Friday the 13th: Part II - 4K Blu-ray Review

Movie
After the surprising success of 1980’s whodunit slasher Friday the 13th, the powers that bee decided to speed release two sequels in the span of a two year period, and taking advantage of the new wave of horror that the 80s was introducing. Well, for those who haven’t seen the original film, or simply know Jason by his infamous hockey mask and machete, he wasn’t even the main focus of the original film. It was a subversive whodunit sort of film that kept you wondering the whole time, only to realize it was the innocent seeming middle aged woman all along. Jason himself was simply referenced by his mother as having died years ago (which was her motivation for revenge). Even the end scene that sort of plays with your mind of Jason (supposedly) leaping out of the lake as a mangled water logged corpse could simply be seen as a jump scare for the audience. No one ever really though Jason would become a bigger player than simply that reference point.

HOWEVER, the powers that be decided to piggy back onto the success of the first movie by pulling a “what if Jason actually survived” scenario and had him grow up in the wood as a mentally handicapped boy who just wanted revenge for his mother getting hacked up (which was actually the motive for her in the original film), and just recycle the whole “ teenagers are coming to Camp Crystal Lake and they need to be slaughtered” plotline of the original. Not exactly clever, and not exactly a lot of work went into it, but the film is still pure 100% 1980s cheese, and spawns an entire franchise of Jason becoming the demonic unholy monster that he becomes.

The films starts out 5 years after the events of the first film, with the opening monologue showing the highlights of the previous film, as well as clueing us in to the fact that SOMEONE might still be out there. Fast forward to the present and we’re presented with ANOTHER host of camp counselors coming out a few weeks before camp starts in order to brush up on their skills, and of course get frisky with each other in the woods (it wouldn’t be an 80s slasher without random nudity and kills during coitus). However, one by one the counselors go missing or are found hacked to bits, leading to the chilling conclusion that Jason himself might not have actually died 30 some years ago.

Outside of the retconning of Jason’s demise, Part II really is simply a remake of the 1st film, just with Jason trying to please his memory of mommy dearest and hack those kids into pieces. We have the same random hookup scenes and skinny dipping in the lake, and even some of the same kills (the spearing of Sandra and her boyfriend on the bed was a near bit for bit remake kill) are duplicated. The final act changes things up a bit with Ginny (Amy Steel) and Paul (John Furey) turning the tables on Jason at the end and discovering his death shrine (how she distracts him is actually a clever little twist), but overall this feels VERY familiar.




Rating:

Rated R by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

The video on the old Blu-ray from Paramount was always good enough for the time, but luckily for us the 4K UHD comes to us with a striking new transfer (supposedly the first 4 films were given new 4K scans before Scream Factory actually did their entire franchise collection, so I’m guessing #3 and #4 are coming sooner rather than later) that does the film justice. Part II has ALWAYS been a heavily grainy film, using a similar aesthetic to the first film (both were shot in like a 14 month period), and right off the bat I noticed some quirks that plagued Paramount’s 4K of the original film were gone. The first film had some rather blasted out whites and that sort of made contrast look a bit wonky too. Thankfully the second film doesn’t suffer from that artifact, instead producing a very natural looking grain structure and a wonderfully organic image. Facial features, background elements, and even skin tones look distinctly improved over the aging Blu-ray, and swear I had never noticed so many skin details than I did in this viewing (cough, cough). There’s still some limitations being that this was shot on a $5 million budget back in 1981, so don’t go expecting a new revelation, but overall this is a very VERY nice upgrade over the Blu-ray.









Audio:

I wish I had the Scream Factory Blu-ray release to compare against, but the 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track is a direct port of the Blu-ray that we’ve had for the better part of a decade plus. Which brings with it all the limitations of that aging mix. The 5.1 track is certainly quite serviceable, with decent dialog, solid rendering of ambient effects and the “tsh tsh tsh” of the score coming through from all angles. It’s a bit front heavy most of the time though, with most of the action taking place in the mains followed by some center channel screams. There’s some good high points, and some GREAT placing of ambient noises as Ginny runs through the woods. But there are some hissing and pops that are leftover from the aging track, and the track has a distinctly “thin” feel to it. But the biggest miss is that Paramount didn’t transfer over the Mono theatrical mix that the Blu-ray has, even if it wasn’t in lossless.












Extras:

• Inside Crystal Lake Memories
• Friday's Legacy: Horror Conventions
• Jason Forever
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood Short: Part 2














Kind of a copy-cat of it’s predecessor, Friday the 13th: Part II is probably the weakest of the original films that were rapid fire released in just a 3 year period. It takes a while to get going (the first kill isn’t till roughly 40 minutes or so into the movie) and while it has a cool twist on what motivates Jason (the shrine was a distinctly creepy reveal back in the day), the film is a bit more snoozy than the rest. Luckily the remastered video is pretty dang good, though any extras on board are simply the ancient ones that are found on the Blu-ray, and there’s no dusting up of the audio mix. It’s a good watch for slasher fans, but it has it’s downsides too. (As always, since this doesn’t have a stand alone release yet, I’ll be linking directly to the boxset).


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Betsy Palmer, Amy Steel, John Furey, Kirsten Baker, Marta Kober
Directed by: Steve Miner
Written by: Ron Kurz, Victor Miller, Sean S. Cunningham
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, German, French, Italian DD Mono, English DVS
Subtitles: English SDH, English, German, Spaish, French, Italian, Dutch
Studio: Paramount
Rated: R
Runtime: 87 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: October 1st, 2024

Asere said:

The Amazon link takes us to Paramount Scares Vol 1 vs Vol 2 that includes part 2. Good to know it is now on 4k. Thanks for the review.

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ooooooooooopsie... fixed lol.