Friday the 13th Part 2

FRIDAY THE 13^th PART 2

Released in 1981 (but set five years after the events of the first movie aside from a twelve-minute prologue that occurs two months after Alice Hardy decapitated Mrs. Voorhees), Friday the 13^th Part 2 does not (as a review in Variety claimed) “employ too many of the same twists and turns used in the original.” The sequel is a unique tale with a new killer and a distinct set of victims. While the setting is similar (the bulk of the movie occurs at a training facility for camp counselors along Crystal Lake near the camp from the first film), the plot unfolds in a wholly different way from the yarn told in part 1. In the lengthy prologue this time around, Alice (the survivor from the original film) has a nightmare about her encounter with Mrs. Voorhees. She awakens, takes a phone call from her mom, and showers. As Alice heats water in a tea pot, a cat startles her by jumping through the window. Alice goes to her fridge to fetch some food for the kitty and therein discovers the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees moments before an unseen assailant drives an ice pick through her temple.

In the twenty minutes that pass before the next kill scene, the audience eventually meets the protagonist (a graduate student named Ginny who studies child psychology). First, the narrative introduces an array of young adults: Sandra and Jeff (a couple) who encounter Crazy Ralph in the town near Crystal Lake, their old friend Ted, a wheelchair-bound counselor-in-training named Mark, and two ladies (Terry and Vickie). All of these doomed individuals gather outside Packanack Lodge to hear an orientation speech from a dude named Paul (the protagonist's love interest) as they gear up for counselor training. Our heroine (Ginny) arrives late in a sputtering unreliable car twenty-one minutes into the story (an awfully late introduction for a main character). That night, the group sits around a campfire as Paul recounts the legend of Jason Voorhees, who allegedly drowned in Crystal Lake back in 1958 but whose body was never recovered. Paul says that certain old-timers in town claim to have seen Jason, who some believe survived and grew up living off the land in the dense local woods. Paul speculates that Jason may have seen his mother decapitated that fateful night in June of 1980 and that he might even now lurk in the forest waiting to exact revenge on any who dare enter his territory. Because there would be no movie otherwise, this legend is totally true (though Paul doesn't believe it).

Later that night, Ginny and Paul kiss in Ginny's cabin while Crazy Ralph lurks outside and spies on them. Jason (still mostly unseen) shows up and quietly murders Ralph. The next day, Jeff and Sandra set off to visit the off-limits grounds of neighboring Camp Crystal Lake. They stumble upon the mangled corpse of a dog moments before a cop busts them for trespassing. After the cop takes the curious couple back to Packanack Lodge, he glimpses Jason vanishing into the woods and sets off in pursuit. The policeman stumbles upon a weathered shack of sorts deep in the forest and explores its interior until Jason sneaks up behind him and embeds the claw of a hammer in the back of his head.

That night, Ginny, Paul, Ted, and many of the background extras (additional trainees who are not named or given much to do in the story) head to a bar in town, thereby leaving a small group of young adults to be picked off at the training facility. A guy named Scott steps into a rope trap that hauls him up by his feet so that he dangles upside down, and Jason shows up to slit his throat with a machete. Terry arrives to cut down Scott, sees that he's dead, and whirls to (presumably) face Jason (her death occurs off-camera). Mark and Vickie flirt in a couple of scenes dense with clever subtext, and Vickie heads off to her cabin to freshen up. In her absence, Jason embeds a machete in Mark's face. Less than two minutes later, Jason drives a spear through the back of Jeff as he sleeps with Sandra, and the spear goes through her as well. Three minutes later, Jason knifes Vickie. Ginny and Paul then arrive back at camp so that the third act can commence.

As Ginny and Paul explore the lodge in search of the people they expect to find there, Ginny senses something amiss and bellows, “Paul, there's someone in this fucking room!” Jason leaps out of the shadows and attacks Paul. Ginny wisely arms herself with a knife. Jason chases her outside, and she kicks him in the crotch. Three minutes later, Ginny goes on the offensive again and attacks Jason with a chainsaw (wounding him but inexplicably opting to not finish him off). Ginny races into the woods and stumbles upon Jason's shack. Therein, she finds a shrine of candles surrounding the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees (whose gray sweater also sits nearby). As Jason pounds on the door, Ginny puts her child psychology skills to good use and dons the sweater. When Jason bursts through the door, Ginny addresses him by name and identifies herself as “mommy.” She talks a confused Jason into kneeling before her and is about to decapitate him with a machete when he spots the head of his real mother behind Ginny and raises a pickaxe to ward off the death blow. Paul shows up (in a deux ex machina moment) and grabs Jason from behind, enabling Ginny to slice the machete deep into Jason's shoulder and neck area. Jason drops, and Paul carries Ginny back to Packanack Lodge.

After a false scare in which Terry's missing dog appears at the door, Jason leaps through a window and grabs Ginny from behind. This is an infamous “money shot” moment in which the viewer gets a good long look at the deformed face of Jason, who had worn a sack over his head throughout the rest of the film. (The iconic hockey mask does not appear until the third film in the series.)

In a brief epilogue, paramedics load Ginny into an ambulance as she calls out for Paul – a slightly confusing ending.

An entertaining and frightening tale from a bygone age (before the existence of cell phones and rectangular television sets), Friday the 13^th Part 2 contains ample spooky imagery (one can never un-see the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees surrounded by candles in Jason's shack after one gazes upon it) to sate hardcore slasher film fans and is laced with humor to balance out the jolts and gore. There's a fair amount of gratuitous nudity and women-in-panties moments also. Ginny is a more dimensional protagonist than most heroines of this horror sub-genre, and (before she actually encounters the killer and realizes that he's more than just a legend) she cooks up a fine psychological profile of what Jason would be like if he existed: “a child trapped in a man's body.”

The first four films in the Friday the 13^th series are wildly entertaining. Check back before October for reviews of parts 3 and 4.

Friday the 13th (1980 version) [unrated edition]

FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980 version) [unrated edition]

I'll be taking a look at the first four films in the Friday the 13^th franchise this autumn. Spoilers abound, so don't read on if you've never seen these slasher gems and want to discover them for yourself.

The original Friday the 13^th follows a young woman named Alice Hardy who is part of a small crew fixing up an isolated summer camp along idyllic Crystal Lake in June of 1980. Alice (an artist who “draw[s] very well” according to her employer) toils alongside other young adults: a vegetarian named Brenda, a prankster known as Ned, another dude called Bill, and a couple (Jack and Marcie). The members of this group paint docks by the lake, nail up sagging rain gutters, and fix up an archery range, all totally unaware that the town's self-proclaimed “messenger of God” (Crazy Ralph) is utterly correct when he intones “You're all doomed.”

In the fifth season of the sitcom Seinfeld, the protagonist's neighbor (an eccentric fellow named Kramer) writes and sells a coffee table book about coffee tables. Some fifteen years earlier, film producer Sean S. Cunningham and screenwriter Victor Miller hatched the brilliant idea of creating a movie set at a summer camp with a plot worthy of being told around campfires. Indeed, the film's first sequel includes a literal campfire scene.

In his book Making Friday the 13^th: The Legend of Camp Blood, David Grove quotes Victor Miller as saying, “I came up with the summer camp idea and it seemed perfect except for the fact that there were lots of kids at summer camp. Where's the terror in that? That's when I thought that it was a summer camp that was just about to open... we had to have these kids who are totally on their own with no one to help them. Total isolation.”

Sean S. Cunningham directed the film from a Victor Miller script that included substantial uncredited rewrites by Ron Kurz (who went on to have sole credit as writer of the film's first sequel). The plot that unfolds in the final product opens with a five-minute prologue set at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958 (a place that a sign indicates was founded in 1935). Two counselors sneak off to an isolated room to sate their carnal needs, but before their romp progresses beyond making out, they're interrupted by an off-camera assailant who kills them both. The narrative then moves to June 13^th in 1980. Nine minutes pass before the protagonist (Alice Hardy) makes her first appearance. Alice's boss (Steve Christy) vanishes from the proceedings for half an hour; he heads into town eighteen minutes into the film and doesn't reappear until the forty-eight minute mark. Thus, Alice and her co-workers have ample time to get into unsupervised trouble.

Jack and Marcie wander around the camp and are outdoors when a thunderstorm commences thirty-six minutes into the tale. Just before the rain falls, Marcie tells Jack about a recurring dream she's had in which “rain turns to blood.” It's a quietly chilling moment and one that has stuck in my craw. Some critics assert that the Friday the 13^th films are nothing more than one gory scene after another, but subtle chills like this one permeate the first movie.

Jack and Marcie sneak into a cabin to have sex during the storm, unaware that the corpse of Ned (whose death scene is not depicted) lays in the upper bunk above them. Meanwhile, Alice plays “strip Monopoly” with Brenda and Bill. Alice smokes a joint and nearly removes her shirt (the game's interrupted before she unbuttons too far), which contradicts the viewpoint voiced by some critics that only goody-goody virginal girls survive slasher films. Marcie leaves Jack alone in the cabin and heads out for some post-coital use of the self-contained washroom building, and in her absence someone hiding beneath Jack's bed shoves an arrow up through the mattress and right on through Jack's throat. Approximately four minutes later, the killer embeds an axe in Marcie's face. Ten minutes later, Brenda dies off-camera at the archery range. Seven minutes after that, boss Steve makes it back to camp only to be knifed in the stomach. Bill is the next to perish, albeit off-camera. Alice (who inexplicably takes a nap shortly after she finds a bloody axe in Brenda's bed) awakens and sets out to locate Bill. When she stumbles upon his corpse, she realizes that she's in mortal peril and barricades herself in the counselors' main headquarters. Headlights appear outside, and Alice (who thinks that Steve has returned) runs outside to be greeted by a woman who identifies herself as “Mrs. Voorhees... an old friend” of the family that owns that camp. Alice attempts to explain that her peers are all dead, but Mrs. Voorhees seems unfazed and heads into the cabin where Alice had been barricaded. In there, she gushes some exposition about how her son Jason drowned at the camp in 1957 while the counselors who were supposed to supervise him were off “making love.” Mrs. Voorhees reveals herself to be the killer when she explains that she could not let Camp Crystal Lake reopen again. She pulls out a hunting knife and lunges at Alice, who fights for her life. Eventually the two women end up on the shore of Crystal Lake, where Alice decapitates Mrs. Voorhees with a machete.

In her book Games of Terror, Vera Dika describes Friday the 13^th as “a film where elaborate characterization and motivation would only get in the way of the rhythmic progression of shocks.” Indeed, most of the characters are thinly-drawn; Brenda has a couple of lines that reveal she is a vegetarian, and Ned goofs around more than Bill and Jack, but the project will never be remembered as a character-centric piece.

Atmospheric and unsettling, Friday the 13^th remains a seminal and prototypical slasher film nearly thirty-five years after its theatrical release. I hadn't looked at any movies from this franchise for over a decade (I used to see the first four films in heavy rotation on cable TV during the mid-to-late 1980s) before I began revisiting them on Blu-ray as part of my annual horror movie festival, and I'm pleasantly surprised to report that the film that spawned the series still retains its crude charm despite a rather slow first act (after the prologue, the viewer spends a long set of scenes following Annie, a young woman who has been hired to be the camp's cook, as she makes her way toward Crystal Lake by hitchhiking). For first-time viewers, there are ample red herrings in terms of suspects who could be the killer (certainly Crazy Ralph and Steve Christy seem creepy and possibly dangerous). For those who have seen the film numerous times before, there are always new details to discover (I noticed a sign that indicates there's a “Lake Tomahawk” thirteen miles beyond Crystal Lake). Often dismissed as a silly gore-filled simple slasher movie, Friday the 13^th is a work of art worthy of serious examination in the eyes of this reviewer. There's a reason the mythos of Camp Crystal Lake resonated with viewers strongly enough to launch a lucrative multi-film franchise. The third act in particular is dense with a sense of dread and suspense. I'm glad I opted to re-examine these stories in the autumn of 2014.

Hellraiser: Hellseeker

HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER

The worst of the Hellraiser sequels up to this point in the series, Hellseeker follows a bland protagonist named Trevor (husband of Kirsty) who is seemingly under investigation by the police for the murder of his wife and some other women. Trevor suffers from frequent intense headaches and loses the ability to distinguish reality from hallucination. He spends time in his cubicle at work (where he's supposed to crunch numbers but apparently never actually gets anything done), riding on a bus, at his apartment, and receiving acupuncture treatments. In the film's final scenes, the viewer learns what's actually been going on via a twist ending that transforms the Kirsty character from the likeable and sympathetic young woman she was at the start of this series into a cold-blooded killer.

I've got a single Blu-ray disc that includes Hellseeker along with three other Hellraiser films, and the back of the case describes the plot of this film as follows: “Pinhead and his legion return to unleash Hell on Earth but standing in the way is Kirsty – the only person who has defeated Pinhead in the past.” This is blatant false advertising. Kirsty and Pinhead barely appear in Hellseeker, and Kirsty certainly does not stand in Pinhead's way. Rather, she strikes a bargain with him. Unless you're a Hellraiser completist, don't waste 88 minutes sitting through this crap.

Hellraiser: Inferno

HELLRAISER: INFERNO


The fifth entry in this series follows an unethical police detective named Joseph Thorne in Colorado who finds a Lament Configuration box at a crime scene and (instead of cataloging it with the other evidence) takes it with him. He stops home briefly to visit with his wife and daughter, then heads to a motel to snort cocaine with a prostitute (who he has sex with). The next morning, Thorne messes with the puzzle box in the motel bathroom and has an experience in which he seemingly walks into another space (a house) and encounters Cenobites. He finds himself back in the motel bathroom and exits while the prostitute sleeps in the bed. The bulk of the plot finds him investigating assorted homicides with a child's severed finger left at each scene. He grows to believe that a criminal mastermind known as The Engineer is behind the murders. Throughout his investigation, he periodically glimpses Cenobites. The boundary between reality and visions/hallucinations blurs, and the viewer learns how and why in the project's final moments. Pinhead appears only briefly in this project.


Hellraiser: Inferno begins quite well as a singular and memorable protagonist (a coke-snorting cop who steals evidence and cheats on his wife) finds a Lament Configuration box and the mangled bloody remains of someone who likely encountered Cenobites (and their hooks) at a crime scene. The scenes in which the main character encounters Cenobites are visually striking and often chilling. I've read that Hellraiser creator Clive Barker (who was not creatively involved with this movie) loathes Inferno. I found it to be the best of the sequels thus far, though it's not nearly on par with the engrossing original film. Inferno's main flaw is in ignoring the Hellraiser conventions and rules that are set up earlier in the series. Inferno turns the Cenobites into moralistic judges of human sin, whereas in the original movie they were more or less neutral bringers of pleasure and pain. Inferno boasts the most cohesive plot of the Hellraiser sequels and features a flawed and unlikeable protagonist who somehow is sympathetic despite his unpleasant attributes. Of the Hellraiser sequels I've seen thus far, this is the first one I'd consider watching again. I imagine it's a different experience to sit through this movie once you've seen the ending and have an idea of what's “really” happening as the tale unfolds. Hellraiser: Inferno may offend Barker purists, but I found it to be an interesting take on the Cenobite mythos.

Hellraiser: Bloodline

HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE

The fourth film in the series takes place across three different time periods: the years 2127 and 1996 plus sometime in the 1700s.  At last addressing the question of how the puzzle boxes at the center of the Hellraiser mythos originated, Bloodline shows an 18^th century toymaker who creates the first box on commission for an occultist (who then conducts a dark ritual in which he sacrifices a woman and brings her back as a demon).  Somehow this imbues the box with the power to open gateways to hell.  The summoned demon (Angelique) still roams Earth in 1996 and sets out to find a descendant of the original toymaker.  The descendant (John Merchant) is a successful architect in New York and apparently is the one who designed the building glimpsed at the end of the third Hellraiser film.  Angelique for no apparent reason lures a man to the basement of the building and has him mess with a Lament Configuration box, which leads to the fellow’s death and the arrival of Pinhead.  The motivations of this pair of antagonists (Angelique and Pinhead) are fuzzy at best, but Pinhead kidnaps Merchant’s son and wife to use as “live bait.”  Pinhead for some reason needs Merchant to open the floodgates of hell.  When Merchant discovers that his family’s missing and his home is trashed, he immediately heads to his place of work instead of, like, phoning the police.  There he and Pinhead face off, and Merchant ends up decapitated.  On a space station in 2127, Dr. Paul Merchant (who has been recounting his family history as depicted in the film thus far even though he has no way of knowing in such detail just what transpired) wants to complete his life’s work: slamming shut the gates of hell that his toymaker ancestor unwittingly helped to open.  Pinhead and a couple of additional Cenobites wander around the space station, unaware that Paul has lured them into a trap.  Will Paul’s ploy work?  Watch the movie to find out.

Bloodline contradicts a rule that’s established in the third film: Pinhead cannot take a puzzle box but must have one given to him.  Thirty-six minutes into Bloodline, Pinhead walks to a box and picks it right up.  This is unfortunately the least of the project’s problems, though I do acknowledge that Bloodline has the best production values out of the first four films in the series.  The use of three different eras is an interesting departure from past installments, but Bloodline (like parts two and three) suffers from unclear character motivations.  Also, with no single protagonist to root for throughout the tale, the viewer might not be as invested as he or she would be in a story with a sympathetic main character.  Though Bloodline runs less than ninety minutes, it’s not worth your time.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH

The third film in the series opens with an interesting premise: what if a television news reporter witnessed the aftermath of what occurs when someone opens a Lament Configuration puzzle box and set out to discover exactly what happened?  A protagonist digging into the lore of the Cenobites could have driven an interesting story, but unfortunately Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth switches narrative directions repeatedly in a way that muddles the plot with unanswered questions and silly moments that don’t match the tone of the first film (Cenobites quip one-liners like “that’s a wrap” and “this is better than sex”).

The story more or less follows the reporter (a woman named Joey) starting at a hospital where she’d been sent on an assignment from her TV station.  After her cameraman departs, Joey witnesses the arrival of a patient who has chains hooked into his flesh.  She questions a girl (Terri) who arrived at the hospital with the wounded guy and learns only that the fellow’s injuries have to do with a box he acquired at a place called The Boiler Room.  Joey asks around at The Boiler Room (a dark nightclub) in search of the girl she met at the hospital.  Terri later phones Joey and offers to tell her story if Joey will let her crash at her place.  Meanwhile, the owner of the club (a guy named J.P.) discovers that weirdness occurs when he accidentally gets blood on a sculpture that decorates his pad.  Just as blood brought Frank back in the first film and Julia in the second, here the blood begins to revive Pinhead (who somehow ended up trapped in this sculpture – the story never addresses why he’s there).  J.P. observes as the sculpture skins and absorbs a girl he’d just slept with, and Pinhead’s face comes to life in the sculpture.  Further convoluting the plot are Joey’s dreams in which she seeks to connect with her father (who died in the Vietnam War).  At some point, Joey’s motivation becomes to lure Pinhead to her apartment because the window therein will somehow act as a gateway to a limbo where the ghost of the man who was once Pinhead resides.  By this point, the plot makes little sense, but apparently some fans of the series were entertained merely by the visuals of Pinhead slaughtering a club full of young adults and (later) Pinhead and a few Cenobites creating havoc and chaos on a city street.  I prefer images on screen that coalesce into a coherent and plausible narrative.  The film ends with Joey burying the puzzle box in wet cement at a construction site.  The viewer then sees the lobby of the building that’s been built there, and its walls are decorated with oversized versions of the trim that adorns the puzzle boxes. 

It’s unfortunate that the first two Hellraiser sequels fail to capture the atmosphere, suspense, tone, and creepiness of the original.  Perhaps each installment should have centered on a different group of Cenobites interacting with people in disparate situations who have summoned them.  Instead, part two centered on Kirsty from the first film, and she even has a cameo shoehorned into part three.  Of the Hellraiser movies I’ve seen thus far, only the first is worth your time.

Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (unrated version)

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2 (UNRATED VERSION)

The second film in the Hellraiser series is flat-out bad.  The narrative is such a mess that it’s hard to summarize the plot.  The tale begins with a prologue that quickly depicts the origin of Pinhead.  In the present day, the viewer finds Kirsty (shortly after the events of the first film) in a psychiatric hospital.  By coincidence, the head shrink (Doctor Channard) has an interest in (and collection of) the sort of puzzle boxes that summon the Cenobites.  As Kirsty attempts to explain the ordeal she’s just been through, she uses the word “Cenobites” when she refers to the demons.  Did she hear that word in the original movie?  She speaks like someone who has seen the first film, not like someone who lived through only part of the events depicted therein.  Channard acquires the blood-stained mattress on which Julia died and (for no apparent reason) uses the blood of his patients to bring her back (just as Julia helped Frank to regenerate in the first film).

Channard takes a patient in a straightjacket out of the hospital and to his home with the intent of allowing the fellow to self-mutilate with a razor and bleed all over the mattress.  Were there no witnesses to his comings and goings at the hospital?  A fellow named Kyle (one of Channard’s co-workers) witnesses the return of Julia because he’d broken into Channard’s house (again with no clear motivation).  Kyle returns to the hospital and tells Kirsty he believes her story given what he saw at Channard’s house (he observed a collection of puzzle boxes too).  Kirsty wants to use one of the boxes to open a door to hell so that she can rescue her dead father.  She and Kyle go back to the doctor’s house, where Kyle (upstairs) encounters an almost completely regenerated Julia while Kirsty (downstairs) finds a photo of the man who became Pinhead.  She pockets the picture.  Julia kills Kyle and knocks Kirsty out.  Channard returns to the house with Tiffany (a young patient from the hospital who has a savant-like ability to solve puzzles).  Channard gives Tiffany one of the mystical puzzle boxes and observes with Julia from another room as Tiffany summons the Cenobites.  With the doors to hell open, all the remaining main characters set off on assorted adventures in the underworld.  Kirsty searches for her father, Tiffany wanders into a hellish carnival, and Julia leads Channard to a place where he’s turned into a Cenobite.  From this point on, the plot spirals into incomprehensibility.  If you must know what happens next, sit down and watch the film.  I discourage you from doing so: believe me, there are better ways to spend 95 minutes or so.  In his 1988 review of Hellraiser 2, Roger Ebert noted that the project “violates a basic convention of story construction, which suggests that we should get at least a vague idea of where the story began and where it might be headed.  This movie has no plot in a conventional sense.”  The 1996 edition of The BFI Companion to Horror notes that the sequel is “sicker and gorier” than the first movie, which is accurate.  It’s just a shame that the disturbing visuals were not strung together in a way that tells a coherent story.  Avoid.