Let’s Go Camping Part 2 (Friday the 13th Part 2, 1981)

Part two shows us that Jason is still alive and stomping around Camp Crystal Lake, killing random people. Mainly folks no one would miss, you know, like the town sheriff and the Official Crazy Old Guy from the first film. Initially, Jason leaves Camp Crystal Lake to kill the Sole Survivor of the first film. After what she did to dear old ma-beheading her and all. Due to low property value, Camp Blood has remained closed in the five years since the first film. Luckily for fans of slasher films, there is another  camp on the same lake. Again, a variety of attractive young counselors are killed in gruesome ways. Jason runs around with a potato sack over his head, which frankly is not all that scary, nor as iconic as the hockey mask. But the Sole Survivor of the film finds Jason’s shack where he keeps Ma’s severed head and her sweater. She puts on the sweater and convinces Jason she is his mother. Because, you know, they look so much alike. She almost is done in by Jason but is saved by her boyfriend. She returns the favor by putting an axe or a machete (I forgot which already) into the back of Jason’s knap-sacked skull. The two lovebirds go back to the camp. They go into the main cabin and suddenly there is a scratch at the door. They get ready for a fight and open the door and it’s “the cutest dog in the world” that went missing earlier in the film! While people can stomach its short shorts wearing owner being butchered, killing the puppy, that would make Jason some kind of sicko.

Suddenly, in slow motion a deformed Jason leaps through a big glass window and grabs the Sole Survivor. And she wakes of screaming on a stretcher asking where her boyfriend is. Which no one answers. Inexplicably, he is just gone. But hey, what kind of Jason movie would end without a Sole Surviving Girl babbling incoherently?

The film follows its prescribed formula that will set the story for the series. People show up, Jason kills them…cause why not?  Amy Steel is a strong protagonist, but the overall story is not very compelling.

One thing that makes no sense. Jason did not drown. But it is clear in the first film Pamela Voorhees clearly believes Jason is dead. So, if Jason survived the drowning…in all those years he never tracked her down? And yet he loves her enough to keep her head on a table in a run down shack?

*Updated to correct a factual error regarding the film’s timeline.