Night of the Creeps is the greatest movie of all time

Night of the Creeps. An all-time fave. Female companion loved it as well. Watched this last the night before the eclipse with an unwanted house guest. Wanted a weird space invader movie and this fit the bill, for me at least. The guest was not into it. Too crazy for him. Had to turn it off. Punished him with Detention instead which he also wasn't really able to handle. Time to revisit. Better than I remembered. Greatest film of all time indeed.

Something cool about the flick is that all the character names pay homage to other horror directors. These include characters named after James Cameron, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg who did Jeff Goldblum The Fly movie, Joe Dante of The 'Burbs and Gremlins fame, Tobe Hooper who's most remembered for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (going to be watching all of those flicks soon) who also did Funhouse and Lifeforce which I called "the worst movie of all time" but am seriously reconsidering as maybe the greatest movie of all time as I remember it fondly (it is a naked, space-vampire movie after all),  John Landis who did An American Werewolf in London among other things, Steve Miner who directed Friday the 13th: Part 2 and Part 3 as well as Halloween H20, Sam Raimi of The Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell fame among other awesome shits, and George A. Romero who more or less invented the zombie movie. I'm not really sure why the director of this flick, one Jeff Dekker, never made it to the level of the directors he pays homage here. After this movie, Dekker's second film was 1987's Monster Squad which is universally loved. Other than that he directed an episode of Tales from the Crypt and the film Robocop 3 which he co-wrote with Frank Miller and is not remembered fondly.  He also wrote the story that would be used for the basis of the film House from 1985 directed by the aforementioned Steve Miner. He has a couple of producer credits for stuff I've never seen and a handful of writing credits, most recently for The Predator from earlier this year which was not well received. Does get much better than this or Monster Squad. Would have totally watched anything else horror related he would have made but alas. There is basically none.

Oh, wow

Pros: Extra cheese here. Over-the-top and doesn't take itself seriously though it obviously loves the genre. The worms and gore are great. The first zombie/alien movie that I know of, it is a pretty unique crossover film with an interesting/engaging plot. Cast is surprisingly solid and features Tom Atkins from Halloween III: Season of the Witch (among other things). What I consider a perfect self-aware, horror/comedy film.

Cons: Aliens in the opening scene look pretty stupid. There are also some dead animals.

Gist of the movie is that to impress a girl, dweeby college student Chris and best bud JC pledge a fraternity full of douche bags and are forced to steal a body from the college morgue when shit goes wrong. Must be a different breed of chick than I am used to that would be impressed by what frat a dude would join or whatever. The movie opens with a bunch of aliens chasing this other alien who ejects a weird canister out into space. The canister crashes to earth in the 1950s and a coed couple goes to investigate. Meanwhile, there is an axe murder on the loose who is in the area. When the dude leaves his date in the car, the murderer shows up and hacks her to bits. We later see that a cop named Ray Cameron, who had dated the girl when they were in high school, stumbled upon the scene and shot the killer to death. Fast forward 30 years in the future and the male coed in the car is the body that the dudes try to steal. Turns out the guy is infested with these sentient worms that turn people into zombies by flying into their mouths. The first person to discover the issue ends up being the female crush, Cynthia, who ends up working with the pledge to stop the college from getting overrun with these worms/zombies. Eventually the axe murderer gets possessed and shit is fucking on. On the whole, the film is an early kitchen sink type movie that throws everything out there and sees if sticks. Parasitic alien worms, B movie alien spacemen, slasher madmen, teen comedy, cop/medical drama, this film has basically everything and enjoys something of a cult following these days.

The Bradster

It stars Tom Atkins who fucking goes for it in this flick as Ray Cameron, Jason Lively who was Rusty in one of the National Lampoon's Vacation movies (European Vacation) plays Chris Romero, Steve Marshall as James Carpenter "J.C." Hooper who is the handicapped best bud of Chris, and Jill Whitlow as Cynthia Cronenberg who is the semi-rare attractive survivor girl that shows a little boob. Also appearing in the film are cutie Elizabeth Cox from Intruder as Kathy, Allan Kayser who was Bubba in Mama's Family as Brad with the vanity plate "BRADSTER" on his whip who is the generic dickhead frat douche who dates the character Cynthia before he kicks the crutch of the crippled kid which prompts her to do the classic crank flipping the bird and then later (once he has turned to an alien zombie which she doesn't notice for an insanely long time) break up with him, Robert Kino as the Asian janitor Mr. Miner who barely speaks English and just keeps repeating "screaming like banshees" which he thinks is the funniest thing he has ever heard in his whole fucking life, Dick Miller from Gremlins and The 'Burbs and a million other things has a small part, David Paymer who is a guy you sort of recognize but have no idea where from as a medical student that gets murdered, Vic Polizos (another I-sort-of-recognize-that-guy guy) who plays this coroner that is constantly eating while poking around horribly murdered individuals, David Oliver who died of AIDS in the early 1990s as Steve with the uni-brow who is basically just a generic meathead, and the very attractive Suzanne Snyder from Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Return of the Living Dead II, and Weird Science. Lot of people you sort of know, I guess.

The zombie ax murderer. Lot going on here

Best line of the movie is a tough one with this flick and Atkins going a mile a minute. The first thing he says, something of a swing and miss, came after a guy asks him if he is the detective when he replies, "No, Bullwinkle Moose." Later that same scene we get "That's fine. Candy-ass, but fine." and when talking about a body that suddenly wasn't there he says "What, did he have a date? Whaddya mean it isn't here?" and later "Zombies, exploding heads, creepy-crawlies... and a date for the formal. This is classic, Spanky." Chris also has a pretty good one. Atkins basically out of nowhere starts telling Chris, a college freshman whom he calls "Spanky", before they really know much of what was going down, that he shot and killed that ax murderer though he didn't need to. Chris then replies, shocked, "detective, other than confessing to a murder, is there a point to this conversation," which is bold. Also of note here, Cameron buried the guy under the floor of the sorority mother's home. The guy ends up coming back to life and they have a zombie ax murderer situation on their hands that they have deal with. But my fave line is probably, from Cameron, "What I'm going to need is your standard flame thrower."

"Your date's here! And he's looking good!"

Best scene of the movie is easily the zombie formal. The sorority girls at this point know shit is going down. Cameron, Chris, and Cynthia have let them know what's up. Meanwhile, down the way, the Beta Frat that they seem to have some sort of thing with, had a bus crash because of a possessed dog and all of them end up getting infected. Once they show up shit really hits the fan and it becomes your typical zombie/home invasion flick. Well sort of. It kicks off with a Cameron zinger, "I got good news and bad news, girls," he says, "The good news is your dates are here." "What's the bad news?" one of the girls asks, taking the bait. Cameron tells her, "They're dead." At that point one of the dead guys breaks into the sorority house and attacks a chick. Atkins unnecessarily pushes her down after she breaks free from the guy and tells her to duck. He then looks the zombie guy in the eye, says "it's Miller time", and shoots him in the face. When the worms come crawling out, he takes an aerosol can to his cigarette and lights those shits on fire. Bad ass. From there all hell breaks loose and it descends in complete chaos. Sort of like Re-Animator. Dope ass scene.

It is during that best scene that we get the best kill as well. While Cameron is busy flame throwing people to death, Chris and Cynthia remain outside, getting overwhelmed by the zombie hoard. But they end up making their way over to this little shed with all the sorority's landscaping equipment. It's then that Steve, with his unibrow and all, among other Beta zombies comes at the pair and breaks through the shed's walls. Steve eventually grabs Cynthia and is going to turn her when Chris grabs a lawnmower and fires it up, saying "later dude" as he mows the guy down. While not nearly as insane as when the main character in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive does it several years later, but this put that instrument on the map as a viable and gruesome tool to dispatch zombies with.

MVP of the movie is 100% Tom Atkins. It's not even close. As you can see from best scene and best line, he is all over this movie. He really swings for the fences in this flick. Every damn line from the moment he is on screen is quotable and absurd. As someone at Horror Freak News put it, "Tom Atkins steals scenes with one-liners like there was a prize for it," one JC Richardson wrote. Pretty much as every damn line is a joke. Sort of like how Deadpool 2 was. They just keep coming at you. This was also Atkins favorite of his 81 movies according to the source. That's saying a lot considering he was a huge overachiever for his shtick being an over-the-top chain-smoking drunk that cracks wise whilst looking hungover. He was Michael Hunsaker, the guy who got involved over his head with paramilitaries in Lethal Weapon, for god's sake. "Never before has a C Level actor risen so high."

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is the greatest movie of all time

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Saw it in the theater with my old man and my bro back in 1998. Sophomore year of high school. Thought it was weird shit back then. Didn't know it was retconned and what have you. Confused the shit out of all of us at the time. They shitcan the whole Man in Black/Mark of Thorn bullshit from Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers which was obviously not working. Also, everything that happened in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. So all of the Jamie Lloyd stuff gets ignored. In Halloween 4 it is glossed over that Jamie Lee Curtis's character, Laurie Strode, died in a car accident. The movies that H20 follows are the original John Carpenter's Halloween and Halloween II. It is in that universe. I sort of picked up on this back then but during the opening credits we see a newspaper clipping with a headline that explains that she was indeed killed in a car accident. What the fuck? Later, when we see that she is alive, she explains that she faked her death. This shit pissed me off back then. Is it in this universe or isn't it? It obviously isn't if it ignores the Cult of Thorn shit and doesn't mention Jamie, but why make it more complicated? None of this was very clear back in the day. Now, however, knowing that whats what, I took the film as it is and other than taking a while to get going and some truly awful and grossly unnecessary CGI which is fucking mind blowing, they CGI the mask for god's sake, this one is pretty solid. Unbelievable. But solid. In fact, greatest movie of all time.

Michelle Williams... Attractive lady.

Also, I should mention that the upcoming Danny McBride written, David Gordon Green directed, Blumhouse produced Halloween movie, watch the trailers here and here, which looks okay but also sort of dumb, retcons the franchise as well. This one, however, ignores everything past the original. So basically another attempt at this movie only ignoring everything from the point when Myers disappears after getting shot six times in the original up to this new one. We'll see if it's a shit show or not in a couple of weeks. Early reports have it being pretty solid so I've got hope.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Halloween: H2O is the best of the many sequels, yet still pales in comparison to the original Halloween.

WTF is this shit?

Pros: Opening is pretty dope. The ending is sort of amazing. Michelle Williams. Found her so attractive when I originally watched this. She holds up. Once it finally gets going, for that last 20 minutes or so, the movie is pretty great. This is basically when JLC goes back into the school with an ax to the very, very end.

Cons: LL Cool J's character is extremely irritating with his romance novelist ambitions for no reason. Takes too long to get going. After the opening scene kills, nothing really happens until the end. Unlike the original where it builds and Myers is lurking, it's more he just isn't there a lot. CGI mask.

Quick note on my Halloween watching/commentary. I have, since the last piece of shit Halloween movie I watched, discovered this dope podcast doing the same thing as yours truly. It's called Halloweenies and is part of the Consequence of Sound Podcast Network. Discovered it after being a semiregular listener of The Losers Club which is a Stephen King podcast. They are both great. Trying not to rip off any of their stuff from their humorous observations but I'm thinking there is a little bit of overlap. Like with our takes on the ending. But check out that shit if you are into any of those shits.

I owned that shit back in the day

Anyway... The gist of the thing goes thus... 20 years after Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, was attacked by her homicidal brother, Michael Myers, she comes face to face with "The Shape" again who has tracked her down from Haddonfield, Illinois to a California boarding school where she is the head mistress after having faked her death to protect herself and her son, played by Josh Hartnett.

Also in flick are Adam Arkin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (JGL), Adam Hann-Byrd, LL Cool J, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, JLC's mother Janet Leigh from Pyscho has a couple nice little cameos, and Michelle Williams. Directed by Steve Miner, who started his career off hot with Friday the 13th Part 2 which is probably my favorite of the franchise and Friday the 13th Part III which is also super solid before doing the underrated film House about a writer whose child goes missing at his aunt's haunted home that he then inherits and moves into (I'm going to have to rewatch this soon), before what should have (and sort of did) killed his career with 1985's Soul Man about a Brett Kavanaugh type who dresses in blackface to pose as a black dude to achieve his dream of attending Harvard with a full scholarship. It didn't exactly age well. Anyway, Miner thought the previous three Halloween movies were trash, saying as much, and didn't watch them. So with his background he more or less decided to make a Jason Goes to Boarding School movie.

Jesus fuck, bro

There is some shit. Like how the movie takes for fucking ever to get going. There are the kills in the beginning and then it turns into a shitty slasher at a boarding school where no one dies and the killer is halfway across the country. He doesn't even get to the area until about the halfway mark. Then it still takes a while for him to get in and what not. Which brings me to some more shit. Every second LL is on screen, reading his old lady garbage from the romance novel he is writing instead of doing his job the top priority of which is protecting the kids from homicidal killers. And finally the movie riding out to the soundtrack of Creed is borderline offensive. Jesus fucking Christ. Wow, Creed sure does suck.

Young JGL

Now for some good shit. There are three really good contenders for best scene. For me, they totally made the movie worth watching. They were the opening, a scene where Michael goes into a restroom at an isolated rest area on the highway and reaches under a stall and steals a woman's purse to get her keys while her small child hums while she takes a shit or whatever, and the final 20 minutes of the movie which bleeds into my pick for MVP. The opening is a pretty solid attention grabber. Starts the way II ended, with "Mr. Sandman" playing over the credits. From there it reintroduces the pertinent characters from that flick that we need for the current film (basically Marion who was Loomis's nurse and Laurie Strode), and kills off one of the biggest stars in the movie in JGL who takes a hockey skate to the face, off screen, as well as Marion who gets her throat slit as Haddonfield's finest search the house next door, long story. It's in this opening scene that we get the best line of the movie. In that scene, one these two hockey punks, the one that is not JGL, asks Marion, "Hasn't anyone ever told you that second-hand smoke kills?" and Marion says, "Yeah, but they're all dead." That was pretty much how I felt when I was a smoker... But now that I'm not and am like many years removed from it... Yeah.

The next great scene, the aforementioned rest area one, is creepy as shit. Definitely the closest the movie gets to real horror. The woman and her daughter are in an isolated area. Women's restroom is locked so they go in the men's room. Light doesn't work. Open it by wedging it with a rock. That works for a minute and then the door slams shut. The little girl is nervous but the mom tells her to chill at which point a hand reaches under the stall and snatches her person. It happens out of nowhere and is a fucked up situation with some potentially sexual stuff that could go down which makes it even more terrifying. Fuck. Anyway. But the best scene is the ending which brings me to the MVP, obviously JLC.

MVP is hands down JLC. It was crazy that she was coming back. I remember being stoked and surprised by that. And she fucking rocks it in that last 20 minutes. Prior to that not so much, I feel she isn't the same character as she was in the first two movies like at all. Don't really think she's the same Laurie Strode at the end either but it's all pretty compelling nonetheless. (Little aside here, hoping this is the thing they really focus on for the new movie: having Laurie feel like the same battered victim that indeed has been through some shit). It's basically when the film turns from complete shit to a solid fucking sequel. It happens suddenly after Laurie has lost her boyfriend, played by Arkin, and has just saved her son and Michelle Williams. She sends them off and shuts the gate so that it is just her and Myers on the grounds. She then gets herself an ax and goes into the darkness, looking to settle this shit with her brother once and for all. It is a powerful scene and then they get it on. Everyone in the theater lost their shit here and at the very end when Myers is finally got, once and for all.

So, yeah, saved the best kill for the the end here as the conclusion of the film also features the best kill as it is Laurie killing Myers himself. How they kill him is fucking ridiculous. He is stabbed many times, thrown off a balcony, thrown through a windshield, rammed by a van, crushed between a tree and said van after it rolls down a cliff, and finally decapitated with an ax. Hell of a way to go. No coming back from that. But wait, he must as there is one more shitty sequel. Have never watched it as I always considered this the true ending of the franchise. Now is the time though which is exciting considering that this is called one of the worst horror sequels of all time. So look forward to that shit show.

Friday the 13th Part 3 is the greatest movie of all time

Two for two after the original Friday the 13th, which was trash, with Part 3 not quite living up to Part 2 but not bad on the whole. The movie is the same movie as Part 2 with a hockey mask instead of a sack of potatoes, the biggest loser in all of film, a brunette only cast, urban thugs, and some implied rape. It is what it is: more dumb kids getting killed in creative ways (but with less nudity).

Pros: Decent kills. Some of them you can tell were shot just for the 3D (like the harpoon to the eye and the POV kills) but are still pretty good, especially the guy walking on his hands. 

Cons: Basically just redo the second movie but not as well. Less of what we want in terms of killing and boning and what not. 

Notes: Starts with the standard recap. We get the “you've done your job well; mommy is pleased” bit from Part 2. Like the first 15 minutes of the movie are the last 15 minutes of the previous movie. I already saw this shit. Get to the credits, finally. Sort of a nice intro. Decent, weird song. Coming at you lettering. Obviously was in 3-D. Also, directed by Steve Miner who is maybe a bit overrated but this film is indeed solid.

"It's me, Haroldo"

Starts with with this guy Harold, some pretty cool looking mustachioed Camp Crystal Lake convenience store proprietor, walking around outside his store. His bitch of a wife goes off on him. She is watching the news which features the Jason murders which just happened. She thinks she sees Harold walking about outside among the clothes she has hung to dry. It is obviously J. Back to Harold in the store, eating fish food. Has a bunny in the produce. Animal lover. He also samples all of these packaged items in the store. Wifey catches him and bitches at him some more. Goes out to put the bunny up. A snake has killed the rest of them. He runs out and goes and takes a shit, leaving the rabbit there. It is the weirdest thing. I like this guy. He'll probably make it. Starts to go outside. Rethinks it. Turns the light on. Now goes outside. Immediately takes a clever to the gut and dies. Bitchy wife dies not long after.

"We should go do it!" "Yeah."

Now it's the next day. So this is Saturday the 14th, technically. More campers. Already talking about boning. One of the girls had something happen to her at the lake and now she is going back as the fifth wheel in a double-date situation. Go pick up the fifth girl who is actually the weird guy's date. He sulks around talking about how ugly he is. The girl they pick up is like, “are you my date.” He apologizes. This guy. All three of the girls look exactly the same. They think the van is on fire so they run back. Turns out the hippies are just toking, man. Yet another brunette. The dude is a Tommy Chong ripoff. One of them is preggers. What? They get pulled over. With weed in 1982, I can only assume they'll get consecutive life terms. But the cops just roll on by. Dealing with mass murder and all. I guess Paul and Amy Steel are dead. Probably Muffy, the dog, too.

Every damn movie

Come up on an insane old person in the road. Why is this shit necessary? They pick him up. He starts right in with the crazy. “You are indeed, all of you, kind and generous young people,” he says. “Look what his grace has bestowed upon me,” and whips out an eyeball. “I found this today. There were other parts of the body but he said he wanted me to have this. We wanted me to warn you. Look upon this omen. Go back from whence ye came. I have warned thee.” Yeah, the kids are fucking ghost. I can't believe how much more annoying this guy is than Ralph who was insanely irritating in his own right. 

They get to the camp which should so be shut the fuck down. The one chick who had the issue speaks about being back there in the vaguest way possible. "I've been emotionally scared by years of unspoken verbal abuse by my father... It's not what he said; it's what he didn't say." Her BF, Rick, shows up. He is extremely unpleasant. Basically everything he says to Chris, the final girl, is pressuring her into sex. Talks about how he can't take anymore cold showers and tells her she is getting fat. She is like, “oh, you, stop.” Back to the van. The door is open. She is like, “huh, I thought I closed that,” implying Jason opened it. But then the kid with no self-esteem, Shelly, is in there. Huh? She is like “why aren't you at the lake.” He is like, “everyone went skinny dipping and I'm not skinny enough.” Whant Wah. This dude is a walking advertisement for abortion. I can't think of a bigger buzzkill than this idiot. He is like Debbie Downer without the irony. The next time we hear from him he is screaming. They go look for him and he has made himself up to look like he has an ax in his head. Fuck this asshole. This guy better die soon, for real.

"Sorry you're in the car with such a loser cuck."

Shelly and the brunette he is into go to a convenient store. It is insane. First, the chick behind the register tells the camper chick, who hasn't pulled out a wallet or anything, that they “don't accept no food stamps.” She is like, “oh, I guess I need money.” The one idiot, Shelly, is looking at porn magazines. He tosses her his wallet and this urban street gang shows up out of nowhere and strong-arms it. The lady in the group pulls out a condom from it and mocks everyone with it as well as other threatening gestures. They leave and the black dude comes out. Nervous Shelly puts the car in reverse and smashes into their motorcycles. "Like I've ever drove before." The black dude smashes windows of Rick's car with a chain. Shelly is pissed and has a car which he weaponizes and runs over their bikes, again. Biker shakes his fist and swears he'll get his revenge.

Shelly shows up with the smashed car that he borrowed from Rick and trashed. He shows no remorse for this. He may be a borderline personality. Rick has had enough. Wants to leave. Chris wants him to stay but he sees no point as his dick wasn't at that moment wet. Chris dooms him by convincing him to stay. 

Bikers show up to get their revenge. Just end up stealing their gas. Seems a pretty reasonable, nonviolent way of get back at the kids who trashed their rides. For this they get killed horrible. (Later see the black dude is still holding on).

Get a bunch filler stuff for the next half hour. The super horny guy, not Chris's dude but the other one, just starts walking on his hands for no reason and does this for the rest of the movie. Shelly tries to score with the brunette he is there with. Her vagina recoils in horror. She isn't brutal about turning him down though. When she is out of earshot he calls her a “bitch.” End this guy already. Chris keeps being vague. Reminded me of the girl in Futurama, hence the above quote, until we find out that Jason may have sexually assaulted her. We Jason's face for the first time since the very beginning of the movie which was actually from the last movie. Here he looks completely fucking different. That shit happened yesterday in this universe.

And even more dicking around with no killing. Tommy Chong and the stoner chick go into the barn where Jason has set up camp. They leave and it is uneventful. Chong also goes to the outhouse where he takes a shit and smokes a doob. They really need to cut some of this shit. Shelly scares the one girl he was trying to score with by grabbing her foot that she is toeing in the water from the dock. He is wearing the infamous hockey mask and has a harpoon gun for some reason. He is like, “haha, you need to relax, stop being an uptight bitch.” Fucking kill this guy already. 
 

And now we get to it

After more real-time walking around and checking shit out we finally get some kills and they just keep coming. The chick Shelly wants to do gets a harpoon to the eye. The one dude walking around on his hands gets a machete chop upside down to the crotch. We see him later and it is gnarly. His lovely GF takes a post coital shower and then does some light reading of a Fangoria mag. Article about Tom Savini, the legendary makeup guy from 1 and 4, also Sexmachine from From Dusk Till Dawn. Blood trickles down on it. Looks up, sees her dude chopped from stem to sternum. Jason stabs her from under the hammock. Jason then kills the stoner by throwing him into a fuse box. Stoner chick, who is just the worst actress, gets stabbed with a hot poker. Dickhead sexual predator dude's head gets crushed. His eye pops out. 

Chris eventually sees all the carnage. Jason chases her about. Stabs him in the hand. Comes at him like a fucking maniac. Bashes him with a giant log. Gets in the van. Tries to run him down. Out of gas. The punks stole it. Stuck on the bridge. Jason's hands get stuck in the window of her car. She bolts. Falls multiple times. She heads to Jason's body barn. Bonks him with a shovel and hangs him. He looks dead. He is not. 

Get the full frontal Jason. Totally different guy from 2. Black biker shows back up to save the day. I mean die. Gets his arm immediately chopped off and macheted to overkill. Chris comes at Jason and gives him an ax to the head. Reaches out like a freak. She doesn't realize he is a supernatural being. He is bleeding after all. But the old "if it bleeds we can kill it" rule of thumb does not apply. She gets in a canoe so we can have that standard Jason pulling the girl down into the lake from behind scene. Get like 30 jump scares. Jason sees her from upstairs in the house. Sprints at her with maximum effort. And it is the rotting mother that pulls her down. What the hell?

She is now a lunatic. The cops just leave Jason's body there to chill. Sweet Jason music to end it. Also, obviously room there for a sequel. And here we go.

Friday the 13th: Part 2 is the greatest movie of all time

After the garbage that was the original Friday the13th, I was expecting total trash. To my surprise, this was actually watchable. Again, the movie doesn't really add anything to the slasher genre, but it was a much more fun than I was expecting. Pretty ladies, gratuitous nudity, and nasty kills make for a pretty enjoyable fright.

Kirsten Baker, a pretty lady

In this one, directed by Steve Miner, we pick up five years after the original. Here Jason stalks and kills camp counselors who fail to live up to the horror genre survivor rules like no drug or sex. All I remembered about it was that it was the first actual Jason as the killer movie, there is no hockey mask involved, and the final girl form the original gets killed in the first scene of the movie. I had no idea that the survivor girl in this movie was Amy Steel who was also the final girl in another solid flick in April Fool's Day. She is great. It's weird she didn't become more famous.

Pros: It is not The Godfather but it is everything I want from a cheesy horror movie. Awesome kills, beautiful ladies, gratuitous nudity.

Cons: Other than it being like a million other slashers and Jason not wearing a hockey mask, this flick was flawless.

Sack of Potatoes Jason

Notes: First 15 minutes of the movie is reliving the last half of the first one. This is standard for the remaining sequels. Now at present. In real-time we get the survivor girl from the first one talking to her parents on the phone and getting ready for bed. It looks like she is making David Bowie drawings for a living. After another 10 minutes a cat jumps in her apartment. She goes to the fridge to grab the kitty some food and sees Jason's momma's decomposing head in the fridge. She freaks out, Jason comes up from behind her and screw drivers her head. It's a pretty decent kill.

Butt cheek

See the new group of kids going to the newly reopened Camp Crystal Lake. Same old guy, Ralph, comes up to them talking his crazy nonsense about them being doomed. Once they get there we meet the counselors. The ladies are really pretty. One of the dude's is in a wheelchair, setting up one of the more memorable kills from the franchise. We get a gratuitous butt cheek shot as the one in the Mickey Mouse midriff is barely wearing clothes. This idiot Paul, the main camp guy—blonde, hunky—greets his staff. Drones on about fun and work and so forth. Amy Steel shows up in a sweet VW bug. He gives her shit for being late. They later go off alone and make out. That night Paul tells the campfire tale of Jason at the same camp where everyone died just a few years ago. Though the movie came out less than a year after the first one, we hear in the dude's telling that it all went down five years before.

This fucking guy, again

Amy Steel and Paul make out in his cabin. Ralph shows up and peeps on them and does some gross shit which means we are approaching the first kill at the camp. This is a pretty gnarly one, too. Gets garroted with barbed wire.

Jason's amateur carpentry

Everything is pretty normal that next day. Butt Cheeks's dog Muffin gets killed I guess. We see this adventurous couple find dog pieces in the woods. The cops catch them and take them back but no one, except the cop, who dies brutally in Jason's impressively constructed shanty, cares that they were trespassing. We also see Amy Steel's ability to use a chainsaw which plays no part in the movie whatsoever. That evening we get the groups breaking off. Most of the camp goes to the bar in town and is never seen again. Amy Steel, Paul, and this nerdy goofball are the only of these that matter. The goofball gets wasted and manages to pick up a lady at the bar. He is never seen again. As for the six folks that stay behind, all with the intention of getting it on, they all die.

The deaths here are all spectacular. Setting it up is Butt Cheeks going for a little naked swim because why not. The nudity couldn't be more gratuitous or appreciated. This Scott asshole, the one that slingshotted her infamous ass earlier, steals the naked girl's clothes. She chases after him while he rounds around giggling like an idiot. He eventually gets caught in one of those step in the loop traps things that hang you upside down that people in movies always get caught in but no one has ever been caught in IRL. She gets her shirt back and threatens to leave him there. While she is looking for a knife Jason slits his throat. She is then killed off screen much to everyone's disappointment. But then we get a pair of awesome kills. In the first, the kid in the wheelchair gets a machete to the face and falls down 50 stairs. Then the couple that was trespassing gets shish kebabed during sex. And the last girl gets it when she checks on the couple killed while boning when Jason jumps out of the bed with the chick and comes at her with a knife.

Meanwhile, the rest were getting wasted in town. They have a Jason related conversation. Here it goes from Jason being a complete folklore myth to him definitely being real to him definitely being alive out there and growing up alone and scared in the woods. This is now fact in their minds and it is taken as such for the remainder of the franchise. It's bananas.

Paul and Amy Steel come back. The rest are god knows where. They have their "where is everyone" moment. Jason attacks them. Paul just fights him.

He has obviously lost that fight as when Amy Steel was watching and ran away, Jason was on top of Paul, choking him out. But when she hears nothing she comes back and calls for Paul. Jason pops up to no one's surprise and she beats Jason down multiple times before running off. Jason chases her to his shanty in the woods, which, again, is pretty impressive assuming he built it, where he keeps all his bodies. He also has a shrine built for his dead mom. The centerpiece, her head. There is also the sweater she was wearing when the girl in the first one lops off her dome. This gives Amy Steele the idea to try the old dress as the mother trick. It sort of works, she is all "mother is pleased, no more killing," but then he sees the head and they go at it again. She is boned. But Paul comes out of nowhere and they machete him in the neck and shoulder. He appears dead so they take off his sack. They think he is gross but we don't see it.

Baby Ruth!!!

They go back to the cabin. Hear something at the door. It's Muffin, the dog. Yay! Happily ever after... Nope. Jason bursts through the window looking like the Elephant Man and pulls her out, presumably to kill her and set up Part 3.

MonsterVision: Here is Joe Bob Briggs's commentary from his Friday the 13th marathon on Halloween night in 1998. Fucking loved this shit.