FRIDAY THE 13TH and FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1997 Chuck Dowling
Friday the 13th (1980) * out of ***** - Cast: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Kevin Bacon. Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham. Running Time: 95 minutes.
The first film in a ridiculously long movie series about a crazed (almost supernatural) killer in a hockey mask named Jason. Jason stalks Camp Crystal Lake, killing naughty teens. Many people don't remember that in this, the first installment, Jason wasn't the killer. He was merely a young camper who had supposedly drowned while the camp's counselors were off having sex, and now his mother was killing all the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake for revenge. Dull, even by cheesy slasher-movie standards. Those who criticize horror films as being sexist towards women should note that the lone survivor of the film is a woman. Kevin Bacon, in one of his earliest roles which I assume he'd like to forget, plays one of the counselors. [R]
-----
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) * out of ***** - Cast: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King. Directed by: Steve Miner. Running Time: 87 minutes.
The second film isn't as ridiculous as most probably think, but it's just as dull and padded as the first one. Five years after the events of part 1 (although only one year in real time... so technically it's 1985), Jason (who isn't superhuman yet, just a demented man living in the woods) journeys to the suburbs to kill the only survivor of part 1. Then, a group of kids go through counselor training (translation: have sex) at a camp right next door to Camp Crystal Lake. Soon, they are getting picked off one by one. Again, the lone survivor is a woman, but the ending doesn't make any sense. The heroine thinks she's safe with her boyfriend, until Jason explodes through her window and takes her. A flash of white, and then we see paramedics taking her away. She asks what happened to her boyfriend, and the film ends. Hmmm. Jason has not acquired his hockey mask yet, so he wears a cloth sack on his head. [R]
-- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, film related links, and reader's reviews.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews