ROX-TV takes a fresh look at “Friday the 13th: Part 2” and why the film is built on an impossibility hiding in plain sight!

Welcome back to the ROX-TV website. As always, we appreciate the returning readers and first timers drifting through the open door. Tonight, we will be examining some of the weirder parts of the second installment of the “Friday the 13th” franchise. As you all know, horror movies hold a special place in my tiny black heart. I suppose there are reasons for this…perhaps more than a few and although we don’t have time to examine the different avenues of why I like the genre in this article, we do have enough time for some topics which strike me as odd in regard to Part 2.

The “Friday the 13th” series is perhaps one of my favorites in the horror movie universe. Some of my earliest memories of scary movies belong to this film in particular. I’ve discussed it somewhat in previous articles and if you’d like to read further…by all means take a look. I will link some of those articles at the bottom for the more curious readers. So anyway, “Friday the 13th: Part II” is why we are here. The film needs no introduction, nor does the star of the show “Jason”. Time has proven that this franchise hit in all the right places with fans and movie goers.

Anyone could crunch the numbers and see that this series pulled in a lot of money at the box office. Like with all good products, when one is a hit…only a fool would leave it alone. The film opened the industry’s eyes to the lucrative possibilities, spawning lots of less inspiring features which aren’t worth mentioning here. The writing was on the wall though, and with one notch in the belt, the dream makers set out to duplicate the success of first film.

I suppose anytime a person hits a homerun, the logical move is to try it again. The taste of glory is intoxicating, and success is for the most part completely un-rivaled. (Author’s note: The only time this isn’t applicable is when a person becomes so good at losing and disaster, they find a way to win by being so bad. Everyone knows someone who is a fabulous mess, which for some odd reason is seductive in its own right. I get that. It’s fun to root for the underdog, which is normally counted out from the get-go, so expectations can be low, which creates a perfect storm of conditions to succeed once in a while. When no one is expecting much, an underdog can be devastating to the competition who doesn’t view their opponent as worthy. That element of surprise can catch many off guard, forcing them to alter their own course. I love that shit)

The first movie “Friday the 13th” was a massive hit and brought in boat load of money…$59.8 million to be exact. That is a tremendous amount of cash, considering the budget which consisted of $550,000 dollars. Talk about a great return on a minimal investment. The film was released on May 9th, 1980, when I was six days old. The first film received praise as well as attacks for the violence depicted in the ninety-five minutes of run time. I guess you could say a star was born, if nothing else. So, there was the first movie, and it was triumph by monetary standards. Who wouldn’t swing for the fences again? I surely would have. A sequel was started right away and on May 1st, 1981 it was cast out for the world to see.

The start of the impossible?

Sequels for the most part are pretty basic in nature. As you can see above, it really boils down to having an idea that is continued. That makes sense and there isn’t much wiggle room for broader interpretations…or is there? The final summary of “Friday the 13th” was mostly straight forward. You had the lone survivor, Alice Hardy (played by Adrienne King who had un-credited roles in Saturday Night Fever and Hair, as well as a Burger King commercial) who had to fight for her life in a battle with Mrs. Pamela Voorhees (played by Betsey Palmer) on the beach of Camp Crystal Lake.

The fight scene was intense and eventually led to Pam being decapitated by Alice with a machete. This showdown was ultimately caused by the 1957 drowning of Pam’s son Jason Voorhees. Death is a heavy thing, even for fictional people and became a driving force for Pamela to seek revenge. She blamed the counselors who were supposed to be watching Jason and that thought eventually blossomed into a murderous rampage in 1980. As the legend goes, two camp counselors were murdered in 1958, a year after Jason’s death by an unknown assailant (I’m sure you can guess who that might have been).

This is where things start to get strange. After killing Pam, Alice decides to take a canoe out into the lake. This is very odd to me, because she just had to kill a woman…who admitted to being the “bad guy”. If the bad person was dead, my first instincts would have been to flee the scene, get help, but above all things I would have gotten the hell out of the camp. But no, Alice decides in her infinite wisdom to take a ride out into the lake. I guess people react differently to trauma so I will leave it there.

“I was working the day that it happened, preparing meals here…I was the cook”

I also find it interesting that Pamela was the cook at Camp Crystal Lake. She obviously would have had intimate knowledge of the daily routine at the camp. If Jason wasn’t a very good swimmer, why in the hell did she bring him to a summer camp where one of the main draws was the water. Being an employee of the place herself, she must have known that the kids would be swimming. If that had been a concern of hers, she didn’t do a very good job of keeping Jason away from water. Either way, Jason drowned, and Pam was forever hell bent on paying back those that were responsible as well as those who had no connection whatsoever to her son’s death, besides working at the geographical location where the tragedy occurred (some twenty years later).

I guess Pam’s rage can be a warning to us all. When people are done wrong…time isn’t always a good judge or indicator as far as safety is concerned. Someone waited a full year before killing two counselors at the camp in 1958. We can assume it was Pam… the scary thing is that she would wait almost two decades before killing again, all in the name of revenge. I respect that discipline, even if Pam wasn’t a real person, she bided her time until she was ready to act. Hard feelings often die a slow death and in Pam’s case, never. I understand that. Pam was definitely a gangster in her own right. Some of the most interesting and dangerous gangsters on earth look like everyday people. and I find that intriguing. Always treat strangers with respect, you never know when you might come across real trouble that you weren’t prepared for.

So, there we are…Alice killed Pam and floated out into the darkness while Pam’s body rested on the shoreline. It is important to remember what just happened because it is often times overlooked as the years pass by. The killer in Friday the 13th was Pamela Voorhees, retaliating for the drowning death of her son Jason Voorhees back in 1957. Jason had been dead for almost twenty years, when “Friday the 13th” starts. After the showdown on the beach, Alice falls asleep in the canoe and around daybreak, we find her calmly enjoying the still waters (weird). A partially decomposed boy surfaces and pulls Alice down into the water.

“Two of my men pulled you out of the lake, we thought you were dead too”

Alice turns up at the hospital, talking with the police. She asks about the boy, but the cop informs here that they didn’t find any “boy” in the lake. Alice insists that the kid is still there, and the movie comes to an end. Ok so far? I believe everyone is still with us. Jason is dead and has been for a long time. Pamela is dead and will be for a long time. Alice survived to see another day and everyone else met the grim reaper. Closing credits…

Now things start to get spooky. “Friday the 13th: Part 2” is released, and we find out the rest of the story. Fans want to know what ever happened to Alice and they get their answer. Apparently two months have gone by since the dreadful night on the beach of Camp Crystal Lake. She is living alone, in a non-descript part of a city. She is haunted in her dreams by the terror and horror of the camp. The opening shot shows a kid playing in large puddles on the side of a city street. I know it’s a city street because it has a curb. There are no curbs in the country. We catch a glimpse of a very desolate neighborhood, with large two-story homes. All of them are darked out except one in the distance. It’s definitely nighttime, so why this kid was out so late, splashing around in the water is beyond me. Perhaps it’s a nod to the desolate Camp Crystal Lake, with the homes representing cabins and the puddles of water representing Crystal Lake…and to go one step further…a child splashing around in the water could symbolize Jason and his drowning. It could be a stretch, but you never know. Could there be things all around you that symbolize and actually reference something else? A deeper meaning that maybe you didn’t think about? I bet there are but who really knows for sure?

Then it happens…as the kid is called away by his mom, a pair of dark boots walks through the puddle the boy had just been playing in. We also hear that chiller sound effect kick in that was made famous by the first movie. This movie seems to bombard the viewer subconsciously with odes to the first film, at least that’s my opinion and its smart. Smart in the way that they are about to sell the viewers an unbelievable set of circumstances that will defy logic…and they need all the help they can get. Humans can be easy to trick, and the power of suggestion sometimes clouds judgement. Things aren’t always what they appear and that is true in everyday life, but that is for another time.

We find Alice sleeping in bed, presumably just an un-intentional nap because all the lights are still on, and she is fully clothed. She’s getting a heavy dose of PTSD nightmares from her time at Crystal Lake and is dreaming of the final showdown with Pam. I find this footage interesting because it’s the second time in 3 minutes and 33 seconds that the viewer is being referenced to the first film, either out loud or subconsciously. It’s almost like the film is reminding the viewer of why they are here at Part 2, and re-capping some of the most memorable moments of the first film. Again, I find this interesting

“Transfer is a technique used in propaganda and advertising. Also known as association, this is a technique of projecting positive or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value (an individual, group, organization, nation, patriotism, etc.) to another in order to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. It evokes an emotional response, which stimulates the target to identify with recognized authorities. Often highly visual, this technique often utilizes symbols superimposed over other visual images”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_(propaganda)

Alice gets into a boring argument with her mother on the phone where she admits that she is trying to put her life back together. A shower is taken. Then a strange hang up phone call. The feelings of unease creep back into the room and Alice slowly starts walking around “checking things out”. The background music tells you something is wrong, but not yet in the field of vision so to speak. A loud noise, an open window, and Alice starts to revert back to survival mode. She arms herself with an ice pick. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been here before…

A cat flies through the window and Alice settles down. She puts on the kettle and takes a breath. She opens the refrigerator door and sees the head of Pamela Voorhees staring up at her. Within an instant the ice pick pierces her temple and Alice is no more. The bridge has been built between the two movies, a new killer has been introduced, and time marches on like it always does. It all happens so seamlessly, but was it? The sole survivor of the Camp Crystal Lake murders had obviously relocated to a new town. These were the days before technology and the internet made finding people so easy. We are suggested to believe that the killer is in fact Jason Voorhees even if it takes some leap of faith.

The killer could have been Jason Voorhees but there is a problem. He’s been dead since 1957. The only reason Pamela Voorhees started killing people was to avenge her dead son, right? If Jason was alive, how did Pamela get things so wrong? Losing a child is probably the worst fate a parent could have. It drove Pamela crazy for twenty some years. Is it possible that Jason didn’t drown? No fucking way. Although the movie never elaborated, if someone drowned back in 1957, there had to have been proof. Pamela was Jason’s mom and then Jason died. This sent Pamela into madness. People don’t get things that wrong, do they? I don’t think so. If Jason hadn’t died in the lake in 1957, where the hell had he been for two decades? How could his mom get it so wrong? How could Jason come back from a drowning death to be alive all that time and no one on earth knew about it? It’s not possible, no matter what you cut the dope with.

The Devil’s Advocate

What are some plausible explanations to support Jason being alive? I don’t see a direct connect to anything even semi-believable. There is one thing though…that could explain Pamela’s thought process, how Jason didn’t die, and why she wasted two decades worth of vengeance for something (Jason’s death) that never happened. Mental Illness would be my top pick. Why? Because when people are mentally ill, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense to the world, it only matters to the infected brain. A true crazy person won’t admit to mental illness because in their mind, everything is how it should be. Have you ever tried arguing with an insane person? I have. You get nowhere because reality is in each of our heads. A real crazy person just is, not someone who suggests that they are crazy to anyone who will listen. Crazy doesn’t need to convince or justify; they just are.

Could Pam have been so mentally ill that she dreamed up the story about her son “Jason”, how he died, and who was responsible? It’s possible, but highly unlikely. Someone that delusional surely would have outed themselves over the years in a small town. Careless speech, a drunken rant, bad blood…over a span of twenty years, Pam would have been extremely lucky not to have been found out, if in fact she was that crazy.

Talking about a drowned son that didn’t, would surely have tipped people off to the extent of her madness and in the 1970’s might have landed a person in the puzzle factory. But who knows, sometimes people internalize hatred and resentments, burying it deep down, so deep in fact that perhaps she passed through life without telling anyone about her beliefs and intentions. It’s a long shot but that’s where we find ourselves, trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.

If Jason had existed, maybe Pam was so crazy that she hid him away from the public. That might explain his own issues later in the movie with reasoning and reality. A mother so ashamed of her son, perhaps stemming from having Jason on her own and his mental quality being questionable…could have been a motive to keep him hidden (especially back then in America). Then Pam would have to justify her own actions, I guess. Like most humans, people are very good at justifying their actions and over time…perhaps it would have been easier for Pam to pretend Jason was in fact dead. Thoughts really can become realities (that’s why it’s dangerous to dwell on unhealthy or negative ideas). Maybe crazy Pam created a scenario where she was robbed of a healthy son, because he drowned all those years ago. Thus, alleviating any guilt over the absence of the father, his mental capabilities, and so on.

The bottom line is that if Jason was alive to be the bad guy in Part 2, Pamela must have been either the worst mom on earth or the craziest. I believe that foundations matter and this second film in the series is built on some very shaky ground. I guess if the movie hadn’t been so seamless in weaving the bridge, more people would have questioned the grounds for Jason’s human existence.

Never mind explaining why or how Jason was able to leave the safety of Camp Crystal Lake, tracking down Alice and killing her. Never mind explaining how Jason was able to keep the decapitated head of his mom and bring it along for the party. How did he get the head? Where had he been when his mom was fighting with Alice? Why not assist his mom, who obviously needed a little help with Alice? If Jason was there, and the ownership of the head was proof of that, why not just kill Alice right then and there? Why wait for two months, before somehow finding her again, totting around mom’s head, and creating an elaborate game with it just prior to killing Alice? The facts make connecting the dots with logic beyond impossible. And we haven’t gotten past the first five minutes of the movie yet.

Is this the end of the road or just the beginning???

Signing Off,

Mike Shepard

ROX-TV Head Writer

shepard2909@hotmail.com