing up and down in the background, the rest of his body obscured by the stairwell.  Denham and Hilda walk into frame and after a few seconds, they finally notice Junior. It's curious how very little build up there is to Denham's discovery of Kong Junior. A more effective way would have had the camera follow Denham and Hilda up the stairs and then have Junior's head pop into frame once they reached the top of the staircase (it's what Ishiro Honda did twenty years later in Godzilla).

The specials effects by Willis O' Brien are, just the like the first film, dated, but incredibly fun and often effective. Practically all of the movie's action is crammed into the film's last half hour; Junior fights not one, but two monsters, a giant bear and a dinosaur-like creature. The interaction between Junior and the actors is extremely well done, and often seamless, in it's execution. When Junior  is battling the giant bear, Denham and Hilda look on from the background. The eye line of the actors perfectly matches the action that is unfolding in the foreground. Of course, the audience is not paying attention to either of the actors in this scene, their eyes are entirely focused on the fight, but it does show that at least the filmmakers put an actual effort into making the film, as opposed to being lazy and coasting on the goodwill of  the predecessor.
While Hilda and Denham have front row tickets to one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time, Englehorn and company get trapped in a cave fissure by a nasty Styracosaurus. Helstrom is extremely cowardly in this scene, trembling in absolute fear while hiding behind Charlie.

The ending is rather abrupt, Denham finds the treasure, Helstrom gets devoured, and all of a sudden an earthquake happens, sinking Skull Island in the process. Englehorn, Charlie, and Hilda row away to safety in a lifeboat, but Denham gets caught, along with Kong, inside a cave. They both scale a cliff to a higher height as the island slowly sinks beneath them. Finally, they have reached the highest peak. Hilda and company spot  Denham and row in his direction. Junior grabs Denham and holds him above the ocean, while he slowly sinks underneath. The row boat arrives just in the nick of time to save Denham, but it's too late for Junior. This scene is almost the inverse of the Empire State Building scene in Kong Kong, in that film Kong sense his death, picks up Ann for one last look and then puts her down, resigning himself to his grizzly fate; he loses his footing and falls to his death. In Son of Kong, grabs Denham and holds him above the ocean until the rowboat comes to his rescue. One death is tragic, the other  is heroic. All of the action I mentioned takes place over the course of FIVE MINUTES! There's nothing earlier  in the film that foreshadows the earthquake, it just unexpectedly happens.

Monster fans tend to whine about the decision to make Junior a friendly ape and are aghast at his comedy routines. It's never bothered me one bit, largely because I went into Son of Kong with relatively low expectations; the only reviews I ever read were negative, so when I saw for the first time in 1993 (age 14) I was pleasantly surprised. Is it a vastly inferior film to it's predecessor? Most definitely! Is it a bad movie? Most definitely NOT! If you catch it in the right frame of mind, it's rather enjoyable (and rather sweet) 70 minutes. Of course, I'm biased as I believe that Helen Mack is one of the most underrated actresses of all time and tend to enjoy practically everything I have seen her in. Not to mention, the sight of Kong Jr. beating the crap out of a giant bear still manages to bring out the child in me.

Credits

Cast: Robert Armstrong (Carl Denham), Helen Mack (Hilda Peterson), Frank Reicher (Captain Englehorn), John Marston (Captain Helstrom), Victor Wong (Charlie), Ed Brady (Bo'sun Red), Lee Kohlmar (Mickey), Noble Johnson (Native Chief), Gertrude Short (Reporter), Kathrin Clare Ward (Mrs. Hudson).

Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay: Ruth Rose
Running Time: 69 min.

Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981)

A few months ago I composed  a list of my top 25 horror films and had Friday the 13th, Part 2 ranked at number 25. I was initially going to leave it at that, but after having watched the movie again, I realized that there was much more that needed to be said.
Friday the 13th, Part 2 is my favorite entry in the critically maligned series. Part 2, in particular, felt the wrath of the critics; Roger Ebert gave it half a star, while Leonard Maltin in his movie guide book rates it a BOMB. This isn't too surprising as there is nothing remotely original about Friday the 13th, Part 2, it slavishly follows the formula of the first film:

1) Friday the 13th begins with a pre-credits scare sequence. In 1958, two horny camp counselors gets offed by an unseen assailant. In Friday the 13th, Part 2, Alice, the survivor of the first film, gets killed off by an unseen assailant.

2) The introduction of the secondary characters. In Friday the 13th, the first character we are introduced to (after the credits) is Annie, who is hitchhiking her way to Camp Crystal Lake, she is to be the cook. She wanders into a small town and stops in a local diner to get directions to the summer camp. At first she is given the shifty eyed treatment by the locals, but eventually a kindly truck driver offers to give her a partial lift.  While driving his truck, he warns her about all the wrong doings that have occurred there and advises her to quit. She laughs him off as being superstitious. In Part 2, the first characters we meet (after the credits) are the busty Sandra and her boyfriend Jeffrey. Like Annie, they arrive in a small town. Unlike Annie, they have a means of transportation, Jeffrey's black pick up truck. Jeffrey gets inside a phone booth and dials the number of his friend, Ted, to get directions to the camp. As Jeffrey is talking on the phone, his pick up truck is getting towed away. Sandra alerts him to this and they chase after it, imploring the driver of the two truck to stop. This, however, turns out to be a prank arranged by Ted. The three of them have a good laugh and drive up to the summer camp.

3) The heroine in both films is one of the last characters to be introduced. In Friday the 13th, Alice's introduction doesn't come until fifteen minutes into the movie. In Part 2, Ginny makes her entrance around the twenty minute mark. There's a lot of bait and switch going on in both films; in Friday the 13th, the audience is tricked into believing that Annie is the main protagonist, only for her be killed off in the early going. Annie is your ideal American Girl, apple cheeked with a sunny disposition. She has the ability to brighten up her surroundings, which makes her death even more shocking. The makers of Part 2, try to the same tactic with Sandra and Jeffrey. They are two fairly likable, and attractive, teenagers that most of us in the audience wouldn't mind having a beer with. However, once the character of Ginny enters the scene, we know they are doomed to suffer the same grizzly fate as Annie.

However, Alice and Ginny are radically different heroines. Alice is a fairly passive character for the first hour of the movie, to the point of being a non-entity. It's only when she's left to her own devices that she's able to assert herself as being the film's protagonist. Ginny, on the other hand, is fairly proactive from the get go. The other camp counselors, especially Paul, are fairly dismissive when it comes to the topic of Jason. They view him as being a legend cooked up the locals to scare away outsiders.  However, Ginny takes Jason very seriously; she is studying child psychiatry and tries to understand Jason from a psychological view point. She is the first to recognize the threat of Jason, while the others are off screwing around.

4. Crazy Ralph. Ralph is a local drunk and doomsayer. In the first two installments of The Friday the 13th series he warns the counselors that they are all doomed if they go to Camp Crystal Lake. In the first one, he approaches Annie in the street and screams, "YOU'RE DOOMED!" In Part II, while Jeffrey is in the phone booth, Crazy Ralph pops out of nowhere and preaches his prophecy of doom, much to Jeffrey's bemusement. Sadly, Crazy Ralph doesn't take his own advice to heart, for he bicycles down to the camp and gets garrotted by Jason.

"If Friday the 13th, Part 2 is such a carbon copy of the first film, then how can it be your favorite of the series?" you might be asking. How can something so completely unoriginal be better than the film that preceded it? While there is nothing innovative about Part 2, there are a few things that it manages to do better than the original, like........

1) The Villain.

 I always thought that the "twist" ending to Friday the 13th (Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother, is the killer) undermined the horror that came before it. Pamela Voorhees is a middle aged woman and not in particularly good shape, yet is some how capable of performing some extraordinary physical feats. How could a woman of her stature, for instance, toss the body of recently murdered Brenda through a raised window? How could she overpower a much younger and stronger Bill and impale his body so that it's hanging a few feet off the ground? This would require super strength, something that Mrs. Voorhees doesn't possess; she can't even hold her own against the rather ineffectual Alice. Plus, Betsy Palmer's performance is so ridiculously over the top, that it is often more comical than scary. She possesses super speed as well, seconds after tossing Brenda's corpse through the window she manages to pull up in a jeep.  The film tries to overlook this fact by giving a Mrs. Voorhees a more "mannish" appearance - she has short hair and they bulk up her frame by having her wear a thick sweater.  Still, I don't know anyone who is remotely scared by Pamela Voorhees.

Jason, on the other hand, is much more formidable foe than his crazy mother. It easy to believe that a man of his physique would pose a serious threat to Ginny and the other camp counselors. Jason is sheer brute force. However, one of the main reasons I like Part 2 the best is that Jason is a rather clumsy, and therefore, a more believable serial killer. With each progressing sequel Jason became more and more of a Super Human to the point that he seemingly developed the ability to teleport; his victims would out distance him by a good mile or so, but then cut to close up and there would be Jason standing right in front of them, brandishing some implement of destruction. When Jason became a super natural being, it drained the reality out of the franchise (and suspense) out of the franchise. In Part 2, it's Jason determination and devotion to his deceased mother that makes him frightening. He doesn't teleport, or for that matter crush skulls with his bare hands, but he does have the element of surprise going for him.

2) Heroine. 

Amy Steel is my favorite leading lady in the entire Friday the 13th series and a genuinely good actress. For instance, take the scene at the end in which Ginny dons Mrs. Voorhees' nasty sweater and tricks Jason into believing that she is his deceased mother. It's a rather ridiculous moment, but Steel manages to sell the living hell out of it and somehow makes it work.
I mentioned how Alice (Adrienne King) is almost a non-entity in the first Friday the 13th film, but that basically applies to most of the leading ladies in the series, Amy Steel being the exception. She manages to bring a lot warmth, humor, and intelligence in to what could have easily been a thankless role. The other leading ladies tended be rather humorless and fairly stiff in their performances; Dana Kimmell in Part 3, for example. The only actress in the series that really comes close to matching Steel's performance is Jennifer Cooke in Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives. She gives a  fairly lively performance as Megan, but she is often shoved to the sidelines to make room for Zombie Jason and Tommy Jarvis (played in dour fashion by Thom Matthews.)   Hell, by the time Jason Takes Manhattan came along, the "lead actress" was more or less relegated to supporting player, while Jason was elevated to "hero" status.

The slasher films have often been accused of being misogynistic and moralistic - the sexually promiscuous woman is hacked to pieces, while the virginal woman is rewarded for her virtuous lifestyle by being allowed to survive the night. However, the first two Friday the 13th films throws a monkey wrench into that criticism, because not only are both heroines sexually active (Alice is sleeping with her boss Steve Christy, Ginny and Paul make love in her cabin), but they indulge in some worldly vices; Alice smokes pot and partakes in a game of strip Monopoly, while Ginny tells sick jokes and goes to the bar with other camp counselors. They may be nice girls, but they are certainly no angels.

3) Scarier Opening Sequence. 

Friday the 13th begins with two horny teenagers meeting their demise at the hands of an unknown assailant (later revealed to Pamela Voorhees). It's a fairly short scene and the deaths are fairly inconsequential to overall plot.  Part 2 begins with the murder of Alice, the sole survivor of the first film. It's a fairly divisive moment among Friday the 13th fans, many of whom feel that Alice should have been the protagonist in the second film as well. I rather like the scene as it sets the tone for the rest of the film, that essentially all bets are off. If Alice, the heroine of the first, isn't safe from Jason's wrath, then no one is.  Killing off the survivor of the first film would become cliche among horror sequels, but Friday the 13th, Part 2 was one of the first to do it. The only sequel, that I can think of off hand, to do it prior to Friday the 13th, Part 2 was the 1942 film The Mummy's Curse, in which Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) offs Dick Foran midway through the film.

4. The prankster lives.

 In the Friday the 13th series, there's always one character that is an absolutely prankster; Ned in the first film, Shelley in Part 3, etc. Therefore, when Ted makes his first appearance in Part 2, we are  certain he's going to get it. When he scares the other counselors by jumping out at them with a monster mask and a spear, we are 100%  certain that he will suffer a gruesome demise. Yet, Ted is spared, because he opts to stay at the bar and get drunk. Paul, Ginny, and Ted go to a local bar for one last night of hardcore drinking, before the children arrive in the morning. When Ginny and Paul go back to the camp, Ted stays behind and asks a local if there are any "after hour" bars? It's actually a nice deviation from the norm; a character survives the night by indulging in the kind of "sinful" activity that would usually mean certain death in other horror films. There could always be a sequel in which Ted relates how alcohol saved his life.

The early Friday the 13th films (1-4) were often under harsh criticism for being extremely violent and gory, yet are absolutely tame when compared to recent horror films. What I like about the first four Friday the 13th movies is that they mix up the killings; some are more extreme than others. In Part 2, Mark takes a machete to the head, while Terry is killed off screen; we see her reaction to the unseen killer and then it cuts to the next scene. Rather than bombard the audience with nonstop gore, the filmmakers allow us a breather every once in awhile. Plus, it doesn't desensitize us to the killings later on the film - each one is shocking in their own right. Modern horror films have become so excessively gory, that it has the effect of numbing, often boring the audience. 

The first four Friday the 13th movies might come across as slow to modern audiences that are used to the rapid pacing of present day cinema; frantically edited to the point that they are incomprehensible.  Friday the  13th, Part 2, in particular, relies heavily on extended takes to build up suspense. The best example is when Paul is telling the rest of the camp counselors about Jason while they are all sitting around a camp fire. The scene begins as a long shot of the group huddled together and then it slowly zooms in on a close up  of Paul's face as he tells his story. It's a nice way of getting a piece of exposition out of the way by disguising it as a scary campfire story. When Paul gets to the end of his story, in which he warns "Jason's out there,"  Ted, donning a monster mask and spear, jumps into the camp fire circle and scares the living crap out of the counselors. It's a cheap scare, but effective.

It's interesting to note that a similar scene occurs in The Burning, made the same year, and complete with the same gag. It would be easy to accuse one film of ripping off the other, but that seems as unlikely as both were in production at the same time and released within one week of each other; Friday the 13th, Part 2 opened on May 1, 1981 and The Burning came out the following weekend, May 8. It's more likely that the screenwriters of both movies had very similar moments in their youth (campfire stories) and decided to include it in the script. The early slasher movies are the cinematic equivalent of a campfire story; they slowly build to a very grim ending and often end on a cheap scare.

Later, Jason enters a cabin to look for Ginny. The camera tracks Jason's feet as they pace about the room, eventually revealing that Ginny is hiding underneath a bed. Jason stands in front of the bed for a few seconds; the shot is framed so that Jason's feet are stationed in the foreground, while Ginny is lying underneath the bed in the background.The tension builds as the audience wonders whether or not Jason will look underneath the bed and discover Ginny. This scene plays out so long that it becomes almost unbearable (in a good, frightening way) to watch. Will Jason discover her? Will he walk away?  A modern horror film might not even bother to establish Jason and Ginny's spatial relationship to one another, instead you might get a close up of Ginny lying under the bed and  then a close up of Jason as he scans the room. Rapid editing would ruin a moment like this, because it wouldn't be able to properly convey the danger Ginny is in.

Another criticism leveled at the Friday the 13th franchise is the audience actively roots for the killer. This may be true of later entries in the series, when Jason was the star, but certainly not the case in early films. In the first two films the filmmakers do a good job of distancing the audience from the killer, who is off screen force for most of the film and completely devoid of an identity, hence making it extremely hard to root for her/him. The audience genuinely fears for the lives of the camp counselors and, in some cases, it actually saddened when one of them comes to a ghastly. In Part II, I am always saddened when the characters of Mark and Vickie get offed by Jason, because they seem like genuinely nice people. Mark has been dealt a hard hand in life, he was cripple in an accident and is stuck in wheel chair, but he has an extremely positive outlook. He doesn't sit around and sulk about his current state, but rather is determined to walk again. He also has a sex drive, which is a rarity in Hollywood, where people with physical disabilities are often depicted as being extremely child like.Vickie has a crush on Mark and the two of them are about to spend the night together, until Jason steps in.

While Friday the 13th, Part 2 is my favorite film in the series, it oddly enough, has the weakest ending. Ginny has seemingly killed Jason (in the dilapidated shack he lives in) with a machete and Paul carries her to a nearby cabin to look after her. Just then they hear a scratch coming from the front door, they expect the worst and Ginny arms herself with a pitch fork, while Paul stands by the door, waiting for her cue to open it. She gives Paul the nod and he opens to reveal...A DOG! The dog belongs to the now deceased Terry and went missing earlier in the film. They both breathe with a sigh of relief. Ginny is about to walk over to pet the dog, when Jason (unmasked) comes crashing through the window behind Ginny and attacks. WHITE OUT and fade in to Ginny on a stretcher being carried into an ambulance. She asks "Where's Paul?" over and over again, but doesn't receive an answer. The medics put her in the ambulance, close the back door, and drive off. THE END.  Jason lunging at Ginny is, of course, a repeat of the gag from the first film, in which Jason rises up the lake and attacks Alice in the canoe. It's a frustrating ending, because it's so abrupt. It comes off as being an after thought by the filmmakers, realizing they need at least one more scare and aping the ending of the first film. Paul's disappearance is never explained, so we are to assumed that he was killed while saving Ginny from the clutches of Jason. Or maybe, it was all a dream?!

In Part 3, the ending has been retconned so that after Ginny has taken Jason out with the machete, he pulls it out of his shoulder and walks away. When Jason crashes through the window at the end of Part 2, the machete is still lodged in his shoulder. The third film never references the attack of Ginny in the cabin, nor the mysterious disappearance of Paul. It does, however, have a TV news report that shows Ginny being taken aboard the ambulance, but that's it.

I would like to finish this review by talking about the muddled Friday the 13th time line. The first film tries to dance around this subject with the caption "PRESENT DAY!" However, in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Pamela Voorhee's gravestone reveals that the year of her death was 1979. The second film takes place five years after her death, making it 1984. The events in Friday the 13th, Part 2 through Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Part 4) happen within the same week. This makes very little sense, because in The Final Chapter, Sandra's brother, Rob, has come to Crystal Lake to hunt down Jason and avenge her death. Given that her death was just a few days ago, Rob must have psychic abilities. Granted, he might have heard about her death, but how would he know Jason is still lurking about the woods? Considering that at the beginning of The Final Chapter, Jason has been pronounced dead. Friday the 13th: The New Beginning (the worst entry in the series) occurs four years after the events in the fourth film, making it 1988 (which is doable). In Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives, Tommy Jarvis is significantly older, which would place the setting of this movie in the 1990s (which isn't doable, given the style of clothing on display). Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood, confounds things even further by taking place seven years after the events of Jason Lives, putting it near the millennium. It's all very confusing, but then again, I'm probably putting way too much thought into all this.

Credits

Amy Steel (Ginny), John Furey (Paul), Adrienne King (Alice), Marta Kober (Sandra), Bill Randolph (Jeffrey), Lauren-Marie Taylor (Vickie), Stuart Charno (Ted), Kirsten Baker (Terry), Tom McBride (Mark), Russell Todd (Scott), Betsy Palmer (Pamela Voorhees), Walt Gorney (Crazy Ralph), Warrington Gillette (Jason unmasked), Steve Dash (Jason).
Director: Steve Miner.
Screenplay: Ron Kurz
Running Time: 87 min.